Filmmaker Statement

“Peacocking” is my coming-of-age story via a coming-to-terms with the alienation and slide toward violence so prevalent among young men today. Having grown up in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, I want to contrast the vacancy of sprawl with the hidden pockets of awe scattered throughout Los Angeles. By highlighting the otherworldly promise of this place, and populating it with contemporary young men searching for adventure, I hope to recall and invert a traditional, mythic male initiation ritual: the hunt. But here, the celebration and recognition of manhood by peers is a compromised victory. It’s not honor, valor, or accuracy which are needed to conquer this beast, but numbness, ambivalence, and aimlessness. This is my own reckoning with what it means to be accepted as a man, and what I fear it would cost.