"Nothing Like The Holidays"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
October 26, 2008
Watch "Nothing Like The Holidays" Trailer
THE RESIDENTS OF HUMBOLDT PARK
The cast of Nothing Like the Holidays includes some of the most acclaimed actors working today, including Emmy winner John Leguizamo (“John Leguizamo's Freak”), Emmy nominee Freddy Rodriguez (“Six Feet Under”), Emmy winner Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”), two-time Tony nominee Alfred Molina (Spiderman 2) and six-time Alma Award winner Elizabeth Peña (Tortilla Soup).
“When we first talked about doing this project, our goal was always to get this caliber of actors,” says Rodriguez. “If we couldn’t, I don’t think we would have done it. It was either all or nothing. The level of quality starts with that.”
The casting process, says De Villa, took a grueling three months to complete. “I never worked harder putting together a cast. We all knew the overall tone of the film was going to be so dependent on who played those characters.”
In addition to serving as executive producer, Rodriguez plays the character of Jesse, the youngest member of the Rodriguez clan, who has just returned from combat in Iraq. Jesse enlisted in an effort to put off taking over the family business, a neighborhood grocery store. “I was intrigued with what was happening with the character, post-Iraq,” says the actor. “We’ve seen movies about the soldiers who are out there, but I wanted to explore what was happening in his head after all that he’s gone through.”
Jesse’s return is the catalyst for the Rodriguez family’s first reunion in three years. “Imagine, if your family got together, and it’s been three years since everybody’s seen each other at Christmastime,” producer Teitel says. “Of course, mayhem ensues. Every family’s going to go through some of that.”
“Add to that Jesse was injured in Iraq. I had read so many articles in the paper about these soldiers coming home and grappling with so many different issues. We took that and we gave it to the writer and said, ‘This is an interesting character. This is a dynamic that you see in the papers every day, but you haven’t seen it on film yet.’”
For the roles of parents Eddy and Anna Rodriguez, the filmmakers turned to two esteemed, veteran actors, Alfred Molina and Elizabeth Peña. The British-born and trained Molina might not have seemed an obvious choice, but his fluent Spanish and compelling performances in films such as Frida brought him to the attention of the filmmakers.
The director recalls the search for an actor who could convey the complexity and depth crucial to the character. “He can’t be just a complete womanizer, because then there is no conflict. He’s the guy who, like a lot of first-generation immigrants, basically gave up his hopes and dreams for the benefit of the kids. He had to put his life and blood and sweat into that store, and that’s how his kid got to be a lawyer. You have to love him, but at the same time, he did something wrong and he has to live with that.”
“When I heard that Alfred Molina liked the script, I thought ‘Okay, well, I’m glad he likes the script, but is he really going to do the movie?’” remembers Teitel. “When he signed on, the excitement was unbelievable. It changed the scope of the movie.”
Molina describes his character as a man trying to do his best and not always succeeding. “He's trying really hard to just keep his family together with two very old fashioned ideas, love and loyalty, both of which get questioned in the course of the story,” says Molina. “There are very serious elements in it, but there's a lot of humor as well, which is the way things are with families. In the midst of serious breakups and fallouts, whatever happens to a family, there are always moments of complete hysteria.”
Molina recalls a Christmas when he was younger, right after his own parents divorced. “My mother decided to redecorate the apartment, so she called in a decorator. But she then discovered she didn't have enough money to pay for it, so she sold the furniture to pay for the paint job. All we had left was a sofa and a coffee table. I'm not kidding, a sofa and a coffee table. All the dining room furniture went. All the stuff in the front room went.”
“And she then decided to have a Christmas party, and she invited about ten or twelve people,” he continues. “We all sat on the floor cross-legged, eating spaghetti Milanese. It was such fun. She was a great storyteller, my mother. She was telling everyone the story in her wonderful Italian accent. She said, ‘Well, I decorated the place. And I had no money. So I sell the furniture.’ And one of her friends said, ‘But Joanna, wouldn't it have been easier just to sleep with him?’ My mother pretended to be shocked. But she laughed, I mean, she laughed and she laughed so much, I'll never forget it.”
