The season of the golden statue is upon us, and the heat is increasing in the top categories. Where is the wind blowing this year? One of the most coveted awards, along with the Leading Actress trophy, is that of Best Male Lead.

This year, the battle is between experienced and seasoned performances, all around age 40 and up. At the same time, there are many first-timers, despite their years in the business, with only one of the nominated already having an Oscar to show for it. Nothing is certain until Sunday, February 26, live from Hollywood, but here are the predictions.

Demián Bichir for ‘A Better Life’

American audiences primarily know 48-year-old Demián Bichir from the TV series, Weeds, and as Fidel in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’. However, Bichir is a huge name back in his native Mexico, part of a family of celebrated actors, and his presence on this year’s nomination list will be his first. In Chris Weitz’s A Better Life, he plays the gardener, Carlos, who has worked hard to make a life for himself and his estranged son in the States. When his truck is stolen, father and son, albeit virtually strangers, set out to recover it in hopes of a better life.

There were reports of confusion when Bichir’s name was read among the nominees as some believed the choice was made at the expense of the highly acclaimed ‘Shame’s Michael Fassbender. While Weitz’s film was celebrated, it was not widely watched. However, the nod to Bichir is the only one for the movie, and despite the initial surprise, or maybe because of it, it seems unlikely that he will take home the award.

George Clooney for ‘The Descendants’

Already a groomed candidate with seven nominations in his pocket and a win in the Supporting category for ‘Syriana’ in 2006, 50-year-old George Clooney has placed himself firmly in the front. Unlike Bichir, Clooney is ‘Hollywood royalty’, and the story goes that a bet was made between him and fellow Tinsel royal, Brad Pitt, that if one of them got the nomination this year, the other would perform a favor.

Clooney’s was to spend the day with Brad and his partner Angelina Jolie’s pack of kids – which he allegedly loathes. With that deal already sealed, the question is if ‘The George’ will up the ante by making an actor’s Oscar hat trick – winning both Leading and Supporting Actor; something only five other actors have done before him.

Is the part worth it? Many great things have been said about The Descendants, and it is no wonder; the adapted screenplay hit a chord with critics and movie-goers alike, and Clooney’s character, Matt King, is relatable as he struggles to keep the pieces of his reality together. Already winning the Golden Globes this year is a huge plus, which tempts us to believe that the night will be Clooney’s time to shine.

Jean Dujardin for ‘The Artist’

At the tender age of 39, Jean Dujardin is not well-known in the States. Dujardin is funnily enough referred to as the French George Clooney, and the liking is merited after an evening spent in the company of The Artist - the smile says it all!

The Artist, in itself, is an incredible achievement that has reaped rave reviews around the world, with the exception of some disgruntled movie goers on the British Isles, and much of the magic is thanks to Dujardin’s charming, yet heartbreaking performance as the silent movie star, George Valentin, who fades into obscurity as the ‘talkies’ take over.

Not only is his performance a delight, but an immense amount of respect and awe goes into the challenge of performing ‘old school’; the whole cast had to abandon their experience to embrace a performance style of the past. A dark horse in the race, but a secret favorite of this reporter. Will the French finally get a leading man on the podium?

Gary Oldman for ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’

While younger generations connect Gary Oldman with good and helpful franchise characters (Harry Potter, Nolan’s Batman), most of the mature viewers know that Oldman earned his badges as the ‘bad boy’ and other villainous characters. Evidently, the tide has turned for the 53-year-old native Englishman who embodied the anti-Bond character of George Smiley in the adapted espionage drama, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, to such taste that the Academy nod was inevitable.

Even though Oldman has been around for years and is the eldest of this year’s nominees, it is the first time he has been nominated for an Oscar. Sadly, the predictions are that the honorary inclusion in the ranks of the Academy is the only thing he will be getting next Sunday.

Brad Pitt for ‘Moneyball’

So far, Brad Pitt’s career at the Academy Awards has been scattered and less eventful than you would have thought, considering his status in Hollywood. When he made the bet with George Clooney, his odds were statistically lower – curiously amusing to consider now that Moneyball is the movie that got him the nomination.

The role of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics who takes a chance on a numbers game in order to win the League, is a powerful tale of grandeur against the odds. It has been awhile since baseball filled the main plot line of a big-name movie, and critics have applauded the production team for reigniting the on-screen excitement for the game.

Some hint that the fuss over ‘The George’ might blindside observers and allow the 48-year-old father-of-six to channel his character’s underdog qualities, but as it stands, Pitt will enjoy the show and settle for the party.

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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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Whereas Oscar-nominated Demian Bichir of the movie ‘A Better Life’ is an accomplished veteran actor, his co-star, José Julián is an outstanding neophyte who makes his feature debut in as the son of Bichir’s character Carlos Galindo in A Better Life.

