Director ‘Totally Absorbed’ in Gonzalez Story

After completing work on the PBS documentary “Ballad of an Unsung Hero,” director Isaac Artenstein knew he was not finished with the Pedro Gonzalez story.

“I became obsessed,” Artenstein said recently, as he lounged in his San Diego office, sipping a quick lunch of soup. “His life seemed to be almost mythical, larger than life.”

Gonzalez rode with Pancho Villa before establishing himself as the first Spanish-language radio star in Los Angeles. He became a symbol for the Latino community when he was falsely imprisoned for rape in 1934 after speaking out against the Los Angeles County district attorney.

“I slowly became totally absorbed in the story,” Artenstein said. “He always seemed to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Break of Dawn” is the first feature film for Artenstein and partner Jude Pauline Eberhard’s San Diego-based Cinewest Productions. “Ballad of an Unsung Hero” relates the facts of Gonzalez’s life, including interviews with the San Ysidro resident. “Break of Dawn” attempts to show the personal struggles, victories, defeats and emotions behind the story.

After the Emmy-winning “Ballad,” Artenstein began digging deeper into Gonzalez’s life. He said a breakthrough came when a Los Angeles courthouse worker found the transcripts dealing with Gonzalez’s trial and imprisonment, which were believed to have been destroyed long ago.

Included in the documents was a signed affidavit from the girl Gonzalez supposedly raped, in which she admitted to the judge after Gonzalez was in prison that she had been coerced to testify. Artenstein took the document to Gonzalez, who had never seen it. Gonzalez displayed little emotion, Artenstein said, but he made copies and sent them to his children.

“The amazing thing about Pedro is that he never seems bitter,” Artenstein said. “In a sense we are bringing up this story again, but we are also giving it a finality.”

Although Artenstein can make a strong case for the dramatic possibilities of the film, it’s not exactly the type of story that big Hollywood film companies love. Artenstein said he shopped the film around to every major studio, and every major studio expressed an interest, until Artenstein insisted on keeping it a Latino production.

“ ‘What about casting?’, they all asked,” Artenstein said. “ ‘Can we get Debra Winger?’ This was the pre-’La Bamba’ days. Not having an Anglo lead basically closed doors.”

“La Bamba,” the story of early rocker Richie Valens, was considered by many to be a breakthrough film for Latino film makers, one of the first movies with a Latino cast and Latino themes to attract a large audience in the United States.

“I’m hoping ‘La Bamba’ changed” the prejudices, said Artenstein, a member of the mayor’s Latino Advisory Committee for San Diego, “but I’m still waiting to see it.”

On the other hand, Artenstein is not sure he wants “Break of Dawn” lumped into a “Latino film” category.

“ ‘Break of Dawn’ has more to do with Raymond Chandler than Richie Valens,” he said.

“Break of Dawn” is a completely independent project, funded and distributed by Artenstein and Eberhard’s Cinewest. Eberhard, 34, and Artenstein, 33, met while attending UCLA, and they have been a team ever since. They formed Cinewest in 1979, even though they didn’t have any specific projects in mind and both were working other jobs.

Despite the little film activity in San Diego, they decided to base the company here. Artenstein was born at Mercy Hospital, although his parents lived in Tijuana at the time. He grew up in Chula Vista and graduated from Hilltop High School. His father still owns a Tijuana curio store.

Establishing Cinewest has often been a struggle for Eberhard and Artenstein, but they were able to find a niche distributing documentaries and educational films.

“Being in San Diego gave us a pioneering feeling,” Artenstein said. “In a sense, it made us more independent and resourceful.”

To film “Break of Dawn,” Eberhard, the producer, and Artenstein brought together a group of investors. Eberhard, Artenstein and other participants defered all or part of their salaries to help keep the budget low. A waiver from the Screen Actors Guild allowed many of the actors to work for pay well below the normal rate for SAG actors.

Producing a movie set predominantly in the 1930s created its own problems. Eberhard was able to persuade local theater groups to loan costumes and a local club to loan cars from the era. Still, money ran short. At one point they were going to complete the movie on less-expensive videotape, simply because funds had run out.

But the success of “La Bamba” helped persuade investors that a Latino movie might produce a return. “Break of Dawn” was eventually finished for a respectable $830,000, Artenstein said, $1.2 million if the deferred salaries are included.

Just a few days after it was finished, the film was screened at the United States Film Festival, and it represented the United States in the Moscow International Film Festival. It has also been selected to screen at the Toronto Film Festival and Amiens International Film Festival in France.

Being an independent company has its advantages. Cinewest was able to design its own posters and put together its own promotional “trailer” for “Break of Dawn.” On the other hand, it was up to Eberhard and Artenstein to sell the film to bookers, who arrange for films to screen in theaters.

“I’ve learned a lot about selling a movie,” said Artenstein, who had just returned from putting up posters for the movie.

The response to “Break of Dawn” has given him and Cinewest the type of clout they lacked up to now. Artenstein said he has several projects in the works. He has been talking to CBS Television about directing a made-for-TV movie about Central America. A self-described “history fanatic,” he also is developing two scripts. One deals with a man’s rememberances of the Spanish American War, the other is about the group of Mexican and American revolutionaries who took over Tijuana during the Mexican revolution in 1910.

“Now that I have a feature film, I have some credibility,” Artenstein said.