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JOSE JULIAN and DEMIAN BICHIR star in A BETTER LIFE. Photo: Merrick Morton. © 2011 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

A Better Life (2011)

Opened: 06/24/2011 Limited

Trailer: Click for trailer

Websites: Home, Facebook

Genre: Drama

Rated: PG-13 for some violence, language and brief drug use.

Synopsis

From Chris Weitz, director of About a Boy and producer of A Single Man and In Good Company, comes A Better Life -- a poignant, multi-generational story about a father's love and everything a parent will sacrifice to build a better life for his child.

Carlos Galindo dreamed of good things for his wife and future son when they crossed the border into the US. But when his wife left him, wanting more than he could give, Carlos' only goal became to make sure his son Luis was given the opportunities he never had. After years of hard work and trying to set an example for his child, he still finds himself drifting apart from Luis, now a teenager, who is susceptible to peer pressures that could lead him down a dangerous path. Seeing a way to control their own destiny, Carlos borrows what little money he can and invests it all into his own gardening business, hoping to finally achieve the better life he always envisioned for his son.

However, after an unexpected turn of events, when everything he's worked for is suddenly taken away, it is Luis, despite years of growing apart, who teams up with Carlos to take it back. Together, father and son embark on a physical and spiritual journey where they discover something more important -- that family is the most important part of the American dream.

Directed by Chris Weitz, A Better Life is produced by Paul Junger Witt, Christian McLaughlin, Chris Weitz, Jami Gertz and Stacey Lubliner.

About the Production

In 2008, the United States Census listed the percentage of "persons of Hispanic or Latino origins" in Los Angeles as 47.7%. That figure doesn't include the many undocumented people, usually seen congregating at corners near construction sites, doing odd jobs each day, including tending to gardens all over the Southland, just to make ends meet. As contemporary as A Better Life seems, however, producer Paul Junger Witt has spent 25 years bringing this story to the screen.

"We have this invisible population in Los Angeles, that because we're so geographically separated in Los Angeles that we really don't know who we live with in the way that people in cities that have a smaller geographic area or have a public transportation system come to know one another. I started thinking about it as a film," Witt says.

Witt began working with Roger L. Simon to draft a script based around this concept.

"It was a pleasure to work for several years on what became A Better Life. Rarely do you get a chance in Hollywood to devote your talents to such a socially and emotionally meaningful project," Simon conveys.

As luck would have it, about 25 years later, Witt shared office space with producer Christian McLaughlin.

"I gave him one of the drafts to read and Christian responded as I had," Witt explains.

The office neighbors became friends and McLaughlin was eager to work with the famed producer of films such as Three Kings and Dead Poets Society.

"I really like Paul as a person and as a filmmaker. He has an incredible track record and is a total gentleman," said McLaughlin. "I felt Roger Simon's script provided a rich starting point for a movie. Not only did the immigrant backdrop of the story have a strong pull, the father-son relationship resonated for me on a personal level that transcended culture."

Eventually, McLaughlin would bring screenwriter Eric Eason into the process. He and Witt made the risky bet of paying him themselves, in order to retain creative control of the story.

"When I started developing the film, I thought of Eric, whom I previously hired for another project. He also wrote and directed Manito, and in that film, he authentically depicted the way New York teenagers talk and behave. I thought he would understand and embrace the story, which he did," remembers McLaughlin. "Eric has a gift for writing characters in an artful, compelling way that make you feel like you're watching real people you'd pass on the street. I knew he was the writer who would make this story come alive."

Manito, set in the vibrant Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Washington Heights, follows two brothers who grapple with the community's crack cocaine legacy, and in many ways, is a cousin to A Better Life which, at its core, is also a family drama.

"This project was a chance to work on something with a true heart and soul, with themes that had the potential to resonate across cultures," Eason says.

Witt concurs, adding that although the movie would dovetail with current controversial immigration issues, at its heart, A Better Life is a human film.

"The film has no political agenda. It puts a face on a population that until now, especially in Los Angeles, has been invisible. Los Angeles is unique in some respects but the story could happen anywhere. And the times have changed since we started. Sometimes stories take a while to reach their most simple and elegant form. The fact that the timing now works so well for the film, the story we're telling, is purely accidental," he says.

