MARÍA LAURA RUGGIERO: SURFING FAVELA

PrizeWriter: Talk about your upbringing and growing up as a child --- your early involvement in art and how you think you came to filmmaking based on all of these things.

María Laura Ruggiero: Well, my mother's a teacher; she's a [kindergarten] teacher. My mom [read] us English fairy tales and the typical children's stories, but she changed them because she thought they were really cruel. So she decided to tell me Greek myths as fairy tales [ever] since I was a really young kid. I was completely fascinated with that—all the characters in Greek mythology. Those were my fairy tales when I was growing up. I think I found out who Cinderella was when I was fifteen or something.

I learned to read and write when I was really young because, well, my mom was a teacher. Since I can remember, I started writing stories, like small school plays. It was very natural for me to write. But at the same time, as I was growing up, everyone kept telling me that I will have a career in art. I loved drawing, I loved writing, ballet, dancing. But at the same time I never saw that as a career. I completely refused to limit myself as a filmmaker or as a writer. I [thought] I was going to be an anthropologist until I was eighteen or something.

PW: Why an anthropologist?

MLR: I think because it had to do with stories. We'd find out about stories of people in faraway lands. For me it was like a dream of traveling, which is something I really enjoy, and finding out about stories of common people. Then my brother, who is a graphic designer, was in design school. We had tons of friends that were in design school, and they were sharing classes with Image & Sound Design majors. They always told me that they saw me, could picture me, in those classes because the people there were like me. I was really furious about that, I couldn't see myself as a filmmaker. One day I decided show up for a class with my brother in college, a special class open to the community. And then I saw how people were shooting a backstage video for a fashion show and a graphic design show. And that was it, I was like, “I'm never going to be an anthropologist. I want to write, I want to tell stories. I've been watching movies all my life. I cannot really, you know, fool myself anymore.”

PW: How about surfing? When did you start surfing and why?

MLR: Well, I always loved the ocean. I went to the beach for the first time when I was three months old. I always loved swimming and just being in the water, maybe it has to do with being in contact with the water element. Then when I was probably thirteen, I went to Brazil with my brother and another of his friends, and they got two surfboards. They never actually let me touch the surfboard, but I made him promise me that the next time we travel to Brazil or some place with a surf culture, I would get a surfboard. I traveled to Brazil two years later and I got myself a board. I was completely fascinated, the idea of being outside, in the ocean, having a different perspective of the city. You always look at cities and you end up looking at this beautiful landscape with the sun setting in the ocean. And when you're surfing, you're just in the middle of the water, watching the city and how crazy everything seems.

PW: How do you feel that going to design school or art school, versus film school, informs your filmmaking style?

MLR: Well, first of all I chose design school because of the degree I was going to get. For me, living in Argentina, it feels really strange to go to film school for five years and get a degree that says you're a film director. If everything goes wrong, what am I going to do with a degree that says "I'm a film director"? So this was my idea -- let's go to image and sound design school and have a variety of things that I can relate to and work in different fields that have to do with creating images and sounds in motion. That could be screenwriting, that could be motion graphics, animation.

I think your education is completely different and your attitude toward what you're doing is completely different. You're not from day one thinking about the industry and the rules of the industry, because you're not all the time thinking about film. You're thinking about images in motion as a medium to express whatever you want to express, whatever stories you want to tell.

PW: You’re an animator and a screenwriter, and you're also a producer of documentary films. What is the relationship between animation, narrative, and documentary filmmaking for you?

MLR: It's about stories. Animation's just a medium that I really enjoy, but it's about telling stories. I was never really involved in documentary until Surfing Favela. It was not in my education, it was not interesting for me to try to portray reality until I found a good story that I wanted to tell. That's the moment when it becomes fascinating. It could be a great documentary, it could be a very boring animation. It's not about that—it's about trying to find a message that speaks to you and find something that you really feel passionate about.

PW: How did you get involved in this project?

MLR: First of all, going back to the beginning with Surfing Favela, I was actually getting ready to go to the Berlinale Talent Campus, which is a program sponsored by the Berlin Film Festival. [This is for] directors and writers and producers from all over the world, and they give them 10 days or a week of seminars with the best people in the industry. It's really a program about inspiring filmmakers to go out and do their thing. It [really improves] your self-esteem [laughs]. It was a great opportunity for me, and I got sent to a special program on the Berlinale Campus which was for screenwriters. I was writing a narrative film. There was another program for documentaries. At that moment I thought, OK, I will apply to whatever program I can because this is a great opportunity, this is like the motto of my life: Try to apply to every program. Try to accept and get any opportunity you can. Just keep on working, and something will come up.

I got accepted to the screenwriting program. I needed an idea for the documentary program. I had like three days to come up with a treatment. One of my friends, Tomás Crowder, is a surfer and national bodyboarding champion in Argentina and has been involved in surfing and extreme sports with a magazine called RAD! magazine. We'd been working together [on the] magazine writing about film. We always had an idea about making films about surfing. I just called him and said, "OK, do you have any ideas for a documentary?" He had like ten ideas for a documentary! We came up with a very complex idea of surfing in different parts of the world and surfing in different cultures—just like a really long story where we would travel all over the world from Antarctica to Malvinas, showing how people could surf in different environments and how surfing could help them achieve whatever they want to achieve in their life.