“You could look at it from the other side and say, ‘What a terrible story, deprivation and poverty and all that.’ But the truth is, no. It was very funny. It was one of the best Christmases I think we ever had.”
Anna Rodriguez is the family’s anchor, a deceptively calm powerhouse, much like Teitel’s own mother. “In my family it was like that,” says Teitel, who describes himself as “Sorta Rican” – half Puerto Rican and half Jewish. “My dad used to say, ‘I’m the boss,’ but my mom made all the decisions. Elizabeth Peña— we couldn’t ask for more as the mother. She has a strong hold on this family. Even though Alfred Molina towers over her, there’s no denying who’s the boss.”
The filmmakers originally had doubts about casting Peña that had nothing to do with talent. “At first they didn't want to hire me because John Leguizamo is only three years younger than me, and I play his mother,” she says. “But there is the magic of film and hair and makeup. You know, I love it. I don't mind playing unattractive or old or whatever. I'm not a model, I'm an actress. To be able to sneak into somebody else's skin is a joy.”
The highly acclaimed actress says working with Molina was a dream come true for her. “I slapped myself every morning when I realized I was working with Alfred Molina. I mean, the whole cast was fantastic. But I have been a fan of Alfred's since the first time I saw him, which was in Prick up Your Ears in 1987. I still can't believe I worked with him!”
In the film, the couple’s eldest child, Mauricio, has been living in New York and is about to become a partner in a white shoe law firm, creating some tension between him and his father, who was born in Puerto Rico and built the family business from nothing. “But Mauricio is really tight with his mom,” says John Leguizamo of his character. “The only tension there is with my wife, played by the lovely, enchanting Debra Messing. My mom wants her to get pregnant. I kind of want it, too, and I use my mom to tell my wife to get with it.”
Rodriguez recalls, “When we were thinking of this character, we immediately said ‘Leguizamo.’ I’ve never seen him do a character like this before, this sort of uptight, Manhattan elite, suit-wearing character. We were trying to cast against type with all the characters so we immediately said, ‘Legz should be that guy, because no one’s ever seen him in that light.’”
“Once John heard the idea, then read the script, he loved it,” adds Teitel. “He came on board right after that. Once we had Freddy and John, they were like the actor-magnets. They just kind of brought everybody else in.”
The onscreen bond between family members is authentic, according to Leguizamo. “We really worked hard to make that relationship real, and to find those little details that reveal the complexity of the father-son and mother-son relationships. As crazy as this family is, we love the hell out of each other.”
Mauricio’s wife, Sarah, is an outsider, a high-powered executive from a Jewish family who understands the Rodriguez clan as little as she is understood by it. Rodriguez reached back to the beginning of his career for an actress to play the part. “When we were throwing names around, Debra Messing was definitely on the top of the list,” says Rodriguez. “She and I did our first film together. When they mentioned her name, I thought, yeah, that’s a perfect choice and she’s wonderful.”
Messing was fresh out of graduate school when she shot A Walk in the Clouds with Rodriguez, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Quinn. “I had never been on camera in my life,” she says. “And there was this young kid, Freddy, and it was his first movie, too. We bonded. Then “Will & Grace” and “Six Feet Under” came on around the same time and we were reunited on the red carpet when both of our shows were nominated for Emmys. It was like, oh, my gosh, who would have thought, when we met the first time, that we would be here? He's such a talented actor. And he's just so smart. I think it's limitless what he can do.”
The Rodriguez family’s old world ideals and values make Sarah feel shut out, says the actress. “Especially when it comes to Mom and what it means to be a woman. This family is so tight and so committed to each other and to each other's happiness. My character feels like there's nothing she can do that can win them over. She tries her best to help out, but the fact that she has not yet provided a grandchild is the elephant in the room, so to speak.”
Although Messing had heard about Chicago’s legendarily cold winters, she was not prepared for the record temperatures she encountered during the shoot. “Had I known then that it was going to be 25 below zero with the wind chill, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to do it,” says Messing, who came up with an ingenious solution. “I researched extreme explorers who go to Antarctica and what they wear, and found a jacket and a liner that will keep you warm at sixty degrees below zero. Of course, by the time it showed up, there were about five days of shooting left, but now I’m ready for Antarctica!”
