R. Ellis Frazier, Director, Producer, CEO at BADHOUSE Studios: Why did we need to go
to Long Beach [California] and shoot that scene?
It was just the location costs and the permit costs and everything are 10 times the amount.
Film Courage: Why did you move to Mexico?
Frazier: I think it's for a lot of reasons really. Mexico is a very warm country. It's a warm place
and personally before professionally I moved there to just to kind of get away from things and to
kind of take a break from the hustle and bustle. I originally moved to Cancun, Mexico and lived
there for several years and did a lot of writing when I was there and then later I figured I can't
really retire at that age, so I got closer to the US and moved over to Tijuana/Rosarito Beach area.
At the end of the day Mexico now it's my home. I've been there over 20 years and so
it's just more comfortable for me. It's easier to live there, less stress, things of that sort.
Professionally, it's like a filmmaker's paradise. You can go anywhere, you can shoot anywhere. It's
got all kind of different looks, the mountains, the hills, the trees. I mean the oceans, the
deserts, anything you want to shoot there and I think it's one of the only places that can
(at least on the western hemisphere) that can be truly cost effective without the rebates.
Film Courage: So you can still have a quote unquote Hollywood career whatever that looks like
(entertainment career) and live and be an expat?
Frazier: Basically yeah. One of the things about where we are which is Tijuana just below the
San Diego border is that it's (in theory) the closest international point to Hollywood in the
world. That means it's drivable. So we can drive everything and everybody down from Los Angeles
without putting them on planes but we're still working kind of like a fraction of the LA
costs. So it's that closest international point and when we started the program some years
ago many years ago now but that's what we were thinking about we're thinking about how can we
kind of not have to do la restraints la rules but still be close enough to drive I mean at the end
of the day you can get to from Hollywood to the border in about an hour and 45 minutes if traffic
is cooperative I mean I it takes longer than that to get from like The [San Fernando] Valley to new
to Newport Beach a lot of the times I'm saying so at the end of the day you can drive everything in
and move everybody on land and don't have to put everybody on planes and do all kinds of
shipping and things of that sort and what about the and this might be more of the American media
but that it's dangerous for Americans well I’ll tell you I said that is a good question
the the the biggest hurdle that we have as a film company in Tijuana Mexico and Mexico and generally
is what the perception of Mexico is you have to convince almost everybody that it's safe now
it is safe we've done several films there I think over this will be our 29th coming up without any
incidents and I mean that no incidents but every day you're bombarded with this kind of negative
cartels and border problems and all kinds of issues and immigrants rushing the border
and it makes it feel super dangerous but it's really not and it's really difficult
to explain that to people or have people believe that they kind of because they
kind of become entrenched in that belief they kind of like well I have a friend that this happened to
and I did this and it's very often it's not true very often it's just kind of this kind of
kind of tsunami of rumors that are are being thrown out there because
we are there and we know it's there we we understand the lay of the land so but it is
something we have to make a lot of assurances to to actors and people that are coming down
and we have a lot of security around we don't always need it sometimes it's honestly for the
optics of it but but we do have plenty of security and when people get there they're just like
like why where's this danger everybody was talking about it it's just really just very it's very
normal very simple and just like anywhere else really but you do have to take some precautions or
in a foreign country and they don't have the civil infrastructure that we have here so it's not like
they have the you can't two seconds later you call for help in two seconds later they're at your door
or two minutes later it's a little bit you gotta kind of know where you're going and where to
go and where not to go but generally it's it's super safe any advice for people in terms of if
they are scouting locations or they're actually going to shoot coming with a sense of respect
like I'm sure if any American goes to any foreign country especially these days maybe
the past 20 years there's the perception is going to be different ways we can
conduct ourselves where we give off an error of respecting someone in their homeland absolutely
what we try to do on all the films is make sure that anybody that's interacting with the public
is a Mexican person it's kind of bad optics to have some American running in the street telling
this guy to move over there and hey close close your doors they talk to each other so
there is a way to do it and there's kind of like a protocol that we make sure that we have
under all our films and when you go there you especially when you're getting a location
whatever you're you have to be very very polite and recognize that they probably don't understand
it in the same way that maybe LA locations would understand that they think oh well it's going to
be cool we're going to film something they don't know the rush of people that are going to come in
there and how they come in and just do all this crazy stuff and and they shut everything down
and so there's protocols in that you have to make sure that they understand what's going on
you have to make sure that and we always make sure that the deals are made all the scouting deals
all the location deals are made from within my Mexican staff we try not to go in there with this
kind of American voice trying to make a bunch of deals it's always better that way
go smoother and then if there's a problem they can kind of talk to each other as countrymen
and and work it out rather than kind of being the ugly American jumping in there and saying hey this
needs to be like this and that needs to be like that in some broken Spanish accent it's it's
better if they do it and so I always defer and that's something you learn over time I mean our
first films you just have a regular location scout from from the valley going in there and trying to
make deals with people didn't speak a word of Spanish and it goes much better the latter way
how long were you in Mexico before you decided to start a production company
well I was in there I was there maybe let's call it around seven eight years just personally and I
was kind of just writing and trying to figure out where my place would be in in the film business
and so it's about seven about between seven to ten years I think I was there and the the
genesis of it just if that's if that skips the question I don't know but the genesis of it is
that there was a company in Baja called Baja films run by a guy by the name of Delfino Lopez he was a
just a regular guy but they had this film company and they did films on super 16 remember super 16.
