Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 27 young Angelenos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver — they all weave in and out of each other’s stories. Through poetry, they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers.
Inspired by a spoken-word showcase featuring 25 diverse high school performers, director Carlos López Estrada (“Blindspotting,” “Raya and the Last Dragon”) proposed a collaboration to develop the performers’ work into a loose, interconnected narrative, encouraging the non-actors to express themselves and their relationship to their city. With its Slacker-inspired structure, fanciful form, and exuberant magical realism, “Summertime” is a free-verse poem — of the kids, by the kids, for the kids. The young poets radiate vitality, honesty, and profound emotion. By the time they wind up together in a tricked-out mega-limo overlooking the city, we believe in what their crazy, creative togetherness represents: hope. As the driver says, “Y’all got a pocket full of dreams, so don’t let me down.”
I recently had the opportunity to interview director Carlos López Estrada and star Tyris Winter about their new movie “Summertime,” please read below for more.
Daniel Pappas: So, I wanna start out by saying thank you so much for meeting with me today. I really enjoyed the film. I think you guys have captured something very special and definitely something I haven’t seen before either.
Carlos López Estrada: Thank you so much for having us.
DP: I have a couple of deep thought questions so I was gonna pitch one to you Carlos for you to spend a little time on and then Tyris if you’re comfortable, I have a very simple question to fill in that gap time. My opening question was gonna be…first I wanna say I’ve enjoyed your work. I saw “Blindspotting” and that was easily one of my favorite films of the year and thought it changed so many great things. But I was curious because some of the work you did on “Blindspotting” can be seen in the work you did in “Summertime” but in this instance from what I understand, you’re working with poets. And so I was curious to learn: What did you gain from working with these poets, you know these young performers on set, that you might not have gained from professional actors people like Daveed Diggs, that you might carry with you going forward? So, if you want, take a second to think about that.
CLE: I can jump straight in!
DP: Perfect! Okay! Yeah, go for it!
CLE: I mean I think – the poets just really – I know this is like a mushy thing to say but they really changed my life. Just because the work, the work, and the thoughtfulness and the level of responsibility with which they approach their work, is really unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You know the amount of thought and care they put into every single word and they know that their words can have an impact and they use that responsibility in a really inspiring way so, I mean I learned so much from them. I feel like that – that philosophy of sort of, like the power of their voices the power of our voices is probably what I take away with me just because I – I definitely don’t see a world in which everything I do from here on is not gonna be influenced by people like Tyris and, like the other twenty-six poets that I got to work with. They’re just really beautiful, kind, inspiring souls and I just feel so lucky to have worked so closely with them for such a long period of time. Even the fact that the movie release got pushed because of Covid but I really just got to interact with them more and develop relationships with them and it has just been truly wonderful.
DP: Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Tyris, maybe you can speak about your experience on set with Carlos. Is there anything you learned from him perhaps?
Tyris Winter: I learned how to sit in the most obscure places, a good criss-cross on the ground, saddling counters. So I learned…
CLE: Thank you Tyris.
TW: …how to be comfortable. No, but I would say what I learned from Carlos is just this like, just pure kindness that I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced. Like, people, like – I feel like I’ve experienced kindness in doses, but Carlos is just this pure being that I was like “oh wow! He’s really doing this to really advocate, to just give voices that wouldn’t be seen or heard otherwise on this platform,” so I was like, “oh wow! This is like kind of a thing. What is this?” Yeah. I would say what I learned is just this pure kindness and I learned to just sit (Laughs).
DP: That’s great! That actually relates to what I was gonna ask- so I wanted to ask you as well – I understand you have a burgeoning modeling career and I was curious if there was any crossover between what you’ve experienced and being on set for shooting or vice-versa, maybe something you brought to the shoot that you already understood.
TW: So I wasn’t really doing a lot of, like, modeling before “Summertime,” however, afterward, I’ve been dipping my toes in the stuff and I’d say what I have taken from working on “Summertime” is just patience because I wasn’t in film, as you know, it’s like a lot of waiting around for things to happen and I wasn’t used to that. I was like “hold on! You just sit here?” (laughs) “What is this?” So I’ve taken that to every other set is to just be patient. Is to, like, wait for the moment and really just live in that moment and I’ve definitely taken that to every set that I’ve managed to grace thus far.
DP: Well, I’m very excited to hopefully see you on more sets, and my next question is super simple but is there an OG burger joint that either of you visit regularly or celebrate constantly among friends?
CLE: Crispy School! Crispy School! Yeah?
TW: I don’t know if I can go back because I’m vegetarian now (laughs).
DP: Sure!
TW: But! Pre-vegetarian, there’s Crispy School, please pay the price for everything.
CLE: I was introduced to Crispy School through the poets and I love it. Also, I try not to eat a lot of meat because my body doesn’t love it but when I do, Crispy School in Koreatown is a really good place.
DP: Right. There’s always one place when you’re up late like 1:30 am and you need something to fill your stomach that like, it’s gonna scratch that itch.
CLE: I don’t think this one’s open that late but they should because… yeah.
DP: Perfect. So, the production for the film – you know I really love the way that you shot it. I felt – You always give a good sense of geography in a lot of your work Carlos and so I was curious how you go about kind of – I mean, California obviously Los Angeles, the Bay area you have a very adept understanding but were you to try and shoot something in perhaps a different city, how would you go about identifying those geographical markers that really help kind of – they’re like the glue in between some scenes?
