A film about Jim Varney and Ernest P. Worrell. See more at BeingErnestFilm.com
Two of our interviewees passed away recently, so I spent this Ernest Day weekend / Jim's birthday reflecting on this project as a whole. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to connect with these folks and preserve their stories. ❤️
- David
Hello, Ernest P. World! I’m sorry that it’s been a while since our last update, but thank you for your continued patience as we move further through post-production on the documentary. I’ve been finding this part of the process even more challenging than I expected.
“The Importance of Being Ernest” documentary is a passion project; one that the team and I work on in addition to our day jobs and other life commitments. Earlier in the production, I found it relatively easy to chip away at a variety of tasks wherever and whenever I could: writing notes and interview questions on my commute, editing video at the airport, cold-calling interviewees from the parking lot of an animal hospital, and so forth.
Unlike a typical movie where you write the script before you shoot it, a documentary's story is put together in the editing phase. While we have Justin's book as inspiration, there are many different ways we can use our footage to form the narrative.
So as we move towards completing the documentary, I’m finding that it’s no longer about simply putting in the hours — it's about being able to focus and deeply think through how to put all of the pieces together in the right way. And that’s been incredibly difficult to do in a time when, let's be real, the world is more chaotic and unpredictable than ever.
With that in mind, here’s everything that’s been going on since last year:
After we released our trailer, I spent time talking with a few other documentary filmmakers and archivists, which is something I’ve done regularly since this project began. I love the community spirit of filmmaking, and these conversations provide helpful advice, data, and research from people who have completed (or are currently working on) projects similar to our own. Some of the folks I talked to were people I sought out specifically, while others took the time to reach out to us — which is something I’m incredibly grateful for!
We also had a meeting with our entertainment lawyer about the legal clearances that we need prior to seeking distribution for the film. When it comes to putting a documentary together, not all assets are created equal: for example, while we are clear to use all of the interviews that we recorded, other pieces of archival footage are owned by a variety of different groups. Having these materials digitized, organized, and transcribed is one thing; having the ability to then actually use them is another.
Alongside the documentary itself, reward fulfillment is one of our top priorities, and we try to have at least one reward in progress at any given time. At the end of the summer, we were preparing to print and ship the Kickstarter-exclusive “Jim Varney is Ernest” posters… but thanks to tariffs, new USPS regulations, and the rising costs of pretty much everything, we realized that we needed to throw out our original fulfillment plan and start from scratch.
September was the deadline for submissions to our “Submit a Fan Video” Kickstarter reward — thank you to everyone who sent in a video! We loved hearing what y’all had to say about growing up with Jim and Ernest, and how the fan community continues to thrive more than a quarter of a century after the last Ernest film was released.
Behind the scenes, editing slowed down due to other work and life obligations. This is pretty typical as the year winds down, and especially around the holiday season: people get busy and schedules become almost impossible to align.
Progress was further delayed when I had to move out of the office where I was doing my editing work. This was not by choice, but was again due to rising prices. Since having a dedicated work station is critical to post-production work, this limited what I was able to accomplish at the end of 2025.
The IOBE documentary production is an LLC, which means that each new year begins with every business owner’s favorite undertaking: preparing for tax season! Like other businesses, Vernacular Multimedia LLC has to catalog our annual income and expenses, send forms to our vendors, and collect a variety of documentation. Our accountant does the rest, but “bookkeeper” is one of the many hats that the team and I wear in addition to director, producer, researcher, editor, etc.
Putting our “crowdfunding manager” hats back on, we resumed fulfillment of the “Jim Varney is Ernest” posters, which began shipping in February. If you haven’t received yours, it’s most likely because we need you to confirm your mailing address. Drop us a line at [email protected]!
Now that spring has officially sprung after a bitterly cold NYC winter, we are moving back into regular post-production work. We’ve also made a number of updates to our website, including:
Along with our mailing list, our website FAQ continues to be the best way to find the latest answers to questions about the documentary. Here are a couple of recent answers that we’ve added:
Your Kickstarter page says that you haven't logged in for months. Have you abandoned this project?
This is not what the “last login” date on Kickstarter means. According to Kickstarter support:
“This date is representative of the last time you’ve actually logged in—meaning, if you logged in on January 13th and have remained logged in since then (on a browser or in the app) it will show that date.”
If you have questions about the status of our project, please send us an email! It works much better than making assumptions based on a misunderstanding.
