In the Oscar-nominated Drama ‘A Better Life’, the practical details involved in filming the Galindos’ quest for the stolen vehicle took the cast and crew on an eye-opening road trip through Los Angeles.

“The movie had almost 70 locations which are more than in any film I have ever done,” says director Chris Weitz. “We spent very little time on the ground in any given place. The film shows you the city of Los Angeles – and not the easy-to-shoot Los Angeles! This is a Los Angeles that not many people see, places that have never gone through a location scout process.

Our location manager, Fermin Davalos, and his team did an incredible job of dealing with people who have not experienced Hollywood films in their backyard. In part, it was good since we got these places relatively inexpensively because people were enthusiastic about us shooting there, showing their neighborhoods and their lives.

In part, it was difficult because we grappled with real traffic noise, and places like the very small apartment in the script which was actually shot in a real location – a very small South Central L.A. apartment.” Perhaps the most exotic and favorite location was in southeastern Los Angeles, where Weitz took advantage of a real Mexican rodeo.

“There are some extraordinary places in Los Angeles that I had never seen before and the town of Pico Rivera was a perfect example of that. In Pico Rivera Stadium, they hold Mexican rodeo competitions. There’s a whole culture of people who keep this aspect of Northern Mexico’s ‘charro’ culture alive, which is extraordinary and beautiful and has its own system of meanings and expressions and costumes,” Weitz says.

In order to authentically capture this unique tradition, Weitz incorporated the movie scenes into the actual rodeo as it occurred one Saturday afternoon. The production reached out to the community, and people showed up in full charro garb – the men and boys wearing broad brimmed sombreros, ornately brocaded, fitted, short jackets and matching pants, expertly twirling fancy lariats – the women and girls in colorful, long, broad skirts with elaborate ruffles and petticoats performing daring feats while riding their horses side-saddle.

“When Carlos takes Luis to the rodeo, it’s ostensibly as part of their hunt for the truck. At first the son resists being there – he’s a typical American teen and he doesn’t have tremendous respect for his father. But in terms of his cultural background, Luis is completely cut loose from his moorings. And in this lovely sequence in the Pico Rivera stadium, he sees it for the first time as we see it for the first time. It was very special,” Weitz describes.

Locations such as the Pico Rivera rodeo, coupled with the characters who inhabited them, served as inspirations for production designer Melissa Stewart. “Chris and I both felt a commitment to the naturalism of the story and keeping it very real, especially to people and places we were depicting. It was a bit of an emotional and geographic road trip and we wanted to make sure the settings reflected that,” says Stewart.

“For me, the design work always starts with the characters. And the characters in this script that Eric Eason wrote are just so well-wrought, they are a gift. So I was really excited about the challenges of putting them in a world that wasn’t familiar to me, but to imbue in them a sort of lyricism and truth, without embellishing them,” Stewart says.

“There were a lot of truths in Eric Eason’s storytelling that we tried to honor. Costume Designer Elaine Montalvo and I talked at length about the colors and textures – we tried to make them warm and almost tangible, very approachable, but not overly colorful. We didn’t want anything too obvious. Chris and Javier, our cinematographer, had very specific ideas and it was a wonderful collaboration,” Stewart says.

Weitz and Spanish-born cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe took great care to highlight the beauty and dignity in these singular settings. Thus, a seemingly ordinary shot of a car pulling away from a modest East LA neighborhood reveals the glimmering skyline of downtown Los Angeles at dusk, the setting sun leaving a trace of purple cloud across the horizon.

“I think that the people who live in the barrio don’t have the feeling about their home that people think they do. That is to say they don’t think they are living in a TV show about living in the slums. They are living their lives and those lives have joy and beauty and happiness, as well as ugliness and occasional violence and heartbreak.

Having said that, neither did we want an overindulgent and overly sentimentalized portrayal of our characters. It was really important that the film be very well designed, for that someone like Melissa Stewart, to lavish affection on it, and for someone like Javier to bring an unjaded, outsider’s perspective to the landscapes we show of Los Angeles,” Weitz says.

To accomplish this, Weitz and Aguirresrobe eschewed the documentary, hand-held approach and instead relied on shots framed very deliberately but without extraneous camera movement that Weitz describes as “fussy or hectic.” “In fact, the camera is essentially occupied in telling the emotional story of the characters, but there is a great deal of faith put in the value of the story and the abilities of the actors, without using emphatic camera moves to ‘juice up’ the emotions,” says Aguirresarobe.

Some of that definition, he adds, comes from the distinction between where Carlos Galindo lives and the more rarefied places he works. “I thought it would be interesting photographically to depict the difference between these worlds, the exquisite and wonderful neighborhoods and gardens he works in West Los Angeles as compared to where he lives in East Los Angeles.

