Planet Money’s Jack Corbett is best known for translating nebulous economic concepts into bite-sized, surreal TikToks that break down credit scores, tax brackets and the national debt.
Now, Corbett, an Ohio native who studied experimental film at Ohio State University, is stepping into a new role. He’s making his feature film debut as the voice of Billy 5000, a teenage food delivery driver, tasked with caring for an alien egg in “Boys Go to Jupiter.”
The animated film’s wiggly pastel world, created by director Julian Glander, comes to life thanks to Corbett and some big names in comedy, including Janeane Garofalo, Cole Escola and SNL’s Sarah Sherman.
Jack Corbett sat down with The Ohio Newsroom to talk about the movie, ahead of its theatrical release in select theaters on Friday. The film will be screened at Columbus’s Gateway Film Center on August 15th.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
On using animation to explain economics
“One, I've always loved animation. I've been making flip books since I was tiny. But two, I'm a very visual learner. I love just seeing things fly around on the screen. It helps me learn stuff. They're crudely drawn and kind of janky, and that's just to disguise that I don't really know how to animate. I purposefully taught myself how to do it wrong because I found when I do it wrong it just looks really weird and funny. So yeah, I'm a visual learner. It helps me make sense of it all.”
On voice-acting in the film
“It was cool because I feel like for the TikToks and for the documentary that I worked on, I just kind of did everything. And this, it felt almost like it was cheating because Julian just crafted this amazing movie. He's a real magician.”
“We were in a sound booth in Burbank and it was just two four-hour days. I would just speak and I would hear the director in my headphones and he would say the other line and I would say it back … Julian made it really easy.”
On how economics shape “Boys Go To Jupiter”
“[For] Billy 5000, money shapes his world. His entire goal is to get to $5,000 to the point where he's abandoning his friends. That $5,000 hangs over his head. There's quite a bit of economics going on in the film. There's a little bit of arbitrage and some other made-up economic theory.”
“Julian told me he wrote the character for me. I think the vast majority of what he had seen from me online, everything I was saying was economics. I think my personality online, perhaps, is very economical.”
On how the movie relates to growing up Granville, Ohio
“[Like Billy 5000], I was a delivery driver. I was a pizza delivery guy in Granville and I worked as a delivery person in Columbus as well. And there's a lot of surreal experiences that Billy 5000 runs into as he's going around Jupiter, Florida, bringing food. People have some bizarre requests and treat him kind of incredibly weird. And I think I can definitely relate to that. I definitely had a few odd encounters, every night, delivering.”
“So, yeah, I think in that way, very relatable. And this is something Julian didn't even know about me. He hadn't even known that I was a delivery person, it was just how I made my money between semesters [at OSU]. In that way, it's like the movie picks up so many things. I feel like Julian Glander watched my life beforehand.”
