‘Joybubbles’ Director Rachael Morrison and Editors Bradford Thomason and Patrick Lawrence on Their Retro Phone Hacker Doc

“Joybubbles” director Rachael Morrison and editors Bradford Thomason and Patrick Lawrence discussed their new film with Adobe’s product marketing director Meagan Keane during a Variety & Adobe Creative Collaborators panel at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

The film centers around a boy named Joe Engressia (later adopting the nickname Joybubbles), who discovers he can “hack into the analog telephone system by whistling a magic tone.” Morrison first came across his story when reading his obituary in The New York Times.

“I didn’t know that there were people who were hacking into the telephone system before computers. I didn’t know there were hackers before computer hackers. It was all very fascinating to me.” Morrison said.

Lawrence said he was instantly fascinated after Morrison showed him a teaser of the project in 2020. Morrison collected and organized audio recordings and interviews from people who knew Engressia, while Lawrence built an assembly cut based around the audio, a method he’s never used before.

“I’m mostly a narrative editor, and so I’m used to having the script, the visuals, and the audio. I sat there with just a blank screen listening to his voice for almost two months, trying to piece together the story of his life,” he said.

Thomason boarded the project in 2024 after Morrison reached out to him, explaining: “There was a long string of rough assemblies that had been put together. I was tasked with taking that and bringing it together with the archive, whittling down the story, rearranging the story some, figuring out what and how to bring this thing and make it into a palatable watch for the final film.”

The trio created rules for themselves when deciding how to tell Joybubbles’ story, calling him a “natural storyteller.” “When he was in Denver, he would get in the taxi, then go to the mall and just walk around with the recorder and record what he was hearing and feeling,” said Lawrence. “To sit and experience all of that and try to put it together, it was difficult.”

The creators also made sure to keep a balance between the technological and personal sides of the film to keep the audience interested. “One of the things that I really love about this story is that his involvement with the phone hacking and the phone freaks inspired people like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs to build their own blue box, to do their own hacking, to create Apple computers,” said Lawrence. “Now every single one of us in this room has a device that was created through that pipeline, inadvertently inspired by Joybubbles.”

Wrapping up the conversation, the trio reflected on their journey working together and the relationship between directors and their editors.

“The one thing they don’t teach you in film school is how to be a director’s therapist,” joked Lawrence. “A lot of it is technical. You gotta know how to use the stuff, and how to be a good storyteller. And then you also gotta know how to either soothe one’s ego or help them off of a ledge or whatever it be when you’re in the room together.”

View this article at Variety.