Untitled Document

Adrian Rudomin (Director of Photography)

"Although some people might view this as a romantic comedy, there is a dramatic subtext to it all. There is a drama in having someone falling in love with someone who is not available at the time. So, for the style of the film, we wanted a softness, a magic that film can have, to give it a look that is not flat, that has a little glow in it, a uniqueness.

A film has to discover itself. This was not a 50 million dollar film where you could do crane shots; we had to create a style that's simple and repeatable, that you can do and still be on time and on budget and yet be of high quality. We were always aiming to not just have light, but to create a nice sensation with every shot. When you shoot, the location speaks to you and you create a pattern that is a combination of planning and taking chances.

Vincent Miller is very talented. He always knew what he wanted with the camera and with the actors. It was unique to see him work with the actors, giving them space to grow, yet knowing exactly when to come in and guide them. He's a great Director."

I was born in Mexico City. My family is one of immigrants. I want to make films that the whole world is going to see. Gabriela is a film for the whole world. It's not just for American people.

Steven Swimmer (Co-Producer)

"I met Vincent Miller at USC film school. A lot of us knew then that he had the ability to become a very successful filmmaker. He had the special gifts of an original vision, which made him stand out as a star of the school.

Vincent did not take the short cuts other independent filmmakers have taken. A lot of independent films compromise on the lighting. They have flat lighting because it’s easy to shoot that way, or they compromise the performances. But Vincent minimized the compromises by doing a lot of rehearsals with the actors, and by planning his shots out very carefully before production had started. Vincent went to film school, but he was also a social worker, like the character Mike, and he was a teacher. So when the crew or actors would present a problem, he was ready to deal with it calmly and always had an answer. He took charge but was always willing to change, as long as it fit his vision, but he wasn’t willing to compromise quality. Vincent’s directing style may be similar to Robert Altman, including in that he allows collaboration, and in doing so his own vision is even more realized.

It was very inspiring to see this film get made, especially as an independent film. I was the VP of an independent film company. And there, even though I tried to develop films I believed in, it ended up being about packaging, putting the right actors with the right script in the right genre. It was easy to forget that people can go out and basically on sheer belief, guts and talent, go out and make a film. Seeing Vincent do that is inspiring a lot of filmmakers; I know a whole group of about four or five filmmakers who went to school with him and are going to run out and try to do the same thing in the next six months."

Vincent Jay Miller (Producer/Writer/Director)

"Gabriela is a love story. There's a lot of humor in the movie and some people might label this a romantic comedy. Perhaps that is what I wrote, but as the director I approached this as a more serious film. Things are not wrapped up in a nice and neat fashion. In a typical romantic comedy, everyone's happy at the end when the leading lady dumps her boyfriend for the hero. Real life isn't that simple. With a love triangle, someone's going to lose, someone's going to be hurt, and it was really important for me to show that in the film. It's not formulaic like a big budget Hollywood film would be.

I think my main motivation for writing Gabriela was my desire to explore relationships and the effect love has on people. The thought of falling in love is very exciting, but at the same time is very scary to a lot of people. Because of how painful it can be, I think most people don't allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to really fall in love with somebody. At the same time, everyone is so afraid of being alone that they end up committing to relationships that will not make them happy, but will hopefully sustain them somewhat emotionally. Most people express the desire to be in love, and try desperately to convince themselves that they are in love with their partners, but true love is not a reality for most people. That’s what I wanted to explore with Gabriela.

I also wanted to do a positive story involving Latinos. Usually you don’t see that in films. I wanted a story where the characters just happen to be Latinos. That’s why I made Gabriela a woman who was from Mexico, who was Latina, a professional woman. And her mother is a professional woman. I wanted to show the other aspect that people don’t see enough in Hollywood films. That gave me a lot of drive and motivation to put it together and helped give me the resolve to bust through any obstacles that were placed in my path. I wasn’t writing a standard Hollywood love story.

I didn’t necessarily intend for the lead male character to be Latino, I wrote that non-ethnic specific. I cast Jaime like I cast a lot of other roles. My casting process was ethnic and race blind, except for the roles that I specifically wrote as Latino.