I thought it was pretty cool, so I wrote a treatment about our travel and trying to find stories about surfers. So I went to Berlin, and they chose this treatment for a pitch session with an executive of Planet TV. Out there I was pitching this crazy adventure. I was pitching and I knew it was not working, because it was just so over the top, so many locations—it was just too much. But I was really passionate about my pitch. And this man really got the idea. So we were breaking down the whole project, and one of the small ideas was about a surf school in Brazil inside a favela. That's pretty much all I knew, and that's pretty much all Tomás knew because we read a small interview about it.

PW: And who was the interview with?

MLR: It was with one of the surf schools, not Bocäo's surf school. Another surf school that is in Cantagalo. It was just a bunch of pictures of kids with trophies. It was a very small interview with this school and how surfing was helping inside a favela. It was really, really a very short paragraph—that's all we had. But it was going to be part of a really really long movie with many locations, so [at the time] it was not that important. But when I got to Berlin, I was pitching and suddenly I mentioned this story, and I realized that you know, that was it. The executive started asking about Brazil, the favela, surfing. And it was so weird, because I've been to Brazil but I had never been to Rio. I started describing the favelas like I was practically born there [laughs]. I got really carried away and I could really feel the place. He said, "Well, you should really focus on this, write a treatment, and try to apply to this contest next month." That was it. I came back to Buenos Aires, and I was really excited about it. Then we started researching and we wrote a more detailed treatment, submitted to this contest, and we made it to the top ten. But we didn't win.

So we waited and tried to find ways to produce it ourselves, Tomás and I. And then we found out about another contest, which is the Fuel Experiment, sponsored by Fuel T.V. We submitted it again, and we made it to the top 25 and then the top ten. The top ten were all winners because the channel, the network, was going to finance all those ten folks. Once we had the money to make the movie, we started talking with different people we knew in the industry. We found Natalia [Bacalini] and Maxi [Maximiliano Ezzaoui] —they are the directors of the film—that had a really intensive background in documentary, which was really, really important for a place like the favela. You cannot not hesitate a minute with your cameras inside the favela. You cannot take your time and then create shoots from setups in a place like that. It had to be people that were really skillful but practical at the same time but which were not going to be scared. What we found was a great group of people. We started working with them about the screenplay, the ideas. It was all very quick. And then probably not even two months later we were in Brazil for the first time for a week, trying to explore the situation there. When we came back, we had more or less our characters in our minds and the stories. We were confirmant (sic) that our ideas about the screenplay were real.

PW: Right.

MLR: Because when you're trying to write a screenplay for a documentary, rule number one is to be open to whatever happens in the moment. But we had a theory about how surfing was something as sacred today as it was in Polynesia years and years ago. It was a sport for leaders and kings and it had a real connection. It was like a connector to God. So our premise was to find out where and how surfing was a connection to something superior and where surfing was saving lives, and that's what we found in the favelas.

PW: [I wanted to comment on] the celebratory nature of the film, and how you integrated the music and the sound design so that, for example, the sander in the shaping room blends with the rhythm of the music. How did you decide to capture the feeling that you have when you’re in Rio in the way that [the film] was edited and sound was incorporated?

MLR: Well, I think we all agreed when we were in Rio that it's a very musical city even if there's no music playing. It's just something about the Brazilians, they way they walk, the way they talk, being by the ocean. We tried to capture different sounds there and work with the sounds of the favela and the sounds of the sea and the sounds of the [equipment] they were using in the shaping room, to create something that was more organic and natural. Also, music was a great way to relate to the kids. We would do improvisation sessions with whatever we had. Then we just had a great, creative musician like Alejandro Pereiro [laughs] and the rest is history.

PW: When you're coming from Argentina, you're coming from a different country, a different culture, and you're definitely coming from a different class background -- how do you define your role as a storyteller, being that you're telling a story about something that is not your experience?

MLR: We didn't want to have a voiceover explaining what's going on in the favela. We didn't want to explore poverty in a way many social documentaries explore it. We wanted a different approach. And I think it works out naturally because we were working with kids. First of all, we were really in tune to them as surfers.

We told them about our love for the ocean. You know, we're young and we're just trying to share an experience with them. That was how it became so natural. We just started asking questions and trying to find out about their lives and about what they wanted to do with their lives, what were their experiences. Some kids would tell us, "You know, I never been to that surfing spot," so we would try to take them to that beach. And kids are just different. They were OK that we were from Argentina and our Portuguese was not the best. They just didn't have any problem with that. It was like an adventure, you know.

It was really rewarding, because working with these kids—nobody really pays attention to them like we did during that whole month. Many people in the same city just ignore them. So the idea that this narration is so natural is because the relationship with the kids was really natural. And as we related to the kids, we started relating to their families, their friends, the adults.

PW: Right. I think that's also a universal thing with kids. When you're a kid your relationship to adults is one of them leading you, them teaching you something, and they're expecting you to follow suit. People rarely sit down with kids. Family, friends, teachers in school— rarely ask them what they want and what they think. They're usually telling them, "You're wrong and this is what's right"—

MLR: Exactly! We were there to learn from them because we wanted to be safe inside the favela, and they know how to be safe there. They knew—they could explain us which streets to take, what to do, what not to say. They were our teachers in the favela. They were sharing their knowledge in the ocean, and we were trying to give back by making a movie that they would be proud of.

