Jul

Alpita Patel, “La Mission’s” producer, reveals the trials of filming in San Francisco

I met Ms. Patel for a brief conversation prior to La Mission’s first evening screening in Minneapolis. I wrote a critique of the film. Her film career began on the ground floor of one of Hollywood’s blue chip talent agencies. At different times, she wound up working for William Morris and International Creative Management. This thoroughly contemporary, and American, Indian professional spoke about how hard it is producing a film in costly San Francisco, the slow increase of South Asians in the film industry, and why blaming it on bigotry misses certain cultural circumstances.

I wish I would’ve brought my danged camera! Solo photos of Alpita Patel are not strewn across web.

"La Mission's" primary actors, and its producer, Alpita Patel, 2nd from the right

If La Mission’s Che Rivera is struggling, as he says, “to make $1 out of 15 cents.” The film’s budget was approximately $2.4 million. What should the budget have been to make a full $1?

I mean that’s a hard question. You kind of go by what the industry says. The budget sort of keeps decreasing, in terms of what you can get financed. So, comfortable for us would have been $4 – $4.5 million. I mean to really not have to stress about it. And to shoot in San Francisco really, you can’t go below $4 million. We also had to make a lot of cuts in the script in order to do it for $2.25 million. Also, if we had anything left over, it would’ve helped for marketing.

During the post-screening Q&A, she mentioned that the production had struck it lucky: they had “really supporting private equity investors who did not want a return.” They were the executive producers. One of them put up 85 percent of the money; the other, the balance. She said that equity is really the only money.

I remember when a typical Hollywood movie budget was $20 – $30 million.

I think what you’re seeing is a dichotomy. The studio movies have gotten more expensive. The studios don’t make $20 – $30 million movies. They only make movies that’re $100+ million and then it has to be a movie that can justify that kind of budget. So it’s gonna be an Avatar, or it’s gonna be a Salt, or Twilight, and Batman. And then what happened, independent movies, a lot of the funding sources have dried up, especially internationally. There’s a cash flow issue. Ten to 15 years ago, you could make a film for $12 million and get independent financing. Definitely even $8 – $10 million would not have been a big deal. Now, raising even $2 million is a huge deal, on the independent side.

Basically what’s suffering is you’re not getting a lot of quality films. Ultimately, you’re not getting enough drama. You’re either getting comedies and you’re getting, you know, big action movies.

Did you pursue the brothers Bratt or did they pursue you and your skill set?

It was a very organic relationship. I’ve known Benjamin for over 10 years. When I was training to be an agent, I assisted, and learned from his agent. So, when I was promoted, he had seen me come up through that process.

When I was promoted, I actually started working with him, so I was one of his agents. His brother (Peter Bratt, La Mission’s director) had the script. So, unofficially I said let me just work this with you. That just worked. Now, the three of us, having gone through this project, have realized that we want to continue making relevant, thought provoking, and conscientious films together.

We created a company called 5 Stick.

On a completely different topic, I had to ask her to discuss, ever so briefly, her experience as a South Asian female in the business. She began at ICM, and was the first “one” there. She said that the problem isn’t necessarily or simply bigotry. She said that, in South Asian culture, children are raised to become professionals, not artists, not in entertainment. As South Asians become more Americanized, it’s changing.

She said that the situation in Hollywood has definitely improved. When it comes to the idea of a swelling cadre of South Asians in the business, she kind of scoffed.

“Are there hundreds? …Dozens?”

“There are over 10 – 15, in agencies, with authority,” she said.

Now that you have a taste for producing, you want to stick with it?

Absolutely! I love it. You know, what’s great about producing is that you can be creative in a much more overall way; sort of like putting together the ingredients in a recipe. You’re not in charge of the black pepper, or making it, but you want to get the best quality that you can to help your chef make something, so to speak.

So, I like that process, and I like helping artists. I like protecting the artist so that he or she can make a product and have the creative freedom to do that, so that they can do their best work without any interference. As a producer, that’s my job. My job is to protect the director and give him the tools, and everything he needs to or she needs to make the best movie – to make the movie that they envision.

So a problem solver, protector for the filmmaker.

In the process, I’ve learned that I do have good taste, and I can find quality people, on a budget! So I’m proud of the elements that I’ve added as well.

What’s next? Do you have a set of scripts, of projects to work on over the next two or five years?

Absolutely. Peter and I have a list of projects that we’ve been mulling back-and-forth. We’re honing in on a bunch, because you have to. You just don’t know which one’s gonna go next. And Peter’s actually writing, called the “Silent Spring,” by Rachel Carson. is sort of the mother of the environmental movement.

