Basically, I wanted to create a story that dealt with my culture. When I say “my culture,” I mean MTV, HBO, and tamales. Having grown up on a border town, I realize there is a dynamic between Mexico and America unlike anything I have ever known. But I didn’t recognize it until I spent a significant time away from family and friends and the place I called home: Pharr.

People in Pharr, Texas speak perfect Spanish and/or perfect English. And often they put in a little spice and speak perfect “Spanglish”. Spanglish is a combination of English and Spanish — words that are native only to that border community. Refer to George Lopez for some classic examples. My spell checker is telling me “Spanglish” is not a word - but TRUST ME - it’s a word.

Since leaving Pharr about fourteen years ago, I had this feeling of missing something. New York City filled a void with its culture, events and so many different and interesting people. So, it wasn’t “my culture” I was necessarily missing; in a sense, I was learning from so many others.

It was family - My Family - that I missed. My parents, my brother, my cousins, my friends, my Tio’s and Tia’s, my Grandparents, and the list goes on. When I mention family to others, I mention Mando. We grew up together and have gone through all the adolescent trials and tribulations teenagers go through. I missed the good and the ugly. In our youth, our “culture” consisted of many diverse experiences …Shakespeare, Football, Cheerleaders, Gangs, Lawyers, Salesmen, House Painters, Lawn Mower Fixer-Uppers, Mexico, drinking at fifteen years old, the Police, Rangers, Drugs, Doctors, Drama Class, Tacos, What-a-Burgers, Enchiladas, Soccer Fields, Football fields, Red Lobster, Armando’s Taco Hut, The Cowboys, The Oilers, Sweetheart Dances, Quincineras.

I had just flown into Pharr, Texas, for a wedding, after being away from home for over six years. The phone rang; it was a childhood friend who had become a lawyer. He’d previously worked for the District Attorney’s office in Edinburg (a neighboring town). I asked him, “Hey Marty, you going to the bachelor party?” He said, “No, I gotta go to work tomorrow.” As I was on the phone with him, the other line rang. “Hold on Marty.” I answered it and it was my friend, Ernesto. I asked him, “Hey Ernie, going to the bachelor party?” He replied, “No, Marty is defending me in court tomorrow. I got accused of pulling out a gun on my neighbor and some drugs.”

Ah…the Valley (all the border towns in the area are collectively called “the Valley”).

Today, Pharr is a major gateway for NAFTA-oriented businesses; a community rich with bi-cultural diversity with influences from both sides of the border. So many people want a piece of it. Or at least, they want to cross through it to get to America or Mexico. Mexicans cross to view opportunity and visit family. Investors from all over the country are beginning to see its potential and so they hunker down in the neighboring towns, invest their money, and build private mansions on some glorious flat land.

Oh, yes, and the ‘Winter Texans.’ Winter Texans are people from the North who come to Texas during winter to bask in the warmth. They can even cross the border and visit a foreign country, without straying too far from the US. The border is a five to ten minute drive from Pharr. Winter Texans do the occasional shopping, boosting up the economy, and they always have time for a margarita. People are fascinated when I tell them I am from a border town. “What’s it like?” I try... “I think it’s like a backwards vacation.”

Needless to say, I had no idea where to start this screenplay. But I still wanted it to happen. I needed it to happen. So I called my family member, Mando. Mando, would know how to start. Mando, who stood up for me in high school. Mando, who was studying to be an architect. Mando, who switched majors when he saw me in a Naomi Iizuka play called Polaroid Stories at the Humana Festival at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville.

Irony abounds because when I saw Mando in a play in eighth grade, I quickly changed gears, without him even knowing what a major influence he’d had on me. Fate or destiny. It depends on what you believe. Me? I just know it happened. Our paths always seemed to cross. And we always kept in touch. We had collaborated so many times and each time we did, it just seemed to click. Mando went on to North Carolina School of the Arts to follow his dream while I was pounding the pavement -- as they say -- in New York, auditioning and trying to land a job. After College Mando continued to work as a professional actor in Washington, DC. Three years ago, while he was still in DC, I made ‘the call’.

We spoke on the phone about the project and we knew it had to deal with family and culture because -- basically -- we missed it. We had to write about something we knew, something we loved, and about something that we thought could bridge the gap between us, now, and us, then. OUR culture. Who we were and who we are and what we have become with an element of what we wanted to explore and find out. We researched the depths of Mexican religion, culture, and politics to explore where we would even start. I bought tapes and videos and books. And although this was fascinating, learning about your ancestors, it kept swaying us away from the story. At the height of our information consumption, Mando, quite simply, stated; “It’s a journey…across.”

“A journey? Across? A journey across”, I repeated. “But, not the stereotypical way, right?”

“No.” said Mando.

“Yes!”

We both thought for a moment. Consciously or sub-consciously, it was a way to combine these two worlds together. It was Mexico and America It was a border town. It was the place which only seems real to the people who live there.

It was, as the playwright Cusi Cram says, “the place in between.” Combining our knowledge from working as actors/writers in New York City and DC with our Texan and Mexican roots, 7 Tales of Desperation started to come to life.

Our lead character, Manuel, is forced to leave one world and return to one he had left behind. In a sense, during his border crossing, he is “in between”. In that moment, he is, in our view, what the memory of Pharr is to us.

7 Tales of Desperation is a story about a man forced to confront the past in order to gain forgiveness. Manuel Ricardo Montes, an entry level graphic designer living in Mexico City, discovers that his long lost father is about to be executed in Texas in seven days. He haphazardly sets a plan in motion to cross the US-Mexico border illegally in hopes of reaching his father before the execution date.

There is only one problem. He has no idea how to do it. And the only people that can help him are the working class people he turned his back on a long time ago.

With the help of his childhood best friend, he embarks on a journey that takes him through a brothel, over the border twice, across the desert, in a container on an eighteen-wheeler, and finally, into the Huntsville Prison.

When he finally reaches his father, he unearths the truth of his guilt and learns that the journey was more important than the destination.

Hope you’ll join the ride!