Interview with TAMARA HERNANDEZ,
Writer/director, MEN CRY BULLETS


MEN CRY BULLETS was honored as Best Narrative Feature at SXSW '98, as well as taking top honors at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Avignon Film Festival, Williamsburg Brooklyn Festival, among others. A dark comedy with shifting gender roles involving a disturbed love triangle among a young innocent female impersonator, the older woman he falls in love with who abuses him and her compulsively jealous cousin, the cast includes Honey Lauren, Steven Nelson & Jeri Ryan. Tamara Hernandez has been compared with John Waters, Russ Meyer and Roman Polanski - not bad company to be in for a first feature.

Q:  How did you get interested in film?

TH:  I'd decided that I wanted to be a writer, which is something that I always wanted to do since I was a kid. I went to UCLA; I wanted to be a screenwriter, but I became an English Literature major instead of going to film school, just because I thought you get a better education, a more classical education than (in) film school, more rigorous. I got out & I started to option scripts. I sold one, but it was very difficult to get them made - you have to have a director attached & the director usually wants rewrites because he wants to have his influence on the story. I just kinda felt like, a lot of times, the things they were asking me to rewrite were based on their ego; they just want to put their imprint on it rather than having legitimate reasons for the benefit of the story - just stupid things like, "have the girl take her clothes off here," which had nothing to do with the story. I was just getting frustrated. I squashed some projects; they wanted to knock me off & put a different writer on, someone who'd be more cooperative.

This producer said, "Why don't you do a short film & see if you want to direct?" I was scared because I'd never even been on a movie set before. But I did it & I was, like, in love with it. The first time I ever felt like myself was when I made that short film & it felt like a foot in a shoe that's the right size. I made 4 short films: LIPSTICK AND LIGHTBULBS was the first one, then I made another short, PANTIES. Then I made 2 short films in one weekend, BABY FAT and THE SLAP; BABY FAT on Saturday and THE SLAP on Sunday.

Q:  Can you take me through some of the conception of the idea that eventually became MEN CRY BULLETS?

TH:  I came up with that idea before I started writing scripts, back in college. I have ideas & I kind of put them in order of priority. I came up with that maybe 7-8 years before I made it. I had so many other stories that I wrote before that one, then I got to it & over time, if you have an idea, it becomes richer if you don't immediately jump on it. I like to give it 2 years of just thinking about the story and the characters over & over. You extract the most out of it.

Q:  It's interesting you mention that you were an English major - while watching the film, there were scenes that had a very overripe Southern Gothic atmosphere, like a Tennessee Williams play pumped on steroids.

TH:  Well, he was one of my favorite writers in college.

Q:  You also mention Edward Albee as an influence.

TH:  Those two were my favorites. In college, when I was really trying to develop my writing style, I wanted to incorporate all the people that I really loved. It's a weird combination, those two writers. You don't really know if it's gonna work or not - some people don't think it does work. I like it ñ I love that really intense drama, especially based on family. It's kind of the way I see life.

Q:  When you made the jump from writing to directing, how did the two compare in terms of control & bringing it to life?

TH:  Like how to translate it; how to keep it the way I wanted it from page to screen? Well, you just have an idea of the character that you came up with in your head & you just work with the actors. I try to, at first, see what the actors do without me telling them anything, because sometimes they'll see things in it or they'll go, "Oh, she's like this & that," and that's people's subjective view of my subconscious state of mind. It's happened a few times where they'll give me some real insight on my own intentions that I'm not even aware of. Then after they do that, then I start to mold it. We just work on it a lot. I really like to have 2-3 weeks of rehearsal because there's a lot of detail; and I like certain gestures & behaviors, like Billy scratching his ear ñ I love tics. It gets pretty close. There's always things that are better & always things that you didn't quite capture, because you just couldn't get everything in one person. Also, like with art department, wardrobe, camera; you just try to get all these people that have the same feelings inside of them, the same issues, the same souls. And that just builds on the dimension of the movie. Getting the right crew is just as important as getting the right cast, in terms of getting the work from the page to the screen. Itís all personalities.

Q:  Has Jeri Ryan's presence helped in selling the film? (She landed STAR TREK:VOYAGER after completing her role in MEN CRY BULLETS.)

TH:  It's helped some, but a lot of distributors don't think of cross-audiences. They think you're only gonna have one kind of audience - 14 year old boys or a gay audience - they never think that it can cross. What can I say? I know that it will cross - a lot of STAR TREK fans will come to see the movie because she's in it & a lot of people would come to see the movie whether she was in it or not, because they like that kind of film. So I think it does broaden the market, but they're (distributors) very nervous types. This was her first feature, although I sometimes use girls who kinda look like that  - it's sort of an 'American Icon' look that I think is funny.

Since this interview in early 1999, MEN CRY BULLETS has been picked up for distribution by Phaedra Cinema for distribution and is now available on video - check the website at www.mencrybullets.com for more about the film and other projects. Tamara Hernandez formed the company Id Films with her producer, Harry Ralston and produced the feature THE LAST MAN, also starring Jeri Ryan. Tamara's next feature project will be a musical based on her short film THE SLAP.