PW: There's also the specter of the police in the film. The film is very much framed to show the police as the root of a lot of the violence. But it's interesting because you don't mention that in the description. The description that you have of the film talks about how there's "difficulties and opposing forces". But you never [mention it directly]. You see the people in the film talking a lot about the favelas being safe when they were growing up, a lot of the elders in the film. That people didn't have a lot of money, but that they didn't fear for their lives, whereas now they were afraid for their children and their grandchildren.

MLR: The first thing you think of when you think about going to the favela is that it's a very dangerous place. But there are many misconceptions. One is that it's very dangerous just because there are tons of drug dealers who live inside the favela. But once you go there, you realize that most of the problems are caused by how the police enter and create these daily battles. So it was something that we had to deal with, expressing that experience. And again, we didn't want to make the usual documentary, the usual social Latin American documentary about poverty and how poor people are, but they're really happy and how colorful they are, the typical Latin American cliché. We didn't want to go there. We didn't want to talk about, directly talk about, drug dealers and the police.

Our movie was about those kids, and the problems with the police were something in their daily life, and it was something really important because it had to do with their own security, but it was not the main focus of our film.

PW: Something that you said when you guys were coming up with the idea for the bigger project, which was [laughing] surfing around the world for every culture and every person -- was that surfing was a doorway to achievement. Can you talk more about that? About the experience of surfing and what that is, beyond the physical?

MLR: Well, I think any sport that connects you with nature can really become a spiritual experience. Water is something that is really powerful. It's where it all began, where you were when your mom was pregnant.
I think something we can all relate to. It's something that's, well in surfing you have really big waves, but it can be really relaxing, the idea of floating in the ocean. I think that connects you with something different. It's a community sport but it's not a team sport. You're not competing against anyone but yourself. Not even competing—you're just trying to get better at it, to flow with the elements and to align yourself with the power and the force of the ocean. It's really about concentration, because there's so many things you have to do at the same time just to catch a wave. So it's about concentration, it's about being flexible.

I don't think it's a typical sport, but at the same time, going back to the favelas, we chose surfing because we were really interested in that sport. And everyone has these fantasies about surfing, which kind of clash with the idea of poverty in the favelas. So that's how we thought it was a different idea. And there are many programs that do the same thing with soccer or Latin American football or martial arts, capoeira, drumming, many things. Finding something that makes your mind go to these lands and travel and give you some fresh air.

PW: How did you feel when you came back to Argentina? There's a period after finishing a project where you've given everything you have to something and you have to re-energize yourself. What sense of accomplishment did you have after finishing your first film?

MLR: Well, as you said, after probably like six months after we finished, we felt really stressed out. Making your first big film and shooting inside the favela and shooting with a DP who was seven months' pregnant—

PW: Oh! You never told me that [laughs].

MLR: Yeah. Everything was so complex, and it was like assembling a whole team because it was not like the directors and the producers have been working together forever. The whole thing was really stressful. But after that went away, and you start to seeing how people react to your film, and how your film is helping the people inside the favela— after you go to the theater for the first time, big screen, and you see your friends there, and they are just really excited to see your film there, it's really rewarding and makes you feel like, "OK, yes. This is what I want to feel for the rest of my life." [laughs] Yes, it just feels great that you were able to share your experience with so many people. And people are requesting Surfing Favela for these film festivals all over the world, and you're not just showing your art but you're showing other people's realities and dreams and hopes. It's just like a big circle which is not just work.

PW: At what point did you show the documentary to Bocäo and the kids, and what was their reaction?

MLR: We showed them a part of the film probably when we were about two weeks before finishing the final cut. They were really really excited. And then like two months ago, Natalia and Maxi were able to travel to Rio because they were shooting Rio because they were shooting a T.V. show called “Pasion Extrema”. They organized a screening inside the favela for not only the kids, but everyone who had been involved in Surfing Favela, and the whole community, and some other surfers and the shaper that was helping other kids in different favelas to go there and share the screening. It was awesome, because it was a dream for the kids in that they were on the big screen, they were actors, they could [see] their names [in the credits]. They could see themselves surfing—that was really striking for them. Because you never know how good you are until you see yourself on the big screen and specifically inside the water. They were really, really thrilled.

You could see all the changes in their emotions, the [effect of the] ocean in their lives. That was really amazing, how a little bit of help with their self-esteem did miracles. Because some of the kids, when we met them, they were surfing, they were just starting out. They were loving it, but they were not really good at it. And we created small stars out of them. They started practicing more and more, and now they're winning small contests. Some of them are getting small sponsors. It's great! And even with kids that were chosen not because they're great surfers but because they look really great on camera or because they were really well spoken. In less than a year they were making really great changes. That's the best thing for me.

PW: About your audience: who did you envision the audience for the film being, and once it was finished was that audience still the same?

