The Good Weird | Inside Out: A Conversation with Jerry White Jr.

Jerry White Jr. is a filmmaker, musician, writer, and founder of the Vidlings & Tapeheads Film Festival. He began making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television in Metro Detroit, later studied at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and has continued to move across film, writing, music, and collaborative creative communities. He has also described himself, quite rightly, as someone drawn to niche creative subcultures, outsider artists, and passionate amateurs.

ELSEHERE: Jerry, thank you for being here. To begin simply, would you introduce yourself in your own words?

Jerry White Jr.: I’m Jerry White Jr. I’m trying to live a creative life, and I probably value creative collaboration more than any other aspect of making, with personal expression being a close second.

I like long walks. Apparently I like Mexican food more than I realized, because I’ve been enjoying Mexican food in Asia, which is a strange place to discover that. I’m a filmmaker, a musician, I write. And a friend recently reminded me of something I said that I had forgotten: “Yes, you could have done more, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t done enough.”

That line really speaks to something I struggle with. I feel like I’ve completed one one-thousandth of the projects I’ve wanted to do. Ideas are cheap. They’re wonderful, but they come to us freely, like breathing. The real challenge is seeing an idea all the way through and getting it into some kind of finished form. That’s the white whale I’m always chasing.

ELSEHERE: Before we go further, can you tell us where you are right now?

Jerry White Jr.: I’m in Taipei, in an Airbnb. It’s mid-May 2026, and I’ve been traveling since the beginning of the year. I was in Thailand, then China for three months, and I still have about a year left on this trip. I’m working on creative projects, not always as diligently as I’d like, but for me this kind of traveling is also part of living life creatively. It’s about meeting people, having experiences, and gathering fuel for future work.

ELSEHERE: If this is a record that may remain for a long time, what do you hope people carry with them after spending this time with you?

Jerry White Jr.: I think about legacy more often than is probably healthy. And honestly, I’d already be surprised if people carried anything with them for a long time. There’s just so much content, and so much creative work, being made every day, not to mention all the work made over thousands of years that we’ve already forgotten.

So if this record is remembered, first of all, thank you for remembering. And second, very pragmatically, I hope I’ve left enough breadcrumbs to my work, in physical media and digitally, that people can still find it. If you search for “Jerry White Jr.” in quotes, hopefully there aren’t too many of us. I hope the work can speak across time. But more than anything, I’m simply grateful for anyone giving a damn.

ELSEHERE: Before filmmaker, writer, or musician became names for what you were doing, what first pulled you in?

Jerry White Jr.: As far back as my memory goes, there were two things I loved: singing and acting. Singing, especially rock and roll songs, whatever that meant to me as a kid, usually some random dated music I had picked up from my parents. And acting, which at that age mostly meant making things up in the house, but sometimes also school plays, and later after-school theater.

The idea of being a singer or rock star was very embedded in my brain as a child. But there was also this third thing, which I didn’t have a word for at the time: storytelling. I had a neighborhood friend, and we would do these improvisational plays in the backyard. It looked a little like LARPing, though I’ve never actually done live-action roleplay. We would invent characters, wander around, and continue the story from one day to the next like a serialized show.

That memory is really strong for me. It was creative play, but it was also creative collaboration. And that still feels deeply embedded in my DNA now.

ELSEHERE: You started making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television. Looking back now, what do you think those early DIY beginnings gave you that formal training never could?

Jerry White Jr.: One of the biggest things they gave me was joy. They gave me this love of creative collaboration and play. It connected directly back to making up stories in the backyard, except now we had a camera, and we could edit, and we could shoot different angles.

It also gave me a kind of looseness, a punk rock attitude of just do it. If anything, formal training later hurt that instinct, because “just do it” is not exactly the USC mantra. Formal training often gave me more ways to say no. No, we can’t do this, we don’t have the budget, we can’t do it properly, the camera isn’t good enough. As a kid, everything was yes. Let’s do it. Let’s try it. It’ll be fun.

The result wasn’t always legible, but the audience loved it because the audience was us. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience a premiere as thrilling as watching raw footage we had just shot in someone’s front yard, projected onto a bedroom TV. Making things with your friends can be one of the most wonderful experiences in the world, and I recommend it.