Says Eason, "Audiences don't want to be preached to. They want to be entertained and have an emotional experience. If there's any agenda in my screenplay-- it's a desire to bring to life characters living in the margins of society, whose stories virtually never appear in studio films."

Adds McLaughlin, "In the film, when we first meet the Galindos, it's clear Carlos desperately needs to reconnect with his son. Luis is an impressionable kid, a teenager at a critical juncture in his life where the choices he makes will have irrevocable consequences into adulthood.

"Eric's script raised the stakes for both father and son. He captured that sense of urgency, and in the process created a story so riveting, you could see -- even on the page -- that it would be a fantastic movie," says McLaughlin.

When Eason completed a draft, the next step was to find a director.

Recalls McLaughlin, "I immediately thought of my friend, Chris Weitz. Long before he directed New Moon, we made a pact to make a quality studio movie together, to do something with our friends that we really loved. In addition to being a really great story, Eric's screenplay had all these elements that I felt would appeal to Chris. There's the father-son theme that he loves, he recently became a father, and his Mexican heritage was this part of himself that he'd never really explored."

"I was seduced by its sheer quality," Weitz says. "It was the best thing that I had ever read. It's a great story of a father and son and the lengths to which a father will go to try to make a better life for his son, for his family. It's about hard work and decency and how an honest man can face tremendous difficulties in life. And yet it's redemptive because this man and his son, who are essentially stranded from one another emotionally, learn to appreciate each other. It is at once simple but full of all kinds of unexpected complexity. I instantly knew that I wanted to make the movie."

It also had personal resonance for Weitz.

"The majority of my family is Hispanic. My wife is half Cuban and half Mexican. My grandmother, who is Mexican, was a very famous actress in Mexico and a silent film star here. My mother speaks fluent Spanish. Most of my family speaks Spanish, but I didn't learn the language until just before I started shooting the film, so this was an opportunity to get in touch with my roots, really," Weitz comments.

Although it was clear A Better Life would not be big budget tentpole movie, Weitz was not interested in making a film that was "super indie."

"We wanted the lushness that film means, to be able to get the sizes of crowds we wanted, to shoot in the appropriate locations, and to work with top notch talent, both in front of and behind the camera," Weitz says.

Fortunately, several factors coalesced to make Weitz's vision possible - notably, a little movie about teenage angst, vampires and werewolves and two producers who were passionate about the project.

"Fate and Summit intervened - the studio was willing, after I did a good job for them on New Moon, to take a risk on this. Then, Stacey Lubliner and Jami Gertz also fell in love with the script and put up the remaining funding that we needed to make the movie we had envisioned," Weitz says.

Stacey Lubliner has known Weitz for years - her husband David is his longtime agent. Lubliner, a onetime agent herself, had recently formed a formed a production company, Lime Orchard Productions, with actress Jami Gertz. Because of Lubliner's experience as an agent, she had close relationships with the production executives at Summit. Coupled with her longstanding relationship with Weitz, she became a natural liaison between the studio and the production.

"A Better Life is absolutely the kind of project we are interested in, as a company and, of course, I knew about it because of David. Chris had given us the script to read before it was clear that Summit was going to be involved and we loved it. We also loved his passion for it - after New Moon, the reality is that he could have done any movie he wanted and this was the one he chose. The script's characters and themes really spoke to us and we felt like we could also bring something to it," Lubliner says.

Lime Orchard provided the last chunk of financing the movie required but beyond that, Lubliner and Gertz brought personal strengths that aided the movie in more nuanced ways. Because of their backgrounds, they describe themselves as "macro" and "micro;" Lubliner is most comfortable with budget, big story points and marketing, while Gertz hones in on performance and character development.

"I think 25 years as an actor is helpful," Gertz allows. "I have a feeling about things - what sounds right, what looks right. To know (innately) when we have it - that's something ... I thought that could be useful. My attitude about movies in general and performing, specifically, is that it is a huge team effort and the goal, for me as a producer, is to facilitate that spirit of collaboration and camaraderie in any way I can; to help everyone shine and to do the best work that they can in a safe and supportive atmosphere," Gertz says.