|
|
Excerpted from LatinoLink:
'Red Light August' Director Gets the Green Light
By RICARDO
VAZQUEZ
© 2000 LatinoLink
January 12, 2000
Since a very early age, Jeff Gomez has been creating elaborate, imaginary worlds.
As a creative child growing up in the projects of Manhattan's Lower East Side, becoming lost in alternative universes, afforded the budding filmmaker and interactive game creator a way to take refuge from the rough streets of his childhood.
"One of the ways I kind of protected myself was becoming lost in movies that I saw on TV or in the movie theater on Delancey St.," said Gomez, who never moved far from his interest in storytelling.
What he was resolute to leave behind, however, was the mean streets around the projects. "I wasn't interested in staying in that world," said Gomez, "that world was full of people who took my lunch money."
The son of a Jewish mother and a Puerto Rican father, Gomez was born into what he calls a "kind of West Side story schism." Add to this a slight facial paralysis and one can only see why all these circumstances made Gomez "kind of an alien in my own culture in the projects."
"The way I socialized with kids was to tell them stories," said Gomez. At 36, he is still telling stories. In fact, the talent that helped him cope with his childhood neighborhood has helped him earn a name for himself in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, interactive entertainment, and now, filmmaking.
Gomez's writing and directorial debut "Red Light August" has been chosen to air January 14 on the Independent View, a highly-rated indie forum on San Francisco's PBS affiliate, KQED.
The film explores the friendship between Boothe (Richard H. Blake), a young painter who deals with his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by engaging in an elaborately bizarre sexual ritual, and Eric (Adrian Johanssen), a homeless teen trying to kick a drug habit. OCD is a condition characterized by intrusive thoughts and unusual repetitive acts.
Set in New York's Spanish Harlem, the movie is a bit autobiographical. Gomez himself is one of five million Americans who suffer from OCD, and felt that previous depictions of the disease in films had been candy-coated.
"Like in 'As Good as It Gets,'" said Gomez, "where Jack Nicholson's character locks the door a lot of times, and opens up a new bar of soap every five minutes to wash his hands. I think that kind of whitewashes OCD."
Still, "Red Light August" got into a bit of controversy when it was shown last May to the psychiatric community at a conference of the Obsessive-Compulsive & Spectrum Disorders Association. Some specialists felt the erotic and highly-charged atmosphere of the film may distort what it is like to suffer from OCD.