At a cocktail reception hosted by Alan Berliner during the last iteration of the Tribeca Film Festival, the newly formed Tribeca Film Institute/Renew Media partnership announced the recipients of the Media Awards Fellowships for 2008.  Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the awards recognize artistic excellence, not to mention huge potential, for twenty-two film, video and new media artists within the US.  In the first of a series of interviews of these 22 talented folk, I spoke with filmmaker and writer, Hugo Perez, one of the recipients of an Emerging Artist Fellowship for the feature screenplay he’s currently developing as his narrative feature directorial debut, Immaculate Conception. (Image: Perez with narrator, Patricia Clarkson, Neither Memory Nor Magic)

Perez’ work focuses on his Cuban heritage.  His short film Betty La Flaca won the 2006 HBO/NYILFF Short Film Award and can be seen on HBO networks throughout the year.  His previous short, Julieta y Ramon broadcast as part of the ’05 Showtime Latino Filmmaker Showcase and recently was rebroadcast on PBS’ Reel New York.  He’s studied writing with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and collaborated with Pulitzer Prize- winning novelist, William Kennedy.  This past year, Perez debuted two feature documentaries on the festival circuit, Neither Memory Nor Magic (which I saw at Full Frame and loved) and Summer Sun Winter Moon, an ITVS-funded project set to air on PBS.  We sat and chatted one late afternoon in a café in the West Village. (Image: Perez with author Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Here’s our conversation:

Tribeca Film Institute (TFI):  I’m aware of some of your work, mostly your nonfiction pieces, but I have a feeling you’re a lot more prolific than I’m even aware.

Hugo Perez (HP):  Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I would say that the last five years have been pretty good.  I’m finishing up my first two long-form documentaries as a director.  I’ve got two short films, Betty la Flaca and Julieta y Ramon that are Spanish-language dark comedies.  Julieta y Ramon aired on Showtime and Betty la Flaca was on HBO.  I did a short documentary called The Old Man and Hemingway which did pretty well at festivals and which I think I’m going to expand at some point to a broadcast half-hour; it’s seven minutes right now.  I think it would make a very decent half hour piece, certainly not longer than that.  That’s one thing I can’t stand, and want to avoid in my own work, is making things too long.  I’d rather make something too short and have people want more, than make something too long and have people get bored.

 

 

TFI:  What’s your theory about why people overindulge in the length of their films? I’ve noticed it’s so prevalent and, as you said, usually does a great disservice to the overall viewing experience.

HP:  I think people generally think that feature-length means that you’re a bigger filmmaker, somehow.  If you can make something 90 minutes, that’s the bar that’s been set.  So even if your film should be a 53 minute film, or a 44 minute film, you’re gonna love the 92 minute version, despite what everybody else might say.  I won’t point any fingers or name any names, but I would say that 80 percent of feature documentaries that people put out could lose anywhere from 10 minutes to 40 minutes in length.

TFI:  I agree.

HP:  There’s also a very strong push in many quarters that if a film isn’t going to be feature-length, they want it to be under Academy short-form length which is 40 minutes, or less.  So there are a lot of films that are 37 minutes or something just under the wire.

Anyway, so I guess in the last five years, I’ve created a good amount of work—the two long-form documentaries, two short documentaries, two short films and a lot of little side projects, as well as a couple of other things I’ve produced for other people.

TFI:  When did you become a filmmaker?  How many years have you been able to call yourself a filmmaker?

HP:  I’ve been doing film stuff since I was in college, but I plunged into the rocky financial terrain of freelance-hood in 2000.  In college, I was making short films.  I did a comedic soap opera.  After college, I worked with the New York State Writers Institute and William Kennedy, the novelist.

TFI:  Where did you go to school?

HP: I went to Yale.

TFI:  What did you study there?