Messing developed a reputation on set for keeping up with the sometimes raucous antics of some of the male actors. “Debra brought crazy comedy chops to the work, as well as a lot of drama, too, so she's giving you a little extra,” says Leguizamo. “Everybody knows she’s very beautiful and upscale and all that, but she can be like a guy. She's got that kind of mouth. It's just hilarious, because she says the raunchiest, craziest stuff. But it was the hip-hop dancing that freaked me out. How that came out of her, I don't know. She must've been clubbing a lot.”
Luis Guzmán, who plays Johnny, has been a staple in film and television for more than 20 years, appearing in high profile projects including Traffic, Carlito’s Way, Boogie Nights and the HBO series “Oz.”
“We said ‘How can we do this movie and not have Luis Guzmán in it?’” says Teitel. “Doesn’t even make sense. So we made him that older cousin, that screw-up cousin that we all have and know. He just fit right into it perfectly.”
For Guzmán, it was an opportunity to return to some of the best moments of his childhood. “I come from the Lower East Side in New York City,” he says. “The whole thing with the family getting together celebrating Christmas, the music and the unity among people from the neighborhood, the spirit of it all. I grew up with all that stuff.
“My old neighborhood has been so gentrified, and so many of the community people have been pushed out,” he continues. “Coming to Humboldt Park was like what the Lower East Side was fifteen, twenty years ago. Just seeing all the different storefronts, all the different organizations, the murals reminded me of what a real community is, before so many longtime residents have been filtered out by developers.”
Vanessa Ferlito, who has appeared on “CSI: New York” and “24,” plays Roxanna, the middle child and only daughter, an actress living in California. “She hasn’t really hit it yet, so when she comes home and realizes what a great environment she left and the people and her family, it starts to pull her back in,” says Teitel. “In my family, I was that kid who went to California. There are times when you’re doing well and you come home and you’re a hero. Then there are times when you’re not working and you really got nothing to say and you still want them to be proud of you.”
Ferlito, who is an Italian-American from Brooklyn, found the Rodriguez family dynamic to be familiar, especially during a dinner scene in which the entire clan is talking simultaneously. “I wish my mother was here right now,” she says. “I’d have her walk in the room and demonstrate. They’re loud. They feel that’s the only way you can hear them. The only way they can get their point across is by screaming across the table. Who can talk louder than the next? Who makes the best point? Who’s right? Whose food is better? It goes on and on.”
Vanessa finds herself drawn to Ozzy, the young man she left behind who works in her father’s store. Ozzy is played by Jay Hernandez, familiar to audiences from roles in films including World Trade Center and Friday Night Lights. “Being a part of a family movie that dealt with these issues was a unique experience,” he says. “I didn't have to act. I had these experiences. I've seen them play out in my family.”
Melonie Diaz, who recently appeared in the Jack Black comedy, Be Kind Rewind, plays Jesse’s ex, Marissa, who was left behind when he impulsively enlisted. “He just ripped her heart apart,” says Diaz. “It’s really complex because sometimes in life you do things because you need to and you act on instinct. And that's what Jesse did when he went to the war, because he couldn't take what was happening in his life with the family and the store.”
Diaz says that the Rodriguez clan reminds her very much of her family. “The movie really reflects our cultural background and how we interact with each other as family,” she says. “What's very recognizable is that this family has a lot of bold characters. Everybody has something to say; everybody wants to be heard. There's a lot of room for drama, as you can see. And it's like that with my family.”
Alfred Molina says that boundless energy was evident on the set as well. “Our rehearsals were very boisterous and very loud and dynamic,” he says. “And that's to do with the nature of the actors involved. The great thing is that the energy didn’t have to be manufactured. Alfredo, our director, created time for us to rehearse, without the pressure of filming. So we were able to create some of that dynamic, away from the camera as it were, and when we shot the scenes, we arrived with something extra to offer.”
