Why we started this....

Borderlands is a love song to our mothers, our Mexican-Americanness and to South Texas.

But mostly it is about Mexican and Mexican American women. 

Gerald and I were raised by extremely strong women at a time when the phrase was uttered with a bit of a snicker and not much in the way of reverence or respect.  Yes... both of us are momma's boys.  In college, Gerald used to say it proudly to anyone who'd listen.  He used to tell me that he grew up thinking his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world.  I knew what he meant because to a sensitive Mexican boy- mama means strength, security, and understanding.  And you view the rest of the world with the vision she empowers you with.  I know that was as true for him as it is for me.  I am my mother's son-- there is no mistaking that.  I have her sense of humor,  her simultaneous sentimentality and cynicism about people.  Her passion and zeal , I carry where ever I go. 


Thank you ma'.

When Gerald passed away, I couldn't stop thanking his mother for raising such a good man, such a good brother and father.  I can't imagine what she's going through-I can't imagine her grief. 

"Strong female" was something we wanted to pursue in our stories.

Today, it almost sounds trite to say, "strong female lead".   But as we saw it, Mexican women ,in particular, have been ignored by the the media, and the entertainment world.  Mexicans in general are seen as spineless, parasitic, low-skiled thugs and gangsters.  I can't think of a representation of a Mexican that is not a clown or a criminal.   

Gerald and I also felt that even when Mexican women were portrayed-- the stereotypes were mindlessly repeated -- virgin, whore, maligned mother, over-worked mother, abused mother, undereducated, willfully ignorant....etc

No portrayal of Mexican women seemed human- just stereotypes that made mainstream Americans feel good about themselves. 

We were highly aware of all this when we wrote the scripts.

But we weren't just trying to correct that deadly combination of sexism and racism through some ethnographic morality play.

No we wanted to tell stories that spoke to our own experiences with the women that raised us.... now-- of course, that's not to say Borderlands is autobiographical- hardly.  But every time we came upon a story line that needed tweaking we asked ourselves; "What would mom think?  What would  abuela do?" or "What would they have WANTED to do?" 

And that is really what guided us-- our mothers. 


Did I mention that my mother is acting in it?  Her story I'll tell later, or better yet she'll tell it.  Suffice it to say- she was born an actress.

Blog hiatus....

Well kids I've been away from blog writing for a couple of weeks.
I was talking to one of my actors and explaining that I was basically doing everything.... DP,  Editor, lighting, sound...etc cause I have to work around people's schedules- Which is fine-- but it makes for crazy making days.  Thanks to everyone who is helping!
Here are some stills from test shots.  Tell me what you think.

Sunday morning recap... Comedia A Go-Go and SanAnT-O-Wood

Slow week on the project front.
I've been looking at some of the stills from Comedia A Go-Go's new project and I'm all ..."hmm maybe I should get me one of those Canon DSLRs...it makes the go-go guys look all SanAnT-O-Wood " 

*SanAnT-O-Wood: my term the new look that will eventually take over- REAL Texas Mexicans as opposed to the California-maybe I'm Puerto Rican- but most likely I just needed a part as a thug-Mexican.

Of course it's not the equipment alone-- but that the shots are composed and lit in such a way that it makes you want to look at what's going on-- keeps you engaged-- the way Hollywood productions keep you engaged.

Oh well.. already bought my depth of field adapter- no big. I'm happy but sometimes one gets equipment envy and I'm just waiting for it to arrive.

But it gives me time to rethink some of my shot ideas and some of the parts that I think need to be rewritten.  We'll see. Gonna gather my "talent" to do some read throughs tonight...

Regardless, check out  Comedia A Go-Go
Check them out on myspace-- they're funny-- I think funnier than Mencia or George Lopez.

http://www.myspace.com/comediaagogo

A man without hands production

And now for the pretentious part of this journal.

Will do some more test taping tonight-- a night scene in a doorway- POV from inside a house. How does one light that sort of scene? See we will.

