Ad Man Turns Anti-Gang Filmmaker

Rick Munoz, who grew up in Pacoima kickin’ it in the park with friends who would become anti-gang activists and world-class kick-boxers, ignored the pleas of his mother and entered the entertainment business.

Not too long ago, the Northridge man was approached by an industry executive eager to make a film that would reach growing Latino audiences. Do anything, the executive told Munoz, and we’ll pay for it.

“Most film producers wait a lifetime for this opportunity,” said Munoz, 47, who built his career producing general market commercials, corporate videos and music videos. “I guess I am doing it backwards.”

After talking to friends in the industry, Munoz decided not only to write, direct and edit the film himself but to finance it through his production company, Our Productions. His first film, “No Mothers Crying. No Babies Dying,” will be released next month on video, and HBO plans to air it later this summer.

The hybrid anti-gang docudrama mixes real-life interviews with reenactments of gang scuffles in the Valley and around Los Angeles.

The demand for Latino-themed movies is so great, Munoz already plans to make three more films this year.

“Right now, the Hispanic market is a big market,” said William Conley, president of Urban Entertainment, which distributes African American films in the home video market. “Video stores need Hispanic movies. If they have Hispanic product they will pick it up, they will rent it.”

The movie has been screened only once so far, in Orange County, but the reaction inspired Munoz to do more.

“I’m going to do films that are about the Latino community,” the hyper-energetic man with a big, infectious laugh said last week. “We are not aliens. We are not from Mars. We have stories just like anyone else.”

Munoz, who was born in East Los Angeles, never set out to be a Latino filmmaker.

After he was stabbed in the chest in first grade at his Catholic elementary school, his family moved to Pacoima.

His cousins, aunts and uncles followed them to the San Fernando Valley to live among the cypresses and cows in the heavily Latino neighborhood, where his mother still lives.

It was a time when many Mexican American parents pressured their children to assimilate; Munoz did not speak Spanish at home because his parents did not want him to have an accent.

He later learned Spanish on his own.

As a child, Munoz’s love was rock ‘n’ roll. He began guitar lessons at 11, and joined a band, the Satin Sounds, at 12. His interest in music led him to music school in Hollywood, the University of Sound Arts. He also earned an associate’s degree in sound engineering for motion pictures from Valley College.

After a stint with Paramount Studios, he spent four years in television news.

In 1982, with editing experience under his belt and money in the bank, he opened his own post-production company in North Hollywood. Crammed into a room the size of a garage was $8,000 worth of editing equipment and his desk.

Seventeen years later, he has a 22nd-floor penthouse suite in Hollywood floating above a smoggy panorama of Los Angeles.

His strength, he said, was building his career on experience, clientele and products aimed at the mainstream market.

As a successful Latino businessman in an era when corporations, advertisers and entertainment executives are increasingly catering to Latino tastes, he suddenly finds himself in a powerful position he never meant to stake out.

“It wasn’t calculated,” he said. “But it’s like everything I have been experiencing is leading me to this one point in life.”

Until now, the bulk of Munoz’s livelihood was earned through music videos, advertising and producing live events. Over time, his business has grown increasingly Latino-focused.

Mexican companies, such as Benedetti’s Pizza (what Munoz calls “the Domino’s Pizza of Mexico”), and Latino-owned companies, such as La Pizza Loca, have hired him to create commercials with the mainstream look they want in their Spanish- and English-language ads.

Similarly, American companies, including Winchell’s Donuts, have gone to him when marketing their products to Spanish-speakers, seeking what he calls his “Latino sensibility.”

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Munoz estimates about 60% of his business caters to the general market, about 20% to Spanish-language consumers and 20% to English-speaking Latinos.

He said his first breakthrough came in 1996 when he produced Cinco de Mayo at Olvera Street, a three-day music festival that attracts thousands of people each year.

“I thought about my friends, who are businessmen and vice presidents in corporations,” he said. “We don’t watch Spanish TV, we watch English. Who markets to us?”

He advertised the event on English- and Spanish-language television and radio. Attendance that year exploded from 30,000 to 100,000, he said.

His next breakthrough came in January 1998 as he sat at home with his son watching the movie “Tin Cup,” starring Kevin Costner.

He calls it a mediocre movie with a mediocre script. But as they watched, he realized he and his son were laughing hysterically--when actor-comedian Cheech Marin was in the scenes.

“He would be doing things only a Latino would understand. Like this,” Munoz said, leaping from his seat to flick his hand in an exaggerated dismissive gesture.

“This is something we saw our mothers and fathers do,” he said, adding, “If you are Latino, you can relate to what those nuances are.”

For his first film, Munoz wanted to produce something that mattered, to give back to his community. He wanted to focus on gangs.

He started interviewing kids and gang members across Los Angeles. Some of them had done drive-bys only days before he talked to them. They were tough, hard.

When he quizzed them about always having to watch their backs, being on the run from police and competing gangs, it seemed to boost their egos.

“It was like, ‘Bring ‘em on, we’re ready,’ ” he said.

But when he talked to them about their mothers, everything changed.

“I saw I was talking to their souls. I could see it in their eyes,” he said. “It was the only time I had their complete, undivided, sympathetic attention.”

In making the film, Munoz also went back and talked to his San Fernando High School buddy, William “Blinky” Rodriguez, who has a son serving a life term in prison for murder and who lost another son in a 1990 drive-by shooting.

Rodriguez, who kick-boxes and is married to a champion kick-boxer, brokered a historic gang truce in the Valley in 1993 and won the United Nations Medaille d’Excellence for his peace efforts.

The film’s title, “No Mothers Crying, No Babies Dying,” comes from a slogan Rodriguez often used in his anti-gang efforts.

Although the gritty, 90-minute film is a low-budget production--Munoz’s friend David Ortiz put up $200,000 and Munoz kicked in $70,000--some who have seen it say it is powerful.

“Was it ever horrible,” said Enriqueta Ramos, who taught at Cypress College in Orange County for 25 years. “I mean it was brutal reality. I think it should be shown at junior high schools, to fourth- and fifth-graders, so they can see the dangers, so it can deglamorize the gangs.”

Jose Martinez, a.k.a. “The Spider,” a 22-year-old ex-gang member who works with at-risk youth in South-Central Los Angeles, said he thinks the movie will reach gang members, too.

“Basically, it was like me in the movie,” he said of the gang portrayals. “They will rent it. The trick of this movie is that in the middle of it you start getting into it, and they won’t be able to stop watching, because they will want to see what will happen.”