Synopsis
A rising social media star faces unexpected danger at an exclusive party, forcing her to decide just how far she'll go to stay in the spotlight.
Written and performed by Los Angeles based students through the Kids in the Spotlight program, empowering foster youth to tell their stories -- paired with professional filmmakers to create and mentor, providing career training for employment in the film industry.
- Director, Producer
- James Kicklighter
- Writers
- Na'Ree Allen, Dwayne Gill, Ayanna Lockett, Noel Mill, Daija Smith, Asia Townsend
- Producers
- James Kicklighter, Jonathan Pope, Tige Charity, Kids in the Spotlight
- Cinematographer
- Jonathan Pope
- Production Designer
- Emily Peters
- Editor
- James Kicklighter
- Composer
- Nicolas Repetto
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Director's Notes
Of every project I’ve made, Whatever It Takes is the one that maps most directly onto my own beginning.
I grew up in Bellville, Georgia, a town of 123 people. There was no one nearby who made films for a living. There was no obvious door to walk through. What I had instead was a small, improbable handful of adults who decided to take a teenager’s wild idea seriously, and then kept showing up. Dr. Pam Bourland-Davis at Georgia Southern, who, when I came into her office at 19 in tears about being trapped in a television news major, found me a path through public relations that would teach me the business of the work I actually wanted to do. Edith Ivey, the legendary Southern actress (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) who said yes to my first student short, The Car Wash, before any of my peers did, and who once introduced me as “one of the best young film directors and writers to come out of the South” when I had not yet earned that sentence. Bobby Zarem, the Savannah-born publicity legend who made Dustin Hoffman a star and invented “I Love New York,” who decided in the last decade of his life that I should be the one to help tell his story. None of them owed me anything. All of them gave anyway. I think about that often.
Whatever It Takes is a short film I directed in 2024 for Kids in the Spotlight, the Los Angeles–based organization that helps foster youth heal and grow from trauma through storytelling and filmmaking. The kids in the program write, direct, and act in their own films, with industry mentors walking alongside them through every step of production. I came to the work because it felt like the closest thing I could do to repay the debt I owe to Pam, Edith, and Bobby. None of them would have called it a debt. That’s part of what made them who they were.
What I learned on this set, working with young people who have already lived through more than most adults will, is that mentorship is not a gift the older person gives to the younger one. It is a transaction across time, and the younger person is the one who completes it by going on to do the same thing for somebody else later. Whatever It Takes is my small attempt to keep the chain going. The film exists because somebody once took me seriously when I was the kid in Bellville with nothing but an idea. The kids in the Kids in the Spotlight program are who I had in mind the whole time we were shooting.
If you watched the film, the actual reward for me isn’t what you thought of it. It’s whether one of those kids walks onto a set ten years from now and remembers that adults showed up for them once. That’s the only return on investment I’m tracking.
— James Kicklighter