remember and it was they they were doing full 90 minute films for nothing and I was thinking in
terms of and i'd look at it and I was I was coming from from l.a and you're in l.a and you're at
coffee shops and everybody's trying to figure out where to get their film together and
how we're going to get financed and everything else and and while we're doing that these guys
are doing a film a month at film every two months on film 90-minute film now you can't get through
one of them I mean they're not very good I mean it in our as far as the way that they're done
narco cinema it's actually quite famous and but they were doing these very
interesting 90-minute films and so I said I just started to think what if we just added
American storyline maybe one or two American actors guy coming down to save his daughter
guy getting down there gets drunk gets caught up with the cartels things like that
and and some of the movies that we all know movies like Man On Fire, movies like Sicario,
movies like some of the parts of Traffic and I thought I can go and try to figure out a way to
fit into that system in Los Angeles where I can come down there and work with these guys
bring a couple elements down and just keep working and I decided that that would be the best bet
in other words it may not be as glamorous in the beginning but
we're getting things done we're proving our worth we're creating a real we're doing we're just
staying busy and you realize how difficult it is for people to stay busy and you realize also then
that a lot of actors will come down and work for you if they're not doing anything those come down
and and and say sure if they like the script and Mexico especially Tijuana and those border areas
it's kind of a really super gritty space and so it's very interesting to see Americans move
through that space like like I said mentioned before movies like Man On Fire, Sicario things
like that where you have kind of interesting border stories about and there and and and not to
mention the cartel tropes that are that are there cartels make very, very good villains. Cartel
leaders they're intelligent they're not they're organized they're not just crazy people cutting
people up they're usually very, very good villains and so there's a lot of stories in there and so
we just started decided to start stop talking about it and start making the movies
when did you make your first movie in Mexico first movie in Mexico was produced and not directed
did a film called La Línea or The Line I wrote it produced it it started Andy Garcia,
Ray Liotta a whole bunch of people Issai Morales and that was in night in 2007.
We did in 2007 it was released in 2009 very very interesting experience
some of the some of the things that we had an idea to do we didn't do meaning we're going to
do it really small and it wasn't it was pretty it was pretty big we set everything up in LA and
took it down to Mexico and it was it's quite an experience it was good but a very very
very good experience and a good film in my opinion so you had to prove yourself that you could take
this crew down there you said you were the producer but not the director and convince
people that it was safe and that this would work yeah and we were super bubbled on that film this
is before I really started to make Mexican films Mexican films we the first idea you have a lot
of times is you just say okay hey I'm gonna set things up like anybody else would set it up and
get a DP and get a sound piercing and then we're gonna travel down to Tijuana and do this film
so we were like in a bubble and we it was an expensive bubble in comparison to what
we could have done it for but it was a good learning experience and we had a lot of things
now that we know we didn't need and it was it was an interesting way to film there but it's not this
kind of organic Mexico filming like our subsequent films were so it's kind of like if you go anywhere
you go to Romania you go to Italy you grew up in the states usually you get some local crew there
and then you go and you take your major keys and everybody goes down there and everything
else like that so that was called La Línea the line and it was a quite a great experience
and what were some of the things that you realized later that you didn't need
we realized later that we did not need all the we didn't need to first of all we didn't
need to create a base camp everywhere we went we shuttled around this huge 17 truck
base camp because we just thought that's what we needed so we went we had to get parking lots and
blocking streets and have this big caravan of cars and everything else
and that's one of them and the and second and most important is crew there's plenty of good crew
there but we had to take everybody from the states all the keys and then the keys said well I just
don't feel comfortable unless I have my second and then they said well and we have a person
that will work and they're an assistant and so we didn't quite understand how much all that cost
it just seemed pretty simple but filming out of the country is very much different than filming
in Hollywood or in LA it's not like you can just give somebody a call time hey call times
in North Hollywood at seven o'clock and be there you have to drive them there they have to have
per diem they've got to have you have food they have to have all kinds of coordination of movement
and it's it's a lot of work so it's you're it's it's probably double the work to have everybody
there to coordinate all the the travel and the transportation to set to and from set everything
else so we we realized we we didn't need all those people we could have we could crew up
in Mexico with an incredibly competent and talented Mexican crew and and then not have to
have the expense and drama frankly of bringing people from the states and you also said you
learned over time maybe or or maybe that was out of the project that taught you that if you
had people from Mexico that it would go smoother with the locals with whatever enforcements were
around with whoever was enforcing this film shooting absolutely absolutely it would have
gone smoother and less expensive right and we learned that those are lessons you learn and
was the first film and so we we we were just kind of figuring it out taking a lot of advice people
are saying hey you need to do this you need to do that and you hire somebody and then he calls his
friends and people he knows and and then and then everybody crews up like that
where and it was a full union show and and as when you're a union show they don't work for the
producers they work for their department head and and then and they work for the payroll company so
they're the employer record so you know sometimes they do what you say sometimes they don't
and so but we kept it together all together and it was but it was a good learning experience and and
if you have enough money it's fine you can bring people anyway and James Bond movies and X-Men they
film all over the world and they bring this whole big machine with them that's like a city
and they have to but you know if you have that kind of money that's what you do with it I guess
and then you create your own little bubble of your comfort wherever you go so in
but most people don't have that not an indie film have that kind of money and so
that money is usually not the best money spent if I'm honest and so was it after your first film as
the producer that you realize I don't need to go back to la or you had already made that decision
I mean go back to la for crew a crew is one thing or or to to piece together the
project and and pitch the idea maybe but in terms of living oh no no I realized no
I that we did a little piece of the movie in in LA the first movie La Línea the line
and the cost of that one week was astronomical in relation to what it was the rest of the four weeks
it's astronomical and so you realize why didn't we just do the whole film in Mexico why did we need
to go to long beach and shoot that scene and it was just the location costs and the permit costs
and everything are 10 times the amount so the like I said the the if they're the learning
moment the teachable moment in that would be to trusted the system and just take everything there
and do most of the things there and and put most of the stuff on the screen as opposed to
putting so much money into creating a like a bubble that makes everybody comfortable.
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