HP:  Nineteenth-century English literature.  There was no film production program there at the time, and I liked reading that stuff.  I did most of my film work outside of classes.  Then one of my writing professors at Yale started to work with Kennedy in Albany and they had this great visiting writers series and no one was documenting or filming it.  They asked if I’d like to collaborate with them and try and do something.  They didn’t have any money to pay me but I said, “Sure.”  I started to go out and film some readings, did some interviews, and we decided to pitch it to the local PBS station with the idea of doing half-hour portraits, talking-head portraits of contemporary writers.  They went for it.  They still didn’t have any money but my initial arrangement with them was that I knew they had famous writers coming through every week that they would take out to a fancy dinner.  I told them that I understood they didn’t have any money to pay me, but how about if I get to go along to dinner, as well?  They said sure, so just about every week for about five years, I was having dinner with a famous writer.

TFI:  I’m very jealous!

HP:  A year later, they got some money to pay me, but I still got to do the dinners.  There was dinner before the reading and then a lot of drinking afterwards.  I ended up producing 48 half-hour portraits of contemporary writers with extremely limited resources.

TFI:  Was that material ever broadcast?

HP:  It was broadcast on the Albany PBS station and a couple of other PBS stations like WLAW, which broadcast some of them.  It didn’t have wide exposure and it was really just talking head-type stuff where I’d edit some of the reading followed by some of the interview and went back and forth a bit.  So it was like a monologue, basically.  But, I got to listen to some of the great writers working today.  I got to do interviews with them.  I got to listen to them read their work and I got to talk to them afterwards over drinks and listen to their voice.  I got to think about the relationship between their everyday voice in the world and their “writing” voice. 

TFI:  Is that experience something that spilled over into your work doing the Radnóti film [Neither Memory Nor Magic]?  It’s a very dicey proposition to do a film project on an artist, particularly one on a writer.  There have been some magnificent pieces done but there’s always the danger of it being very dry, derivative, not lending itself really well to a visual medium. (Image: Perez in Bor, Serbia, Neither Memory Nor Magic)

HP:  I would say that my time working with the Writers Institute was a real education for me.

TFI:  In what way?

HP:  Just to get to spend time with these people and, through osmosis, being able to learn so much.  When a writer was coming through, I would try and read their work.  Then, I would film a workshop led by them, then do an interview, film a reading.  I’d hang out with them socially.  I’d watch all the footage and distill all that down into 24 minutes.  I spent a lot of time thinking about the commitment of an artist to their craft.  A lot of these writers, especially a lot of the really successful ones, spent a lot of their lives not successful, really struggling.  William Kennedy, before he won the Pulitzer, was adjunct faculty at SUNY Albany, which is kind of like being in the purgatory of academia. But these writers made a commitment to their work and stuck with it for decades.  The people that I enjoyed meeting the most were the ones most committed to their craft, always working on their craft.  Kennedy is a little over 80-years-old now.  With every book, he keeps on trying to improve his craft.  He’s still working, hardly resting on his laurels.  I really came to appreciate the written word and what goes into putting words down on paper and bringing something to life.  So all that definitely influenced me and, later, influenced the making of the Radnóti documentary.  I also met Carolyn Forché during that time and read Against Forgetting [:Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness]. I made the Radnóti documentary because I did an interview with her and spent a few hours talking about the poetry of witness with her and that afternoon we spent together in Saratoga Springs manifested itself ten years later into the film that I made.  She’s somebody with whom I got back in touch when I started making the film and she’s been a supporter; she’s seen various versions of the film.  I didn’t go to film school so I felt that all that was my post-graduate education.

TFI:  In developing your visual style and in producing both fiction and nonfiction stories, you’re developing your own language in the body of work you’re producing and will continue to produce.  If someone is looking at the body of work you’ve created thus far, what conclusions would be drawn, do you think?  What are you, as an artist, drawn to in terms of storytelling with sound and vision, what the camera shows us, and the cinematic language that’s used? There’s our innate sensibility and then there is the sensibility that’s honed through life experience—what we choose to read, watch, etc.  It sounds like your “education” will stand you in much better stead in the development of your voice than any experience in film school could have.

HP:  You know, it’s kind of hard for me to talk about my work.  My fiction work is very different in some ways than my documentary work.

TFI:  What does fiction allow you to do that you don’t do in documentary?