Will you be using AI in the film?
Our original teaser used AI upscaling tools to try and match low-res archival material with modern 4K footage. However, the “look” of AI has more recently become associated with misinformation and insincerity, and that absolutely does not match the tone of our project. Our 2025 trailer did not use any AI upscaling, and we are revisiting how best to incorporate older and lower resolution footage into the final documentary.
One thing is certain: we will NOT be using AI or deepfake tools to generate visuals or audio of Jim Varney (as some other documentaries have done with their subjects).
For those of you saying “it’s been a while and I don’t remember what rewards I was supposed to receive”... we have put together a comprehensive list of all rewards and whether or not they’ve been fulfilled. You can check out the full lineup of rewards at https://www.beingernestfilm.com/rewards, and view a guide to the 2021 Kickstarter tiers at https://www.beingernestfilm.com/rewards/guide!
In addition to the Jim Varney is Ernest Posters, we recently sent out the digital PDF copies of “The Importance of Being Ernest” Book! All eligible Kickstarter and BackerKit pre-order backers should have received an email with instructions on how to download your copy. If you haven’t, you can send an email to [email protected].
The Art by Kevin-John Painted Sketches are also ready to ship, but we need confirmed mailing addresses! Again, you can send those to [email protected]. (A few of these sketches are still available on our BackerKit pre-order store!)
As always, thank you for supporting our project. That’s all for now, but we’ll have more to come (and more regularly)!
- David
The IOBE documentary team is proud to present the first trailer for "The Importance of Being Ernest"!
In addition to the YouTube upload linked above, you can also find (and share!) the trailer on...
This production has been years in the making, and we're so excited to be able to share this preview with you... though it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the stories, imagery, and other surprises we've collected along the way.
A giant-sized thank-you to all of our supporters, interviewees, family, and friends for your continuing patience and encouragement! As we've said before, Jim's story is big — and we're determined to do right by him.
More to come!
- David and the IOBE Documentary Team
Today would have been Jim Varney's 76th birthday, and the documentary team is indebted to all of our interviewees who have helped us tell Jim’s story and keep his memory alive.
We are still hard at work on the documentary post-production, but we have something exciting to share with you:
Wednesday, June 25th is the online release date for the trailer for “The Importance of Being Ernest” documentary! We'll be posting the trailer here, as well as sending links via our email list and social media.
We’re looking forward to sharing what we’ve been working on!
See you next week!
- David and the IOBE Documentary Team
Hello, Ernest P. World! Here's what's been going on lately with the IOBE documentary project...
In 2024, we filmed 14 interviews — the most we've ever recorded in one year! The majority of these interviews took place the week of Ernest Day 2024, but the last one (with Lianne Russell, seen below) wrapped in early November.
From 2022 to 2024, our goal was to capture as many stories of Jim Varney and the people who knew him as possible. This approach came into mournful focus earlier in the fall, when our very first sit-down interviewee — cinematographer Jim May, aka "Vern" — passed away at the age of 78. We are grateful for the time Jim May spent with us and that our documentary will play a role in preserving his legacy.
Now, in 2025, the hours we’ve put into post-production have ramped up dramatically. Post-production is where documentary films really come together — where the story we want to tell is crafted from a ginormous amount of recorded material:
It's a LOT of work. Logging and transcribing our interviews requires a careful watch-through of every last minute of footage. Our tracking documents are glorious to behold, KnoWhutImean?
It's been rewarding and exciting to see this film start to come together. Some of the stories we've captured are totally consistent no matter who's telling them, while others contradict each other. This is unavoidable when asking people to recount events from 40 years ago, but it's also fitting for the story of Ernest and Jim Varney: two larger-than-life characters of legend.
We've also received (and transcribed) a number of fan videos! These were submissions from backers who chose the "Submit a fan video" reward from our Kickstarter fundraiser, and they have been awesome to see!
If you were one of these backers and haven't yet submitted your fan video, it's not too late! We sent submission instructions via email last Spring. If you missed them, send us an email at [email protected] and we'll get you what you need...
As for the other tiers: digital rewards still are a ways out, but the outstanding physical rewards (the "Jim Varney is Ernest" poster and the Art by Kevin-John) are next in our fulfillment queue. If you're waiting to receive one of these rewards, please confirm your most up-to-date mailing address by dropping us a line at [email protected]!
- David and the IOBE Documentary Team