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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Chris Weitz, an Academy Award® Nominee for About A Boy (2002) and possibly even better known as the director of Twilight’s New Moon (2009), is bringing another powerful drama to the screen in A Better Life. In his new movie, Weitz paints a narrative of the resilience through the story of a father, who is an illegal citizen, working as a gardener in L.A. to provide a better life for his son. The father, played by Demián Bichir, has access to an important business opportunity through obtaining a pickup truck which would allow him to build a successful operation and have control of his own destiny. This potential is soon crushed when his pickup truck is stolen, throwing not only his life but his son’s into jeopardy.

A strong contender for next year’s Oscars as well as the Spirit Award, this film supplies a sturdy storytelling of a very real fact of life for many illegal immigrants living and working around the world today. The film stays true to many Latino elements, featuring little English and a cast comprised of almost entirely Latino actors. Bichir, who played Fidel Castro in Che (2008), delivers an honest and hardworking performance of a parent up against all odds who continues to fight after each set back in hopes of a good future for his teen son Luis.

Struggling against the presence of gangs and the community offered within them, Bichir’s son, played by newcomer Jose Julian, struggles against what he wants and what his father is trying to provide for him. The hardships which both must endure intertwines them, resulting in a profound connection between not only father and son, but opportunity and the success a person can create.

A Better Life manages its portrayal of the hardships by a single parent Latino very carefully.  The context which provides a vehicle for the script is the tightly woven bonds between Latino families and how hardships can tear at that very fabric. At a KCET screening series Weitz identified the movie as having a “deceptively good script” which “dissolved into performances of the actors”.  A strong element of the seamless performances given which are completely embodied by the actors is the fact that they were cast without an invested interest in celebrity names. Aside from Demián, who is well known throughout Mexico, the rest of the cast is relatively unknown. This is a key element to the dialogue which the film creates, allowing for an experience unmarred by the political and social baggage which established actors would inevitably contribute.

Despite coming highly acclaimed, A Better Life has struggled to find publicity among many viewers. To be part of a story heard through every culture and race, find this movie in a theater nearby and take meaning from the determination of humanity.

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