MLR: Um, this is a very personal answer. But at first we thought we thought were targeting the film to all surfers around the world. Like surf videos, we're trans-targeting the surf media, with an edge. But after several screenings of Surfing Favela, I think our audience is way bigger. We have lots of people really interested in documentary, social documentaries, and they had no clue about surfing. They just fall in love with the story. It's a paradox because some surfers—I'm saying something general, but for some surfers that are really addicted to watching these very silly surf videos with this very silly—I mean, it's just a guy surfing in very repetitive movements and repetitive sound -- Surfing Favela is a very complicated experience for them. So sometimes we are screening and you find a group of young surfers, and you start to see how they cannot really remain quiet in their seats because it's just not a typical surf movie. You have to read subtitles; you have to face yourself with the social reality. And we have good shots of surfing, but let's face it—these are not pro surfers, so it’s more about the love for surfing. So I think there's difference in what we thought our audience was going to be. Of course, for more grownup surfers the movie is really emotional. But for teenagers and the typical teenage kid who is really into surfing and freeboarding, it doesn't work that well. But we're happy because we're getting a bigger audience.

PW: What will your next project be?

MLR: Money will decide what my next project is. I'm pitching different things. I have a narrative I want to direct. I've been trying to produce an animation series, and I'm trying also to sell a series on extreme sports, TV shows similar to Surfing Favela. There's just many things going on, many ideas. Hopefully I will find the right person to produce my next feature and the right team to continue working with any of these projects. There's really a lot of things going on, and I'm open to what the universe decides which one is gonna be the next one.

PW: How can people see the film?

MLR: Right now you can check out Surfing Favela in different film festivals around the world. That's going to be happening for at least another six months. Fuel TV has the rights to distribute Surfing Favela, and we're hoping they'll release the DVD soon. It's also airing on Nat Geo in different locations. During September you can watch on NAT GEO Latin America.

PW: So, what do you want, personally, for your mark to be?

MLR: I really want to keep on writing, and I really want to direct. I'm not sure if I'm ready yet, but that's just me—I never feel I'm ready, now or a year later [laughs]. You jump into the water, and that will be it – either you're ready or you're drowning. I really want to direct narrative films that create different realities—sort of the opposite of documentaries. I want to create worlds from scratch. Like filmmakers I really admire like Tim Burton or Julio Medem, that are really able to tell stories in different landscapes, different environments. But still all those stories are really human and really real, but the universes they create are awesome. So that's my goal. Maybe I will do that through animation. Or not. It's just about the story.

PW: My last question to you is a question that is posed in Surfing Favela by ‘22’, which is: What is surfing to you?

MLR: It's a dream. It's like the perfect dream-state. It's the place I go when I close my eyes and dream of my own special paradise for five minutes during the day. That's the state of mind of surfing. It's my place and my time to dream.

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María Laura is now working on directing her first feature film, Arcos, while she writes and produces several other shorts. She currently directs Seiren Films, a company devoted to content design for film, T.V., and animation. She can be found at http://www.seirenfilms.com

Surfing Favela can be found on MySpace at: http://www.myspace.com/surfingfavela

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JESUS BELTRAN: WHY DOES THE GRASS GROW GREEN?

PrizeWriter: The first time I heard you speak was after a screening of The Grass Grows Green. You were talking about your growing up experience and your background (how you came to engineering as opposed to film, to begin with). Can you talk a little bit about growing up, either as a kid or as a young person, and then how you envisioned your future at that time?

Jesus Beltran: My parents were both born in Mexico, and they came to the US and they ended up in Fort Worth. I’m not quite sure why you end up in Fort Worth, of all places, but I think they knew somebody—had a distant friend who was there and who offered them a place to crash more or less. So my dad came to the US, I believe in '71, maybe '70. He was there for about a year and then my mom finally came over. My oldest sister was born in Mexico. When my mother came over, she was pregnant with my older brother. So he was the first one that was born in the US—he always says, "I was ‘Made in Mexico,’ and ‘Born in the USA.’"

My dad was very fortunate that he was able to get a job pretty quickly. He had a trade more or less—he’s a paint mixer. You can take him a sample of something and he can match by eye. He learned how to do this in Mexico, so he was lucky to get a job real quick. I don't think he was much of a partier or drinker or anything like that, so he tended to stay out of trouble and was able to stick around and help my mom come over.

I was born in '77. My younger sister was born in '79, so there's four of us. We pretty much grew up in a working-class, lower-to-lower-middle-class Mexican American neighborhood in Fort Worth. We were never—I never worried about food, let's put it that way. Worried about other stuff, and my parents certainly had their ups and downs. My dad worked all the time, pretty much held two jobs. He had his day job working at an auto paint store. Then he'd come home, have dinner, and he always had a garage across the street where he fixed cars, paint and auto body. So he was pretty much in and out of the house. And then when he came home at night, he'd go to bed. He'd maybe hang out and watch TV a little bit, but not really.

So we grew up hanging out with our mom mostly, though my dad always tried to pull us over to the garage—my brother and myself. My brother was always a bit more ambitious and hard-working than I was. I guess he enjoyed the work. I more or less hated it—I'd go over for a few hours and then just want to leave and go screw around with my friends or read or watch TV or something like that.

