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Jimmy Burch: Big Dreams

Jimmy Burch has an ambitious goal: He wants to be a famous actor and win an Oscar by the time he is 30.

That gives him 11 years. Jimmy, who lives in Ivoryton, is now 19.

Acting is not all; he also wants to produce and direct movies. He has already begun, making a 15-minute documentary on Long Island Sound and global warming as a part of a four-week summer program co-sponsored by Valley Shore Community Television (VSCTV) and Flip the Lens, a short-video platform.

“It was on the history of Long Island Sound, how it has changed, how to reverse harmful effects of pollution,” Jimmy says. “It was the longest documentary and the most serious.”

Jimmy did all the research, directed the film, and wrote the script, which he narrated. In addition to his own research, the film features the marine biology teacher at Valley Regional High School, Amanda Mezick.

Jimmy graduated from Valley in 2022.

Like the Norwegian teenager Greta Thunberg, who has become the best-known international advocate of measures to control climate change, Jimmy wants his film to emphasize that global warming is a problem that requires everyone’s effort to solve.

He urges people to recycle, to switch to clean energy, and to work together to prevent the earth from getting hotter.

“It will take all of us to fight for our oceans,” he urges at the end of his film. “Not one degree hotter, no one inch higher, not one more piece of trash in the ocean.”

The documentary is a significant accomplishment for a young filmmaker, all the more so in the face of the particular circumstances of Jimmy’s life. He is on the autism spectrum. “Somewhere between mild and moderate,” he says.

“It’s a challenge, but I push past it. I hope to inspire other neurodiverse people. Discrimination is completely unnecessary.”

I am continuing to work to change stereotypes.”

He points out that noted performers like Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dan Ackroyd have been identified as on the autism spectrum.

Jimmy’s mother, Melissa, who came to the interview with him, pointed out that at Valley, he had successfully completed a challenging match class, pre-calculus.

“I was treated normally, never bullied,” Jimmy says.

Jimmy says his main interest is not documentaries but rather full-length movies in areas from science fiction to drama and comedy. Still, there is another documentary he would like to make, a biopic on Kamala Harris and the 2020 election.

“It was the most significant; she was the first female, and it took a long road to get there,” he says. “The title would be 2020, like 1984 or 1917,” he says of two movies with calendar dates as titles.

Jimmy not only makes films, he reviews them on a site devoted to movie reviews.

When he saw big-screen movies as a youngster, he says he knew he had to be in film. He has interned at VSCTV and worked with the television production program when he was a student at Valley Regional.

He is also enamored of the little screen. He particularly likes reality television shows quickly reeling off the names of popular ones. He doesn’t just watch them; he would like to be on one of them: Survivor.

He has applied online and gone to open casting calls to try out for the show, one in Connecticut and one in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to which his mother drove him.

“We are very supportive of Jimmy’s hopes and desires,” she said, adding that the family had a friend in Bowling Green.

Jimmy wanted to leave as little to chance as possible; at the Connecticut call, having arrived at something like 2:30 a.m., he was first in line. A reporter for WFSB interviewed him, and a bit of the clip actually made it onto the CBS morning show.

At Bowling Green, he was fifth in line.

So far, he has not been chosen, but he is not through. He will continue to apply, using the online process, and pins his hope on the upcoming season, Survivor 47 or the next Survivor 48.

Each of his online applications, he says, is different, giving an individual slant on what he will contribute to the show.

“If one strategy didn’t work, I try another,” he explains.

This fall, Jimmy started at Middlesex Community College, majoring in digital media. After finishing at community college, he wants to attend a four-year college for a degree in film.

And after that? Jimmy says he would like to end up in Los Angeles. He has a good reason. “That’s where Hollywood is,” he says.

To see Jimmy Burch’s film on Long Island Sound, visit

https://reflect-vsctv.cablecast.tv/CablecastPublicSite/show/4454?site=1.