HP:  I have a lot more control in what I choose to film, to put in front of the camera.  I guess I could do this with nonfiction but I haven’t really had the opportunity to do that yet.  With my fiction work, I feel like I can really paint with my production design and really create a world that’s exactly like the one in my head.  The difference between my fiction and nonfiction work doesn’t really have to do with the distinction between the two.  I think it’s a disingenuous line.  In fact, a lot of my favorite writes like Hunter Thompson, really trod upon that line between fiction and nonfiction.  That’s something I’m very interested in continuing to explore. “Hybrid” is kind of an academic term, but I want to tread more along that line, both by making fiction films that reflect on documentary “reality,” and by making documentaries that are fictitious in nature.  Right now, I have a project in my head for each of those categories. I guess if there’s anything that connects all of my work, it’s the way I see the world, which is in a very heightened way.  I’ve never been a big drug user because I guess I don’t necessarily need to use drugs to see the world in a slightly altered way.

TFI:  What would be an example of that heightened sense—a concrete example of what that might be?

HP:  When I first started doing the research for the film on Radnóti, I was reading the work of an Armenian poet that died in the Armenian genocide in 1915 and I remember I was in Istanbul around the time I was doing this research. I went to what’s now the British Quarter, which was once the Armenian Quarter.  As I was walking through the street, it felt like there was blood up to my knees.  Looking at the buildings, I could almost see where the blood marks were; I could imagine the rivers of blood flowing down the streets in 1915.

The heightened sense, too, is about the absurdity of the world.  So it’s not just the darkness or dark things, but also the really absurd things.  On more than one occasion at cocktail wine-and-cheese parties or receptions, I notice everyone dressed up in their suits and they’re all attacking the cheese table.  I look around and it’s almost like a bunch of overgrown mice in suits gnawing on hunks of cheese, you know?  When I go to these receptions, that’s what I see.

TFI:  You can always amuse yourself wherever you happen to be.  I have a habit of doing that, too—you almost can’t help it sometimes, because, to me, most of life is absolutely absurd.

HP:  I guess it’s a way of amusing myself, yes.

TFI:  Do you love your fellow human beings?  Filmmakers, to my mind, are akin to people who study human beings for a living, like psychologists or anthropologists, much more closely than most people do.  Your work has a very observational feel to it, whether it’s absurd comedy or emotions stemming from the most profound tragedy, as you try to capture that heightened state you speak of.  I think you did a really great job of that in the Radnóti film.

HP:  In the Q&A in Durham [at the Full Frame festival], I talked about the poem “Peace, Dread,” which is a very quiet poem but, I think one of the most important and emblematic poems of his for me, because what he describes is his experience of walking out of his door and everybody’s going about their normal business.  He talks about the baker walking by, the clock chiming ten and everybody going about their peaceful lives.  He looks up in the sky and sees these scores of dark phantoms filling the sky.  He wonders if he’s the only one who sees this.  That particular poem really struck me because I feel that way all the time—am I the only one who sees this?  And it can be good or bad or silly or absurd or whatever.  I’m often in situations where I see the absurd in everyday life.  I often feel like I’m the only one seeing it. Six months before the invasion of Iraq, everybody’s just going about their normal business and all kinds of people are saying, “Oh, nothing’s going to happen.”  And I’m like, “Can’t you see the way this is going to go down?”

TFI:  Did people accuse you of paranoia?

HP:  One friend who writes for New York Magazine did.  He told me not to worry.  That was one specific conversation that I had where I could say I felt a bit like Radnóti felt when he wrote that poem.

TFI:  What, specifically, will the receipt of the Tribeca Film Institute fellowship enable you to do, in both practical and spiritual ways over the course of this coming year?  Will it change anything for you in terms of the work you’re setting out to do in the next twelve months?

HP:  Well, I can tell you before I even got the award, the whole process had a big effect on me.  It’s a secret nomination.  I got an email in November telling me I’d been nominated to submit for the fellowship and I Googled it and thought, “Holy shit, this is really great—even just to be nominated.”  And then I wasn’t sure which project to submit.  I have several documentary ideas and several fiction ideas and you submit one project for the fellowship.  I called up Lucila [Moctezuma, Media Arts Fellowships Director] and spoke with her for a bit.  After our conversation, I determined that it would be this one.  Immaculate Conception is an idea I’ve had in my head for years.  For the last several years, I’ve kept telling people that I was half-way done with the script; it’s going to be ready in a couple of months.  That was all lies.  Truth be told, I hadn’t really written anything.