With such a powerful cast, it might seem that the personalities would overwhelm the material, but Messing says it was exactly the opposite. “You rarely see a big ensemble cast with so many actors who usually play leading roles. Because there isn’t one star, everyone is on the same level. That makes the story the star.”
Each of the cast members came to the set anticipating a special experience and left feeling the shoot had been a gift of sorts. As Luis Guzmán says, “To be able to come together with this cast on such a project was awesome. I've had an incredible amount of joy and delight and fun working on this movie with them. You know, we just fed off each other so much, and complemented each other so, so well.”
ABOUT THE "NOTHING LIKE THE HOLIDAYS" PRODUCTION
The story for Nothing Like the Holidays had been percolating in producer Robert Teitel’s mind for almost five years. A partner in State Street Pictures and producer of such hit films as Soul Food and Barbershop, Teitel grew up about 15 minutes from Humboldt Park, Chicago’s best known Puerto Rican neighborhood. “My grandma, my cousins, my aunts all grew up there. My mom would take my brother and me there in the summers. It seemed natural to do a family story and set it in the neighborhood that my family grew up in.”
Teitel says for years he was asked by relatives, “‘When are you going to do a movie about Humboldt Park?’ I heard it so many times, I told Freddy Rodriguez about it. Fred and I have been friends for around twelve years, and I knew Freddy grew up right outside Humboldt Park.”
Rodriguez, an award-winning actor best known for his Emmy®-nominated role as ambitious mortician Federico Diaz on “Six Feet Under,” has been friendly with both Teitel and his partner, writer-director George Tillman, Jr., for more than a decade. “We’re all from Chicago,” says Rodriguez. “Bob and I left Chicago around the same time, we had our first projects out around the same time, and we always talked about doing something together. We kicked around a couple ideas, but this one was always in Bob’s head. He asked me to come on board as executive producer and help put it together.”
Rene M. Rigal, State Street Pictures’ president of production, had been pitching an idea to Teitel since his first job interview. “In that meeting, we started riffing an idea for Nothing Like the Holidays. We started talking about a family and how we wanted to make it an American family that happens to be Latino.”
”With a strong personal connection to the material, the producers had very specific ideas about the movie’s screenplay. “I wanted a story with a lot of heart and a lot of drama,” says Teitel. “We gave it to the writer, Rick Najera, and he gave us a draft. Then I went to my wife, Alison Swan. She would always come back here with me to Humboldt Park for Christmas and she saw my crazy family and saw what was going on at Christmastime, so she was the perfect person to mesh it all together.”
Teitel acknowledges that a lot of the details in the film are based on his own family. “My dad owned a small auto paint store and I grew up in that. I had to grapple with whether or not to take over the store or go to Hollywood. A lot of the same kinds of things that Freddy’s character is dealing with in the film. So, it’s really close to my heart.”
Director Alfredo De Villa had impressed the producers with his work on three previous films, notably the acclaimed independent production Washington Heights. “He really captured that specific neighborhood in New York,” says Teitel. “I felt like this was a natural progression for him. As soon as we met him, everybody embraced him. His ideas were totally in tune with ours, so it was an easy connection.”
Although the filmmakers met with a number of talented directors before offering the film to De Villa, says Rodriquez, “I go with my gut, and my instincts told me that he really got what we were going for in this film and he got wonderful performances from his actors in his earlier films. I was confident he would get the same kind of performances out of all of us.”
De Villa was attracted to the film’s emphasis on family and community. “It says that these things are sometimes more important than individual needs,” the director says. “It really sounded truthful to me. By embracing the authenticity of this unique community, we allowed the movie to become broader and speak about larger themes of unity.”
Teitel adds: “My goal is for this film to be received as a universal film. People will see bits and pieces of their family in this film. It doesn’t matter what race or religion you are, you’re going to see your family on the screen.”
“It’s kind of what George and I did with Soul Food,” the producer continues. “We were fortunate enough to make this movie that crossed over universally. People of all ethnicities would come up to us and say, ‘That was my family!’”
De Villa believes the questions at the heart of Nothing Like the Holidays will strike a universal chord. “As a culture, it feels like America is in a time of transition. That’s when it’s most important for families to come together. When there’s that emotional union or communion, it gives you a sense of purpose that you might not have when you are just on your own.”