PW: Do you think of yourself as being one of those people who's always known what they wanted to do, from the time they were a little kid? Do you see a connection between your dad being able to look at a color and understand that color so that he could mix that color of paint--?

JB: No--

PW: You don't see that as a connection to your filmmaking or your being a visual person?

JB: No. I've never seen that part of it. I think more—If you want to look back—The only way I've thought of it is, as far as seeing any precursors to being interested in this, it's more just like having wide interests and always wanting to know about many, many topics. I would hear about something on TV or read about something, and then I'd go to the library and get like 5 books on that thing. And then I would just become obsessed about it for however many months it took to learn whatever I could learn about it. And then I would just totally forget about it and go to the next thing. That's one of the things that definitely appeals to me about filmmaking, is that you can lead multiple lives on each project. It's like a journey into somebody else's day-to-day.

That, and at a certain point I think in the 9th grade or so, I convinced my mom to get a video camera. My brother was a Marine, and he was out of boot camp. He was graduating, we were going— I somehow convinced my mom to buy this little video camera. Obviously it was a ploy to get a video camera to do other stuff, you know. You can buy a videotape of the graduation that they do professionally for $25, but she was cool enough to do it. We would recreate "Cops" episodes, we did plenty of those. My brother came back once from Twenty-nine Palms, with all his military gear. We said, "We gotta make something." So we did a kind of Gomer Pyle boot camp in our backyard—we set up obstacles and we put on uniforms and we did that.

But it never really seemed like something that would be like a career—I never really thought of it that way. I was always good at math and science, and you kind of get pushed in that direction once you excel at something. I think it's just the fact that I bore easily. Like I said, you can go do different things with each project. For me, that's actually one of the toughest things, in terms of thinking what I want to do for a next project. 'Cause there's so many things that seem interesting to me. And a lot of people are like, "I can't think of this," or "I can't figure out what to do now, I just don't have—" I feel like— "Damn, what do I do?" You need such a commitment, you know?

PW: Right. Well, that's one of my questions actually. You mentioned [at the screening] that you had 5 or 6 ideas floating around in your head at the time you made The Grass Grows Green. What made you decide that that story was the most relevant or the most urgent?

JB: I don't know that there's any way to describe it, but when you see a story or when you're doing a certain project or you hit upon an idea that you think is really unique, you feel a sense of urgency. And you feel like somebody might be thinking of this as well? Or you can't stop thinking about it…

PW: You feel the force behind it.

JB: Yeah. And this one—I liked the fact that I had experienced some of the things that the characters might have experienced in the film, and that my brother was in the military. It seemed like, just from a production standpoint, like something that I could do. It wasn't crazy ambitious in terms of locations and all that stuff. When I shared the idea with several people, they were like, "Wow, never heard of this—I've never seen a story like this." I shared it with Larissa, who was one of the producers; with my brother; some of the other producers and a few of my friends. They were like, "Yeah, that's a really good idea."

PW: There's something I want to jump back to, which is you talking about being an engineer and your way of looking at the process of production and being very deadline-oriented. What was your first step in bringing that project to fruition?

JB: Really, the first thing I did was: I had the idea. I went to South by Southwest last year with another idea that I liked, and I saw a film similar to that idea. It was a different story, but the theme was somewhat similar. Execution was not the way I would have done it, but it was good enough to get into South by Southwest and good enough that I was satisfied, very happy that somebody else had done it.

So I left that festival thinking, OK, I have to make the other one. I had met Santiago at South by Southwest. He was in First Date, which played there, and I was really impressed with his performance. I just got his business card and I said, "Hey, I'm thinking about making a movie. I'll call you if I do it." As he tells it, he's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." That's what everybody tells him, right? And so I wrote it on the way to China. I worked on drafts while I was over there for 3 weeks, shooting things back to my brother, to "Just give me a little feedback here and there."

I came back from China at the end of the month, felt pretty good about the script. And then I called Santiago. I remember the conversation. We had like an hour-long conversation. He didn't know me, I didn't know him. He was really interested. He said, "Man, send me the script." I told him, "I can't pay you," but that I wanted to do it right. He said, "Yeah, if I like the script I'll go, I'll take the time to do it."

I think I must have sent it to him on Tuesday or something. And that weekend I had to go right back to China. I was home for a week. He hadn't gotten back to me by Friday. I was leaving on Saturday. I remember going to dinner with a friend of mine. She's like, "What's wrong? You seem stressed out." I was like, "I don't think he likes the script! He hasn't gotten back to me, you know? I don't know what's going on. He's had it for 4 days, and it's 15 pages long."

Next morning he woke me up, it was around 10, I was sleeping in. "Man, I want to do it!" He was super excited. It's weird, you know. When you first start sending it out, those first few times you're very self-conscious about your work. But he loved it. He said he showed it to his business partner, and he showed it to his wife. And they all told him he had to do it. That really got the ball rolling. When you get an outside person involved, you don't want to— [laughs]

PW: You kind of owe it to them—

JB: Yeah, you owe it to them. You seem like a schmuck if you don't execute.

PW: Did you have experience directing actors before working with Santiago and before working on this film?

JB: Nn-hn. I read. I just read a lot. I have this used-book store, here and one back in Texas that I pretty much hit up every few months. I have a little library going of different books, just directing books. What I really like reading are biographies or even autobiographies, just about how other people have dealt with their own situations and their projects. There was one book that was very helpful in terms of it being instructional.