TFI:  Why?  What was it about this project that was blocked for you?

HP:  Honestly, just bad time management, finding the motivation.  If you’re working more than full-time already on a lot of other stuff, you don’t necessarily have the energy to face that blank screen.  When I got this nomination, I decided I was going to submit Immaculate Conception—which I hadn’t written yet.  I had a good idea of it in my head.  The nomination forced me to write a proposal and an artist’s statement and to really think about it.  I sent it off with an hour to spare, midnight cutoff at the post office.

TFI:  Did you have a good feeling about it when you sent it off?

HP:  I did.  I have a statue of the Virgin at my desk and I put my FedEx slip at her feet, putting my fate in the hands of the Virgin.

TFI:  Excellent.

HP:  Also, around this time I had a bout of food poisoning and I had a really terrible night on the floor of my bathroom curled up in a little ball thinking that I was going to die.  And then I’d have these moments of lucidity for a little while until the next wave hit.  Throughout the night, you’re just hoping you throw up but you’re not really doing that and then at 7:00 a.m. you finally do and go to sleep.  So, during these moments of lucidity in between these moments when I thought I was going to die, I just realized that if I was ever going to get my first feature made then I was going to have to write the script.  Nobody was going to do it for me.  Along with the Rockefeller grant and this bout of food poisoning, it made me really think about what was important.  Once I submitted to the Rockefeller—the deadline was early December—on December 10, I started writing the screenplay.  I promised myself I would finish it by the end of the year.  I went home for Christmas, writing the whole while.  I didn’t make it by New Year’s, but on January 3rd, I finished the first draft.  I also knew that I needed to knock out that first draft before January 7th when I started to get back to work on various projects.  So I did. Subsequently, I’ve revised it. Even before I got the award, that nomination had lit a fire under me and made me realize that I just had to push through, write it and make the film.

TFI:  As an independent artist, how important is that validation from an entity like this?

HP:  The validation is huge.  I spent most of the last nine months locked up in an edit room, occasionally going out to festivals and things.  You spend a lot of time working on something and even though time is moving, it feels like you’re standing still.  Sometimes it seems as if nothing is happening.  Even though a lot is happening, it might be three months before you finish something and you start to forget about the outside world.  To get nominated and then to get the award is a validation that I made the right decision starting on the path of being an artist.  The cash certainly helps pay the rent.

TFI:  That’s precisely what it’s for—to enable you to live so you can devote significant amounts of time to the work.

HP:  Yeah, to have some breathing room is really important.  The distinction also opens some doors.  People that have known you and your work a little bit look at you in a slightly different way and might be a little more open to hearing about your latest project or reading a script. I also think that now that the fellowships are connected to the Tribeca Film Institute, it’s a win-win.  It helps filmmakers out even more.  I crashed a lot of parties at this last festival and met a lot of interesting people and met a few people who are now reading my script because I won this award.  Having that extra checkmark after my name has already started to be helpful.

TFI:  And, conversely, is there now a bit more pressure piled on?
 
HP:  No.  Listen, the life of the freelance artist doesn’t really entail too much spotlight, but it’s more the baying of the financial wolves at my heels, the bill collectors.  The spotlight is nice, but I’m not at a point yet where I can forget about continuing to run until such point when I can lose these wolves that are on my path.

TFI:  So let’s say that you get to the point where you lose the wolves and have a more comfortable existence, at least materially speaking.  We’ve spoken about artists that languish in obscurity and live in a sort of penurious state for most of their lives.  That’s also a line to have to skate a bit. Does that make one more productive, less?  What do you think?

HP:  I have a very restless intellect.  Even if I was financially comfortable, and even if it were to entertain myself, to keep my mind active and engaged, I would need to keep on doing work.  This kind of financial pressure can keep you going, certainly, because you need to produce in order to pay the rent.  Once you get past that, having some leisure time to allow your mind to explore things in a less-pressured way can be even more productive.  I’ll get to take more vacations at some point; I’ll have more leisure time.  I don’t know that I’d be any less productive.  It would be nice not to have to do all the annoying little freelance jobs I need to do right now to pay the rent in order to support the greater craft.