Nothing Like the Holidays, says Rigal, is ultimately about coming home. “As in a lot of American families, each of the Rodriguezes has been living a very different life with its own unique set of personal challenges. When the kids come home for the first time in three years, they bring all their problems with them. And the thing they think they can depend on most, the foundation of family, is completely thrown into chaos. But no matter what obstacles, no matter what things we deal with, no matter what the trauma within the family, the only thing that’ll get us through is the family.”
FINDING THE REAL HUMBOLDT PARK
Humboldt Park is located at the original boundaries of the city of Chicago. The area has always has been an entry point for ethnic communities. “First it was German, Jewish and Scandinavian, then later on it became Polish and Russian, and then, of course, from the 1950s until today, it has been a predominantly Puerto Rican community,” says Enrique Salgado, Executive Director of the Division Street Business Development Association. “Humboldt Park actually has a diverse population. There’s a large Latino community here that includes Mexican, Salvadoran, Colombian, Guatemalan and a significant African-American community.”
When the filmmakers started scouting locations, word got out that they were making a film about Humboldt Park. “A couple of people from the neighborhood were a little nervous at first,” says Teitel.
As the area’s unofficial spokesperson, Salgado was instrumental in helping the filmmakers gain access to the heart of the community. “I got a phone call from one of the location directors asking for assistance in finding some locations for a possible film that would be made here,” he remembers. “When I asked for more information, the filmmakers not only sent me a script, they also asked for input about whether or not it accurately portrayed our community. I offered to give them a tour and show them the community through our eyes.”
Taking the tour were Bob Teitel and the film’s location managers and designers. For two hours, Salgado led them through some of the area’s businesses and homes, introduced them to community leaders and gave them a historical overview of Humboldt Park. “People became really excited about the movie,” says Salgado. “When they found out who the actors were, it was even more exciting because Freddy Rodriguez is from the community. It also brought business in for local companies, which was great.”
Humboldt Park’s people take particular pride in Paseo Boricua, the area’s main thoroughfare, which is framed by a unique monument erected in 1995. Two Puerto Rican flags, constructed of steel and weighing 45 tons apiece, reach 56 feet across, 59 feet high and 59 feet into the ground. “We created two gateways into the community that span it from one end to the other,” says Salgado. “They’re the world’s largest monument to any flag in the world and the only monument to the Puerto Rican flag. They were designed to last over five hundred years.”
Once a year, the Paseo is shut down for a one-day celebration that attracts over 200,000 people to displays of Puerto Rican history and culture. A nearby mural, one of many in Humboldt Park, contains a visual history of Puerto Ricans in Chicago. “When you look at this mural, if you’re from the community, you recognize key people, business owners, shop owners, statues, flags, buildings that are actually on the street,” says Salgado. “It shows the essence of who we are as Puerto Ricans, here in Chicago, in Humboldt Park and on Paseo Boricua.”
During the shoot, the filmmakers got an even better sense of the spirit of the residents of this unique community, says Teitel. “The people are so proud of their neighborhood. One time a kid outside a house where we were shooting came up to me. He didn’t even know who I was. We just started talking. He looked at all the chairs in the row, with everybody’s name on it, and he said, ‘Look at this: Alfred Molina, John Leguizamo, Freddy Rodriguez, Jay Hernandez, Luis Guzmán, Debra Messing, Elizabeth Peña, Vanessa Ferlito, Melonie Diaz.’
“And he goes, ‘They’re all here in my neighborhood making a movie. This is unbelievable. Who’d ever thought about a movie in Humboldt Park? I didn’t think anybody even knew we existed in here.’ Little things like that went on during the shoot that gave me a lump in my throat. Makes you feel really good about it, you know what I mean?”
The film marked the first time Humboldt Park native Freddy Rodriguez shot in Chicago. “I’ve been gone for almost fifteen years, when I was shooting on the street, people were coming up to me and they’re saying, ‘Hey, I went to grammar school with you,’ or, ‘I know your cousin,’ or ‘I went to high school with your wife.’