Soooooo-- why a man with no hands you ask?

I will take a moment to explain.

Picture it. The early 90s- Bush 1.0 in the White House. The economy was tanking (this was PRE .dot com boom) and the only jobs for a redneck philosophy major (Gerald) and a fat English major (me) were pallet loading, he, and telemarketing, me.

Life made little sense.

We had college degrees but we had no real ambition beyond making art- and that was fraught with problems for us.

We both wrote poetry and short stories. Some of it bad, some not too shabby.

But we wanted to get it out there. Remember folks this was PRE-Internet.

He wanted to be a small town Bukowski with a heart of gold (Bukowski never wanted to have a heart of anything). And I wanted to be Anne Sexton or Flannery O'connor- without actually going insane or dying from lupus. Regardless, we thought we were pretty good and we wanted to get our stuff out there but it was a weird time for the arts. Small publishing houses were cliquish and large rags would have little to do with the subject matter we covered. The literary fashion was still pretty post-modern - blank, witty without substance, very fin-de-siecle.

Gerald and I were either writing poetry about being Mexican, being drunk, being a small town has been, or simply feeling completely useless.

Like I said some of it was good, some of it was not so good.

So we embarked on making our stuff known-- We tried to put out a literary fanzine of sorts. We wanted it to be visual as well as "literary"- so we had great big layouts with overlayed poems by ourselves and some friends.

It went nowhere.

We continually ran out of money to move on with it.

We had no access to dark rooms so we could REALLY get our pictures properly exposed...blah, blah, blah...

Looking back we should have just moved with what we had regardless of how it looked.

Damn hindsight.

Some days we felt really desperate to get things moving- others we felt the overwhelming lethargy of inertia.

We were true slackers.

Did I mention we were both living at my parent's house?

Yes, I was a boomerang boy and Gerald tagged along for the ride.

Well, one night we ended up going to a party to escape the unbearable heat of my parent's house (no A/C, we was fan driven Mexicans).

I seriously don't remember much after the trash can punch. I remember waking up the next morning with a busted lip and Gerald with blood on his neck from a gash on his head.

We looked at each other and just laughed. How the hell did we end up like this?

Living in my parent's house, hungover, bloody and not terribly sure what to do next- except going to "El Tacoriendo" for a machacado plate.

I think it was the hangover that did it because that night Gerald came home from work and said, "You know what we should do? A public access TV show. It will be about this! You've come home from college and your parents have rented out your room- You're forced to live in the bathroom and I'm your only friend. We'll actually write scripts- not like these fools who just tape themselves 'being funny'. WE ARE ACTUALLY FUNNY. "

A legend was born.

The next year and a half was devoted to script writing, taping, crash editing, rewriting, buying bad wigs, buying dresses, and trying to figure out how to tape everything in my parent's bathroom.

Sooo... what does this have to do with "A Man with No Hands"?

At some point G and I, were sitting around thinking of issues that needed tending to.

We were, after all, going about this blindly- neither of us had been an RTF (radio, television and film) major. We knew nothing about everything. AND we had no resources, no cameras, no equipment...etc. So Gerald just asked me, "What are we going to call this production company?"

"I don't know", I said.

So we sat around and thought about it.

Nothing.

So we did what our arty Dada heroes would have done.

I picked up a copy of Anne Sexton's Complete Poems, closed my eyes, and opened it at random and landed on the poem "The Maiden Without Hands".

We butched it up..."A Man With No Hands".

We thought it fit. Here we were trying to fumble our way through a project we had no resources for- no hands so to speak.

Anne said it best,

Picture her there for a moment,

a perfect still life.

After all,

she could not feed herself or pull her pants down or brush her teeth.

She was, I'd say, without resources.

So, there you go.

You see we really wanted to create something serious at some point and saw the comedy show as a way of getting experience. We learned a lot...why we didn't get to the serious stuff. Well, later.