CLE: Yeah! I mean, nothing about the way we put this movie together was conventional so I can’t really say that we reused any existing formula or philosophy, this, geographically was particularly an interesting challenge because we’re working with twenty-seven poets, each of them from different neighborhoods, each of them belonging to different communities. Essentially, how the movie came together is that we asked them to bring a poem or two that they would want to include in the movie, and then based on those poems, we put together like a map of L.A. and tried to sort of outline what the journey – we knew that we wanted the movie to happen over one day and we knew that we wanted the movie to follow an actual geographical route. So we knew that we wanted it to start at the beach and we knew that we wanted it to end at East L.A. and then we started to plug in like, “oh this poem is about this neighborhood so this goes here. This poem, Mila, wants it to happen on a bus so it could potentially happen anywhere in the movie. Where would it make the most sense?” And like that we – I don’t even know how many poems we ended up incorporating in the movie but it was a big, big puzzle. But we did want it to feel as much as possible like an experience that you would have if you were to drive from west to east over one day in L.A. so I’m glad to hear that it- it gave you that experience somewhat.
DP: Yeah! Especially for you Tyris cause you get to kind of, you get to carry us a lot throughout the film in that journey, just hunting for a burger. Did you have a similar experience throughout the course of this shoot? Which is just, you’re in one – you start in one place at the start of the day and then finish in a different location.
TW: Yeah. I definitely would say that we were jumping around quite often and I had the experience of being at every single location when I noticed we were filming for a day. So I did definitely feel like I was exploring more of L.A. than I would have otherwise seen because I didn’t grow up in L.A., I grew up in Palmdale Lancaster. So to see L.A. and to see the most like authentic spots in L.A. was really impactful for me and my experience, like coming into L.A. when I was first moving out there at the start of this movie, so yeah.
DP: Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I have a very simple question: What are some of the scenes – It’s a tapestry, right? There are so many different poems and different entire dramatic scenes but for both of you personally – like what are some of the scenes in the movie that resonate with you perhaps the most?
CLE: How ‘bout you T?
TW: Resonate with me on a spiritual level like in every sense of the way… I would say it’s the Korean restaurant scene because it just feels so warm. I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced a feeling from a film that just makes me feel so warm and that scene, it just has this, it just tells a story, as each scene does, but I just feel like I really resonate with that one because the way that Maddie’s starting it off with the music and everything and then the dancing and then I come in and I just felt so just like, in body during that scene. So it just it’s one of my favorite top scenes for sure.
CLE: I love that scene so much, looking around I actually have a little print of it, you can’t even see it but up there tilts camera to show a framed print from the film that’s an illustration of Tyris and then the Korean woman dancing in the background.
DP: I love it.
CLE: I love that scene. I also love the final poem in the movie when they’re all at the top of Elysian Park looking at the city just because I feel like that moment encapsulates what the movie is all about which is about the connection which is about strangers coming together and growing from being around each other and that poem and that moment I feel really really captures that. So, that one always gets me.
DP: Thank you. I felt the same way about the restaurant scene. It had a very clear strong conflict. I was resonating with that poor cook just trying to get through the end of his shift and just giving up and turning everybody’s night into utter joy. We’ve all had quitting dreams. Like we’ve all had dreams where we’re like “I’m gonna just destroy this place on my way out.” Yeah. I see you nodding your head Tyris. Yeah. Okay. Were there any scenes that were particularly hard to shoot? It almost feels a little run-and-gun in some places. Like the bus location, I understand. But being on a bus for just a short amount of time might put some crunch on the shoot.
CLE: I think there’s no simple answer to the question because honestly, every single day was really fun but really complicated because normally in a movie, even the films that are a little bit more complex, you get to that point where you are, you get into a groove. You’re in the same location after a few days with the same actors. People start learning each other’s languages. You’re like “Okay! We got through the icebreaker stage and now we’re just being here together.” But this movie, every single day we had a different cast, we had a different location, each poem came with a set of rules with how we were gonna shoot it, what we were gonna do about it. So, every single day it was like starting a completely different movie, and people like Tyris, there’s like a handful of folks who show up and exist with us for more than one day but most of them were in and out – a day, maybe two and some days we were shooting on the side of the street. Some days we were shooting someone’s house. Some days we were shooting on the beach. So it really kept us on our toes. But I also think that one of the reasons the movie feels so alive and so unexpected is because we really were every single day on a new adventure.
DP: I know we have a short amount of time left so I’m just gonna squeeze this in real fast.
CLE: Yeah, yeah!
DP: Was there anything you consciously did at the start of each day, given that you’re starting from scratch on each of these sections, that helped maybe work with the poets more or get the crew kind of invested that you might have done to ease production?
CLE: I mean there were a handful of things that we did and this is a good place to give a shoutout to Vero Kompalic, who is our associate producer, she worked very very closely with the poets, and every morning she’d do like warm-ups, exercises with them, run lines with them, would kind of get them excited and you know it sounds like a simple task but most of the poets had never acted in front of a professional film camera before and also, they’re playing characters but they’re really drawing from a lot of personal material so it’s a big ask to say to someone, “Hey! I know you’ve never like acted in front of a camera before but please just give us your deepest truth in here and just, you know, do it fifteen times in a row then do it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” It’s a lot and I think that she was a really key component because everyone felt comfortable and excited so she deserves a big shoutout here.
DP: Thank you so much for sharing!
CLE: Thank you so much, Daniel! This was great!
DP: Thank you! Thank all of you!
“Summertime” opens in Texas on Friday, July 16th
