Lina Lecaro and Michele Raphael
Jun 20, 2018
One of the most successful Latin filmmakers of all time, Robert Rodriguez, has been a big influence on many Latin filmmakers, among them, 19-year-old LALIFF filmmaker, Chris Carmona.
Carmona's Bad Labor will be featured at the fest on Thursday. The film, about a day laborer who takes a job with great pay, has a dark twist (OK, the day rate of $10,000 should have been a clue); it turns out to involve kidnapping, murder and a burial — and a terrifying drive to the desert with “the world's strangest” hitman.
“I gotta start off by saying if Robert Rodriguez would've never written the book Rebel Without a Crew, based on the experience of making his first movie, El Mariachi, there absolutely would be no Bad Labor — straight up,” Carmona declares. “I found his book off chance when I was about to leave a Barnes & Noble. It was the subtitle that caught my eye: 'How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player.' I was 19 at the time, so I thought, 'I'm not too far from 23, and I'm dying to make a movie.'