The initial proposition was that the tones would be much colder where he works and much warmer and denser and familiar where he lives,” Aguirresarobe says.

Although A Better Life is Aguirresarobe’s second collaboration with Weitz—they first worked together on New Moon—it was, in fact, Aguirresarobe’s first film in Los Angeles. It was not exactly a typical American experience for him, however, as the filmmakers deliberately hired Spanish speakers, in front of and behind the camera. Aguirresarobe rarely had to switch from his native language to English.

“All of the characters who were supposed to have been born in Mexico are Mexican actors; the characters who are Mexican American are Mexican American. So that means that often entire scenes are spoken in Spanish,” Weitz says.

“We were a very polyglot film from all around the world – Anglos, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Spaniards – our set was pretty much bilingual. In preparation for the film, I took an intensive Spanish course. I can’t say I was fluent but I was much better and the set itself was like a full-on immersion course,” Weitz says.

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Jóse Julián plays Luis Galindo in the Oscar-nominated movie ‘A Better Life’ and the young actor was able to convey a convincing performance and wonderful screen chemistry with seasoned veteran Demian Bichir. However, Julián also shared many of his scenes with Chelsea Rendon and Bobby Soto, who played Ruthie, Luis’ tough, loyal girlfriend and Facundo, his energetic best friend.

The three teenage actors genuinely liked each other and the natural rapport they shared on and off camera was apparent. “I’m the man, definitely. I kind of push him around. Ruthie is a bad influence. Her whole family is made up of gang members. She’s grown up in that atmosphere, she’s very cocky and confident because she knows she can talk smack – her family is backing her up.

I think she really cares for Luis – I think he brings out her girlier side because he is not as big and tough but at the same time, she wants him to be part of the gang lifestyle because literally that is her family,” Rendon says. Rendon, friendly with a quick grin, is far less intimidating than her character. Nevertheless, she found she had quite a bit in common with Ruthie.

“This role was really close to home for me. I grew up in East LA, about ten minutes from where it’s set. Ruthie will always speak up for her friends and so will I. I’ve always been a tomboy, always hanging around guys, so in those respects I’m a lot like her. I think the whole movie is very accurate, in fact. I go to public schools, so I know about the influence of gangs and drugs and the [presence of] illegals – I think the movie really depicts all that authentically,” Rendon says.

Interestingly, although Ruthie’s kin are clearly affiliated with gangs, Luis’ visits with her and her relations are almost old fashioned – no violence, just a welcoming, familial sensibility – even if her supportive uncles are covered with ominous tattoos and may have designs on Luis’ future that his father doesn’t share. While Luis’ interest in Ruthie does not necessarily extend to her gang affiliations, their friend Facundo has no such reservations.

“Facundo is definitely into the gangs and is all about influencing Luis into joining one with him.  They’ve been best friends since childhood but Facundo sees no way out – a gang is what he thinks will give him high ranking in the neighborhood. He tries to influence Luis in that direction.

He is not like Luis, who can just ignore it. Facundo needs to be part of a gang, and he would love for Luis to be a part of it with him,” says Bobby Soto. Soto adds that he hopes kids who see the movie will relate more to Luis than to Facundo, who often seems to be fueled by false bravado and misguided ambitions.

“I think a lot of kids romanticize violence and drugs and gangs. Hopefully, if they see this movie they’ll think differently – that you don’t have to be a thug to be somebody, that you have a choice,” Soto says.

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Oscar-nominated drama ‘A Better Life’ addresses the illusions of the ‘American dream’ from the point of view of the hardworking immigrant Carlos and his teenage son.

In 2008, the United States Census listed the percentage of “persons of Hispanic or Latino origins” in Los Angeles as 47.7%. That figure doesn’t include the many undocumented people, usually seen congregating at corners near construction sites, doing odd jobs each day, including tending to gardens all over the Southland, just to make ends meet. As contemporary as A Better Life seems, however, producer Paul Junger Witt has spent 25 years bringing this story to the screen.

“We have this invisible population in Los Angeles, that because we’re so geographically separated in Los Angeles that we really don’t know who we live with in the way that people in cities that have a smaller geographic area or have a public transportation system come to know one another. I started thinking about it as a film,” Witt says.

Witt began working with Roger L. Simon to draft a script based around this concept. “It was a pleasure to work for several years on what became A Better Life. Rarely do you get a chance in Hollywood to devote your talents to such a socially and emotionally meaningful project,” Simon conveys.

As luck would have it, about 25 years later, Witt shared office space with producer Christian McLaughlin. “I gave him one of the drafts to read and Christian responded as I had,” Witt explains.

