How Julian Glander Got New York’s Funniest Comedians to Join His Animated Film

As a professional 3D-animator, it makes sense that Julian Glander would feel more passionate than the average person about the social implications of a shape. Take the cube, for example. “Arrogant,” Glander says. “Overrated.” With a portfolio that extends far and wide, Glander’s passion shines through in the squishy, shimmering creatures that feature in his video game Art Sqool to his numerous New York Times and New Yorker illustrations, not to mention his short film about an existential tennis ball starring Clairo. 

Most recently, this cube-hating, Gumby-loving Pittsburgh native has decided to go all in and make a feature-length animated film starring the distinctive voices of Janeane Garofalo, Tavi Gevinson, Julio Torres, Cole Escola, Eva Victor, and Jack Corbett of NPR’s Planet Money TikTok, among others. In theaters this Friday via Cartuna and Irony Point, Boys Go To Jupiter is a surreal, ambient coming-of-age story (featuring an original score by Glander himself) about a teenager who commits himself to the “grindset” in order to make $5,000 so he can finally move out of his sister’s apartment. For 87-minutes, viewers are immersed in the idiosyncratic dreamscape of a suburban Florida winter. For this week’s installment of Search History, we immersed ourselves even deeper in Glander’s world by sliding into his DMs to discuss everything from childhood animation influences to the film’s mythological strip club inspo.

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CHARLOTTE ZAGER: Hi Julian! Thanks for joining me here in the DMs 🙂 To kick things off in true Search History fashion, A/S/L?

JULIAN GLANDER: Hellloooooooo 35/m/Pittsburgh 🐝 u? 

ZAGER: Lovely! 21/f/nyc… sometimes Philly. You must like Sheetz.

GLANDER: I guess we should get right into a Sheetz vs Wawa debate. I have a lot of Pittsburgh pride but I think the city is kidding itself about a lot of things, including Sheetz being good. As a city we should just stop talking about food altogether—it’s a losing argument.

ZAGER: Wawa always. So, what’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

GLANDER: Check on my ducks because they usually start honking when the sun comes up

ZAGER: WOW! They look like a special species of duck. Love the brown.

GLANDER: They are called Indian Runners …They’re cool as hell. I got them on Facebook Marketplace when they were 2 days old. This is probably the best content I have. I should have saved it for later in the conversation

ZAGER: No, let’s get right into the adorable duck content. What inspired you to buy ducks off of FB marketplace?

GLANDER: Pandemic-related psychosis I guess. I was at a Tractor Supply and they had a huge metal tub full of live baby chicks and ducks, probably 200 of them… and I think I was just looking for a project where I could be a little more nurturing and work with my hands as opposed to doing 3D grafix on the computer. I watched probably 100 hours of duck YouTube content in preparation. They are great pets though. Very social and huge comedic value.

ZAGER: Pandemic-related psychosis was such a real thing. I love how distinct your animation style is. Where do you draw inspiration from?

GLANDER: I guess mostly childhood related imagery—candy, toys, games, Gumby specifically. I’m looking around and there are probably 20 Gumbies in my house.

ZAGER: Love Gumby. I always wanted to eat him, he looks like taffy!

GLANDER: I am glad to hear that. It seems like he is fading out of the public consciousness …like there are people who only know him as an iconic dog toy.

ZAGER: Where do you spend most time online?

GLANDER: I do about an hour of daily puzzles (NYTimes games and adjacent) which I feel like is “good” internet usage in the grand scheme of things. But I am a TikTok scroller. I love when a movie is uploaded to TikTok in 90 parts with inaccurate voiceover. I just watched The Bodyguard in that format and I think when you already know a movie pretty well it adds another element. What’s your tik tok algorithm like?

ZAGER: Puzzles are great. When I guess the Wordle on the first try I feel like a God. And yes, watching a movie on TikTok in multiple parts is incredible. It’s like I’m earning the plot.

GLANDER: Yes! It kind of reminds me of watching a movie on cable and it takes five hours because of commercials.

ZAGER: But for me, it’s fewer movies and more like, wildly unrealistic crime abduction shows that I know nothing about. My TikTok algorithm is stuff like that and @veronika_iscool. She’s my favorite. Have you heard of her?

GLANDER: Yes I’m a huge fan and sucked deep into the Veronika and Kyle lore. Like, they bend the line between life and art and performance. Those Toks will be in a museum some day.

ZAGER: Okay, fuck, marry, kill—shapes!

GLANDER: Wow that’s a tough but fair question. I’ll stick to the basic 3D shapes since that’s my world. Marry: the humble sphere, fun but reliable. Fuck: the alluring triangular prism. Kill: the arrogant, overrated cube.

ZAGER: Arrogant, overrated cube? Elaborate.

GLANDER: I think the cube just has this rigid, solid vibe that’s very off-putting. It feels like the jock of shapes. And you just see them EVERYWHERE! Specifically places you don’t want to be. Condos, cubed cheese, amazon boxes … gimme a break.

ZAGER: Cubes synonymous with capitalism?

GLANDER: Oh, for sure the most capitalist shape. That’s a good read.

ZAGER: Saw the film. Absolutely loved it. Which Boys Go To Jupiter character do you relate to the most?

