It's funny to watch people's faces when I get to that point in explaining the film company when I say "our mission is to produce groundbreaking films that portray the Latino experience in American culture" -- I mean, what does this WASPY girl from New England know about the Latino experience?? I'm not going to lie to you -- not much -- or at least that is what I thought at first. And how did this strawberry-blonde with a BA from a small liberal arts college in Ohio (Go Lords!) end up getting to know three arty Latinos from Pharr, TX in the first place? It goes something like this...

I met Michael Escamilla at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (aka my paying job) when he did Craig Wright's RECENT TRAGIC EVENTS. Michael and I immediately clicked. He's a special guy -- anyone who knows Michael would agree. Then Michael introduced me to Mando who at our first meeting at The Diner in Adams Morgan told a story about beating someone up with a baseball bat in high school. I have to be honest, Mando and I didn't immediately click. In fact, I was just a little shy of terrified of him. But I should have known that the universe was telling me something when I heard Lake Trout (one of my favorite bands) playing at The Diner that same evening. By the time Mando and Michael were back at Woolly playing brothers on stage for OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET a year later -- Mando and I had become close friends and the three of us started to chat about this little project they were working on -- a screenplay.

We did a reading at Woolly with most of the cast from OUR LADY and a small audience of die-hard Mando and Michael fans and my friend Dan. After the reading Dan and I went for cocktails and talked for almost 3 hours about the screenplay -- the good, the bad, the ugly, the amazing -- I figured that anything I could get that revved up about was worth it so I kept listening when Mando or Michael would talk about the screenplay and my role in its success. Personally, I also started to see how my skills at Woolly, all the networking, the planning and obviously the fundraising might be able to transfer to the world of film and producing very nicely.

But I didn’t get really excited until René -- the third guy -- was introduced into the screenplay scenario. For those of you who know René, I thinkyou'll get it when I say -- "with René comes business." With René on board, I knew Mike and Mando were serious and I knew we were on to something.

We started with phone calls and e-mails and René set-up an intranet site for us to pass info back and forth. Next came the creation of our name Those Guys & That Girl Films, LLC -- and then we had the trip to Massachusetts (land of my Pilgrim forefathers and my home state).

In Massachusetts René and I finally got to meet face to face (rumor has it that his first comment to Mando after meeting me was "she's tall"); the boys met my mom (aka Cher), my step-dad Joe and my dad (aka Mike Fenton); we gambled at the casino and on scratch tickets; the boys golfed with Mike who informed us that my Grandmother used to "winter" in Donna, TX (who knew?); we saw Michael in a new play; we got lost on bad directions (thanks Michael!) and we hammered out what Those Guys & That Girl Films was supposed to look like, feel like and operate. We created a chart of roles and responsibilities; and created a business plan and created a vision, core values and a mission statement that reflects what we are trying to accomplish.

It was during that weekend -- while ironically touring the three boys from Pharr, TX around the Berkshires -- that I realized I did really know something about the Latino experience and about portraying Latinos in a non-stereotypical light. Spending time with three diverse men like Mando, Michael and René in the multitude of experiences that we shared over that weekend showed me that telling Latino stories is nothing more than telling stories with heart, humor and humanity. I'm pretty good at telling a story especially when it is about people I care about and I’m excited about our inaugural screenplay – 7 Tales of Desperation. It has been through many a re-write since the reading at Woolly but I find it just as exciting as the first time I heard it. My goal as producer is to get other people (like you!) excited and amazed by 7 Tales of Desperation and the mission of Those Guys & That Girl Films as well.