ELSEHERE: What really’s striking in what you just said is that institutional training can sometimes introduce a powerful “no” into a creative life. As children, we often begin from yes. Then later, through training, systems, and standards, we learn all the reasons something cannot happen. I felt there was almost a third self in what you were describing, one that could observe both the younger self and the institutional self from a little distance.

Jerry White Jr.: Yes, and what’s heartbreaking is that for some people, that “no” becomes final. I had a friend who went to a strict high school in New York to study singing. She loved singing, and the school completely broke that love in her. Their standards were so high, their rules were so many, that by the time I met her in her thirties, that damage from her teenage years was still echoing. It had destroyed not just her confidence, but her desire.

I’m grateful my own training didn’t do that. But it can be risky. And I think that’s part of why I still have such respect for passionate amateurs. I try to protect that part of myself, because I’ve seen what can happen when we grow up and no longer give ourselves permission. Deciding not to follow certain norms is a deliberate choice. I’m not married, I don’t have kids, I didn’t want that stable path of getting a house, getting a secure job, and settling in one place.

That life can work beautifully for many people. But for me, it would have gotten in the way of the kind of creative life I wanted to live. So in some ways, that is my bigger project. It doesn’t produce an artifact in the same way a film does, but it is still a kind of work. It’s a life in progress.

ELSEHERE: Was there something in that early environment, some freedom, some roughness, some chaos, that still lives in your work now?

Jerry White Jr.: One hundred percent. In fact, I’m more and more trying to find that and recreate it. I want to use what I learned institutionally, at USC and through years of work, but bring back the spirit and energy of those early experiments.

Peter Jackson once said that he still makes movies through the lens of the things that obsessed him when he was twelve. That might sound to some people like arrested development, but it clearly worked for him. For me, that early energy of collaboration and possibility is still crucial.

What I didn’t realize when I was younger was how rich I was. We were suburban kids, working-class or middle-class kids. We didn’t have much money, but we had time. And that meant I had access to other people who were freely creative and wanted to make things for fun. As an adult, just finding another adult with time is already incredibly hard. I want people to be paid for their work. I want to be paid for my work. But I often make things with little or no budget, so I’m working through fair exchange. The challenge now is finding people who, in their limited spare time, are still willing to make something simply because they want to make it.

When you’re young, you have time and no knowledge. When you’re older, you have more knowledge and much less time. It’s one thing to be an artist. We can all be artists. We can all make work. But it doesn’t mean we’re all going to make a living from it. I do still want to make a living as a filmmaker, but I’m also committed enough to keep doing this even when it doesn't pay the bills. It isn’t easy, but I don’t want to live in a world where only rich people get to sing, dance, and make movies.

ELSEHERE: You often note that you are drawn to niche creative subcultures, outsider artists, and passionate amateurs. What do you recognize in those people? What are they holding onto that the mainstream often loses?

Jerry White Jr.: The first word that comes to mind is authenticity. Though I always feel I need to admit that I also watch Marvel movies. I’m not a purist. I don’t only consume outsider work. There are mainstream things I enjoy.

But what reaches me more deeply is usually something else. Too much polish, too much money, too much system, it becomes harder for me to connect with the humanity in the work. In film especially, where authorship is already diffuse because so many people contribute, it’s difficult enough to maintain a voice. In music and writing, maybe it’s easier. But once someone starts tracing trends too closely, they can lose the thing that is most original in what they have to say.

What I’m looking for is a voice. A person with a vision, even if it’s small, strange, or difficult to place. When I saw your performance in Detroit, I didn’t know who you were. Your face was covered the entire time. But I knew immediately that yours was the strongest work of the night for me, because it had a very distinct voice. It didn’t feel like anything else around it.

So what I’m recognizing is not always similarity. Sometimes it’s just the unmistakable presence of someone trying to say something in a way that feels personal, specific, and alive.

ELSEHERE: I wanted to ask exactly that. Whether you’re drawn to those artists because of aesthetics, ethics, sincerity, or because they remind you of something in yourself.

