Do you think that being gracious towards people that you meet along the way makes it easier for you to make a film or do an artistic project?
Oh, sure. Yeah. I’m definitely not like a tyrant kind of a person. I’m very bubbly. I’ve had this experience since I was a kid. I’ve always just loved playing make-believe, and I’ve loved bringing people in. I’ve been putting on plays since I was a kid. I’ve always just loved that experience. I’ve always recognized early on those people who aren’t even into it, per se. Once they get into it, they usually love it. Because who doesn’t love to play make-believe, right? It’s like that’s what it is.
I wanted to know about Nomi Ruiz. I think she’s fantastic. How did you meet her, and how did you guys come together?
I’ve also produced electronic music, and I was like doing music videos and stuff when I was living in New York. And so we had mutual friends, so I knew about her and in Hercules and Love Affair. She was a part of that group, and her stage presence always took me. And then we have a mutual friend named Marcos Garcia, who goes by the name of Chico Man. He’s a performer. And I saw her at a show, one of his shows, and it just sort of like… I don’t know. It just sort of sat somewhere in my subconscious. And then, when I started to kind of come up with this idea, I was trying to get the script made. Before I even wrote it, I started talking to agents and acting people and producers, and they were like, “What else do you got?” I got this other script about this retired Muay Thai fighter who falls in love with a trans pop star. And everybody really was like, “Oh my God. Yeah. Well, you should make that. I want to see that. I want to read that.”
It sort of started germinating in my mind, and then I said, “Maybe I should write this, and if it doesn’t take too long, I’ll write it.” The story just poured out of me, unlike any story before. It kept just being like, “What the heck? Let’s try.” So I was like, “Hey Marcos. Can you connect me to Nomi? I want to see if she wants to maybe think about doing this.” So he reached out to her, she’s like, “Yeah. Send me the script.” I was like, “I don’t want to send you the script. Can I meet you and tell you about this?” So we met, and I acted out the whole movie for her. I didn’t plan on doing that. We were at a bar downtown. Or we had lunch. I forget what it was. At that point that I thought that maybe she would be attached to it because I’d already written it. I got so in my mind, like, “Oh my God, I really want her to do this movie.” I didn’t want to give it to her and have her get the wrong impressions from the words. If I act it out, she’ll maybe see… So I played all the characters. I was just kind of walking her through the movie. It took about 45 minutes. And then she was like, “That sounds really great. Yeah. I’d love to read the script.”
“…we met, and I acted out the whole movie for her.”
So she read the script, she loved the script. She had some notes. We were collaborating on it from that point on. And we started rehearsing, and so it really was like that. It kept just being like, “What the heck, let’s try it. Sure.” It was sort of a natural progression, if that makes any sense. Every other movie I tried to make has been like pushing really hard, like I’m trying to play chess. And this was very much like… It became chess, but once we started shooting.
I want to know what working in the entertainment industry in LA versus New York. What’s the plus of LA over New york for you?
Good question. Excellent question. Well, I’m from New York, and I lived there for many years, so leaving New York was like… I always was like, “I’m never leaving New York, honestly.” And I had a great in New York. It’s like a classic New York producer. I interned at Miramax way, way back in the day.
For the president of marketing, when I was in college. I really love… I had this, I still do, and I worked on The Sopranos, Angels in America. I worked at Silvercup (studios). So I had this exposure, like the New York scene, I feel like, and I just… I really don’t know how to articulate it entirely because I get asked this question a lot by people who are trying to make movies. The thing about New York, I love it to death. It’s just something I could never figure out. I could just never figure it out. I don’t think anyone can ever figure anything out. Also, I should say. We come to California, and we moved to LA. When I moved to LA, granted, I was in New York when we started. I was moving to Los Angeles, as we were deciding to do the movie. As the movie got green-lit, I was literally driving across the country. I got to LA, and I was here for like a week, and the next thing I know, I was in Greece.
But since I’ve been here, I will say it’s kind of a relief because everybody, not everybody, but so many people are in and around working in the industry, so it’s just really refreshing to network in that way. It’s refreshing to have just a lot more people that you can… You just bump into people, you become friends with people, and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I edited Margin Call.” And you’re like, “What?” So I love that aspect of it. I don’t think it necessarily makes making movies easier because you still got to push the ball over the goal line at the end of the day. And the flip side with LA is that in LA, everybody’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re doing it. We’re doing it. We’re doing it,” but I don’t have the sense that it ever gets done. It’s a weird thing. It’s like…
