Interview: Peter Bratt (La MISSION)

Sundance veteran Peter Bratt (Follow Me Home) returns with a powerful second feature. Propelled by commanding performances from Jeremy Ray Valdez as Jesse and Erika Alexander as Lena—and featuring an exceptional turn by Benjamin Bratt—La MISSION is a haunting story of healing and transformation: the healing of a broken man, of a father’s relationship with his son, and of a neighborhood struggling to break the chains of violence. – Sundance Film Festival

Peter Bratt

Eric Lavallee: I guess the first question before anything else would be: what took you so long? Artistically speaking, what kind of projects were you involved in the past decade?
Peter Bratt: I assume you’re talking about the making of Follow Me Home, which was (dare I say it) 12 years ago. Half that time was spent hand carrying “Follow” to the four corners of the country, doing grassroots distribution. The other half, I spent writing scripts, remodeling houses, and working with a Native American non-profit called Wicapi Koyaka Tiospaye (Wears the Star Circle of Families). The goal of the organization is to nurture, cultivate and reinforce Native American spiritual values and traditions in indigenous communities. Through the work, I got to work with some amazing Native communities here in the United States and in South America.

I also got hitched during this time period, and we recently welcomed our little sonny boy, Lucas, into our lives.

EL: I imagine since Follow Me Home that some things have changed – not the process but perhaps the technology. What “tool” are you most thankful for this time around?
PB: The most obvious one is the internet. Last week we were experimenting with a postcard and one sheet for the upcoming Sundance festival. Benjamin and Alpita (my producing partners) are in L.A., and the graphic designer and I are here in San Francisco. With the internet, collaborating from our four separate locations, we knocked it out in a matter of days. The same task ten or twelve years ago would have taken fives times as long, and would have broken the bank in Fed-Ex charges alone.

I‘m looking forward to seeing how the internet will change the old distribution models for both big and low budget films. In fact, I heard Wayne Wang recently released a small indie film on YOUTUBE, and had over a million hits during the film’s first week of release. If that’s true, I think we’re going to see a distribution revolution. 

EL: Can you discuss the genesis of La MISSION – how did the initial idea come about or how did this become a story you wanted to tell?
PB: Our film takes place in an urban Latino community, and centers on, “Che”, a violent patriarch who finds out that his only son is homosexual.

Before I can sit down and write, I first need to have a theme, or “big idea” buring inside. Once I have that, everything else — the main character, location, and conflict – starts to magically show up. Before I started La MISSION, the thing on my mind was the presence of violence in our daily lives and our almost unconscious acceptance of it.

I was drawn to the idea of transformation, as well as the pain that often goes with it. La MISSION’s main character, “Che”, was the perfect vehicle for me to explore this. Che is a reformed bad boy of the street, who at middle age, finds beauty building classic lowrider cars. His son, and the friends he’s had since childhood, are at the center of his world. In many ways, he personifies the dominant patriarchal culture that surrounds him, and like that culture, is at the threshold of great change. Once he learns about his son’s sexuality, he is faced with a choice: maintain old habits and attitudes, OR adapt, grow and mature. In order to make this choice, Che is forced to stretch beyond his comfort zone; and it’s only from this place that he discovers what might be at stake if he doesn’t chose wisely.

EL: What aesthetic decisions did you make prior to shooting?
PB: The central character, “Che”, is is an artist when it comes to building and restoring lowrider cars. I’m not a car aficionado by any stretch of the imagination, but when I studied the rich cultural history of the lowrider, I gained a new appreciation for it, and the people who live the lowrider life.

In short, a lowrider is a factory standard automobile that’s been “dropped” and given a very specific cultural flavor (or as they like to say in the neighborhood, “an Aztec makeover”). When you drive a lowrider, you’re never in a hurry. It’s always about the music, being seen, and driving as low and slow as possible. That is, in fact, the lowrider’s credo: to take life “low ‘n slow”.

Once I educated myself about the lowrider car culture and its history, I knew I wanted to somehow take the lowrider aesthetic and apply it to the look, pace, and style of the film. In other words, I wanted the film to be a “lowrider”. To that end, we employed a classic standard approach in the direction and editing, but also included very specific cultural accents and flavors.

(This of course was the idea, and we tried to stay true to it as much as we could. But when you’re low budget, and up against the constraints of time and money, you also improvise and get what you need!)

(All three film stills: credit: Mission Love Production)

EL: Casting for the film: what qualities were you looking for in the role that ended up going to Jeremy (Ray Valdez)?
PB: The first priority was finding someone who you would believe could be Benjamin’s son. Second we wanted an actor who wasn’t afraid to give himself to the role mind, body, and soul.

With a bad ass father like Che and a neighborhood like the Mission, Jes had to have a toughness and strength that would be obvious to the audience. He is also an honors student who belongs to the hip hop generation, making plans to leave his working class Latino neighborhood to attend college. In short, he’s a cultural hybrid who has both the traditional Mexican culture of his father, as well as the culture of the street, yet aspires to something beyond even his own imagination.

