Former film student, now TV segment editor, writer and director, Alejandro Cruz is constantly forgetting—even the pieces of himself. “Some things you want to forget, or I want to forget. So I purposely do,” he admits. One such memory is that of his 2002 short film Franky Greene Goes to Town, an absurdist play on genre films with well-drawn characters and scant plot. “Franky Greene is dead inside of me; I didn’t know it existed. I haven’t read it or seen it since film school,” he continues.

With a reminder of the short film brandished his way, Cruz shares his time to talk about the changes in his approach to filmmaking, his new currently untitled feature screenplay and his ideas about what makes film a unique art form.

SM: Where do you feel that your craft in terms of storytelling and filmmaking was  (in film school) versus now a few years removed from that experience? Just in terms of the way you approach filmmaking, how has that changed?

AC: In film school, none of my films really had a story, plot or anything. I always approached films from a character standpoint. I’d always create one character that I liked and then show him in random situations…I’m not really a writer. I thought I was a writer in film school, but I don’t think I am now. I feel like in film school we never got the education on how to tell a story. In writing class it was more about how to write a script. Now, I’m definitely more interested in creating plots and stories—which I was not doing in film school because I thought I was being different, but I think it was because I couldn’t. Also, in film school my films were ridiculous, and now, it’s not that I’m not interested in being ridiculous, because I like being ridiculous, but it’s about trying to be more emotionally impactful to people.

SM: With that in mind, what type of stories are you interested in telling now, and are you still wanting those stories to be primarily character driven?

AC: The kind of stories I’d really like to tell—if I could do anything I wanted in the world—I really love the old Hollywood genres. The story is already there, and I would just like to take characters and put them in those plots with the other standard characters. There’s not one story I’d like to tell. I would just like to do whatever comes along and tell it if I feel like it.

SM: What five genre movies just off the top of your head fit that categorization?

AC: Something like Red River would be a great example, or Rio Bravo—that every character is a character that’s in every movie like that. Almost any movie with John Wayne except his really good ones in which he is sort of different. Or, the 30s gangster films with James Cagney where in the first thirty minutes he’d be on top and then the next hour he’d lose his criminal empire and fall apart. White Heat. I also feel like French New Wave—even though they were trying to be anti-that—you watch any film by Truffaut or Godard, and you can tell immediately that it is because they are all about some guy who wants to be cool. Even the French New Wave was a genre, though they were trying not to be; so any of those films too. 

SM: Talking specifically about Franky Greene, where did that particular character come from and your initial idea of what he wanted?

AC: That character came from a friend of mine in high school. He was a lot like that. Originally, when I thought of it, I wanted it to be a political movie, showing how much of a failure the public school system is and how a kid who is different, or a troublemaker, can’t be rescued. Of course, it didn’t end up being anywhere close to that. Franky Greene—because he lost his mother and because he was also gay and didn’t know it—he just wanted to be accepted by someone else, to love someone and to have someone love him back. But, he couldn’t because he wasn’t aware that he was gay. When he was with a girl, he couldn’t figure out what was going on. But, I think he just wanted to be loved.

SM: When you did your character building for Franky Greene, or when you do your character building now, how much of yourself do you put into these characters? Or, do you try to dissociate yourself from the characters? 

AC: I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that I put myself in a character. I think I just observe other people, say, ‘Oh, that person will make a good character,’ then make that person into a character but also add a bunch of details that I find interesting—although right now, I’m trying to write a feature, and the main character pretty much is me, which I don’t like as much.

SM: Will you tell me about it?

AC: His name is Caesar Beaser—which I think is funny because his first name rhymes with his last name. He’s a Hispanic kid, and he’s from Collinsville, Illinois. It’s very near here, and there are lots of Mexican immigrants. He really wants to be a rodeo champion, but that’s difficult for him. His best friend is a girl named Billie, and she always gets made fun of for having a boy’s name. But, I always liked the name Billie for a girl, like Billie Holliday. She’s a Jehovah’s witness, and she also has a lot to overcome from her strictly religious background. That comes from a friend of mine. But, I don’t know what they’re going to do. I constantly have ideas about what they’re doing, but I don’t have an overall structure for what they’ll be doing throughout. I have little vignettes of what they do on some days.

SM: What type of things do they do?

AC: Oh, geez. They go visit this place called Cahokia Mounds and talk about random things. They go to the racetrack all the time, the horse racetrack. They are both teenagers. Oh, I wanted to make it like—there’s a movie I love Pierrot le fou, a Godard film, and it’s basically just the main character—who is crazy, well not really crazy—randomly walking around France, doing whatever he wants, wrecking cars and getting into all sorts of trouble. I wanted to do something like that. They don’t really do anything; they just talk about stuff—how it’s weird that this place Cahokia Mounds is really amazing. There are these Indian mounds everywhere, and one massive Indian mound the size of a pyramid that took 300 years to build. Among the mounds, there’s this really seedy, crappy town where they’ll be a house on one lot on the street, then a mound, another house, a trailer and then a mound. So, that’s the environment they’re in, and they talk about the links between the modern day and the Indian civilization that’s still there even though the Indians are gone.

SM: How much do you feel that location is important to your writing and your approach to filmmaking?