TFI:  Who’s out there right now producing work—fiction, nonfiction, cinematic work in particular—that you’re crazy for?

HP:  There are a lot of great filmmakers out there.  I love the Coen brothers.  From Blood Simple on, they’ve been a huge influence on me.

TFI:  What is it about their work that inspires you so much?

HP:  I think they also see the world in a very heightened way, in an exaggerated way, especially in their comedies.  But even in Miller’s Crossing, that’s such an over-the-top film, such an operatic film.  Visually, their films are great.  Narratively, their films are great.  Their sense of humor is wonderful.

Terry Gilliam has also been a big influence on me.  I love the work of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the filmmakers who made Delicatessen and City of Lost Children.  The films Amélie and A Very Long Engagement have also been influences. Pedro Almodóvar is also an influence.

TFI:  We like all the same filmmakers.

HP:  Well, these guys are great.

TFI:  Particularly in terms of cinematic storytelling in completely fresh ways, with a visual richness that’s unsurpassed. The people we’re talking about are huge risk-takers, creatively.  As successfully as they pull off what they do, they could so easily fail miserably—as some have with certain projects.  It seems like someone like Almodóvar can succeed over and over again.  Why do you think that is?

HP:  It’s because those filmmakers aren’t making films to create an effect.  They’re making films about characters they really believe in.  There’s real integrity in the stories and in the characters.  Almodóvar I especially like because he tells us really absurd, over-the-top ridiculous stories, but he never makes fun of his characters. I think that’s what makes his work so strong.  Whatever happens, you never stop believing in the characters; there’s integrity to the characters; you really feel for them.  You laugh at some of the absurd situations but you never feel like you’re ridiculing the characters.  I think Talk to Her is, so far, his great masterpiece.  If you read a synopsis of that film, it’s a ridiculous storyline, but it’s a deeply affecting film.

TFI:  In casting Immaculate Conception and creating that visual world you yourself have invented, what elements, at least at this stage, are absolutely key?  Is there a certain actor or other element that is a particularly strong factor for you?

HP:  If you watch my short narratives, they are in a very similar vein to what Immaculate Conception is going to be.  In Julieta y Ramon, this female character has a fetish for Ronald Reagan and because of this, has a hard time finding Mister Right because nobody compares with Ronnie.  In Betty la Flaca, we deal with butt enlargement.  They’re little absurdist comedies, but at the same time, I’m holding up a documentary looking glass to the world.  They’re infused with a humorous sensibility that stems from growing up in a Cuban household in Miami in the 70s and 80s.

Immaculate Conception, even more than the shorts, is going to be influenced by this world.  There’s a lot of humor and a lot of laughter against a background of a lot of darkness.  My family fled the Cuban revolution so there’s always the sort of melancholy of exile.  But, at the same time, it’s a very colorful, exuberant culture.  There’s a real dichotomy between this ebullient, life-filled culture and this poignancy, this melancholy.  Again, I think that Almodóvar’s work really touches on that.  When I first saw his films, I thought to myself, you know, this is just like growing up in Miami.  I want to try and do for that world, that Miami in which I grew up, what he did for Madrid, which is to bring it to life with a sense of humor and lots of integrity and an infusion of this Latin pop sensibility.  TV is a big part of this culture.  There were TVs going in my house, literally, 24/7.  If you watch the Latin TV stations and the shows, they’re totally over-the-top, very entertainment-oriented.  So I’m looking at that kind of world of Miami, but also satirizing Latin pop culture, ruminating on the fetishistic way with which religion is dealt.  Everybody has a Virgin statue or his medallion of St. Christopher or St. Barbara.  It doesn’t seem to me that there’s a lot of discussion about the underlying belief system.  It’s more like we hold on to these physical relics and worship these icons rather than think about the underlying message.  I would say that Immaculate Conception is very much influenced by, and imbued with, a sense of the Cuban-American culture in which I grew up in Miami.

TFI:  Any actors, in particular, you had in mind while writing this?