Jeremy had it all (the strength, intelligence, curiosity, vulnerability), but what surprised me most was his fierce ability to focus and concentrate. Watching him prepare was like watching an athlete prepare for the championship game. Take no prisoners.

EL: For someone who knows next to nothing about California’s lowrider culture – in your opinion, why has it sustained itself, become such a fabric of the West Coast Mexican-American culture?
PB: Before I started writing the script, I wondered the same thing. Then I discovered that there was a ‘64 cherry red impala lowrider on permanent display at the Smithsonian Museum. Why? Because it’s an original American art form that grew out of the Mexican American experience.

After WWII, when the white middle class was growing by leaps and bounds, many Mexican Americans on the West Coast and in the South West were experiencing blatant forms of oppression and discrimination, often times making pennies to the dollar compared to their white counter parts.

During the late ‘40’s and well into the 50’s, the American car culture in general experienced a boom. New luxury cars were rolling out of the factories and being driven off by the emerging white middle class consumer. However, for many young, first generation Mexican Americans, that wasn’t the case. So they got creative: They went to the junk yards of America and resurrected the country’s throw away cars. They fixed them up, dropped them low, and the lowrider was born. (In fact, the history of Chicano struggle is often depicted on the hoods, trunks and doors of lowrider cars and is a point of pride.)

I would also say, that the family is at the center of Latino life, and contemporary lowrider culture is very family friendly. In a lot of the lowrider clubs I came across, I met entire families that belonged to a particular car club. On a regular basis, people get together for bbq’s, birthday cruises, etc.

(An interesting fact: the biggest lowrider club in the world is in Japan. The second, I believe, in Europe!)

EL: If you could name just one – what stands out as your most favorite experience you had during filming?
PB: We were filming the big lowrider party under the Bay Bridge, at pier 23. We were expecting about 30 lowriders, but nearly a hundred showed up. Brian, our AD, is white and gay. He had a bull horn that night, and was trying to contain the crowd of mostly Latino lowrider OG’s (“original gangsters”). The OG’s meanwhile were drinking 40’s, smoking blunts and blasting their oldies tunes from their car radios. Brian also had to deal with all the homies who were swarming the actors, asking for pictures, and making it impossible for them to “act”.

Brian came up to me in a panic, and said, “Peter, there’s no way this gay white boy is going to tell these big bad brown dudes that they can’t play their music and smoke their weed. It’s just not going to happen!”

I pulled Hiro, our DP, aside and suggested we go into commando mode and steal everything — shoot it without people knowing. I gave general direction to the actors, then watched as the “party scene” turned into a real party. It felt like we were making a documentary, grabbing shots as they unfolded naturally.

The night was spontaneous, out of control, celebratory and ultimately, peaceful, and it gave everyone a sense of creative exhilaration.

EL: Anatomy of a scene: What was the most difficult sequence to film during production?
PB: Ben had been growing out his hair 7 weeks prior to the beginning of production. That meant we had to shoot backwards, starting with some of the biggest scenes during the first days of production. It had been a few years since I’d been on a set – twelve to be exact! – And so I was a bit nervous to start with a complicated scene. The scene also called for rain, as well as 40 Aztec dancers and a number of extras.

I had story boarded everything out, with the expectation that I’d have at least a full day to cover the scene properly. Because of a company move and a broken water tower, we were left with only a half a day to cover it all. On top of everything else, a city official showed up unannounced and threatened to shut the set down, because we didn’t have the proper permits. The stress was incredible, and I felt as though the entire crew was watching to see how I would handle the situation. When we got to the last and most difficult part of the scene, everyone was holding their breath. The actors could get wet only once, so the most complicated set up had to go right the first time.

It did.

I said a prayer. The day was over.

EL: What was the most challenging aspect of the production?
PB: The most challenging thing is wanting to cover a scene in a certain way, but not having the time/money to do it that way. We averaged six to seven pages a day, and one day even covered nine. But that was the trade off for shooting in San Francisco, in the Mission. We had only so much money, which meant not having the additional 7 days we initially wanted.

The upside is that the circumstances and obstacles force you to become more creative and inventive — or as Spike likes to say, “by any means necessary, sho’ nuf!”.

EL: I imagine that you’ve seen most of your brother’s work – I was wondering which performance in his filmography did you admire the most but went mostly unnoticed?
PB: He has a scene in Pinero, where he’s up on a New York rooftop, reciting a poem, while the camera moves around him. It’s one of those pure cinematic moments, where the direction, the acting, the editing and the writing are all working together perfectly. When I first saw that scene in a theater, without thinking, I jumped out of my seat, and started howling. At the moment, the poem and the poet Miquel Pinero had taken over the room and I was transported.

Peter Bratt‘s La MISSION received its world premiere at the 2009 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. It is receiving its theatrical release on Friday, April 9th.