January 21, 2000
Los Angeles -- With a planned world premier during the Berlin Film Festival in February (and an unofficial preview at the Digidance 2000 Festival during Sundance Film Festival on January 27th), what audiences at the independent feature Last Mountain are going to see is actress Lorina Zapata in the lead role of Annunciata del Rio something that might never have happened if the major Hollywood players had had their way.
When my book came out in 94, recalls writer-director Robert Fleet, I had the fun experience of receiving calls in the same morning from a studio and a major production company both expressing interest in the story if I would consider changing the lead character from a Latina in East L.A. to a white girl somewhat less ethnic. Instead, Fleet and partner-wife Alina Szpak of Legend 44 Productions made the story more ethnic. They recruited Broadway/film actor Soon-Tek Oh and changed the male lead from a white homeless character into an Asian which attracted co-producer Steve Kim to finance the project as in independent feature.
But characters were always at the center of Fleets conception for Last Mountain, which uses the Latin American technique of magic realism to tell its social-satire: A homeless drunk (Oh) may or may not have seen a Unicorn in the Hollywood Hills, so he kidnaps a teenage Latina (Zapata) to be his Lady Fair and help him find the magic beast. Her sudden disappearance attracts the interest of an overzealous Border Patrol agent known as The Dreambreaker (Daniel Riordan) as well as the girls cousins (Domingo Vara, Joseph Aguilar, Kurt Caceres), a low rider cliqua desperately trying to stay nonviolent in a system that seems to be targeted against them.
This story is about the American Dream about a system, La Migra, thats lost the Dream and about immigrants and residents of the U.S. who still believe in this country's ideals of equality and hope, even if against ridiculous odds says Fleet.
The novel, Last Mountain, ranges from the fall of Moor-ish Granada to the Conquest of Mexico to a contemporary Los Angeles where riots and earthquakes shook the citys social foundations in the 1990s with side trips to Santiago Matamoros, the Virgin Mother, Huitzilopochtli and pichilingi (who gets the last word).
The movie streamlines the novel to the contemporary, and for the human face of the story filmmakers relied heav-ily upon the large pool of Latino talent in the Southland. They started with veteran actress-producer Jackie Torres, who plays Zapatas strong willed tia, a paralegal who is not afraid to take on the bureaucracy of La Migra when it threatens her family: They lost my documents, they lost your documents! Ah, chiquita, this is the INS Idiots N Stupidity!
Torres, herself is from Puerto Rico, but works frequently in Mexican television. Indeed, the entire spectrum of Hispanic-American performers is represented in the supporting cast, including Cindy Peña a native Californian of Mexican descent, Jennifer Evans (Panama) and Venezuelan soap opera heart-throb Enrique Sapene. Original music is performed on-screen by percussionist Kim Diaz, a transplant from Florida with several offscreen songs by the progressive-rock/traditional group Quetzal.
Mariachi Plaza and its surrounding neighborhood in the Boyle Heights section of East L.A. were centerpiece locations for the city portions of the movie, with neighborhood children, teens and adults making appearances throughout. It ended up like a picnic, some days, says producer Szpak, when we were shooting till midnight and people were bringing us food and hot coffee from their homes. When you have that kind of relationship, you have to respect them in your storytelling.
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