Log-Line

A 40-something-year-old man rediscovers himself when he’s kicked out of his sister’s house and forced to live in his brother’s apartment with no electricity.

External/Internal Conflict

Will Enrique be able to live on his own for the first time in 40 years? Can Enrique figure out what he wants to do in life?

Summary

Enrique has just been kicked out of his sister, Rosa's house. He takes his one bin and moves into his brother's extra apartment. The apartment was recently vacant due to the tenant just leaving and leaving all their belongings behind. He quickly learns there's no electricity and in having no funds to turn on the lights he adapts and buys candles to make due. His brother, Eddie gives him the idea to start painting again. In the process of getting enough of an art collection together, his drug past comes back to haunt him. After spending a day with Eddie's son, Romey, who's a gifted artist, he learns the joy of creating art for the sake of just creating art. This coming-of-age drama is about the discovery of one's self and the connection we have with family.  

Behind the Story

In 2019, I had an itch to start my next film. It had been two years since we were in production on "Shut Up, You!". My brother-in-law, Ruben, who has been a part of my short films, came to me and wanted to do something. Anything. I knew this project had to be a feature. But my longest film was 30 minutes. So this was going to be a challenge. I really wanted this project to showcase my vision as an artistic director. But who knows their vision. I've been directing short films and had somewhat of a style but the cinematography, although good, never felt like it was how I saw it in production. So I needed to shoot this to show that. In order to do that I had to learn how to use a camera. So I did. It took a lot of work. Since I was going to do production all on my own, my brother-in-law and I agreed to only use practical lightning. So we had to get creative.  

How was I going to start shooting without a story? All my stories take about a year to write because they have to be perfect. But that itch was getting too be to scratch. I told myself, I've been studying story/screenplays for about ten years now, and if I cannot write this off the cuff without thousands of hours of "research" I shouldn't be doing this at all. I took events from mine and Ruben's life as a starting point.   

So I took the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" approach; which is to do a basic outline and all the dialogue will be improv. The next thing to do is schedule the first shoot. Since there was no script, we decided to shoot this linearly in case we miss something we can go back and add to it. We both agreed to work on this for about a year and see what we came up with. 

We shot only on weekend and so far it was going great. In the first five minutes, there was no dialogue and no outside characters. I took this dramatic turn where he was kicked out of his sister's house and was living on his own for the first time. An external conflict is how would he deal with this in his 40s. This is somewhat true to what really happened in real life. One of the biggest hurdles we've had is that his new apartment had no electricity. He was a huge fan of candles and that didn't bother him. This added to the film in cinematography and incorporated it into the story.   

We had a scene where the main character calls a call-girl. We did the scene and it was good, but after watching Steven Spielberg's commentary during the week, he said we always need to see what the subject is looking at. So I hired an actress to play a small part of the call-girl that the main character is looking at through the window. When she arrived I asked her if she wanted to do some improv and ad-lib and if she would like to extend her part. She was excited and came up with dialogue. I then extended her part and added my son to the cast list. I scheduled another shoot where the two characters meet in a laundry mat and the main character asks her out.  

I outlined a new version, now creating two storylines. As dates were being scheduled co-vid 19 happened so production was at a standstill. I waiting eight months and due to the scare, I re-outlined focusing back on the main character's storyline. Following the beat-sheet structure, I added a bunch of scenes and added more cast members. With the pandemic, there was only one character on set with the main actor plus myself.  

Now with determination to get to the finish line, I wrote the script for the cast members and scheduled all the shoot dates in advance.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this project was to practice what it takes to make a feature. Also to show it can be done on a zero budget and with no crew. What I did learn is that if one takes on this challenge, make sure you have a script because doing a production with no crew and budget it's really hard not to know where the story is taking you without one.