Hemet is Heaven

I didn’t expect the project to exist outside of the family. There are too many inside jokes and who cares about Hemet anyway? Someone convinced me to post it online and it spread around like crazy. Many posts said, “If you’re from Hemet, you’ll love this!” or “If people ask me about Hemet, I show them this video.” I was pretty stunned and it seemed like fulfilling on this fake movie trailer might be in the future.

In December of 2014, we embarked on a 3 week experiment to expand Junior into a miniseries. Only going off of an outline, we started shooting on December 6th with a premiere date on the 27th. The goal was to try and involve as many friends as possible (a lot of them in local bands) and see how big and crazy we could take the character in a short amount of time. As the opening title card suggests: “This is a fictional story about real people.” We used as many details from my Dad’s life in Hemet as possible (except for the whole dealing cocaine thing).

It premiered at the Historic Hemet Theater to a sold out crowd, features some incredible rock ’n’ roll classics and a family member even threatened to sue me over their depiction in the film.

If you don’t know Hemet, let Junior be your guide. Grab a Budweiser and enjoy the original episodes below!