“We needed to find the right young actor to play Luis Galindo, someone who could hold his own against Demian on screen,” remembers producer Michael McLaughlin. “Usually, this involves a nation-wide search for an unknown that is fraught with the possibility that not finding the right actor will actually derail the production.

In her interview for the job, our casting director, Carla Hool, declared she’d already found Luis for us. And then she showed us tape of José Julián. The first time we tested José and Demian together, we were beside ourselves because they found the father-son dynamic with each other instantly and so early in the process.”

“From the start we knew we were going to cast an unknown as Luis, his son. In his performance, José demonstrates what an extraordinarily clever, intelligent and talented actor he is, even though this is his first movie. I felt he was the guy from the first time I saw him.

Plus, he’s an example of someone the film represents – it took him three hours to get to his auditions, due to the number of buses he had to take,” says the movie’s director Chris Weitz. “Also, mixing an extraordinarily technically accomplished actor, like Demian, with someone who is making his motion picture bow, like José, worked beautifully.”

As it turned out, Bichir, a garrulous man who typically greets everyone with a bear hug, happily took José under his wing, which thrilled his young protégé.

“It was incredible working with him, it was like being in a fantastic acting class and he was the professor. He’s completely an actor’s actor. He has a very systematic approach to how he works, the roles he takes and I completely admire him,” Julián says.

“Demian is a consummate professional. He completely understood the character he was playing. And he’s been a great gift to José Julián—to work with someone who is both so generous and so professionally accomplished. He’s everything a young actor could ask for, and José has been quite a gift as well.

The movie is driven by these two characters. If either one of them is even a little off, you lose so much. And to find someone this age who’s this talented and charismatic is just, quite frankly, more than I had hoped for. And I think he has an enormous career in front of him,” producer Paul Junger Witt sums up.

Julián, who was 16 during production, was always disappointed that, due to child labor laws, his shooting day ended earlier than Bichir’s. Their characters’ fraught on-screen relationship was the total antithesis of their off-screen partnership.

“Luis is teenager who lives in Los Angeles with his father who is illegal. Luis is always angry and pissed at his father and has no respect for him, even though deep down he loves him. He always gives his father a hard time. Luis has many friends who are in gangs and if he isn’t careful, Luis will end up in that lifestyle.

He’s smart, he doesn’t want to end up that way, but after a while, he may not have an option. When his father buys a truck, it’s a great thing because it means a better life for them but when it is stolen, Luis and his father go to find it and that becomes the opportunity for them to finally connect,” Julián explains.

Julián adds that there were certain aspects about the character and the film that he related to personally. “I’m from California, I grew up with kids like Luis. I think it’s a very realistic portrayal, not just of the teenagers, but of illegals – and we lived in areas that were very gang oriented, I know what it’s like to be subjected to those conditions, exposed to that environment,” Julián says.

Julián also developed a special bond with producer Jami Gertz. Gertz certainly empathized with his position as “the newbie.” Invariably, in between takes, Julián would seek her advice – or just sit and play scrabble, a pastime that allowed him to be distracted and present at the same time.

“I’ve been in his place before. I was the young, first-time actor on a set, so I completely empathized with him and hope I was a resource for him. My attitude about movies in general and performing, specifically, is that it is a huge team effort and the goal, for me as a producer, is to aid in that effort in any way I can; to help everyone shine and be the best that they can be. If I could be a sounding board for Jose in that way – or even just provide a safe place to hang out, I was happy to do it,” Gertz 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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The filmmakers of the oscar-nominated ‘A Better Life’ began planning the soundtrack before they’d begun pre-production, engaging top music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas (Summit’s The Twilight Saga series, Mad Men, The O.C.), who collaborated with director Chris Weitz on New Moon.

“Chris called me about a script about the immigrant experience in L.A., which he said had moved him beyond words,” Patsavas recalls. “He said, ‘We’re looking for the real deal, realistic tracks that the characters would listen to on the radio and in record stores.’”

Patsavas and her team at Chop Shop Music dug into Mexican musical history, as well as Latin hip hop and rap, current rock and hipster tracks. The resulting soundtrack is a mix of musical styles including everything from ranchera (Alejandro Fernández), East L.A. hip hop (Delinquent Habits), Son Huasteco (Los Camperos de Valles) and reggaeton (Proyecto TQ) to Norteño (Intocable), Mariachi (Antonio Aguilar), Mexican-influenced hip-hop (Awkid) and rap (Guilty Simpson). The popular band, Voz de Mando, a narcocorrido act, not only contributed a track, but also performed it in a scene shot in an East L.A. nightclub.

Adds producer Christian McLaughlin, “We wanted an original song at the end of the film, something that would amplify the resolution of the story and suggest the synthesized musical tastes of both Carlos and Luis.” The first choice was LA indie-rock favorite Ozomatli, who committed as soon as Weitz showed them a cut of the film.

