A Disability-Centered Take on Jack and the Beanstalk

If you’re tired of the endless search for streaming content that seems fresh and relevant, the award-winning actor and New Mobility Contributor Regan Linton hopes you’ll tune in to her modern update of Jack and the Beanstalk, now streaming on Max. The 19-minute film, directed and co-written by Linton, is one of six short films that make up Reframed: Next Generation Narratives, a new series from Warner Bros. Discovery Access that addresses modern themes through remakes of classic films.

Linton’s film is an update of Abbott and Costello’s 1952 film. Jack and the Beanstalkand is full of clever twists on familiar fairy tale tropes. His Jack, played by Josh Elledge, is an underrated neurodivergent grocery store worker who is denied a living wage and must find the audacity to fight for what is right.

“From my first release, I had the idea of ​​a worker standing up against a more metaphorical giant,” Linton says. “I knew I wanted it to be about employment, simply because it seems like a very important topic for our community. As I developed it, I became more and more aware of the subminimum wage problem and we expanded it a little further.

“I was passionate about trying to get into the narratives that I think we don’t see about the disability community,” she says. “I just hoped I wasn’t crazy to think I was doing something that seemed innovative to me.”

Linton was one of six emerging directors selected to direct the shorts after a lengthy process of nominations, applications and proposals. While the other short films were filmed in Hollywood, Linton strove to film in his native Denver and use local disabled talent to center disability issues.

In addition to Elledge, the film features wheelchair users Stewart Tucker Lundy and Kalyn Rose Heffernan, and music from Heffernan’s band, Wheelchair Sports Camp. “The studio wanted us to come up with different actors and I said, ‘No, these are the people I want,’ because I knew I wanted to use people who I thought had potential for these different roles. ” she says. “[The studio] “He finally realized.”

Linton hopes the film’s focus on people with disabilities who receive subminimum wages will motivate viewers to take action. Defenders have been working hard get Congress to end subminimum wage practices by approving the Transformation towards Competitive Integrated Employment Act. You you can send comments in support of the bill until January 16.

Shock aside, Linton is excited to show her vision to the public. “It was a really amazing process and I hope it helps people come up with ideas about how our community can be represented in different ways, and not just see us as people who are pushed aside as decorations,” she says.