Film Alliance hosts drama on undocumented 9/11 victims

Among the 2,983 victims at the Twin Towers on 9/11, there were roughly 100 undocumented workers — essentially invisible people. For their families, often thousands of miles away, the tragedy brought the added torment of not knowing if their loved one had survived — or how to find him or her.

The 2019 film “Windows on the World” is a fictional account of just such a family. Given that the film has yet to receive general distribution, “Windows” presents the irony of being an invisible film about invisible people. On Wednesday, March 4, the Petaluma Film Alliance will screen the independent movie with writer-producer Robert Mailer Anderson and composer David Russo in attendance.

“The film was inspired by a photo essay I saw in the New York Times on undocumented workers killed in the buildings,” said Anderson, “people from Guatemala, Algeria, all over. And I thought, ‘Wow, to not even exist, officially. To have no agency whatever. This is a story we should tell.’ ”

Andersons’ co-writer was his cousin Zach Anderson, with whom he had written the screenplay for their first film, “Pig Hunt,” a 2007 sci-fi horror thriller.

“We come from a big labor background, so the plight of these workers struck home. These victims were the ones who do the work yet are overlooked,” he said. Anderson’s father created the first teachers’ union in Marin County. His grandmother is half Mexican.

Anderson is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and philanthropist. He is the author of the 2001 novel “Boonville” and the 2016 play “The Death of Teddy Ballgame.” As an SFJAZZ Center trustee for ten years, he helped raise $64 million to build the first stand-alone building for jazz in America. In 2016, he received the San Francisco Arts Medallion for outstanding leadership in the arts.

In the film, Balthasar (Edward James Olmos), an undocumented Mexican busser at the World Trade Center, has disappeared after 9/11. Three weeks have passed with no word from him, but his wife thinks she saw him on TV fleeing the building. His son Fernando (Ryan Guzman) makes the hard, dangerous and illegal trip from Mexico to New York City to find him.

The screenplay has a long history. Anderson sold it to Miramax in 2004. 

“It’s always a hard sell, so we felt lucky when we sold it to Miramax,” Anderson said. “We did three drafts for them, but lots of people tried to change the film, relying on stereotypes, or they said there was no market for it.”

When Miramax was subsequently sold to Disney, the obstacles to getting the film made increased. 

“Here’s the kicker,” Anderson said. “They wanted to change the father, a busser in a restaurant, into a drug dealer.”

So, Anderson, at the urging of his wife Nicola Miner, bought the screenplay back from Disney. He and his collaborators then worked for years to get it made as an indie film. Once the script was finally filmed last year, they then faced the equally arduous challenge of distribution. In typical indie fashion, they offered the film to numerous film festivals. To date, “Windows on the World” has played in a dozen festivals, garnering awards in Los Angeles, Tucson and Boston, among others.

Actor Olmos was recruited by co-producer Vicangelo Bulluck, a veteran in the development of multicultural initiatives and programs. Bulluck opened the Hollywood office of the NAACP. He has also served as the Managing Director of Outreach and Special Events for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He is a producer of “The Judge Mathis Show.”

While the son, Fernando (Ryan Guzman), takes up the most screen time, Olmos’s character, Balthasar, anchors the film through sheer presence. With age, the face of Olmos, always craggy, sorrowful and arresting, has become a monument to stoic endurance.

Olmos is best known for his roles in “Miami Vice” (1984–1989), “American Me” (1992), “Battlestar Galactica” (2004–2009), “Blade Runner” (1982), and “Stand and Deliver” (1988), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He is also known for his activism on behalf of immigrants.

“Olmos is an acting genius,” Anderson said. “Working with him was a profound experience for me.”

The director, Michael D. Olmos, is one of Olmos’s four adopted children. Born in Jamaica, he is a producer and director, known for “Thursday” (1998) and “Filly Brown” (2012). 

The film was shot by cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos (Risky Business, Urban Cowboy, and TV’s Breaking Bad). The soundtrack was composed by David Russo, best known for his work on “Gotham” and “Pennyworth.” 

“We wanted a sonic landscape for New York, suggesting the different neighborhoods there,” Anderson said. The soundtrack has been released on Ropeadope and praised by Blues Magazine, whose reviewer wrote that “every now and then a soundtrack pops up, which distinguishes itself from the large selection of soundtracks. That is now the case with ‘Windows On The World.’”

Filming was a challenge. For one thing, the shoot took place during a hot summer, while 9/11 itself occurred in the fall. Both Mexico and New York were sizzling.

Anderson’s current marketing strategy is to make the film accessible to a worldwide Spanish-speaking audience. He has placed it in the hands of Pongalo, a Los Angeles-based company that runs ad-supported video-on-demand services. Last year, Discovery’s Spanish-language VIX digital platform acquired Pongalo. The deal marries Pongalo’s library of Spanish-language content from around Latin America and beyond with VIX’s huge social-media presence and ad-sales team. So, in yet another irony, an English-language film about a Mexican family will need Spanish subtitles or dubbing.

“I want a larger audience for the film,” Anderson said. 

He also plans to release a graphic novel of the screenplay in May.

“I never wanted to be a part of Hollywood scene.” Anderson said. “It’s brutal, but on the other hand filmmaking is a collaborative art, and a huge joy can come from the work.”

Currently, Mailer is finishing another screenplay, which will also include a graphic novel.

“But I want to get back to fiction writing,” Anderson said. “A screenplay doesn’t really exist until the film is made. I think of myself primarily as a novelist. Language comes first, then images. I was lucky to be raised around lots of film, plays, books.”

As a writer, Anderson has always been inspired by modernists, including his namesake Norman Mailer, as well as John Dos Passos, Flannery O’Connor, Jim Thompson, Grace Paley, Joseph Mitchell, Joan Didion, A.J. Liebling and Ring Lardner.

Anderson is also a passionate fan of music. 

“Jazz and opera have always been in my house,” he said. “Jazz has usually gotten the shortest shrift in our culture, with the artists receiving relatively little money or recognition when compared to other art forms.”

Until Anderson helped put together the SFJAZZ Center, there was no single building in the U.S. dedicated to this iconic American art form.

As for “Windows,” Anderson feels the long delay in creating the film may have been a blessing. Its themes have become even more relevant today than they were 15 years ago. 

“We are losing the culture wars,” he said, adding his hope that “Windows on the World” will make visible the invisible, and give voice to the voiceless. Said Anderson, “We need to amplify their voices.”