HP:  The only person, so far, is an actress named Ana Asensio.  She played the lead in both of my fiction shorts.  I would like her to be the lead in my film.  She’s got this quality of a comedic Catherine Deneuve.  It’s only a matter of time before she becomes an international star and I’d like for that to happen with my film.  She was in New York for a while but now she’s back in Spain.  She was on a TV series and is currently doing another. (Image: Perez and Ana Asensio on the red carpet)

TFI:  Will you do the film in Spanish?

HP:  Yes, I’d like to do it Spanish-language.  That’s the way I’m tackling it right now.

TFI:  In terms of getting it made, if someone said to you that they wanted to executive produce this but you need to do it in English, what would your stance be on that?

HP:  I’m really trying to make it in Spanish.  That’s very important to me.  I don’t know if it would feel right to me to do it in English.  Of course, if somebody waved a big enough check in front of my eyes, I might reconsider.  Spanish-language, these days, doesn’t necessarily mean box office death.  I’m heartened by the success of a lot of the Spanish-language films in the last couple of years.  I’m not looking to make Titanic.  However, I think this film could do well in art cinemas, and able to cross over to Latino audiences, as well.

TFI:  What have the festivals done for you?  What do you get out of going to all of these festivals?

HP:  A sense of community—the best thing is hanging out with a bunch of other filmmakers and not even necessarily talking about the craft so much as just drinking together, telling stories together.  It’s like group therapy.  Also, I’ve developed relationships with some of the festivals and some of the festival directors.  I feel like they are supporters, cheerleaders, advisors; they can really help and kind of push you a little bit.

TFI:  Are you going to clear the decks for Immaculate Conception now and put your several different projects aside to devote the majority of your time to it?

HP:  Until the funding for the film happens, I can’t dedicate myself one hundred percent to any one thing.  That being said, this summer I’m making a big push on the project, getting it out, trying to line up a couple of producers and doing my initial round of financing.  This is a good time to make a big push on it.

TFI:  Do you feel the support you have now is going to carry through your whole career?  A lot of artists, a lot of filmmakers, never encounter that kind of support.  It’s almost as if certain people have a magnetic pull towards success. Someone else might be working just as hard or applying themselves to their craft in the same way and have the creative chops, but somehow never garner that support.  How do you see that phenomenon?  Is it luck?

HP:  I feel very fortunate because I think for every one of me, there are about 10,000 other people that are working just as hard, working in greater obscurity.  I’m not a well-known person, but I have had some success in my field.  I feel very lucky.  I also feel like it’s related to making a commitment to your craft; it’s like being married to your work—‘til death do us part.  I make my work to satisfy myself, first and foremost, not in an egotistical way.  Why are some people successful and others not?  That’s a very hard question to answer.

TFI:  Do you see support for artists changing or improving at all in this country?

HP:  Changing for the worse, maybe.  I’m not that familiar with support for the arts overseas in any specific way, but I sense that there’s a lot more support in other countries than there is here.  I would say that a lot of support of the arts comes from private money, private foundations, individuals.  Getting that kind of support means being known by these people and these foundations.  What separates success from non-success?  I think it’s just being out there hustling.  As a filmmaker, you’re kind of like a Hoover salesman.  You have to knock on a lot of doors before you make a sale.  However many doors get slammed in your face and however many sales pitches you do, most of the time you’re told “no thanks.”  You just have to keep on going, hoping and expecting that you’ll make enough sales to make your monthly quota.  People have notions of this idea of the life of an artist.  But as a craftsperson, you’re really no different than a carpenter.  You have to apply yourself to your craft and make something good.  For me, there are much more ephemeral notions of being an artist that are not really valid.  Being an artist is rooted in being committed to your craft.  As a filmmaker, especially, it’s an industry, it’s commerce and you have to be out there peddling your wares.  And you have to satisfy yourself while figuring out how to convey the sense of excitement that you have about the work to other people.  Maybe at the end of the day, that’s it.  If you’re successful in conveying this excitement that you have to others, maybe that’s the distinction.

Comments

Add a comment

Name:

Email Address (not required):

URL (not required):

Your Comments:

post