Michael Fishman recently sat down with filmmaker Antonio Mendez Esparza and producer Diana Wade to discuss the making of Antonio’s award-wining short film Una Y Otra Vez (Time and Again), winner for Best Narrative Short at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival.
Excerpts from that conversation follow.
Brief synopsis of the film: Pedro, an immigrant in Paterson, New Jersey, and top worker at a wire-basket factory, believes he will be promoted to manager and gathers his courage to ask a waitress on a date.
Michael Fishman for Ourspacemovieblog (M): I’m always fascinated by titles, where a title comes from and what its intention is. Can you say something about your title Time and Again, and the way the film is split into three distinct parts, “Without Her,” “With Her,” and “Without Her”?
Antonio Mendez Esparza (A): Yes, well Time and Again refers to a succession of events that somehow repeat themselves. The film finishes on kind of an optimistic note so the idea is, there is always hope. As for the titles within the film, I liked the idea of how you can define a section of the film with titles. I had never used them before in that way, but it felt like a very solid way to organize the film, in these three parts.
M: Is part of the optimistic idea that something may end, but something new may begin?
A: Yes.
M: And in fact the film ends with the character of Pedro (Pedro Santos) becoming the musician he wanted to be, even though he has apparently lost the girl, Teresa (Erica Heras). Prior to that final scene, Pedro had run into Teresa outside a store, and it’s kind of an open ending in that you’re not really sure what’s going to happen with them, if they are going to get back together or not. I wanted to ask about that scene where he sees her outside the store. It’s a short scene, they have a very short conversation. Was that scene longer, and did you edit it?
A: Actually yes, it was a little bit longer. In the original scene, she exits the shot. But I thought it was more powerful to leave it to the audience to decide what she might say, and so instead we go to a long shot as she is getting ready to leave. I found in the editing that I would rather leave it a question as to what happens.
Diana Wade (D): I think that’s a really good moment. I think it would be hard to have her say anything that wouldn’t seem trite or cliché. I take it as she doesn’t really respond because sometimes you can’t really say anything, (in those situations) there is nothing to say. I think it really adds to the film not to have anything said at that moment.
M: Right, and for me as a viewer, I wasn’t really sure if they might get together again or not.
A: That is often the first question people ask after seeing the film.
M: And so I would ask you (laughs), do you see them getting together?
A: No. (laughs) I don’t.
M: Which doesn’t surprise me because for her, it does seem to be over. Particularly in an earlier scene after their break-up where Pedro goes to see Teresa at the restaurant where she works, and he’s thrown out; she does cry but it seems to be more that she’s just upset and not that she misses him. And in fact there’s an even earlier scene, when they are still together, in bed at night, and he asks her, “Do you still love me?” and she doesn’t answer.
D: That’s right, she doesn’t answer.
M: Antonio, you wrote the script as well, and I’m curious, which came first, story or character?
A: Character was first. Actually, the character of Pedro originally was a boxer So the film had a much more darker side. He was a lightweight and not a very good boxer but had some success in Mexico. Now, working in a factory, he wanted to go back to boxing, so instead of the music it was the boxing. But when we cast Pedro, we decided that he would be a musician.
M: Speaking of Pedro, both Pedro and Erica are not actors, is that right?
A: Yes.
M: To your great credit as director, you won two awards at the Columbia University Film Festival (where he earned an MFA in Film): the David Jones Memorial Award (for directing actors) and the Student Choice Award for Best Directing of Actors. And in the citation for your award from the Los Angeles Film Festival for Best Narrative Short Film, they point to your cast “which brought a refreshing realism.” So, regarding Pedro, how did you find him? Was the fact that he was in real life a musician part of the decision to cast him?
A: No, we cast for a very long time. At first, we were going to boxing clubs, because the character was going to be a boxer. I posted ads in Latin newspapers. I was really looking everywhere, trains, buses, following my friends suggestions. But then I saw Pedro working at Fairway (as a stock clerk) and I told him I was going to make a film and I would like to test him for it. And he said no, actually (laughs). And I thought, this was good! But I convinced him to come to the casting and he was great. It was my first time working with nonprofessional actors and I knew I had to devise a new strategy. I saw immediately that I couldn’t make him be a boxer, and that I shouldn’t. I was very happy to find out he was a musician, and decided to work with that.
