Oxnard Lands a Starring Role

The tale is part love letter, part wake-up call.

Against a backdrop of racism and youth violence, Oxnard filmmaker Trae Briers has crafted an urban love story about his hometown, a Shakespearean-style tragedy designed to showcase the seaside city and the talents of the first-time director.

He started with no money, no studio backing. All he had was a desire to tell a story, from personal experience, about the struggles of interracial relationships and the search among the races for common ground.

Ten years in the making, “In Your Eyes” debuted earlier this year to a sold-out crowd at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Now Briers is trying to gather the cash to re-shoot some scenes and polish the production, with an eye toward national distribution.

“At some point, people of interest are going to see this film,” said the 30-year-old writer, director and producer. “But I’m not worried about that. Now I know this is what I was meant to do.”

This is no simple love story. It is a portrait of the community where Briers was born and raised, a city with more blacks and Latinos than any other in Ventura County, two groups that in Briers’ view share a deep, little-mentioned history of discord. It is also a city awash in street violence, with young people in recent years killing each other in near-record numbers.

From Briers’ original 120-page script, “In Your Eyes” tells the tale of star-crossed lovers on the verge of adulthood. It is a Romeo-and-Juliet-style tragedy in which a Mexican father forbids his daughter to date a black man. The movie explores community attitudes about race and underlying tensions that often erupt in violent outbursts.

Briers wanted to show his reality in raw, unflinching fashion, pushing the message that if minority groups could get beyond their differences, together they could be a powerful force.

But he also wanted to pay homage to Oxnard, rounding up local actors to play key roles and featuring local parks, malls and other shots of the cityscape. He even got the Oxnard Police Department to provide a holding cell for a scene.

“We don’t do it very often, but it sounded like he had an interesting project that would portray the city in a positive light,” Police Chief Art Lopez said. “He struck me as the kind of individual who was willing to go out there and hustle to make things happen.”

Briers has banked on such generosity. Along with partner Jorge Ramirez, he formed a production company, Determined Pictures, and persuaded investors to put up $100,000 to shoot the movie. People offered their stores, nightclubs and houses for shoots free of charge.

Now Briers is trying to build a local following for the film, intent on releasing it first in Ventura County to generate momentum and help draw attention to the area’s budding entertainment industry.

“It’s a hometown movie, and I think we can create enough noise in Ventura County to be able to get a wider response,” Briers said. “Obviously I want to go national, but you’ve got to crawl before you can walk, and I want to crawl in my hometown.”

Rutherford Briers III learned to crawl, walk and run in the city he calls “The Nard.”

The second-oldest of six children, he was student body president at Hueneme High School and attended UC Santa Barbara for three years before withdrawing in 1994 after his father died. He embarked on what he calls a “spiritual journey,” landing a job as a Paramount Studios page and honing his interest in the industry.

By 1996, he was enrolled in a film program at Oxnard College, learning the basics. Then it was back to UC Santa Barbara and its film program, where one of his assignments was to learn to make a movie for under $100,000.

Briers said he took the assignment with the making of his first feature in mind. UC Santa Barbara film professor Anna Everett said she was not surprised he pulled it off.

“One of the things that struck me was the passion he had for telling the story,” said Everett, who served as a mentor for the budding director. “I think he really had a good grasp of what he felt his contributions could be, and it was clear he wasn’t going to be deterred from realizing his dream.”

It hasn’t been easy. It took him two weeks to write the script and two years to clean it up. And he has held nearly 30 jobs in 10 years in order to nurture his movie.

He lined up investors to transfer his vision to the big screen, including Oxnard-based music production company Platinum Entertainment, which sank $4,000 into the project.

“It sounded like something we really wanted to be part of,” said co-owner Steve Cruz. “We’ve always been backers of local talent. Not only is this being done in our backyard, it’s being done with backyard money.”

Plenty of others pitched in. Oxnard residents Tomas Hernandez and Jessica Arciniega lent the use of their backyard in the city’s La Colonia neighborhood to shoot some scenes. Local rappers and musicians donated songs for the soundtrack.

And although the movie features a handful of notable actors, including former “New York Undercover” detective Michael DeLorenzo, it is peppered with rookies trying to break into the business.

Thousand Oaks resident Caleeb Pinkett, the younger brother of actress Jada Pinkett, plays a starring role. And after a dozen years of trying, Oxnard resident Nancy Rodriguez earned her SAG card by playing the mother of the young Latina forbidden from seeing her black boyfriend. She was paid $285 a day, the SAG minimum for a low-budget film. She said she would have done it for free.

“I just loved the story,” said Rodriguez, who also played a part in a two-minute short designed to sell the full-length feature to investors. “I always believed that as long as I was patient, one day somebody would see I can do something. It’s just so weird how it happened in my hometown.”

Briers had figured no one would have seen his film by now. He shot it in November and December, and had hoped to have a final version in the can this spring so he could start shopping for distributors.

Then one of his investors wheedled a special invitation to the Santa Barbara Film Festival early this year, and Briers had three weeks to ready the movie for public viewing. The movie premiered Feb. 1, and a second showing was added to satisfy demand. He has since held two more screenings in Oxnard and Camarillo to gauge audience reaction as the story moves toward final edits.

Now, it’s time to see where Briers’ personal story leads.

With hopes of landing a distribution deal, he has applied for entry to film festivals in Ojai and Malibu, and plans to take a shot at Sundance. He is already thinking ahead to his next movie, a thriller set in rural Mississippi.

And when he dares to dream big, he looks to a day when the county comes into its own as an entertainment mecca, perhaps sporting a home-grown school for the performing arts to help young artists like him launch their careers.

“My main goal and dream is to have enough money to be a part of something like that,” he said. “We are too close to Los Angeles to not have our own entertainment establishment. Dreaming is all I’ve ever done, but I’m a dream chaser.”