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Behind-the-Scenes/independent/Latino/Q & A/South Asian

"La Mission"/Alpita Patel/Behind-the-Scenes/independent film/South Asians in entertainment/South Asians in Hollywood/tight budgets

Jul

A near romance lifts Benjamin Bratt vehicle, “La Mission,” beyond a mere after-school special

In San Francisco’s Mission district, La Mission, Ché Rivera (Benjamin Bratt) is an ex-convict, city bus driver and recovering alcoholic with a gay son, A–student, Jesse, (Jeremy Ray Valdez) who’s heading to college at the University of California–Los Angeles. His son has no qualms about sexual orientation, except on coming out to Ché or the wider macho neighborhood. Its emblem is its passion for old-school aesthetics and design: a low-rider car sub culture. It is their manhood, their pride.

This small film, with 50 prints to spread out across the U.S., opened officially in April, and is still opening; this time in Minneapolis, at St. Anthony Main, for as long as people keep coming for it. Before the screening, I spoke briefly to the producer, Alpita Patel, about various production trials, including filming in San Francisco. Something a little different, a little refreshing.

The complex and contemporarily awkward relationship that blooms between Mr. Rivera and Lena (Erika Alexander, maybe known mostly from her stint on The Cosby Show) lifts La Mission away from being “just another” Barrio, or gay coming-of-age movie. Their stop–frustrate & beguile–start rapport develops in an organic way, by clashing. They do so as two mature and articulate, but head-strong adults. After Ché has established himself as taciturn and bull-headed, he shows a warmer side, even though he hesitates.

Erika Alexander as "Lena"

Lena’s bike wheel breaks. He offers to fix it. “It’ll take 10-minutes, tops!,” he says. She visits later to find that he has stripped the bicycle, investing two hours in the work. They’re thawing and gaining momentum with each other. After Jesse is attacked by his classmates because of his sexuality, Ché seeks solace in Lena and the sensitivity that she represents.

With only a few words, “You know sometimes, Ché, you really break my heart,” from Lena and to a distraught, very proud man, they move to another level.

From this moment of vulnerability, they consummate whatever their relationship is. They aren’t yet sure, so we sure as heck aren’t. But beats later, when Ché confronts his son’s boyfriend, Jordan (Max Rosenak), with the brazen, brute violence that has been his main defensive reflex, and Lena witnesses this, she puts on the breaks. While she enjoyed what they did together, she sees each of them as being too different, him being too content with violence, for them to make more from that splendid moment.

Father Ché confronts his son, Jesse, who embraces a different kind of manhood

The characters and the themes could have been treated greater nuance and complexity. This lack doesn’t surprise, but does disappoint. The ideas are treated in an elementary way, which suggests that the filmmakers presumed that we could or would want to venture only so far into the domains of Ché and Jesse’s complex personal politics. This discord prevents La Mission from being as potent as some people might expect from Messrs. Bratt and their team.

Then again, with meager gay or Latino films coming out, it might be unjust to criticize this film when brown, black, and beige communities are just hungry for positive and constructive portrayals of their peoples.

The tone, pace, and look of La Mission stands out as a slightly better than typical feature-length after school special, if they made them that long; that isn’t an utter condemnation. While the film has been marketed as a Latino, Barrio, or gay film, that bare description brushes against the story’s significance and power. The film is surprising and pleasing also because it omits the typical and banal Hollywood affect: a sheen that implies that the characters reside in a slightly separate dimension from ours. This contributes to an ambient motif of a warm, genial community that represents old-school dudes who just don’t get how men and mores changed so quickly, and behind their backs.

This unconventional look contributes to La Mission’s freshness: its atmospheric warmth & vibrant colors. That homey vitality helps it stand out. That immediacy of image also makes it resemble digital video, except that you can see the scratch marks on the film. These details buff away the rough edges of this film’s community of men, specifically their antiquated ideals of manhood.

If we’re to rate this with stars: 3.5 out of 5.

Jul

PBS’ “Presumed Guilty” exposes one innocent Mexican’s reckoning with justice

Presumed Guilty is the story of a Mexican, Jose Antonio “Toño” Zuniga, a 26-year-old street vendor, who is caught in his country’s legal system. He was arrested for murder in 2005 with none of the traditional rights that Americans find typical and that they take for granted. On July 27th the Public Broadcasting Service’s POV series continues with this documentary by Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete, and directed by Mr. Hernández and Geoffrey Smith. Their exertion, as they strive to expose the discord between Mexico’s justice system and the United State’s, is resolute.

Presumed Guilty isn’t amazing, fantastic, or perfect. There are similar films that treat this dire topic with more detail, complexity, and nuance. This is excellent and eye-opening – compelling. To some degree, it’s greatness lies in how deftly it provides a reminder of the rampant injustice that is easily and imminently found outside of the United States.