PW: Which book?

JB: It's Directing Actors. Judith Weston. This was one that I carried with me for about a month, and— I had a small notepad, and any time I saw something that I thought was really helpful, I would just write it on the notepad. I did take a few exercises from this book and use them for rehearsing with Santiago and Anthony. But they were more or less experiments [for] me.

PW: How did you surprise yourself in the process of directing, and what were the most daunting parts you hadn't expected at all?

JB: I think the most daunting part--I did expect and it was still daunting--was conveying emotion the way that I needed to convey it in front of a group of people. I guess previously feeling that talking about these things was a personal thing. I hope that if I continue doing this that I can work with just small crews. I just feel funny. You can't say it's a guy thing, but that's kind of what I felt like… [also] because I'm an engineer, and you don't have discussions like this on a day-to-day basis. In talking with Santiago, trying to get him into the state of mind where I thought he needed to be for some of these scenes, I more or less would pull him aside, and we'd go talk somewhere else. And then we'd come back to it.

The other thing that I did for a couple of his scenes was we'd talk a little bit, and then I would, if we were shooting MOS [without sound], play a certain piece of music like what we were shooting. That seemed to really help. It also was really cool, because these were pieces of music that I was listening to already, or that I had listened to before I wrote. Obviously there are technical things that are very difficult [for me] because I'm not a technician… I'm not a DP; I'm a pretty bad photographer.

PW: So how did that work? One of the things I noticed, your DP is the same for both your films--.

JB: Mm-hm. Aaron Platt.

PW: Beautiful, beautiful work. But totally different styles in both The Grass Grows Green and The China Project. How did you sit down and articulate the vision that you had for the film if you find this to be a challenge personally? You would not guess that by looking at it.

JB: Well, a lot of credit goes to Aaron; a ton of credit goes to Aaron… In terms of The Grass Grows Green, I think the look and the pacing was a big thing: the visual pacing of the film is a lot slower than The China Project. That had a lot to do with what the guy's going through, and it being your worst day at work, the kind of day that you're looking at your watch every 5 minutes. And it drags.

A lot of the things are obviously based on my experience of being in the physical locations where I had set the stories and how I feel when I'm in Texas, and things being a little bit slower. People are friendlier the way the people just walk in and out of doors. And China just being this hustling, bustling world where there's always something going on in the corner of your eye. You're in the factory, there's people doing this, that, you're out in the streets.

When I first met Aaron we sat down for like 4 hours. We sat down and more or less sketched a lot of things, like ideal looks, the office being a long rectangular room. The file cabinets at the end, kind of this subconscious morgue so to speak. When I went location scouting, I tried to get as close to our idea as we had sketched out back then.

PW: Sundance was always part of the equation. So when you sat down to do this project with a deadline in mind and Sundance being the goal, did you believe that it could happen?

JB: I have a friend, a wonderful really, really cool friend of ours, whose parents own a home in Park City. So [she] invited us out to Park City for Sundance about 2002. She’s kind of made it an every-year thing now. So I've been to Sundance—I had been 4 years in a row. I'd seen other films and—I mean, you just think, Man, I could do better than that! That's kind of a brash or stupid thought, but I felt that way. I was like, can I do a Sundance film? I don't know. I felt like I could do a film worthy of Sundance. Whether it would get in? You never know, it's programmer's choice. Was Santiago [Vasquez] a conscious decision because he did Sundance a year before? No. Santiago looked like a freaking Marine. He carried himself that way when I met him. He was the right age, he was a Latino, and he's a very intelligent person. And hell, he got into Sundance— I was excited about that because it gave us some credibility…

PW: So when you went to Sundance now as a filmmaker as opposed to an audience member or spectator, were you changed? Was your experience drastically different as a person with some stake?

JB: Oh, yeah. It was totally different. [laughs] It's like being the fat, dumb kid at school wanting to hang out with everybody, and all of a sudden somebody opens the door: "Hey, you're the coolest guy in the world—come on in!" [laughs] You just don't get in. Literally, you don't get in to certain places. And those are the obvious things in terms of just having access to those people that you want to meet and people who will give you 5 minutes, just to listen to what you have to say.

PW: How did you feel post-Sundance, coming back?

JB: Well, before Sundance I decided to do The China Project. Just based on my work schedule and needing a couple of weeks to do that, to shoot it. I just decided to cram it all into the period between quitting at Apple and starting my new job. So I took 6 weeks off. Two weeks were basically at Sundance, one week here. Two weeks doing the China thing, and then back to work, more or less. I was—

PW: Occupied?

JB: Occupied, yeah. If you say "stressed" you sound like a shit because you're at Sundance or whatever, but—You should be enjoying the moment, but I was stressed out. I don't know if I really analyze my state of contentment at any given moment. I'll do it every once in a while. I'll sit there when I'm by myself, and it kind of trips you out. But I tend to move on and I guess that's what we did with this one.

