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Sunday, June 15, 2003

Movie With a Message Turns Filmmaker Into Activist

By Leanne Potts
Of the Journal
    In the shadows of "The Hulk," "The Matrix Reloaded" and the rest of the big-budget, escapist pap clogging the multiplexes at the moment is a small film with a big message.

On the screen     "The Gatekeeper" opens this Friday at the High Ridge 8 and Madstone Theater in Albuquerque, and at De Vargas Mall Cinema 6 in Santa Fe.

    "The Gatekeeper" tells a wrenching story of life, death and dreams at the U.S.-Mexican border.
    The film was shot in 18 days on a microscopic- by- Hollywood- standards budget of $197,000; there are no big stars and no McDonald's promotional tie-ins.
    See it, and you will never look at those Border Patrol SUVs that travel up and down Interstate 25 the same way again.
    The film tells of a Border Patrol agent who has spent most of his adult life trying to forget his mother is Mexican.
    So intent is he on being Anglo that when he's not sending immigrants back to Tijuana or hanging with his blond fiancee, he is moonlighting with a right-wing paramilitary group convinced the hordes of dirty-faced Mexicans swarming across the border are going to bring down our great white nation.
    In a fit of xenophobia, our unlikable protagonist decides to pose as an immigrant so he can expose how porous our borders are. The undercover operation goes awry, the agent is forced to work at a meth lab staffed by poor and desperate Mexicans, and after experiencing the horrors endured by his fellow immigrants he has the startling realization that the Mexicans are human beings with hopes and dreams just like his own.
    Imagine.
    "This was a story that had to come out," said the film's director and star, John Carlos Frey, by phone from his California home. "No one else was telling it, so I decided to tell it."
    The story of "The Gatekeeper's" journey to the big screen is almost as riveting as the film itself.
    About six years ago, Frey, an actor who had spent more than a decade in Los Angeles doing beer commercials and bit parts on TV shows, realized he wanted more from his career. He decided he wanted to write and direct his own movie.
    He was at sea for a topic, though.
    "Someone told me to make a movie about what I knew about," Frey said.
    Frey, the son of a Mexican mother and Swiss father who had grown up in San Diego less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, knew about immigration.
    "One of my earliest memories as a kid is the Border Patrol spotlight shining through my bedroom window," said Frey, 39. "Immigrants turned up in our yard almost every week."
    He began researching his topic. On the Internet, he found a DEA report about the bodies of seven Mexicans being dug up in the Arizona desert. "Autopsies showed they had all died from breathing meth lab fumes," Frey said. "When one person died, they just buried him and replaced him with another."
    Frey had found his inspiration. He wrote "The Gatekeeper," taking the title from Operation Gatekeeper, the controversial campaign begun around a decade ago to stop migrants from crossing at the California-Mexican border. (Critics say the policy has caused more immigrant deaths by driving them to more dangerous routes into the country.)
    Frey spent the next five years shopping his script to Hollywood types.
    Nobody wanted it.
    "I was told it was a small story, that no one would pay money to see it," Frey said.
    Undeterred, Frey decided to make "The Gatekeeper" himself. To pay for the film's production, he mortgaged his house.
    He was on a mission.
    "Being Mexican-American and being a filmmaker, I felt like it was my duty to tell this story," Frey said.
    Frey made his movie. He ended up starring in the film, too, playing the bigoted Border Patrol agent who ends up walking a mile in los zapatos of the very people he had so vehemently hated.
    Frey said that like the fictional agent, he, too, has been conflicted about his heritage.
    "I denounced my Hispanic heritage for years," he said. "I didn't want people to know I was part Mexican because of the way (Mexicans) were treated."
    Frey's movie has become his reason for being. He spent last year taking "The Gatekeeper" to festivals around the country, where it racked up a slew of awards. Now he is taking the film to theaters, one city at a time.
    Last month "The Gatekeeper" opened in Phoenix and San Diego. The film opens this Friday at the High Ridge 8 and Madstone Theater in Albuquerque, and the De Vargas Mall Cinema 6 in Santa Fe.
    Frey plans to take the film initially to 20 cities nationwide. "This is my job. I don't get tired of it," he said.
    Like a politician on a whistle-stop tour, he travels to each city the week before the film opens and goes on the stump. "I never intended to be a champion of the migrant," Frey said. "I just wanted to make a movie. But I've become an activist by default. Once you know the facts and get close to the stories of immigrants, you can't look away."
    Those who see "The Gatekeeper" may find themselves feeling the same way.