Jose Antonio Zuniga is "Presumed Guilty"

To prevent surprise or frustration, this documentary is in Spanish with English subtitles, in white. (It is often frustrating to read those; How costly are the yellow ones, which are read more easily?)

If a fellow inmate hadn’t asked whether Mr. Zuniga was the guy who did the murder, who knows when Mr. Zuniga would’ve learned of charges against him. When he would ask repeatedly what did I do, he would hear “you know what you did.” Many North Americans, who are used to the age-old, even banal ideals of presumed innocence and due process, will find this hard to take. Americans take these rights for granted.

Let’s remove our blinders: Mexico’s legal system presumes no one’s innocence; Instead of the prosecutors holding the onus of proof, the accused must exonerate himself or herself, sometimes with a lawyer’s help.

Mr. Zuniga's committed, volunteer lawyer, Rafael Heredia

You can either compare Mr. Zuniga’s story to North American expectations or remove those cultural goggles and consider how criminal justice is delivered outside of that vantage point. It’s easy for us to become indignant about this, but while that would be justified, it would also be naive; American-style justice is far from ideal, but there seem to be few nations that practice a version of it that is so enlightened.

This story is dramatic, but that’s not because Mr. Zuniga, his family, or his passionate, volunteer lawyer are maudlin or animated. Except for Mrs. Zuniga, who gives birth while her lover is confined, everyone’s chief emotion is disbelief.

The judge’s, the detectives’, and the prosecutor’s interest in serving the kind of justice that we recognize seems sporadic. Their villainy, if you want to call it that – let’s call them knaves or rascals instead – is benign. None of them do it as though their work is about service. It is merely a living.

Simply and bluntly put: Few of the traditions of an enthusiastically liberated and democratic society are recognized or even desired for the citizens by those who are in power. For those who are new to this perverse reality, this will distress them. After having heard the evidence, and its quality, which is meager at best on both counts, the second verdict is the slap in our faces.

Hector Palomares, the trial judge, goes through the motions with Mr. Zuniga behind him

The scenes from Mr. Zuniga’s ordeal play like those ideals, which are central to North America’s mystique of dispassionate justice, have been clobbered with brass knuckles. Presumed Guilty surprises us by mentioning that you don’t have to be a judge in order to preside over a case; anyone staff member will do. His ordeal seems semi-Kafkaesque, as long as your grasp of Franz Kafka’s works is shallow. You can summarize his plight as that of an ordinary, wholesome husband and eventual father who is caught amid circumstances that are beyond his comprehension, and that of many reasonable, rational individuals’.

This film is equal to fiction films about delayed, denied, or perverted justice. For those who watch fiction films most often, the drama and catharsis of Mr. Zuniga’s story harkens back to The Shawshank Redemption, to Hurricane, in some ways, and even to Brubaker from the 1970s.

Jul

A “blackfaced” French film, “The Other Dumas,” seen through American eyes

Bastille Day celebrates fraternity, among other values, but only some… paler… citizens feel that love, even in the 21st-Century. Bias remains a pillar of French culture, at least through American eyes. The suburban immigrant uprisings in 2005 told or reminded us of that.

Painting of the taking of the Bastille (in French, La Prise de Bastille)

As we look at this anniversary of the French revolution let’s pose a difficult, sensitive question: what about the brown, black, or beige French people? Let’s consider a recent French film that has shoved this topic, and the more awkward questions of black face.

Let’s consider that the filmmaker, Safy Nebbou, cast a title character of a French film, about an ethnically mixed, French literary icon, Alexandre Dumas, with a white, French acting icon, Gerard Depardieu.

That makes you raise your eye brows and ask, “hunh?!” Mr. Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and “The Three Musketeers,” and other seminal literary works. His grandfather was black.

This film The Other Dumas, entered theaters five months ago, in February. The film which is « L’Autre Dumas » in French, considers Dumas’ principal collaborator, Auguste Maquet. It’s not a conventional biographic film. It raises questions about whether we should Dumas and Maquet as an iconic literary duo instead of leaving Mr. Dumas’ legacy to hold the lot of it.

Gerard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas, an ethnically mixed, French literary icon

Both French and North American peoples consider and respond to questions about diversity in very different, even disparate, ways: in the U.S., we track a near myriad of statistics in regards to color, and rarely and barely have conversations that lead us to shrink the stark social boundaries that divide us. The French handle it very differently. Their government keeps no official statistical records about ethnic or “racial” groups. They are convinced that that defies the objective of liberté, égalité, and fraternité, their ideal, without regard to your color. Most Americans probably find this bizarre, awkward, and even ghastly.

