Actor
and writer Zachary Laoutides recently interviewed with FandangoNOW sharing some
interesting facts with his previous films. The film Adios Vaya Con Dios being
inspired by his community that he credited the title of director to and Arise
From Darkness originally an art house paranormal film with Sundance
possibilities. I for one truly enjoy the ‘making of’ or the stories behind the
stories. I was able to Skype with Laoutides to ask him some additional
questions from his FandangoNOW interview.
How many people tried to slow
down Adios Vaya Con Dios from actually happening, was there really that much
resistance?
ZL:
From Hollywood no, they were totally fine with my concepts. I was also talking to
Sony Music for additional songs – everyone was cool. The issues became on set
with my vision, which I don’t think anyone really understood what I was setting
out to do. The community did, the neighborhood did, other people not so much.
Respectively, what I did, what ‘we’ did was certainly unorthodox – you need to
see it at completion to understand it.
I watched Arise From Darkness and
it is in fact an art house film, why did the name and marketing feel so
different?
ZL:
You’ll need to ask the distributor that one and I get it, they really thought
they could hit a horror demographic, now was that the way to go…? I really feel
paranormal and art house would have presented the product as what it is and was
– special and something different. I was waterboarded with the business side of
things and all of this was presented to me when I took a break in Mexico. I was
overstretched into moving the ball forward when I had enough – and just trusted
that people were trying to do the best thing with the product.
Is it hard to write, act, produce
and be so hands on with the business side of film?
ZL:
Yes. So many things don’t turn out the way you want it to because you’re pulled
in so many directions. That’s why coming back in 2020 I spoke with the founder
Monica Esmeralda Leon and told her we were going to re-structure Ave Fenix
Pictures.
It’s now called Ave Fenix
Pictures Studios… You have branches in Chicago, Los Angeles and Arizona?
ZL:
(laughs) It sounds like it just got really complicated right… This is a delegation
of artist, the right people at the right forefront. I’m super excited, never
have we been so talented and moving into bigger projects.
When you say bigger projects you
mean going from the La Raza style of filmmaking into mainstream film?
ZL:
At the end of the day we still always arrived where mainstream films ended up,
but I put us in a category of experimental. That was great and creatively what
we wanted to do at the time, but now we have the opportunities to really put
our films on the market with mainstream venues. If we have films with messages
important to us we owe it to ourselves to earn the most eyes.
You have deals with Random Media
Motion Pictures, which is a subordinate of The Orchard and Sony Pictures?
ZL:
We are in partnership, good people who care about film working together. It’s
an exciting time where we can develop film not only where we started in
Chicago, but now on the west coast. It was always the long-term vision – Producers
Marius Iliescu in Los Angeles and Emmanuel Isaac and Mirza Esho is Arizona.