Jerry White Jr.: It can be all of those, but I don’t think it’s always direct identification. Sometimes it’s not “that reminds me of me” so much as “that reminds me of a similar intention.” Someone is trying to navigate the world and say something in a way that is personal to them. That can be aesthetically very different from my own work, but I still feel a kind of kinship.

Connection is the other part of it. I’m trying to connect with their humanity. And maybe the more polished something becomes, the harder that connection sometimes is for me to feel.

ELSEHERE: What role does humor actually play in your life and work? Is it a shield, a form of truth-telling, or a way of navigating world complexities?

Jerry White Jr.: There have been periods of my life, especially after my teenage years and into the USC years, when I intentionally made work without humor. Looking back, some of that work is among the most embarrassing for me to revisit. In stripping away humor, I was stripping away myself.

Humor has always been central to my character. As a child, one of the most common words people used for me was “weird.” And weird is not supposed to be a compliment when you’re a kid. But honestly, it didn’t take me long to realize that weird was interesting. Weird was the opposite of boring. Usually the weirdness people were reacting to came through humor. I was saying something funny, strange, goofy, or offbeat. So humor became part of how I moved through the world.

Of course funny people also have serious sides. Robin Williams and Jim Carrey come to mind. They were known for comedy, and then when they moved into dramatic work, people had to adjust to that. So I don’t want to be trapped by humor. But I also know it would be foolish to ignore how central it is to who I am.

And with bios specifically, artists are constantly writing and rewriting them. I have more serious, straight-laced versions online too. But eventually they all start to sound clinical and interchangeable. They become cookie cutters. And then I think: how can I say I care about outsider artists, subcultures, and singularity if my bio sounds like every other bio?

So I feel this push and pull. Depending on the day, I may decide that even if it sounds silly or slightly off, I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t let some humor in.

ELSEHERE: What do people most often miss about you when they read the portfolio or biography first and meet the person second?

Jerry White Jr.: Depending on the bio, they may think I’m more severe or more academic than I really am. I can speak seriously and confidently about my work, and I have taught, so that side of me is real. But it isn’t the whole picture.

I also think people might assume that the work itself is the most important thing in my life. And I don’t think that’s true. It’s something I think about every day, yes, but not always because of the artifact. It isn’t only about the film, the song, the script, the short story. Sometimes it’s about living an interesting life.

I recently came across an Orson Welles quote in which he says that art is actually lower on his list of considerations than things like friendship and living. I may be paraphrasing badly, but the spirit of it really resonated with me. He said he would cast his friends even when they weren’t technically right for the role, and he didn’t regret that, because being “appropriate” was less important than working with people he loved.

That resonates deeply. Friendship, life, shared experience, all of that matters immensely to me.

ELSEHERE: At this stage of your life, how would you order these seven elements: time, health, yourself, art, relationships, money, and wealth?

Jerry White Jr.: I think self comes first. I won’t even apologize for that. I chose not to have children, and I’m not married. My life is relatively condensed, and that gives me the freedom to be a little self-obsessed without hurting anyone. So yes, self comes first.

Art is probably second. Relationships are third. Time is fourth. Money is low. Health should probably be higher, maybe it should be number one, but honestly right now it isn’t. Wealth depends on what you mean by it.

If you mean wealth in the larger sense, then it rises. I do consider myself wealthy in friends, in creative experiences, in having lived an interesting life. Monetary assets, less so. But in terms of fullness, yes, I feel wealthy.

ELSEHERE: If this episode had a title, what would you want it to be called?

Jerry White Jr.: The Good Weird. 

Because even though that word came up later in the conversation, I think it’s central to something I really value. There is good weird and bad weird. I hope I am the good weird.

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About Jerry White Jr. 

Jerry White Jr.

Jerry is a filmmaker, musician, writer. He began making films as a teenager through home movies and public access television in Metro Detroit, later studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and has continued to move across film, writing, music, and collaborative creative communities.

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About Inside Out

Inside Out is ELSEHERE’s long-form conversation series, published through STRATUM. It begins from the belief that before artists are understood through category, institution, or medium, they must also be encountered through the deeper structures that shape a practice over time: memory, method, contradiction, relation, and the conditions of life pressing from within the work. This conversation with Jerry White Jr. has been transcribed and edited from a live recording for publication.

Edited by Yuyang Hu