GUM

The idea for Gum first started to take shape when I was toiling through a busy schedule, balancing my Master’s degree and a part-time job in customer service. One day, while chewing on half a pack of Juicy Fruit to get through a particularly rough day, I was struck by the image of the sticky mass expanding in my mouth and choking me. For whatever reason, this picture then extended into one in which the hypothetical deadly substance was packaged in a prescription medication bottle. These were two images that I couldn’t concretely pin down the exact meaning of, but they were compelling, and I began to turn them over in my mind, trying to work out where they could be placed in a narrative.

I decided early on that the film should be set in a corporate workplace. A dull, mundane environment that remains incredibly stressful for those unfortunate enough to work there. I consumed a steady diet of classic workplace satires to strike that tone between satirical and horrifying (Modern Times, Brazil, Vampire’s Kiss, etc.). All the while considering the concept of ‘bullshit jobs,’ office work that does little except fill an employment slot at a company, and the modern circumstance of having your family, shelter and income dependent on this specific form of alienating work.

The final film came together through combining these ideas into the story of a man dependent on an addictive substance to get through the day at a crushing office job he relies on to survive, to the point that both of them are destroying his body.