“My aunt and uncle were extras on the film, and it’s just kind of weird when I’m preparing to do a scene and I look over and I see my aunt and uncle in the background. It’s been a reality check, you know? I feel like I’ve come full circle with this film.”
Rene Rigal was one of the few people at State Street Pictures who had not worked in Chicago before. “Bob told me, ‘You’re going to love the people,’” he says. “I think they respected the fact that we were telling a story about a family. I mean, we were filming on the streets and they would open up their houses. I can’t tell you how many times people came with food from their kitchen and fed us in the freezing cold. It’s a great community. It was one of those films where no one ran back to their trailers.”
On one of the coldest days of Chicago’s coldest winter in decades, Teitel met a woman on the street who invited him into her home for hot chocolate. “I didn’t even know her,” he says. “I walked in the house, and there’s Luis Guzmán, Jay Hernandez and Freddy playing dominoes, while Alfred Molina and John Leguizamo are in the kitchen talking to the family. That’s an image I won’t forget and it’s what I’ll always cherish about making this movie. Everybody was so inviting.”
One of Humboldt Park’s cherished traditions, the parranda, takes center stage in one of the most exciting and authentic scenes in the film. Parranda is a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas celebration that takes place on January 6, also known as Three Kings Day.
“It is our term for Christmas carolers,” explains Luis Guzmán. “It celebrates life, it celebrates the season. I know when I go to Puerto Rico to celebrate Christmas, it's six weeks of that, seven days a week.”
According to Teitel, no film about Christmas in Humboldt Park would be complete without including the annual celebration. “It’s something I had never experienced but I’d read about it and heard about it and we felt like we needed to include that in the film to make it as authentic as possible.”
It starts off with one family going to another house to carol outside. The residents invite them inside and the Christmas caroling continues. “They serve you drinks and food and once you’re done, both families go on from there,” says Freddy Rodriguez. “Then you go to somebody else’s house and you repeat the same thing there at that house and that family goes with you.
“I remember my parents doing it all the time,” Rodriguez continues. “There might be a group of fifty people going to somebody’s house at three in the morning, knocking on the door. I remember being five and having maybe thirty people arrive. My mom had to wake up and put hors d’oeuvres together and serve Puerto Rican rum. It’s a great memory to have and I’m so happy that we got to put that in the film.”
“I always tell people that it’s taking caroling and adding fun to it,” says Enrique Salgado. “It’s a gift to the family, so you actually go to their house, and you ring their doorbell and when they open their doors, there’s music and it turns into a party, but the party just doesn’t end there. The party goes from there to the next person’s house, to the next person’s house, to the next person’s house. And it becomes one huge, community celebration that goes through the night.”
It was the perfect opportunity to involve the residents of Humboldt Park directly in the film. “All the extras were from the community,” says De Villa. “About a hundred and fifty people participated. They had no camera experience, so we just had to kind of keep it real, and they did great.”
The whole concept was new to Debra Messing, but she was quickly caught up in the spirit. “Where have I been?” asks the actress. “This is the place to be on Christmas Eve. There is something very telling about a culture that goes from house to house singing for each other and playing music. These people are generous of spirit and clearly consider everybody part of their larger family.”
Guzmán says the tradition represents the community as a whole in celebration. “The family is celebrating with the community, and the community is celebrating with the family. And it's a way that we get to know our neighbors better. You can be asleep and it's one o'clock in the morning, and there's this innocent knock on the door. You open the door, and then forty people are singing. And, of course, you must invite them in. And you've got to give them something to drink, and something to eat, and it's a party, and they sing songs”. The filmmakers used a combination of practical locations and sets built on a soundstage to shoot Nothing Like the Holidays’ interior scenes. It fell to production designer Dan Clancy to create the film’s colorful and authentic settings. “I did a lot of research, going to people’s homes, walking through the neighborhood,” says Clancy. “It’s a cool community and a close community full of incredibly creative people.”
De Villa says the production was fortunate to have most of the community open their houses to the filmmakers. “We probably took over a thousand photos of people’s living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms. We looked at everything and learned what the most common type of house would be for a family of this economic level living in the community for thirty years. We used that research to design the interior and exterior of the Rodriguez house.”
