COVER STORY : Lights! Camera! Access! : Film Training Program Gives Troubled Youth a 2nd Chance : Carlos De La Torre

“I never did anything like this before. I get to meet new people. It’s cool.” *

“I was in the eighth grade when I started getting into gangs,” said Carlos De La Torre, 20, known as “Critter” in his Highland Park neighborhood.

He got into the gang for the excitement, he said, and “homie love,” the camaraderie among members of his gang.

But then he met Father Boyle two years ago and, through his Jobs for a Future program, he started working at its Homeboy Tortillas eatery in Downtown Los Angeles, later becoming a manager.

“Father Boyle was always around, and he asked me if I wanted to do something with my life, and I said, yeah,” De La Torre recalled.

Last summer, he attended a Jobs for a Future board meeting, where he met Mary Kay Powell, president of RASTAR productions in Culver City.

“I asked Dorothy to take a chance on Carlos,” Powell said. “Few employers take a chance on guys like Carlos.”

After De La Torre got laid off from Homeboy last summer, he started the production assistant training and was hired by Hollywood Pictures in February.

“I never did anything like this before,” De La Torre said. “I get to meet new people. It’s cool.”

The staff at Hollywood Pictures was wary of De La Torre at first, given his background. But he quickly proved himself.

“He did everything with total enthusiasm, which is rare in this business,” said Karen Shaw, a production coordinator at Hollywood Pictures. “Everything I gave him to do, he finished in seconds and was back for more work.”

Now a production assistant on the Disney feature, “My Posse Don’t Do Homework,” De La Torre still lives in the same neighborhood, but he said his work schedule keeps him out of the mix.

“I’m still in the gang, but I’m not active. I’m on the reserve list,” he said with a laugh.

His children, a 3-year-old girl and a newborn boy, and his job are the focus in his life now.

Friends in the neighborhood are impressed.

“They say, ‘Gimme a job.’ And I say, ‘Let me get big first. Let me become a studio head. Then I’ll get you a job.’ ”