I've been going through our old tapes- all the raw footage from the show and digitizing it-- Yes kids, this was all VHS- the editing was done either on the fly or on two crappy VHS machines with 30 buck radio shack mixers patched between the audio output/inputs for dubbing.

It was gettho-fabulous.

Here is the intro to one of our characters.

From 1992 (Pre-Austin Powers!), here is Chuck- Seventies Disco Acolyte who had fallen into a coma after slipping on the dance floor at the Crystal Pistol while doing poppers. (Some will know where the Crystal Pistol was...some won't). The premise-- he came to me for 80's lessons in exchange for salacious stories about the 70's.

I look at this video and it makes me happy and terribly sad at the same time.

On the one hand I look at it through the eyes of grief; missing my brother, angry at how the cancer took his life, how it took him away from us.

Yet, I can't help but smile at how damned wonderful he was. He changed us all in some way or another. My life was completely changed because of him and I'm grateful that I knew him.

A couple of months before he got sick he told me that our new production company should be

"BoPett" productions.

I'll probably change it- a man with no hands now seems odd to me- the original meaning is lost and now it just sounds a little ghoulish.

Don't know yet.... bigger fish to fry.

New Year - Wisdom by Bullet points

I don't have much to post tonight.
'except this--

• Don't take your life for granted.
• Gratitude is an act not a word.
• Be who you are.

And, the only reason we exist-

• To lessen each other's burden.

Everything else is just meaningless

Signs

I had an interesting moment.
I went to the grocery store- Our lovely H.E.B, for some NYE suff. As I got to the checkout a middle-aged man approached me and said, "Are you Hector? from the Hector, Hector, Hector show.?"

I stammered, "Yes".

"I thought that was you. I loved your show. I was a big big fan. LOVED it. Thank you"

I was stunned. Gerald and I had an actual fan. It's happened before actually- strangely enough RIGHT when Gerald first had the idea to write the current script another man approached me and waxed fanboy goodness about the Hector, Hector Hector Show. I remember calling Gerald and telling him that it was a sign that we were on the right track with the script.

And actually, I think this was Gerald calling me and saying, "Yup, you're on the right track".

For those that might care to know... this was the theme song-- Mind you. This was 1992 on public access and we had NO real equipment- all borrowed.



P.S. That was me playing guitar and G singing.

Friends

Today was a crappy day. I wanted to do some pretty simple outside taping....lo and behold- SLEET. I decided not to waste the day and tried to do some test shooting inside- and since I don't have proper lights yet, I was just going to use fluorescents (6500 K). Went around town looking for the correct lights (and a small LCD monitor)-- didn't get home until 3 pm.

Discovered that I needed more lighting and that more than likely... I would have to shell out more dough for lights.

So, my nerves are a little frayed-- over something pretty stupid- money.

But it's not really the money... but the fact that I feel I have to "own" stuff in order not to depend on the "kindness of strangers". I'm sure that I could ask some folks around town to lend me some lighting equipment... but truth is I would feel awkward. I am not that close to people who could conceivably lend me said lights. Essentially I would feel awkward and like a user. And I don't want people who I admire thinking of me as a jackass user. So, I'm stuck with having to buy or kluge lights together.

It basically makes me feel a little alone.

But then I'm reminded of my friend...well... we'll call her Mrs. BerryTastic.

Mrs. BerryTastic has graciously agreed to let me use a relative's old dilapidated house for the denouement of my little project. It's an incredible gift for her to let me do this. I've known her for about 9 years and although we haven't always kept in touch-- she's been a complete angel these past few months since Gerald's death.

I suddenly don't feel so alone.

Thank you Mrs. BerryTastic !!!

I have to also thank the folks that have agreed to act in the project.

I won't name their names yet. But they are great people.

We will call them the Garzasteins. The Garzasteins are an incredible family I've known many years who have also helped me through times of need.

Thank you Garzasteins.... your badass photogenic selves will make this project kick MFing butt.

I've made myself happy now.