AC: I feel like it’s everything. You are where you came from. You are your environment. This was big in Franky Greene; this was huge in Franky Greene.  He was always surrounded by— you know how towns today are nothing but strip malls, fast food restaurants and concrete? A lot of Tallahassee was like that, and so almost all of Franky Greene was photographed against that.

SM: This is entirely hypothetical, but if you could shoot in any location and with any storyline, what location would you like to shoot in?

AC: It all depends, but my ideal location would always be—that’s difficult. I don’t think there is an ideal location; it all depends on what you want to tell. If I were to make, if I imagined myself as an accomplished filmmaker, and I looked back at my imaginary films, they would be set in the modern situation. I’ve been to many places around the country, and then all look the same. They all look like McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, lots of concrete. That’s where I came from, and so that’s my ideal location, the location where we all live right now. It’s a shame because I hate it so much.

SM: What is your approach to the script writing process itself? You’ve said that you’re crafting vignettes, and so is the process for you one of editing, just making these pieces then meshing them together, or do you try to take a strict three-act structure approach?

AC: No structure. One day a scene will come to me, and I’ll write it. Then another scene will come to me, and I’ll write it. I don’t even mesh them together usually. I just put them end to end, and that’s it.

SM: So, is it possible you’ve taken this idea of putting your characters in non-sequitur situations and ending up with a piece that has vignettes with non-sequitur scene transitions instead?

AC: I actually like scenes just cut together back-to-back that have nothing to do with each other, and you have no idea how much time has passed. It feels like things are happening, that lots of time is passing, that you’re coming in. So, I don’t think the transitions are necessary.

SM: Ultimately, when you’re creating a film, or writing a film, who are you doing it for?

AC: For myself because I would like to watch it.

SM: So, overall then, what is the purpose of making a film for you if know that your primary audience is yourself?

AC: I feel like when I go to make a movie, I’m going to make it because I have to. I love it when people like my films so maybe that’s why I make them. But, really I just feel like I have something to say, and so I say it.

SM: What is one question about your filmmaking, your background or your approach to storytelling, that you’ve never been asked but always wanted to be asked?

AC: I feel like everyone who makes his or her film fits into the timeline of every film made in the history of film. I feel like my films are the product of the films I’ve seen, and even the films I haven’t seen, because the films I haven’t seen have influenced the films I have seen. I like to think about my films as a brick in this brick sidewalk of movies, and it sort of fits in nicely with other movies. I wish people would ask me, ‘Where did you get this idea from? How does Franky Greene compare to this movie?’

SM: In terms of Franky Greene, how would you answer your own question? How does it fit into the historical timeline of film?

AC: Oh, geez. I don’t want to sound like a jerk. There’s definitely influence from John Ford Westerns, and I see it as a continuation as the 70s gritty realism of Hollywood. I felt like it was a continuation of that although it’s only a tiny, little film.

SM: It’s interesting that you said that every filmmaker has a place in cinema history somewhere and that what they’ve made is informed by what they’ve seen. With that in mind, do you think that it’s possible for a filmmaker to have an innate vision that is not at all connected to their experiential perspectives of other films?

AC: I personally don’t think so unless a person’s never seen a movie, but how can a person make a movie unless they’ve already seen one? I guess it’s possible, but it’s impossible to escape the movies you’ve seen.

SM: Then, how do you craft an original idea if you can always source it back to some foundation?

AC: This is something I think about a lot. I always feel that everything I’ve done is just stolen from someone else, but you can never copy something—unless you’re talking shots—you can never copy something perfectly. Even though you take something, you always add something different, and so the entire thing becomes unique. It’s almost impossible not to add something even if you’re shamelessly stealing, and you try to redo it, you’re still not going to. It’s impossible to copy something perfectly in film I feel like--which is sort of different from other arts.  That’s one of the reasons film is unique. If you think about the greatest filmmakers today—lots of people think Martin Scorsese is a great filmmaker, and everything he’s done is stolen from another film. Even Wes Anderson steals lines from other films, and it will become something different when he does it. Even if you want to be completely original, you just can’t escape what you’ve seen: the television, the commercials, everything.

SM: So, how is it that we progress artistically? Is it just a series of minor changes in juxtaposition, and then all the sudden we see a new movement say?

AC: Exactly. We can do nothing but progress. We can’t go backwards. We can’t stay stagnant; even if we try to stay stagnant, we’re going to change it a little bit. With all the film movements that there have been, the New Wave or Italian Neo-Realism in the 50s, those were movements that were inspired by the movies those filmmakers had seen. The New Wave was inspired by Westerns, detective films and Alfred Hitchcock. Neo-Realism had the horror of World War II in Italy, the post-war Italy and how poor it was there. We can do nothing but progress. Progression in film is not something we actively have to do; it does it by itself.

SM: But, that process isn’t necessarily a rapid one.

AC: No, it’s not necessarily a rapid one, but it can be rapid at times, and it can be slow at times. In the 60s and 70s, it was very rapid. I feel like today it’s not rapid.

SM: Do you see imminently, with the influx of digital technology, that we’ll see a movement so to speak?

AC: I hope so. It just means more people can make movies; it means you don’t have to have a lot of money to do it. There’s a lot more flexibility in film now. Technically, people can do anything they want on their PC at home. If it hasn’t already, it will speed up the momentum, the change in film. With video that makes film accessible to everyone, it’s just going to go everywhere at once, and I think that’s awesome. 

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