It was somewhat weird in that we're like, "We did it—we got into Sundance—shit, what's next?" This was the ultimate goal, and we did it. The day it got in, the day that [Sundance] called me, I had the funnest time just calling everybody. I was still at Apple. There were three of my best closest friends at Apple who knew that I had made a movie. Only one of them was in town at the moment. I called him: "What are you doing other than working on a spreadsheet?" [laughs] "Dude, I just got into Sundance." So we went across the street to a bar, to this pub and grill. Sat there and drank and called everybody for the next 4 hours. It was awesome.

PW: So to jump back to The China Project. Why did you decide to name it The China Project?

JB: [laughs] We started calling it that because obviously it was our China project, we're going to China, we're going to do this project. The reason I decided to stick with it was because a lot of times that's how you describe something you're working on. "Oh yeah, I gotta go to China for this China project." Kinda funny in this film because these guys may be telling their people back home, "Yeah, I gotta go work on this China project." It could be work, it could be having a good time.

PW: When you were working in manufacturing and you were first exposed to the culture of the guys that are overseas and the expectation that, particularly people who are working in manufacturing, have around having access to women and the sex industry, it obviously struck you enough to make a day-in-the-life. But what was it that struck you about it and how did you feel initially?

JB: I think—again, I use the word "absurd." Because it's kind of comical really, in my opinion, that these are grown men behaving like this, you know? They would never behave this way here. It's not even an act. It's just how people behave. It was funny. I mean, the first time I walked into one of these places myself and saw what was going on, you're somewhat shocked because you see the girls and they're like so young. I'll tell you this: I was more shocked when we made the movie than when I had ever seen this in real life. There's something about seeing it on the screen, seeing it so crisp the way that it was captured. The girls just look so frigging young. That was weird for me. Like when we first started shooting, it was like, "Whoa." It was somewhat difficult for me to describe to people. That made me really think like, OK, I have to show this. Because you can only describe something so well verbally. The attempt was really to try and place the viewer into this situation and see it for maybe the first time.


PW: The thing that struck me the most was that the whole film was told from the perspective of a woman. And that was really interesting, very feminist. That's kind of a feminist film concern, with female filmmakers starting in the '70s who were [dealing] with Otherness and the character in the film that's overlooked, the character in the story that doesn't have a voice. The person who's narrating the story—even though the [protagonist] is actually the man, is the woman.

JB: I think one of the reasons is obviously, it's kind of a man's world that you're looking at. Just by choosing a female you can say one thing. It's kind of jarring as well. That's one thing that I liked about it, was like, "OK, wow, we had a female here."

PW: She's also speaking [Mandarin, not English], which is really interesting because it's an American filmmaker. And it's subtitled. It's very very cool, but it was an interesting point.

JB: There's a lot of—a lot of things that are done because they're cool as well… The female Chinese Mandarin narrator was—I thought it was like, this is a street-smart girl, like kind of somebody who's just this observer. It could be like the mama-san who's working there, who sees this. Maybe she's been exposed to the industry for 15 years, and now she's managing girls. It's not I'm not saying that's who the narrator is, but it's somebody who has an insight into that world and maybe hasn't been drawn into that, I guess, the male side of it.

PW: The factory stuff that you shot, you were saying something about you marketing it as a documentary? Was there a little guerilla action going on when you were shooting in factories? How did you get permission and—

JB: I know the people. They knew it was a narrative.

PW: OK. Then with the brothels?

JB: [laughing] They don't really quite know what we were doing.

PW: I mean, it seemed like—

JB: The girls do.

PW: But the people who are running—

JB: I went to the place maybe like 3 or 4 times before we started shooting and before most of the crew, 3 or 4 of the guys. So we had to get the girls lined up, so we went 3 nights in a row. Literally as they brought the girls in, as they do in the movie, we told them what we were doing. We said, "We're shooting a little movie for film festivals, and we need 12 girls for 3 days in a row." There was one girl who spoke some English, and she got really excited. She sat down and started talking to me. She knew enough English to communicate things that I was telling [her to the girls]. So she helped us get some of her friends who worked there. Extremely helpful to me. My business card said "Jesus Beltran." In China, on business cards you put your last name first, your family name after that. So she thought my first name was Beltran, so she called me Beltran the whole time. [laughs] "Beltran, Beltran!"

PW: When you were making your work, who did you envision your audience to be? And after you made your work, was that audience still the same audience? Or did it expand or change? With distribution, what are your hopes in getting it out there?

JB: I did not intend to put it on any Internet stuff originally. Sundance accepted it, and that's when I started thinking about the Internet stuff and what I wanted to do with it. So I put it on iTunes, and Sundance has their own streaming website. So, it streamed on Sundance's festival website through the middle of April, I believe. We're on Ironweed Films, the May DVD. Right now I still don't want to put it on YouTube or anything like that. We're still playing other festivals, and there's another possible DVD that it might go on, which is a collection of Latino short films by another distribution company. I think slowly it will be seen by a lot of outside people. Because I think it is relevant. The strategy sometimes is to send it to top-tier festivals. I've sent it to all kinds of stuff, and if anybody asks, if anybody invites from another festival I don't care—I'll let it play.

I wish there was some way to show it more to audiences in the cities and inner cities, in the Mexican American neighborhoods, in the black neighborhoods. People relate to it very very well, and that's one of the things that I've loved about it, is that I can show it at Sundance, and John Smith from the Republican stronghold of Orange County loves it as much as Jose something from my old neighborhood loves it. I really wish they aired short films before feature films in regular theatres.

