GreenCine | article

Is everything transient?

Everything! I ended up merging the idea of work and the passage together so you enter the car wash and it's about work and then, by the time you leave, it's about this awkward juncture between Mexico and the US.

About transience and work, you made a clear effort to depict Carmelo's work as a highly physical one. I mean, this is a 60 -year- old man, schlepping his nights away on Valencia with his guitar. His is not a relaxed living.

Hard work. I liked the idea that despite the fact that he sings love songs for a living, he's really making a living on his feet. It's very blue collar. I felt like this walking life - these musicians in the Mission do this circuit between 16th, Valencia, Mission and 24th, from upscale places to these little joints - but most of the time they're walking, they're waiting for the last band to leave and there's something very job-like about it. I really wanted to make a film about a musician in which the film wasn't a celebration of the music. Instead it's about a guy who is a musician as a job. Even though Carmelo happens to be a guy that's rather passionate about this music, I didn't include one piece of voiceover about how wonderful he felt the music was. My interest was in music as a gig, a way to make money and that is certainly part of the plight. The walking, the hard work of it, the manual labor of it all was important to me and I'm sure I emphasized that.

Which pairs very well with the sadness of the lyrics. You include subtitles for all of the songs' lyrics, which gave the songs and their performances a difference kind of gravity.

When I was thinking about the movie, and this evolved over time, I realized I wasn't making a music documentary. This is a film about a guy who plays music for a living and it's about the intersection of the narrative of the music and narrative that's going on in that guy's life. The music and the lyrics are constant commentary on the actions and the plot: he plays weddings and the weddings can't help but intersect with his daughter's life and his fears and the future; he plays funerals and those can't help but intersect with his concerns for his ailing mother; he plays quinci�eras and he puts together a lesser quinci�era for his daughter; his musical partner is kind of a drunk and the lyrics comment on a life of drinking or troubled relationships. Or some songs are a celebration of the love of a young woman, and here he is in a relationship with a woman who he's having trouble understanding because she's going through menopause. So there's irony and commentary in the music and it helps suffuse the narrative of the film.

I read about your interest in American 60s v�rit�, which you said - and I love this- had "unbuttoned structures," and I can see how your film makes a comfortable parallel to say, Salesman, but the way Carmelo mythologized the plight of characters who might be regarded as indigent or invisible, struck me as very British New Wave. He wasn't Jimmy Porter -

I was inspired by 60s v�rit�, but it's true the film isn't exactly...

I don't mean to imply it was Don't Look Back starring Carmelo.

Right, but when you watch my film you probably have more of a sense of character subjectivity. Beside the 60s v�rit� aesthetic, which is a definitive inspiration, I love that you never felt like you were being dragged by the nose - in terms of the plot - in v�rit�. You felt like the plot was almost accidental, or you were discovering as a viewer how you feel. And you never felt like the editor or the filmmaker was trying too hard to make you see their points, though they had their points. I was inspired, in Rom�ntico, to make the viewer feel the randomness of life, and feel how tenuous life is and how unexpected. In many ways, though I'm leading you subtly, I didn't want you to feel that "manipulative filmmaker" presence.

All in all, it's funny the weird feedback thing that happens with documentary inspiring New Waves and now I'm saying I was inspired by the films that were inspired by the films that were inspired by documentaries.

I read about your experience at the Morelia Film Festival. It seemed like, for Carmelo, being part of your film wasn't just cathartic, it was much more. You must have discussed this with him.

I didn't ask for this, but I ended up with a film subject who had always wanted to tell his story. He told me that the first night I spoke with him. This was the gift of the movie. Yes, he gave me the gift of a plot because he went home in the first week of shooting and that was totally unexpected, but he also gave me the gift of an examined life. He belies the cultural stereotype people have about the hand-to-mouth existence. I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think people tend to think that if you're spending all of your time worrying, working and trying to make the family happen and be comfortable, that you couldn't possibly have the time for perspective on life or on your part in the larger world. I mean, that's a stereotype, not a truth. And I feel like his life is an examined life and it allows a window into his world and makes his world more poignant because he's a self-reflective guy. At a certain point in his life, he decided - maybe he kept this in the back of his head - that he'd love the opportunity to tell his story, and when I met him he told me that. He was 57 at the time and said, "I've been waiting a long time for this." It was very odd for me.

It sounds almost prophetic.

I know, but I hesitate to make it sound too prophetic because that's the reality, that's what he told me. When he did eventually see the film, despite the fact that he's in almost as shitty of a position as he was in the beginning of the film in terms of his economic situation, he told this audience at Morelia - he quoted himself from the film - he said, "Ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to become somebody, and now I feel like I am somebody because I've told my story." The mere telling of his story was a great satisfaction to him. Now he's a person like anyone else; he needs more satisfaction than that. He needs a degree of comfort that he doesn't have, so I don't mean to be patronizing in that way, but it's also true he's a musician and he likes being the center of attention and I'm sure when he walks down the street and people yell, "Hey Rom�ntico!," he loves it.

I appreciate the amount of respect and responsibility you have towards Carmelo - he's not just your documentary subject.

There's an economic thing that I don't know if we should talk about.

Why shouldn't you?

I'm still in debt to the film, but I feel like I can't make a film about a person like Carmelo and not share in the proceeds. So I made a promise that whenever the film makes a dime, he'll get half that dime. The film might make ten thousand dollars - I don't know if that sounds small or big; it's really nothing over the course of seven years working on it - but if the film made ten thousand dollars over the next few years, I'd be helping create an account for him and I can not wait for that to happen! Lastly, there's a non-profit organization that contacted me and they formed a little website story about him and they have a little PayPal button for direct donations to Carmelo and his family. Their thing is marrying philanthropic minded individuals with families in need and I set up a little fund for him. It's not benevolent on my part. It sounds silly but I don't think that anyone who has spent time with Carmelo or has worked on this film, anyone would want him to benefit from the fruits of the film. Anybody would want to do this. The guy is just inspiring to be around, and after we talked about the economics of the film, he never asked for a dime - he only asked to tell his story and that only makes you want more to provide what he needs most, which is money.

Tell me about how you were featured on Apple.com.

They didn't find me, I found them. This last two years since the film premiered at Sundance, I've been a crazy one-man promotional machine, and I hate promoting, and yet I think any filmmaker feels the same about it: When you create something and you want people to see it, you lose those inhibitions that might keep you from calling up strangers to come see it or helping get your movie out there or helping you push it, though you have no money, or whatever. And so I work as an editor for documentaries, but I spend every waking hour I'm not doing that trying to get the movie seen. It was on the festival circuit for a year and that's really satisfying because the festivals are only about love. Distribution isn't about love because, even if people love a film, they're still worried about whether or not the film will break their company.

Kino, from New York, took it on in April of this year so it was taken on a year and a couple months after Sundance. It was partly because they knew that I would contact every non-profit and poster entire cities with a staple gun myself and I'm so gratified that the film has a chance to reach so many more people because the film has a theatrical release. I really honestly couldn't ask for more than for it to screen at the Lumiere and the Shattuck in the Bay Area. This is the home of my characters and the home of people who are really sympathetic to immigrants in general. San Francisco is progressive and sympathetic and a real home for Rom�ntico. I feel like the fact that it will see the light of the movie theater is a testament to a lot of hard work and never taking "no" for an answer.

ADVERTISE on GreenCine!

New