The best documentaries focus on newsworthy people who do great things and then break down how they got there. Neil Garguilo’s documentary Misfit Mentor is even better because its subject, Jamie Egan, is an average guy accomplishing extraordinary things.
Jamie Egan is an elementary school music teacher in New Jersey, and the film opens on his last day of teaching and his final orchestral performance. Shunning the corporate world, he has been and will always be passionate about teaching and mentoring kids. Years before, one of his students asked Egan if he’d be willing to take one of the trombone slots in the student’s band, Catch 22. That one-time gig turned into more gigs and eventually a record deal with Victory Records.
Egan’s real story—and the basis of this documentary—is the death of his longtime partner, Julie, after years of illness, which prompted his retirement. Her passing forced Egan to reorder everything in his life. Egan is now left to piece his life back together while raising the blended family she left behind and focusing on new passions.
What follows is Egan trying to do something he’s always wanted to do—make music that’s actually his, instead of backing someone else’s project. He pulls his old bandmates and former students into a recording studio as he finally steps up as the lead.
Jamie Egan inspects a trumpet among rows of brass instruments in Misfit Mentor.
“Egan’s real story—and the basis of this documentary—is the death of his longtime partner, Julie, after years of illness, which prompted his retirement.”
This new journey has also forced him to open up about his life publicly as he speaks about surviving abuse as a kid—the underlying reason he’s spent his whole life looking out for other people’s children.
What struck me about Jamie Egan was the idea of being a hero. It’s easy to see heroes do extraordinary things through discipline, endurance, and training. But Egan is cut from a different cloth because he shows us that anyone can be a hero. Egan is just like you and me. He’s motivated and deeply passionate about seeing children grow into mature human beings ready to take on the world.
Egan is also imperfect…like most of us. He struggles with his past and present, refusing to let them tear down his future. Doing what is right and best for others is not easy, and, quite frankly, it was never meant to be. Documentarian Neil Garguilo captures the pure soul of Jamie Egan. Opening up is not easy for Egan, but over time he becomes an open book, and, according to the testimony of his friends and students, he manages to balance what it means to be a friend and a mentor, even to his elementary-age students.
Neil Garguilo’s Misfit Mentor is the story of a man who spent his whole life giving himself away to other people, finally getting his shot to do something incredible for himself. That’s what makes Jamie Egan’s story worth telling.
For more information, visit the Misfit Mentor official Instagram page.
"…Egan is also imperfect…like most of us."