D: Another interesting thing is that in the film Pedro takes swimming lessons. That was always there, and when we met Pedro, he told us he couldn’t swim. We knew we couldn’t film him swimming if he didn’t know how to swim. So, he actually learned how to swim for the role. He learned in four weeks.
A: Yes, we got him a private instructor, Scott, a very nice guy, he’s actually the instructor in the film but you don’t really see him, he’s not in the shot during the swimming scenes. The people in charge of the Teachers College Aquatic Center were very helpful.
D: Luckily Pedro was a natural swimmer!
A: Yes.
(Both laugh.)
M: And Erica, who plays Teresa, she also is not an actress. Was that a case of, did you have somebody in mind before her?
A: Funny enough, I felt she was just right for the character from the very beginning. We saw some other people (who were actors) but she was our first choice, and luckily she said yes. So, for a long time we had our main female lead but not the male lead.
M: Was your direction of them as non-actors different from when you directed actors in the past?
A: Well, it was a very intuitive process, even though I heard about many different people doing different things in this situation. The characters, I think, molded to Pedro and Erica.. The film characters are a mix: they start from what is written, but then evolve from what the actors brought to the roles. I tried to stay away from imposing a defined character and many times I relied on their instincts. I could surprise them, but very few times, actually. The key for me was for them to trust each other. Once they were engaged with what was happening, their reactions and choices were very good. That was maybe the challenge, sometimes, to get them to engage. I was very fortunate, I think. The casting made everything feel just right.
M: There’s a very interesting moment where, it’s their second meeting and Pedro invites Teresa to go swimming, which is fairly intimate, you know, for potentially their first date, and Erica does a great job with that moment. She shows what I think people would really show in that moment; she’s flattered, but also taken aback and a bit uncertain and wary. Was that a one-take?
A: No, we had to do that a few times. We were really aiming for moments, to capture, like, fractions of things, so it didn’t just happen. That, we had to work at.
M: How long was the shoot?
A: Eight days.
D: Eight days. There was a lot of jumping back and forth between locations, because we shot in order of the story.
A: Not in order totally but we wouldn’t shoot all the scenes that took place in each location if we didn’t have to. We shot in the factory first, when he is teaching his friend, then the apartment scenes when he and Teresa were together, and then the scenes when they were no longer together. That was a little demanding for the production but I thought it would help to give them a reference of where they were (story-wise).
M: Did you think that was important because they weren’t professional actors?
A: I just think it’s very helpful if you can do it, if you can work this way. Most of the time, because of the production needs, you don’t even consider doing it. But if you can do it, to me, it’s more organic, shooting it this way. I wish I could shoot like this all the time.
M: Stylistically, you alternate to some degree between fairly still shots and hand-held camera. What was your intention in using these contrasting styles?
A: When I was planning the film, I thought the film would be more still, but as I soon as I started shooting, I understood the film needed more movement, that the film needed both. I think the hand-held shots function to get us closer to the characters, to make the film more dynamic in a way . So the final film is a mix of what I had planned originally and what occurred to me during the shooting, what were my instincts basically.
M: You have a very interesting scene where Teresa is learning English, in a class along with other non-native English speakers, and the class sings Happy Birthday to one of the students. I’m just curious, was that a scene you wrote as it appears in the film…?
A: No, that was an actual class, everyone else in the class are non-actors and were there for the class. We just filmed the class basically, and in the class it was someone’s birthday and they sang to him, so we filmed it and later I thought it would be nice to include it.
M: It adds a nice touch of realism.
A: Yes.
M: What is your next project?
A: Trying to make a feature. Similar to the short, kind of a continuation of the short. I’m hoping to go to Mexico and shoot it there. Hopefully I can go to Mexico soon and start writing. And trying to see where this short can go, as well.
D: We’d really like to see it get on television, because when we’ve shown this film, so many people have come up to us and said how this resonates with them, and some of them are immigrants or know people who are immigrants; it speaks to people, it really touches people, and I think that’s something very nice that’s come out of this. So we’d really like to see it reach as wide an audience as possible, to somehow have this film made accessible to people whose experiences are similar to the experiences of the characters in the film.
M: Right.
D: Now that we won the award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, that may make it a little easier to get distribution, but it is still a difficult process.
A: Yes.
M: Congratulations again on winning for Best Narrative Short at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
A: Thank you. That was a great experience.
M: And thank you both for your time today.
For more information, please contact Antonio at: antoniomendezesparza@gmail.com.
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