A chat with Andrew Jenks

by Anya Lehr

Andrew Jenks has done more at 25 than most middle-aged men in pressed business suits can put on their résumés.  And that’s because Jenks isn’t concerned with quantity; his body of work extends farther than just a film here and there or a record breaking television show.  Jenks’s work is about communicating a story to develop and convey deeper understanding.  He daringly immerses himself into the lives of unheard voices, and remarkably humanizes the faces on screen that we have been so programmed to disregard as real.

Thursday night, Jenks appeared at Bovard Auditorium for a USC Spectrum Career Fest event as the Keynote speaker. He recounted how his first film, Room 335, came to be, a hilarious story filled with rejections, lies, laughs and a (possibly) stolen van (it depends on who you ask).  Jenks loves the word “NO,” because the more he hears it the more he takes it as a challenge to make it a “Yes.” His persistence is the reason that Room 335 was eventually bought by HBO and went on to win awards at festival after festival.  All this after he originally got a call from a film festival telling him they didn’t want his film, and that he shouldn’t even bother submitting it anywhere else either.  I would have given up then. Possibly dug myself into a hole.

Jenks meandered on stage in jeans and a t-shirt, honestly and modestly relating to the sizable crowd what his life has been like since he made the decision to move into an assisted- living home for 5 weeks when he was 19.  Surprisingly funny and undeniable charming, he engaged the audience for over an hour, even while battling exhaustion from his whirlwind travels with the Republican primaries.

Hannah Getts and I had the pleasure of sitting down with the exhausted Jenks afterwards for a (very) quick Q&A.

Jenks: I just have to catch a plane, so we have to be short, I don’t mean to be an ass.

Where are you off to now?

Back home to New York. I’ve been traveling now for a week.

How did you get involved in MTV News?

That came about because I am really into politics and obviously with the show we try to cover young people who are going through serious issues and I feel like that parlays quite nicely into the world of politics.  It’s like ‘I’m following a young woman who’s homeless, how can I help her?’ I’m following a young man who is having problems with health care, how can we help him? And there are these tangible stories, so that works well.

So I talked to MTV about it, and we decided it would be cool if I tried to cover the election, and try to humanize it all.  Part of the show is trying to humanize what it’s like to be homeless, which is something that is hard to do.  I think the idea is that I can try to humanize the political world for young people, because it’s something that a lot of us aren’t really that interested in, or just feel disenfranchised by it.

How does it feel to be on the Romney Campaign?

It’s been trippy, it’s been weird.  Trippy would be a good word.  It’s strange because in this press pool of people I’m the youngest by like 25 years, and I’m the MTV guy so they’re all like ‘What is he doing here?’ It’s surreal; I was getting on this plane the other day, and I saw [Romney] get patted down by the TSA.  I saw

Image courtesy of MTV News

him singing Happy Birthday. I saw him poolside one day. I’m still coming around to the idea that he’s a real person. He’s a dude. He’s a smart dude. He’s just trying to become president.  It just is what it is.  He gaffs, he makes mistakes.

But hopefully as time goes on we can switch from the lifestyle part of this to the policy part and what he can actually do is engage young people and make a difference in their lives because obviously right now there’s a lot of young people hurting.  Also there are a lot of people that can vote this year, young people can really change this election. There are more potential young voters this year than any other voters in the country.  We can actually make a difference.

You dropped out of NYU film school and became wildly successful. What merit do you think film school has?

Everyone has different paths. I think you can talk to ten different people who “made it” and you could ask them how they got there, and they would have ten totally different ways. Film school worked really well for Spike Lee and [Martin] Scorsese, Harvard didn’t work well for Matt Damon.  It just depends on who you are. I don’t necessarily think that if I had graduated college I wouldn’t have made it, it’s just a part of that route you take in life.  So whether it’s more traditional, like going to school for four years or not, I feel like there’s a different way for everyone.  I don’t hate on film school. I think for me I would have hated school regardless.

How do you deal with the emotional backlash after living with the people on World of Jenks?

By just staying engaged.  More than  anything I give them my phone number on day one and I let them know that when this comes out, after this comes out, five years after this comes out, you’ll always have my number and we’ll always talk.  So if you get nervous when the show comes out, call me. If you get upset while its airing because you think you look bad, call me.  I think it’s really important for them to know that they have someone else that can relate to them and help them.  The’re revealing a huge part of their lives and it’s a very vulnerable situation for them, and for me.  So I always found it really important that we stay in contact.

Who do you stay in contact with?

From the 12 people last year that I followed, I keep in contact with all of them.  It’s like having a group of friends, some of them you talk to a lot, some of them you don’t really talk to but you’re still friends.

Favorite Director?

[Francois] Truffaut, to get all film school on you.

Playing on your iPod right now?

The Avett Brothers.

How do you take your coffee?

Black with two Splendas.

So that’s all the time we had with Jenks, but I’ll try and get a transcript of the talk for some more insightful moments.  Until then I am going to keep saying “Yes” to “No”s and revel in the fact that Jenks takes his coffee the same way I do.

Check out more MTV News campaign coverage at www.powerof12.org

WORLD OF JENKS: Season 2 is scheduled to premiere in early 2012.
Enlightening and uplifting, heartbreaking and hilarious, it promises to
set a new standard for gripping documentary programming on MTV.

And: