Living the Role : Making Movie About Gangs Hits Close to Home for Barrio Family

Drenched in gasoline, Nancy Alvarez is surrounded by police, firefighters and a hysterical juvenile court judge who is trying to talk the 17-year-old out of suicide. The tough, tattooed chola cradles an infant in her lap and brandishes a gas hose and cigarette lighter.

For Nancy, the scene is only make-believe, a few moments of a film titled “Judgment,” in which she portrays a troubled teen-ager about to end a life of drugs, prostitution and gang membership. In reality, she is soaked with water, not gasoline, and she can return the baby to his real-life mother at the end of a take.

But the role hits home.

Not only for Nancy, a Los Harpys chola , or Latina gang member, but for her mother, Consuelo, 41, and Nancy’s 13-year-old brother, Roberto. Consuelo and Roberto are former gang members who also landed roles in the $6-million Juvie Production, which its producers hope will be released this summer.

“I’m not gonna end up like Angel, killing myself,” Nancy says, recalling her character while sitting on the living room floor of her family’s four-room house near USC.

She stares out the front window at a crowded street filled with her Harpys friends, some sitting on the curb, huddled and laughing. Baseheads (cocaine-addicted prostitutes) stroll by youngsters swinging on a lamp post. Idling cars attract the attention of other gang members, who lean over the rolled-down windows to talk about rumbling, roaming and robbing.

For almost 20 years, Consuelo and her husband, Ricardo Alvarez--a quiet man in his early 50s who was laid off from his electrician’s job four months ago--have lived in this neighborhood, unable to escape poverty, violence and self-destruction.

Theirs is the kind of life that writer-director Bill Sachs wanted to depict in “Judgment.” Indeed, in the Alvarez family, producers found talent and a reality and a rawness that they say gives the film some of its most gripping scenes.

In “Judgment,” the Alvarezes found a way to regain a sense of dignity Consuelo says the barrio has stripped from her family. She still cannot afford to heat her tiny home. Nancy has not been able to give up her gang life. And Peggy, Nancy’s 16-year-old sister, joined Los Harpys last year; like Nancy, her ankles, fingers, wrists and hands are tattooed with Harpys emblems, including three dots shaped like a triangle that stands for la vida loca or “the crazy life”--the Harpys credo.

But Consuelo Alvarez has discovered a new force in her life: hope.

The Alvarezes tried out for the roles almost two years ago after Roberto came home from school one day with the news of a casting call for barrio youth. The next day Nancy attended tryouts with her mother. She immediately became the front-runner for Angel’s role because of her attire, attitude and a blind right eye, the result of a childhood accident involving a coat hanger.

At her third callback Nancy took her brother, Roberto, who caught the attention of casting director Bob Morones for the pivotal role of Pepe, a youngster struggling with the decision to join a gang and who is later wrongly accused of murder.

After 12 other callbacks, Roberto and Nancy beat out more than 300 others for the roles. And joining them in the cast was their mother, who was spotted by Sachs as she waited for her children during casting calls.

During and since the filming, the Alvarez family has developed friendships with cast and crew members who encouraged Consuelo, Nancy and Roberto to pursue acting.

For their parts in the movie, which took about five weeks to film in Los Angeles, the Alvarezes earned a total of $10,000. About $2,000 has been socked away in college trust funds for Roberto and Nancy. Another $2,000 is in Roberto’s savings, which helps make ends meet at home. The rest was spent on a new car; a TV and a videocassette recorder, which were subsequently stolen from the Alvarez home; shoes and clothes for the children, and on bills.

“I felt like a millionaire with all this money,” Consuelo says about the $4,000 she earned for portraying a gang member’s mother who is murdered for revenge. But now Consuelo says she wishes she hadn’t bought the red Chevrolet Cavalier because monthly payments--$253--have been difficult to meet.

“We have a long way to go before we can get out of the barrio,” Consuelo says, shaking her head. “But we have come a long way in the past two years. We have made wonderful friends,” she says about the special bonds her family has forged with Sachs and Emilia Crow, a 28-year-old actress. Crow plays a juvenile court judge who befriends gang members who appear in her courtroom.

Crow’s home, a sprawling marble-floored Beverly Hills mansion, has become a second home on weekends to the Alvarez children and Nancy’s Harpys’ friends.

Nancy and Roberto have been waited on by a cook and maids. The family has splashed in a pool, jumped on a trampoline and attempted tennis on a back-yard court.

“I adore Emilia,” Consuelo says. “She doesn’t put down my children. She talks to Nancy about doing something good with her life. Roberto respects her. He sees her house and he says he wants to buy one for me.

“I tell him, ‘One day, son, I know you will do it,’ ” Consuelo says. And she has reason to be optimistic.

Soon after “Judgment” completed filming, Roberto, a seventh-grader at Foshay Junior High School, traded his membership with the Harpys for the Screen Actors Guild and hired an agent. He has since appeared in TV’s “Falcon Crest” and is featured in “Angel Town,” a film scheduled to be released in theaters next month.

His work on the film also prompted Roberto to hone his reading skills. When he tried out for “Judgment” he couldn’t read long passages of dialogue, so at callbacks he had memorized his lines. On the movie set and months after the movie was completed, Crow paid a tutor to work with Roberto. And casting director Morones became the youngster’s godfather at Roberto’s Roman Catholic confirmation.

“I took a liking to the kid,” Morones says. “I took a liking to the whole family. We all did.”

Consuelo says the experience of working on the movie and seeing “the fairy tale life that the rich have” showed her she can provide a better life for her kids.

“I grew up tough,” Consuelo says. And she stayed tough. In fact, up until nine years ago, Consuelo, known as La Sweetie on the streets, was a member of Los Harpys. She says she joined the gang in her mid 20s because she had to put food on the table. Her husband had been traveling between Mexico and the United States in search of work. Sometimes there was no money for months.

“But this was no way to live,” Consuelo says about her gang involvement. At age 32 she dropped out of the Harpys. She was allowed to quit the gang because she was considered a veterana or veteran member. “I had the gang’s respect.”

Now she’s looking to get respect from Hollywood producers and agents. She will meet with an agent next month in hopes of representation, and Sachs has promised her a role in his next film. “

Consuelo says her role in “Judgment” came easily.

“All I had to do was think about my own pain and heartache. I thought about my children, my life in the barrio. I could see it flash before my eyes, and it made me cry.”

When she had to pray in another scene, she thought about her son, Ricardo Jr., 21, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. Although the scene was emotional, the reaction from the cast and crew made her proud.

“I felt like a queen when I heard the clapping.”

She adds, “But even though we were in the movie and some good things have happened, I still worry about my children.” Especially Nancy and Peggy. Consuelo would like for them to quit the Harpys.

Neither girl is ready to leave the gang, although Nancy says she has cut back on gang-related activity, such as fighting with rival gang members.

Nancy attends a high school for students on probation. She says she has shoplifted and repeatedly missed school. Recently she moved out of her family’s home and in with her boyfriend, a Harpys member.

But her role in “Judgment” did inspire some changes--if only in her appearance.

“I don’t dress like a chola that much anymore,” she says about retiring her trademark Harpys attire for a skirt and blouse. “Even my makeup has changed,” she says, noting the absence of black lipstick and heavy black eye liner “that used to make my eyes look like cat eyes--wicked and mean.”

Nancy values her relationship with Crow and tells the actress her problems. And she appreciates joking around with Sachs and Morones when they occasionally drop by to see how the family is doing.

“Maybe I will get out of the Harpys when the movie comes out,” she says, while sitting by the pool in Crow’s back yard with her boyfriend and several other Harpys members. (The producers of “Judgment,” which stars Elliott Gould and Karen Black, are negotiating with distributors.)

“I don’t know. I’m confused,” she says. “Here, at Emilia’s, it’s nice. It’s Beverly Hills! I can escape from my ‘hood. But when I’m back in my ‘hood, you have to learn to survive. You have to have eyes in your back.” Her gang friends tell her she’ll know when it’s time to get out.

Unlike her mother and brother, Nancy does not point to Hollywood when asked about her future. She wants to use the money in the college trust fund to become a nurse.

“I get mad when I see my little brothers and sisters sick and they can’t go to a clinic because we don’t have the money,” she says.

But for now, “I’m still a chola ,” she adds. Not even Hollywood can change that.