GLANDER: Thank you for watching and absolutely loving it. I spread all of my negative qualities evenly across the characters so there is a little bit of me in each of them. But right now I am feeling like the scheming orange juice scientist Dr Dolphin—she is growing some experimental citrus fruits in the movie and I have some lemon and lime trees that are not doing so good this year.

ZAGER: How did you come to cast the characters in your film with such terrific actors like Cole Escola, Elsie Fischer, Sarah Sherman, etc?

GLANDER: We were very lucky to have such a great cast. This is a good place to talk about it because most of the casting happened over Instagram DMs. This was my chat with Julio … I think he would be okay with me sharing it. Nothing very revealing on his end.

ZAGER: I love how down he was. It seems like you compiled a super passionate (and funny) cast.

GLANDER: Here is a picture of Demi meeting Whoopi Goldberg at Tribeca. Sending that because I have zero pics of the recording process.

ZAGER: Top three favorite emojis right now?

GLANDER: This is soooo embarrassing but I’ve actually been using the ice cube emoji a lot 🧊

ZAGER: Wait. Are you the cube?

GLANDER: Right … I have some issues to work through here. I like it as an emoji to mean like, “That’s okay with me.” Cool and detached … unapproachable … I think I need to look in the mirror. Have you ever thought about what the rest of the smiley face emoji’s body looks like?

ZAGER: Never.

GLANDER: Like in my mind it’s the smiley face bendy doll. But I think there are other valid takes.

ZAGER: What’s the strangest side hustle or gig you’ve ever had?

GLANDER: The first one that came to my mind was tarantula caretaker. I had an internship at this company that kept a tarantula on display and over the course of the internship that became my entire job. I would have to feed it live grub and I took it really seriously. I would wake up in the middle of the night like, “Did I kill the tarantula today?”

ZAGER: That’s a lot of pressure to keep the display tarantula alive. And also kind of scary (spiders freak me out).

GLANDER: Ya I can’t say I’m a huge fan, but this was the 2010s [when] everybody was keeping tarantulas at their office.

ZAGER: What’s the last meme you saved?

GLANDER:  These are somewhat ancient but I find myself endlessly drawn to the Wikihow illustrations. They have something for every occasion. One of my daily puzzles is Damn.dog where they show you one of these illustrations and you have to guess what article it’s from.

ZAGER: Okay, that’s a puzzle I would do. Can you send us a screenshot of your Google search history?

GLANDER: I need to get out in front of the elephant in the room here—I Googled you 10 minutes before this started.

ZAGER: I made it.

GLANDER: I think a lot of people would delete that from their search history but let’s be real in this space.

ZAGER: I actually really appreciate you being so open and honest.

GLANDER: I didn’t learn anything. You have a very clean and professional web presence, congrats.

ZAGER: So I know you used Blender to animate the film. I don’t know much about animation 

software programs but what would you say was your most used short-cut?

GLANDER: Okay, great Q. One thing I lean on a lot is called a subdivision surface modifier which automatically smooths and rounds everything out … aka goodbye cubes.

ZAGER: Command E the capitalist jock cubes away!

GLANDER: I have been looking forward to this interview all morning and it has not disappointed… I didn’t think I would ever get the chance to go so in-depth on cubes.

ZAGER: Back to your film—I really enjoyed Freckles’ raw and sensitive ballad about eggs. Grace Kuhlenschmidt has a beautiful voice. How do you like your eggs?

GLANDER: Grace is soooo good on the egg song! I would say preferred eggs would be Over Hard but if I’m at a diner I would order Over Easy because it’s a more normal order and I don’t want to cause a fuss. HBU?

ZAGER: As much as I strongly dislike over-hard eggs, you should feel free to order them even at diners. However, I love a poached egg.

GLANDER: Omg fancy! With a little garnish … definitely an elevated egg. This tracks.

ZAGER: So tell me a little bit about the title of the film.

GLANDER: Okay, so the film had a number of different titles through the production that no one could remember. For a long time it was Unidentified Florida Object. Boys Go to Jupiter is from a schoolyard rhyme that I thought everyone knew but it turns out it’s very millennial specific. “Girls go to college to get more knowledge, boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.” And then, as an added level there is a town in Florida called Jupiter which is sort of thematically adjacent to the action.

ZAGER: Oh yes, I’m very familiar with the rhyme! I found it really shut down playground arguments, there’s really no way to come back from that burn. How would you say the process of animating a video game differs from that of a full-length feature film?

GLANDER: You can kind of “test” a video game in a way you can’t test a movie. Like, there are very real mechanical ways that a game can break or not work correctly. With a film there is really no way to know if “it’s working” or not until a room full of people are watching it. So, there’s an element of danger.

ZAGER: I’d imagine that’s exciting too. And maybe it would allow you to be a little less of a perfectionist. Do you have a favorite piece of Florida lore?

 

GLANDER: This strip club called 2001 Odyssey was a big mythological inspo for the film. I used to drive by and think the big shiny UFO on top was so beautiful.

ZAGER: Okay, money or clout?

GLANDER: Marx describes this process called MCM where money turns into commodities turns back into money. But I think it could also be money>clout>money. In other words, you can’t have one without the other. And that’s Marx saying that, not me.

ZAGER: Last question. What’s your password?

GLANDER: *******

ZAGER: Forgot your password, eh?

GLANDER: Nice try. I almost told you.