It’s very exciting to get a cast of so much talent, which is something that I was really focused on getting. In my mind, I had a very set idea of the kind of people I wanted for this film. The acting ability of your cast makes such a monumental difference in terms of the quality of the film, in the quality of the script for that matter. You can have a horribly written script, but if you have a great actor, the script might come off okay. If you have a great script and a bad actor, the script might come off poorly. I saw this in the auditions. If an actor wasn’t very good and/or not right for the part, I’d sit there and think: ‘Oh god, did I write a stiff scene, is the dialogue not real?’ And then a good actor would come in and I would breathe a sigh of relief because the material would suddenly seem like it was well written. So it was very important to me to get the right cast.

Jaime Gomez is a tremendous actor with an unbelievable amount of potential and talent. He's charismatic, and very handsome, but he's not just a heartthrob. I love to brag that I've discovered a star.

Seidy Lopez was very good, very real as Gabriela. Seidy made her big splash as one of the stars in Mi Vida Loca as a gang girl and subsequently has been cast over and over again as the gang girl, the tough girl, the trouble-maker, and what not, which is a very stereotypical image of a Latina. Just as Jaime is always cast as the tough guy. I saw in the auditions when Seidy came in that there was a sweetness that's going to come out on screen. It’s really sad that it's never been allowed to come out before.

I wrote the role of Grandma Josie for Lupe Ontiveros. She’s just an amazing actress who’s a veteran of a million Latino projects and a legend with people who've watched a lot of Latino films. She was just there for one day, but we shot five scenes and she came in like a tornado, blowing everybody away

Also very important for the film was the casting of Zach Galligan who is best known for his starring roles in the Gremlin movies. The role of Pat was a very challenging part, a very complicated character. I wasn’t sure if Zach would be willing to play this part because he usually plays leads and the character might have seemed unlikable in the script. So it was very rewarding when I met with him and he said he would love to play this character. It was clear to me that he understood that I wasn’t writing a cardboard character as you usually would have in a Hollywood love story, in a romantic comedy where you have the rival man who is just set up as this jerk and you forget about him half-way through the film.

I tried a lot of things in the rehearsals and the actors were very excited about being so involved in the creative process. I've really enjoyed collaborating with them. I've always thought that was an important step in the process: to allow the actors to try things and give feedback and do some improvisations in the first rehearsals. And then I locked the script down as we went along. When you're doing an independent film, you don't have the luxury to sit and try to think up new scenes while you’re shooting, so you really need to be prepared and organized.

There are advantages and disadvantages to making a film independently on a low budget. Obviously, the big disadvantage is that you are limited in your resources. It’s not easy raising money. Fortunately, there were enough people out there, including my fifth-grade schoolteacher, who believed in me enough to put the money up that I needed to do this film. But there are a lot of positives, including the type of control you have, the kind of freedom you have. Within the restraints you have of your budget, your resources and your ability to hire people, you’re able to go out and do the movie that you want to do. It's your vision that's up on the screen.

A bit of a complication that arose while I was putting this film together was I got into a serious car accident. A guy drove his car right at me on the wrong side of the road and I swerved to avoid him and my truck flipped over. I had bulging disks in my back. This was during the audition process, so I had to go to the auditions and then immediately come home and get back into bed. After trying every type of alternative to surgery that I could, I went ahead and had surgery. Unfortunately, two weeks after my first surgery, I started feeling really intense pain. It turned out I had a spinal infection and had to be rushed into emergency surgery. I was put on an IV for 8 weeks during pre-production, including while we were doing the rehearsals for the film.

I grew up in El Monte, which is a predominantly Latino, working class community. I was doing Hi-8 video movies from the time I was eight years old but I never thought about going into filmmaking. It was just something I did for fun with one of my brothers. And I was always the actor. My brother was the wanna-be Spielberg. I played ten different roles, including the female roles, in one of our movies. I always assumed I'd go to law school. Ironically, I was inspired by a movie, Inherit the Wind, which was about Clarence Darrow, who was a famous criminal defense lawyer. And I always saw myself as this crusading lawyer for the people. I was going to be a cross between Clarence Darrow and Ralph Nader. When I was twelve years old, I went to the library and took out all these law books. I was ready to take the bar exam when I was twelve! That was always what I thought I was going to do. But my brother was the one who went off to law school and lost interest in making movies. I still felt this desire to make movies and I started writing a screenplay without really thinking much about it. After I finished the screenplay, I suddenly lost interest in going to law school. My passion for filmmaking forced me to go to USC Film School.