Our Friend Jon

This film was so amazing and touching. I love to see such strength and kindness in people. I was lucky enough to be part of a small Art/Film/Music Festival as a musician and I felt like seeing that before we played really touched us. I can honestly say I will be watching this movie more than a few more times!!

This was a really emotional film about true friends which all have a disability they are living with. The story of Jon's life as someone who has limited time to live, made choices to live life to the fullest. To think of all of us who are completely healthy... we get lost from realizing how lucky we are. This film is a humbling and touching human experience that I recommend for everyone. The jokes and comradery of these gentlemen finishing the film their fallen friend Jon laid out for them really sticks with you. Bravo.

I'm an actor and I've been in an Edward Payson film. Not this one. A horror film. That's what Edward Payson is known for: making horror films.

Which makes "Our Friend Jon" all the more striking.

A blessing to the parched soul (and I say that with no hyperbole,) "Our Friend Jon" cannot help but be spiritual refreshment to anyone who sees it and really settles in with the story; with Garrett, with Brandon, with Nick, with the moms, with the friends.

With Jon.

The film is moving in some weird, quiet way. I struggled for a word to describe the sensation, and finding none, created one: humanness. There's no attempt here to manipulate emotion or to make anyone a hero or (despite circumstances) a victim. There's just friendship. Friendship as it actually exists in the private lives we all actually live. It's like being in someone else's home and finding that it is somehow your home, too.

Watch Our Friend Jon. It validates the quiet nobility of our messy, ordinary lives. It makes you long for what is lost, and remember that there is always a future. You'll want to hug somebody. And not a red-carpet hug either. The real kind.

This doc will last.

Highly recommended--a moving tribute to friendship and the power of filmmaking and storytelling. When Jon dies at a young age, his friends vow to produce the slasher film screenplay he'd been developing. This documentary follows their journey as first-time filmmakers, and creates a real sense of anticipation to see the finished "film within a film." Subjects pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, in memory of a dear friend. A story that could easily dip into pathos and sentimentality, but instead holds a steady camera on the subjects and lets them speak powerfully for themselves. Memorable.

I saw Our Friend Jon last night at the Valley Film Festival here in Los Angeles in the valley. Just a terrific documentary about the making of a movie written by a Jon Hernandez who passed from Sickle cell anemia before the film could be made. The filmmakers of the film within the doc all have special needs or disabilities which don't seem to get in the way of their passion about making Jon's horror film come to life. It was inspiring to see, as my step father had spina bifida which one of the filmmakers, the director of the doc's brother, Garret Payson also has and to see him over come his disability and finish the film is truly inspiring. And a close relative of mine is autistic and my wife has worked with kids with special needs for years - so it was wonderful to see a film highlight the talents of people who often get over looked in our society.

I went into the screening not knowing anything about the movie. The last time I did that was my friend's doc, Dear Zachary, and the result was me being a blubbering mess as I cried my eyes out at the twists and turns of that documentary. Our Friend Jon did the same to me last night although I am happy to say the film has an optimistic ending that should inspire any burgeoning filmmaker.

I highly recommend the film.