Clancy consulted with experts, went to private homes and visited the local bodegas and coffee shops to get to know the real people of Humboldt Park.
“It was the director’s vision to keep it as authentic as possible. I needed to see the way the people dressed, the way they shopped, the way they decorated their homes. It was all really colorful, which is reflected in the film’s bright palette. In the Rodriguez house, Alfredo insisted that each drawer, each cabinet, each closet, be filled with the real clothes that they wore. We had to have the right colors. Every little detail that you can think of was covered.”
Clancy and his crew built the Rodriguez’s store from scratch. “We created it to be Division Street in miniature, with a coffee shop and a bakery within the grocery store. They play dominoes there. It became more of a community center.”
Clancy’s efforts resulted in a bodega so realistic that it fooled even longtime residents of Humboldt Park. “When we were shooting those scenes, there were people coming by all the time and trying to get into the store,” says Teitel. “This store had been closed for a year and a half. We’d say, ‘No, I’m sorry, we’re shooting,’ and they’d say ‘But look at all the people inside. Look, everything’s up.’”
To capture the Rodriguez family and their vibrant community on film, De Villa brought in award-winning cinematographer Scott Kevan, whose credits have ranged from Paul W.S. Anderson’s summer sci-fi thriller Death Race to the acclaimed horror drama Bug to the kinetic, crowd-pleasing dance film Stomp the Yard.
For Kevan, the biggest challenge was finding visual ways to underscore the film’s emotional subtext, which threads a fine line between comedy and drama.
“Throughout the film we had to maintain a richness and contrast that gave images some depth but not make them so dark and dreary that it bled the fun and comedy out of the script. There are a lot of moments that are very dramatic where the tension is broken through comedy—and vice verse.”
As an example, Kevan sites the dinner table scene where Elizabeth Pena’s character announces she plans to leave her husband. “There’s a warmth to that scene—it’s a family meal with a lot of joking—but then halfway through, it takes a twist. To highlight that, we kept the light in a pool around the dinner table, so there was a serious tone to it but it still had warmth of family gathering.”
The cinematographer contrasts that sequence with the scenes in the hospital, which were intentionally almost devoid of color.
“Also, in the back office of the grocery store, where Alfred Molina’s character has a couple very serious conversations with his son, played by Freddie Rodriguez, we tended to let the scenes go darker and have more contrast to give them a heavier feel, whereas the scenes in the front of the store were lighter and more colorful.”
Costume designer Susan Kaufmann brought the same rigorous attention to detail to the characters’ wardrobes. “I spent a lot of time walking through the neighborhoods for research to see the patterns in the way people looked in Humboldt Park,” she says. “Everyone shops in the same stores these days, but different cultures wear things in different ways. They buy different sizes, different colors, they accessorize it differently.
“Almost every woman, young or old, had on a coat with a fur hooded collar and lots of hoop earrings, lots of tight, tight jeans tucked into boots,” according to Kaufman. “And there was a very specific color pattern. I didn’t see one woman who wasn’t wearing pink or purple.”
For each character, Kaufman developed a signature style that reflected their world view. “For example, I wanted Edy to have a sense of his culture and neighborhood, so we dressed him in guayaberas – traditional Puerto Rican shirts. With Anna, as she transitions in the film, we let her turn into a little more of a hot mama for a little while.
“My general goal was to define the characters, so that people can get a quick sense of who they are.”
To provide the film’s soundtrack, director De Villa turned to acclaimed DJ and remixer Paul Olkenfold, a two-time Grammy winner whose credits include works for U2, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Madonna and The Cure.
Olkenfold said he was attracted to the film’s universal themes and what he saw as its potential to reach audiences beyond the U.S. Although Olkenfold’s feature film work has been focused primarily on such blockbuster action pictures as Collateral, Pirates of the Caribbean, Die Another Day and The Bourne Identity, he says he was pleased with the opportunity to work on an intimate and often funny drama such as Nothing Like the Holidays.“The music was a big challenge for me because it’s primarily a comedy but I’m happy that the director and producers believed that I could do this genre of film.”