Weitz also wanted a score that hinted at the simplicity of the neo-realist films that served as early inspiration in the film’s design. He turned to a former collaborator and friend, composer and four-time Academy Award-nominee Alexandre Desplat. “Alexandre is marvelous at moving from very intimate themes — like the mandolin piece that opens the movie — to more sweeping, romantic colors, like the powerful, big-orchestral theme that brings the film home.”

“When it was time to work on the score, Alexandre was coming off the rigors of scoring Harry Potter. We had about a month to go from concept to recording with the London Symphony Orchestra,” recalls Weitz. “I knew that our communication would be vastly improved if I moved my family to Paris for a month. So I took that bold step. Alexandre and I sat in his studio practically every day and Alexandre heroically produced what I think is one of his most beautiful scores.”

Weitz goes on to say, “We would sit in Alexandre’s study in Montparnasse and talk through the cues, Alexandre drinking green tea and I espresso in great quantities. Gradually, themes took form and were shipped off to the orchestrators. The final cue was hashed out in a late night session two days before we hit Abbey Road.”

The contribution of Piolín 

Another vital, authentic component to the film are the contributions of Mexican radio personality, Eddie “Piolín” Sotelo, whose top-rated morning radio program, “Piolín por la Mañana,” is broadcast throughout Northern, Central & Southern California and is syndicated nationally in over 59 stations across the United States.

The show is wildly popular with Southern California’s Spanish-speaking population, and the filmmakers knew that they had to have Piolín to lend veracity to the early scenes of Carlos in his truck.

What they weren’t expecting, after showing an early cut of film to Piolín, was his devastated, private reaction. He also shared his own personal life experience with us that he had been through the deportation process early in his career, when a rival station reported his illegal status to American immigration, and offered to record original tracks for A Better Life, which are featured in its opening sequences.

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The first actor cast for the movie ‘A Better Life’, who is now up for an Academy Awards this Oscar season, was famed Mexican actor, Demian Bichir, in the pivotal role of Carlos Galindo.

While US audiences are somewhat familiar with Bichir’s work on the series “Weeds” and his portrayal of Fidel Castro in Che, he is a superstar in Mexico, who comes from a family of performers – his parents and two brothers are also actors. Indeed, the Mexican MTV Movie Awards created a special category for the brothers Bichir – “Mejor Bichir in una Pelicula,” “Best Bichir in a Movie.”

“He’s a huge star in Mexico but relatively less well known in America. In that respect, he brings two great things to the movie: One, the most important, is that he is an exceptional actor. The other is that when he appears on screen, he isn’t totally familiar to American audiences.

This allows you to believe he is a gardener, a simple man who might lose everything, whereas with US movie stars, you just never really believe it. Demian immersed himself fully into the role. I think people will be impressed with his performance,” director Chris Weitz says. Indeed, prior to the start of production, Bichir extensively researched his character by consulting local Los Angeles day laborers. He even bought a white pick-up truck from one of them and that became his preferred mode of transportation throughout the film.

“There are many different ways to approach a character and it’s different on every film. When I have the time, I always try to do a lot of research. So I interviewed a lot of paisanos [fellow Mexicans], working in gardens everywhere in Los Angeles. It was really great and informative to get to know those guys.

I wanted to build a character that was not a stereotype because even though it is specific to Los Angeles, it is a universal story – it is about pursuing and fulfilling your dreams and taking care of your family – my character’s son, in this case. He is a decent, hard-working man trying to build a better future, primarily for his son.

He doesn’t have many dreams for himself – if he can give his son a good education and keep him away from gangs and drugs, if he can achieve that, that’s a life worth living. It’s about heart and that’s something everyone can relate to,” Bichir says. Carlos’ dreams are literally linked to the truck he buys, which instantly transforms him into an independent contractor and allows him, he hopes, to take charge of his destiny. Everything changes, of course, when a supposed new friend and co-worker steals the truck.

“The truck means everything to Carlos. It is the boat that will take him to a happy port. It signifies hope and the possibility of a better future.  It is his passport to better times, but in this case, in truth, also to rough ones,” Bichir notes.

These circumstances are untenable on every level – without the truck, Galindo has no means of finding enough substantial work to make a living and to repay his sister Anita, who has loaned him the money to buy it. He can’t report it stolen because he is an illegal immigrant, albeit one who has lived and worked in the United States for so many years he’s almost forgotten about his status.

Father and son unite to find the stolen vehicle and slowly forge a bond that has been broken for many years, each finding out more about the other. “The situation is completely risky for Carlos and he finds himself at the limits of desperation. But it is also an extraordinary opportunity – it provides the pretext for Carlos and his son Luis to join forces and to face things together for the first time.

