With his debut solo album on the horizon, 22-year old Something Corporate singer Andrew McMahon expected big things in 2005. Leukemia wasn't one of them. Dear Jack - a deeply personal documentary made by Jack's Mannequin frontman Andrew McMahon that chronicles the year that McMahon, then 22, spent battling acute lymphoma leukemia while trying to release Jack's Mannequin's 2005 debut album Everything in Transit. Dear Jack chronicles McMahon on a rollercoaster year, through the highs of recording and releasing a solo album and the lows of being diagnosed with leukemia and breaking up with the love of his life. Using a DV camera Maverick Records bought him to capture the making of his album, Andrew shot everything before and after the crucial day in May of 2005 when he both finished the project and was diagnosed with cancer. The documentary is a raw look at the battle that is leukemia, from spinal taps to radiation, from using a lint brush to remove your hair to infusing your body with someone else's stem cells (in the case, Andrew's sister Kate, coincidently on the exact date his album was released). The film opens on the day Andrew is diagnosed and follows him through every scary, life-changing and intensely personal event that follows. It also flashes back to this childhood, the making of the Jack's Mannequin album and his collaboration with Tommy Lee, one of the last concerts he played before becoming ill, and his relationships with the two most crucial woman in his life, his sister and her best friends. Dear Jack is a breathtakingly emotional film, as well as a testament to family, friends and, perhaps more than anyone will ever know, a love of making music.