PW: Instead of a trailer, a short film.

JB: It's a much smaller investment so you could do riskier things with it. You could explore topics that nobody else wants to invest in for a feature-length film. And you could at the same time give new filmmakers a venue.

PW: Do you plan to keep working with the same people?

JB: It's hard to say, you know the story dictates the characters in film. As far as I am concerned, [Anthony Neil Moss and Santiago] will be in every single one of my movies, if they're up for it. I owe these guys so much, just because they were so willing to go on these crazy journies. Like I said, I'd love to keep working with these guys.

I’d like to work with actors that are… worldly is one word, or curious, and are interested in talking about more than just the movie that we’re working on. Santiago, particularly, is very interested in politics, and in art. I think we have a lot of the same concerns in that… well he’s got a very different story than I do obviously. He grew up in Venezuela, he moved to the U.S. when he was eighteen, but we’re both very interested in socioeconomics, and I guess just struggle… economic struggle. I love talking to that guy. And there are several people that I would love to work with just because of that, because they seem like they’re interesting people.

PW: When you think about economic struggle, and you see it as a tie that binds different people together, do you see it as a culture, or as a commonality?

JB: I don’t know-- I think in one respect, it gives you a shared frame of reference that somebody who hasn’t dealt with these things may not have. It doesn’t make anybody more interesting, there are plenty of people who have struggled who may bore the hell out of me, or may have nothing to say. It’s certainly not the only type of person that I hang out with. I think when I was younger I felt that way, I felt like I didn’t have much in common with people who grew up with…

PW: Things?

JB: Things, and parents that could provide, not everything they asked for, but… you know, the kid who goes to Stanford, who doesn’t have to worry about hashing or getting a job and has a car and whatever. Honestly, when I got there I felt like I had nothing in common with certain people. I’m totally appreciative of the experience I had there because I met people that had come from the same place I had, but didn’t feel that way. After a while you realize everybody’s got problems, and everybody is going through their same shit, in one way or another. But certainly, when you get to know somebody, I think there’s a certain appreciation for being able to pull yourself out of a situation like that, no denying that at all. I have a lot of respect for people who can do that, and sort of, you know-- keep it real. Santiago is like that. A lot of my close friends are like that, but not everybody’s like that, and… whatever [laughs].

PW: The other side of that is when you come from struggle, and you find yourself in a world of privilege, you also can’t go backwards. Just as much as you might think you might have nothing in common with your new friends at Stanford, your friends from the old neighborhood might not feel like they have anything in common with you anymore either.

JB: [laughs]

PW: I shouldn’t speak for everyone, but I think there is a shared experience of levitating between two worlds, and being of neither/nor--

JB: You have access to both sides to a certain extent. You could go back to… you could use some hip-hop terminology: people who got big, people who blew up. It’s funny. It’s a good point that you don’t necessarily belong to either group. There’s no membership, so you never really belong to any social group, per se.

PW: So, if you get your feature funded, are you going to sell out?

JB: Oh, yeah! [laughs] What are you talking about?! Course!

PW: Your mission statement?

JB: Yeah, my mission statement. I don't know. What the hell does "sell out" mean? No, I think the idea is to try and stick to stories that are personal. The weird thing about making a movie is that I believe that it should be a personal journey for the director. Unfortunately a director can't make a movie by himself. So the director doesn't deserve full credit. But it's just like anything, and it's not just a movie either—it could be a business. It always requires one person really, really, really kind of pushing it along.

PW: The visionary?

JB: Not—you can use that word if you want, but it's just somebody making sure that shit happens. It's like people say, like filmmaking by committee typically results in crap or things that are just purely market-driven or whatever—not what I typically enjoy. Most of the stuff I like ends up being from the guys, from the directors who are considered like ruthless or assholes or tyrants on the set and whatnot. That's not what I'm trying to do, but—one of the guys is quoted as saying, "Well, somebody's gotta care." And it really, really helps when you have wonderful people who bring you fantastic choices. And that's why you have to respect and work and trust people that you surround yourself with. But at the end of the day, somebody is making those decisions.

Selling out is . . . You know, sometimes you have to make money. You can never say you're never going to sell out. Hopefully I can make stuff that's personal to me, and I would love to keep writing what I do. I hope that I can continue to work on those kinds of projects and then get to features [that way]. You can take something and make it personal as well. I think Sam Raimi's done his own vision of Spider-Man. You can make things personal. And if somebody gives you an opportunity… hey you never know. ☺

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Jesus Beltran's films have been self produced under his Zumpango Films production house, named after Zumpango Del Rio, Guerrero, the small Mexican town in which his grandfather lives. Chin lives and sometimes works in Mountain View, CA. He has a pet monkey, two fish, and a couch that was once a cow.

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Jesus Beltran can be found at http://www.zumpangofilms.com

The Grass Grows Green and The China Project can be found on MySpace at:

http://www.myspace.com/thegrassgrowsgreen
http://www.myspace.com/thechinaproject

::Click here to watch The Grass Grows Green on iTunes.::