This will tell you a lot about the respective characters and outlooks of France’s and the U.S.’ cultures; France trusts (and expects) citizens to know right and act right. The United States has little of such trust or expectation.

La Fête de la Fédération (Bastille Day) is an instructive hour to pose awkward questions about the realities of that haven, which many non-French people expect to find in France.

A likeness of Mr. Dumas himself

Mr. Depardieu, who has no African ancestry, and didn’t wear burnt cork, the black face material, but reportedly he did “blacken up.”

One English writer’s conservative point of view proposes a rational approach instead of an emotional one. In writing for the “London Telegraph,” Patrick West, a free-lance writer he said, “Sometimes ‘blacking up’ can have no racist intent, even if people are determined to detect it.” In “Why ‘blacking up’ white actors isn’t necessarily racist,” he elaborated that, as long as the “portrayals didn’t aim to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes,” we should not take offense.

Marcia Dawkins, a media scholar with California State University – Fullerton, has been considering the Dumas question also. She has been writing about a recent trend in film casting: passing for mixed. In response to Mr. West’s stance, Prof. Dawkins said, by-phone, that Mr. West isn’t completely off, “but it ignores the complex history… We need to be more sensitive to how” these subtle and very sensitive questions are dealt with.

When people see that Depardieu used a contemporary version of black face, rancor easily follows. The word mistrel pops to mind. Prof. Dawkins understood this easily: “I definitely think it is to some degree. It’s not the same as minstrelsy. It’s like a first or second cousin of it.” Just because you can take a cool, rational approach to this, “…that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cool..,” Dawkins said

Jul

Way after the headlines, a “Jaws” question was left unasked

Amid the enthusiastic, but shallow and proforma coverage of movie’s anniversary and its significance, no one asked what the summer movie experience was before “Jaws” bit down.

How? Why?

These are fundamental reportorial questions; it’s strange and awkward that those questions interested no one. No network news reporters seemed to pose them.

Curious, I strove to report on this topic and found a surprising and bemusing response from scholars and production experts: they were all contained by the same, typical talking point. “It changed everything.” No one felt prepared to elaborate; it was as though they these questions caught them off-guard – like those seemingly impromptu questions were off-script.

Elementary research shed some light on this topic: summer had been a dumping ground for those movies, which studios only expected to make a thud. They had rarely made any profit.

Why didn’t these questions interest any network TV newsrooms? We’re accustomed – or have resigned ourselves – to blockbuster movies’ dominance. Some people in the audience probably want to understand that part of film and cultural history.

1055 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Film/media criticism

"Jaws"/I love movies/movie analysis/movie love/movies/summer movies

Jul

A very different kind of Fourth of July film: “Nightjohn.”

Independence Day. I suspect that few of us reflect for any meaningful time about what this holiday, this day of remembrance, means to our lives. For the most part, we just don’t have to ask ourselves if our rights will be acknowledged. For peoples on America’s margins, their rights to literacy and education, or their personhood were ignored or denied. Of course, these are natural rights for which the U.S.’ founders fought, tooth and nail.

Now how about July 4th movies?

Identifying films about this holiday’s theme, which emphasize well-developed stories and well-drawn characters over spectacular visual effects, is a trial; they’re mostly about action. I suppose that independent and documentary films treat those lofty, incisive questions far more frequently and deftly than commercial ones do. They’re coveted along a different part of our society’s margins.

Some movies remind us of just how grateful we should be for the founders. Although “Nightjohn” does not refer to the Fourth of July, the made-for-TV film fits the bill.

Struggle.

This word rarely pops to mind when you think about access to education; mostly when you’re struggling to make the grade.

It’s also only a popular movie topic when bullets are flying and bodies are dropping. ”Nightjohn” tells a compelling story about a people’s yearning and struggle to simply, merely read; to understand themselves and their world. It stars a thoroughly talented actor, and Minnesota native, Carl Lumbly; He, as well as scores of other actors, seems terribly under employed and underappreciated.

Carl Lumbly

“Nightjohn” is a coming-of-age story to some extent. It was adapted in 1996 from a 1993 novel by Gary Paulsen. This film is a fantastic and fascinating reminder of a people for whom the pursuit of literacy, education, and personhood meant a death sentence. It’s intense, but in a great way; just like all the other Independence Day films.

So find “Nightjohn.” Pull it from your library, rent it from wherever, or buy it. Watch it; Appreciate it and reflect for at least a few moments. When that’s over, talk to your children about independence and gratitude. And then go back out for a swim or light up the grill again.

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Will Wright. Digital Journalist. Reporter.

Monthly Archives: July 2010