They have an important adventure together and Luis sees that his father is a brave man, a whole person who is prepared to do anything to regain what is rightfully his, all for his son – and in the process, he demands and earns Luis’ respect,” Bichir says.

While clearly Bichir delved into the “head” of his character, part of his acting style is less intellectual and more visceral. Athletics are a big part of Bichir’s life – tennis and soccer, in particular – and he considers it a part of an actor’s job to stay nimble, both physically and emotionally.

To that end, he learned to climb to the top of a palm tree, using only the gardener’s belt and boots, shimmying up the trunk in a powerful, gravity-taunting dance.  Weitz also clambered up the tree, on an early location scout with Bichir, in a nice bit of “method directing,” but it was Bichir who had to do it multiple times, balancing up in his perch for a few hours, when it came time to film the scene.

In fact, it was the intrepid, tree-climbing director coupled with the story of Carlos Galindo that attracted Bichir to the project. “I met Chris about a year before filming, and just by listening to the way he talked about it and by sharing the same feelings he had about the subjects and the story, I immediately felt connected to him.

When I finally got the script, I was impressed by its realism, the way it approached the people we mostly don’t know anything about. Your cooks, your gardeners, your maids, your valet parking people – what I liked about it was its human approach to their lives,” Bichir says.

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When screenwriter Eric Eason completed the draft for the drama ‘A Better Life’, the team behind the oscar-nominated movie were set on finding the best choice for a director.

Recalls producer Christian McLaughlin, “I immediately thought of my friend, Chris Weitz. Long before he directed New Moon, we made a pact to make a quality studio movie together, to do something with our friends that we really loved. In addition to being a really great story, Eric’s screenplay had all these elements that I felt would appeal to Chris. There’s the father-son theme that he loves, he recently became a father, and his Mexican heritage was this part of himself that he’d never really explored.”

“I was seduced by its sheer quality,” Weitz says. “It was the best thing that I had ever read. It’s a great story of a father and son and the lengths to which a father will go to try to make a better life for his son, for his family. It’s about hard work and decency and how an honest man can face tremendous difficulties in life.

And yet it’s redemptive because this man and his son, who are essentially stranded from one another emotionally, learn to appreciate each other. It is at once simple but full of all kinds of unexpected complexity. I instantly knew that I wanted to make the movie.”

It also had personal resonance for Weitz. “The majority of my family is Hispanic. My wife is half Cuban and half Mexican. My grandmother, who is Mexican, was a very famous actress in Mexico and a silent film star here. My mother speaks fluent Spanish. Most of my family speaks Spanish, but I didn’t learn the language until just before I started shooting the film, so this was an opportunity to get in touch with my roots, really,” Weitz comments.

Although it was clear A Better Life would not be big budget tentpole movie, Weitz was not interested in making a film that was “super indie.” “We wanted the lushness that film means, to be able to get the sizes of crowds we wanted, to shoot in the appropriate locations, and to work with top notch talent, both in front of and behind the camera,” Weitz says.

Fortunately, several factors coalesced to make Weitz’s vision possible – notably, a little movie about teenage angst, vampires and werewolves and two producers who were passionate about the project.

“Fate and Summit intervened – the studio was willing, after I did a good job for them on New Moon, to take a risk on this. Then, Stacey Lubliner and Jami Gertz also fell in love with the script and put up the remaining funding that we needed to make the movie we had envisioned,” Weitz says.

Stacey Lubliner has known Weitz for years – her husband David is his longtime agent. Lubliner, a onetime agent herself, had recently formed a formed a production company, Lime Orchard Productions, with actress Jami Gertz. Because of Lubliner’s experience as an agent, she had close relationships with the production executives at Summit. Coupled with her longstanding relationship with Weitz, she became a natural liaison between the studio and the production.

“A Better Life is absolutely the kind of project we are interested in, as a company and, of course, I knew about it because of David. Chris had given us the script to read before it was clear that Summit was going to be involved and we loved it. We also loved his passion for it – after New Moon, the reality is that he could have done any movie he wanted and this was the one he chose.  The script’s characters and themes really spoke to us and we felt like we could also bring something to it,” Lubliner says.

Lime Orchard provided the last chunk of financing the movie required but beyond that, Lubliner and Gertz brought personal strengths that aided the movie in more nuanced ways. Because of their backgrounds, they describe themselves as “macro” and “micro;” Lubliner is most comfortable with budget, big story points and marketing, while Gertz hones in on performance and character development.

“I think 25 years as an actor is helpful,” Gertz allows. “I have a feeling about things – what sounds right, what looks right. To know (innately) when we have it – that’s something … I thought that could be useful.

My attitude about movies in general and performing, specifically, is that it is a huge team effort and the goal, for me as a producer, is to facilitate that spirit of collaboration and camaraderie in any way I can; to help everyone shine and to do the best work that they can in a safe and supportive atmosphere,” Gertz says.

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