The office neighbors became friends and McLaughlin was eager to work with the famed producer of films such as Three Kings and Dead Poets Society. “I really like Paul as a person and as a filmmaker. He has an incredible track record and is a total gentleman,” said McLaughlin. “I felt Roger Simon’s script provided a rich starting point for a movie. Not only did the immigrant backdrop of the story have a strong pull, the father-son relationship resonated for me on a personal level that transcended culture.”

Eventually, McLaughlin would bring screenwriter Eric Eason into the process. He and Witt made the risky bet of paying him themselves, in order to retain creative control of the story. “When I started developing the film, I thought of Eric, whom I previously hired for another project.

He also wrote and directed Manito, and in that film, he authentically depicted the way New York teenagers talk and behave. I thought he would understand and embrace the story, which he did,” remembers McLaughlin. “Eric has a gift for writing characters in an artful, compelling way that make you feel like you’re watching real people you’d pass on the street. I knew he was the writer who would make this story come alive.”

Manito, set in the vibrant Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Washington Heights, follows two brothers who grapple with the community’s crack cocaine legacy, and in many ways, is a cousin to A Better Life which, at its core, is also a family drama. “This project was a chance to work on something with a true heart and soul, with themes that had the potential to resonate across cultures,” Eason says.

Witt concurs, adding that although the movie would dovetail with current controversial immigration issues, at its heart, A Better Life is a human film. “The film has no political agenda. It puts a face on a population that until now, especially in Los Angeles, has been invisible. Los Angeles is unique in some respects but the story could happen anywhere.

And the times have changed since we started. Sometimes stories take a while to reach their most simple and elegant form. The fact that the timing now works so well for the film, the story we’re telling, is purely accidental,” he says.

Says Eason, “Audiences don’t want to be preached to. They want to be entertained and have an emotional experience. If there’s any agenda in my screenplay–it’s a desire to bring to life characters living in the margins of society, whose stories virtually never appear in studio films.”

Adds McLaughlin, “In the film, when we first meet the Galindos, it’s clear Carlos desperately needs to reconnect with his son. Luis is an impressionable kid, a teenager at a critical juncture in his life where the choices he makes will have irrevocable consequences into adulthood.

“Eric’s script raised the stakes for both father and son. He captured that sense of urgency, and in the process created a story so riveting, you could see – even on the page — that it would be a fantastic movie,” says McLaughlin.

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From Chris Weitz, director of About a Boy and producer of A Single Man and In Good Company, comes ‘A Better Life’ – a poignant, multi-generational story about a father’s love and everything a parent will sacrifice to build a better life for his child.

Carlos Galindo dreamed of good things for his wife and future son when they crossed the border into the US. But when his wife left him, wanting more than he could give, Carlos’ only goal became to make sure his son Luis was given the opportunities he never had.

After years of hard work and trying to set an example for his child, he still finds himself drifting apart from Luis, now a teenager, who is susceptible to peer pressures that could lead him down a dangerous path. Seeing a way to control their own destiny, Carlos borrows what little money he can and invests it all into his own gardening business, hoping to finally achieve the better life he always envisioned for his son.

However, after an unexpected turn of events, when everything he’s worked for is suddenly taken away, it is Luis, despite years of growing apart, who teams up with Carlos to take it back. Together, father and son embark on a physical and spiritual journey where they discover something more important – that family is the most important part of the American dream.

An authentic ‘Better Life’

A Spanish-speaking cast and crew was not merely an affectation: it reflected Weitz’s commitment to authenticity and his desire to accurately portray the community he would represent on film. This began as an intellectual exercise and ended with Father Gregory Boyle. Father G., as he is known, is a Jesuit priest who ministers to and lives in the East Los Angeles community, as pastor of the Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights.

After the 1992 riots, he created what would become Homeboy Industries, which “assists at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth to become positive and contributing members of society through job placement, training and education.”

Weitz says, “Being somewhat of a nerd, my first instinct was to go to the bookstore and get some books on the subject because I didn’t know East LA  My first foray into the culture was to try to get a sense of the demographics and what it is like to be a young person living in East LA in an environment where gangs exist, and what it’s like to be an undocumented worker.

In the acknowledgements section of one of these sociological texts I found Father Gregory Boyle mentioned. I thought, well he seems like a really interesting man. I begged a meeting with Councilman Richard Alarcon who called him up and within minutes, I was talking to the guy who I thought might really be able to help us in terms of being able to enter into these neighborhoods with a show of respect on our part.

“I showed the script to Father G., he took the time to read it, even though he has a very busy life and he found it just as wonderful as I did. And from that point forward, he and Homeboy Industries showed incredible faith in us and I would say also us in them. Father G. has a way of believing in you that makes it very difficult for you to let him down.

