Daley Pearson stubbornly refuses to grow up. And it’s proving to be an excellent career move.
As the co-founder of Ludo Studio, a Queensland-based animation and live-action production house, Pearson has overseen the global phenomenon that is Bluey.
His idea about high school kids getting their kicks through demonic possession would become the basis of Talk To Me, a box office smash for Adelaide’s Philippou twins.
And now he has turned an unabashed nostalgia for his own childhood into Ludo’s first live-action feature film, Allen, for streaming giant Netflix.
The film opens in the 1990s, with a boy, Petey, who has an encounter of the third kind with a cute alien he calls Allen, only to have his extraterrestrial bestie suddenly leave.
Jumping two decades forward, the film examines what it would be like to have such a seminal experience and not be able to fully move on, and the damage that may cause to a person’s most important relationships.
Then, when Allen reappears just as suddenly, is it a validation of said decision not to move on, or does it ultimately prove to be the impetus for Petey (the adult version is played by TJ Power) to grow up?
It’s fair to say the plot was personal for Pearson.
Allen opens with Petey playing the original motion picture soundtrack for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, an absolute 90s classic.
Just like Petey, Pearson owned it on CD.
The opening sequence with a slow pan across Petey’s collection of branded toys could’ve been Pearson’s childhood bedroom (or current home office).
Of course, recreating it on film does not come without a very real cost.
“It was a huge job for the lawyers and the production designers to get the licences and release the IP,” Pearson admits over a Zoom call with PLAY.
That’s a very grown-up problem for a movie in which the central character’s biggest problem is a failure to do just that.
“I always try to stop myself before talking about my generation or everyone else, I always just try to talk for myself, and I think with this film I’ve tried to talk for myself as somebody who grew up in that childhood,” Pearson explains.
“I think there was something about the 90s, and maybe a little bit of the 80s as well, because maybe we were the first childhood that was so commercialised.
“And I don’t know if that was because we were the first ones to collide with the internet, the first ones to sort of go analogue to digital . . . but it’s a lot more romantic.”
With culture as fluid as it has ever been, and the social and political climate feeling especially fraught, the warm embrace of nostalgia has never been more inviting.
We’ve seen this in action with a proliferation of legacy sequels in recent years.
Allen offers something different. The nostalgia is there, sure. But the movie delineates when a misty-eyed trip down Memory Lane becomes unhealthy.
And that’s something you don’t need an alien in your past to fall victim to.
“It just doesn’t let you grow up. And I still find myself hooked by it,” Pearson says.
“I still don’t know the answer about how healthy it is to sort of swim in that pool, because you don’t want to spend all your life being about bills and relationship dramas and growing up, you do want a little bit of that romantic wonder in your life.
“So, I think the film was about trying to hold both at once, the wonder and the responsibility.”
The director does wonder how kids these days will look back on their childhood, years from now, because the cultural landmarks are breathtakingly temporary.
Pearson flogged that Ninja Turtles CD for a year. Now, a teen would be accused of being out of touch if they’re listening to the same song on Spotify a week after it was trending.
Of course, if there is one thing likely to stand the test of time for Aussie kids of a certain age, it must be Bluey.
“It’s a lovely thought,” Pearson says.
The pinch-me moment came at the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, when he heard American families sound so excited at the giant Bluey balloon floating its way down 6th Avenue.
“I love the idea that it’s possible to make something like that in Australia,” Pearson says.
“To know that you don’t necessarily have to be Steven Spielberg or Arnold Schwarzenegger . . . you don’t have to be these demigods, who I love, it is possible to do some version of that.”
Spielberg is a great reference point for Allen, although, unlike Pearson, the Hollywood legend never thought of giving his ET a Bubble O’Bill.
“If he’d had a Bubble O’Bill, I think it just would have been a better film,” Pearson laughs.
Allen will be available to stream on Netflix on November 12.
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