He blessed the set on our first day and since then I kept in mind that the people we are doing this for are not just the audience but the gardeners and all the people that Father G. ministers to.” Specifically, Father Boyle and his group vetted the script and helped the A Better Life team navigate the neighborhoods in which the production would film. Indeed, some of his Homeboy Industries members literally became part of A Better Life cast and crew.

“I told Father Boyle that we wanted to engage in the neighborhoods we would shoot in, we wanted to make a good impression. We were also willing to have a long- term connection with Homeboys Industries – I personally will always be involved with them. We asked Father G. if he thought it would be possible to set up some auditions and he gave us five people – we cast all of them. We hired his people to work in catering, in security, as location liaisons.

“We also tested our script and the presumptions in it against what Father Boyle knew, from 20 years of working and living in these neighborhoods and the amazing thing was that our writer, Eric Eason, had done a tremendous job of research so that 99% of it felt very right, true and compelling, but also fair-minded and redemptive.

The one percent was about particular expressions or the way gang members behave, housing, did a place look right, did the way they were talking seem correct? And these things can come down to the difference between one block and another one five blocks over. I don’t want to claim any street cred from our association with Homeboy Industries. They do amazing stuff and we were incredibly fortunate to have their help,” Weitz says.

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Dolores Heredia, who plays Luis’ Aunt Anita, Carlos Galindo’s sister, in the Oscar-nominated drama ‘A Better Life’ is an experienced Mexican actress and producer, who has worked many times with Demian Bichir. The two old friends were delighted to reunite on A Better Life.

“I think this was my fifth film with him. He is a great friend and colleague and I really admire him as an actor. We were constantly laughing and joking in between takes, it was great to work with him again,” Heredia says. Heredia adds that it was equally exciting to work with newcomer José Julián.

“It’s wonderful to work with an actor who is just starting out, there is a special effervescence about it. In addition, José is a very calm, quiet young man but he is very attentive. He was a real pleasure,” Heredia says.

Whereas Anita’s brother Carlos is somewhat struggling to find his way in America, Anita is married, a mother, nurse and lives in a nice neighborhood. Although she is often impatient with her brother, the two share a bond that began many years earlier, when they left Mexico for the United States, both hoping for a better life.

“Carlos and Anita have been in the United States from Mexico for many years. They are very close but things have gone rather better for her. They will always love and help each other but there is a small rift between them having to do with her nephew Luis, who, from her point of view, is not taking very good steps with his life.

She doesn’t like his friends, that he doesn’t study. She is always asking if he is behaving, even though she loves him,” Heredia explains. “She is quite rigid in that respect, she thinks things have to go in a certain way and she wants Luis to follow a certain path that she thinks he is not on, so that really is the first emotional crack between brother and sister. And her own relationship with Luis is tense – he feels she abandoned him and his father, to look after her own life.”

Still, Anita takes a huge risk in loaning her brother money to buy the truck that will literally become his ride to the American Dream – and ultimately, because of the truck, she will have more say in the way Luis is raised, though hers is a pyrrhic victory at best. And yet, the truck – or, actually, Carlos and Luis’ search for it – becomes an adventure as father and son explore Latino Los Angeles – and emotional terrain that they have avoided for many years.

“It starts out as this traditional father-son story – Luis is a typical teenage boy who is finding his way in the world, and like many teenage boys, that includes being embarrassed by your parents. You want them to drop you off miles away from school so your friends won’t see you together.

When the truck is stolen, Luis and Carlos go on this journey together and you find yourself caring as much about that truck as they do – because along the way, you see father and son learn about each other in ways they never did before – Luis, in particular, starts to learn not only how hard his dad is working to give his son a better life and all the advantages he can, but also how to be good person, how to treat people with respect,” says producer Stacey Lubliner.

The disconnect between Carlos and Luis is specific but also, as producer Paul Junger Witt points out, touches on familiar cultural/generational aspects.

“We’re also dealing classically with the immigrant and first generation divide in A Better Life. So you have a boy who is totally American. He has been formed by the same things that formed all of our children; be it film and television and the Internet and media. At the same time, he sees his father as someone from the old country.

When we deal simply with generational differences, it’s enough. When you have an inherently and totally American child and an immigrant parent, that gap is even greater and more difficult to bridge,” he notes. However, it is this father/son relationship, adds producer Jami Gertz, which makes A Better Life a universal story. As the mother of three boys, it is something she can attest to firsthand.

“Two of my three boys are teenagers and I’m always amazed at that moment that their peers and peer pressure start to take over their life. And as a working parent, I could also see things from Carlos’ point of view – the guilt at not being there all the time because of your job. So while it’s about a gardener, it struck me that all these extraordinary people who make our lives better who we don’t really know – their lives, on some level, can be similar to yours even if their socioeconomic backgrounds are not,” Gertz says.

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