Only
it's 2004 now, and the daydream is reality. Briers' first full-length feature
film, "In Your Eyes" -- shot in his hometown of Oxnard and dealing with roiling
racial issues there based on an incident in his own life -- is being screened
at the Santa Barbara Film Festival on Sunday night. Heady stuff for sure, but
if his story is an overnight sensation, it's one that took 10 years to germinate.
"To see it on the big screen,
I might just pass out that night," Briers said as a smile broke across his normally
studious face during an interview last week at his Ventura production office.
"Butterflies?! I got bees in my stomach. It's going to be hard to sit there. ...
I haven't had so much pressure ever -- but it feels good." It
was a rare burst of giddy, boyish enthusiasm from someone who talks in earnest
terms about his new movie and his grand desire to create a film, music and entertainment
empire in Ventura County. We don't need the Hollywood studios, he says; we have
the talent, the backdrops, a film commission, the organization here.
But
that's out in the future, pie-in-the-sky thinking. Right now, he has a movie to
finish -- and Briers suddenly sounded like any grizzled veteran filmmaker trying
to get the final product in the can. As writer, producer and director, Briers
dealt with it all -- conjuring the story, hiring the cast, getting a crew, obtaining
money and maintaining a budget.
Filming
of "In Your Eyes" started only in November and wrapped Jan. 13. He hadn't planned
on getting it out until March or April, but when the Santa Barbara Film Festival
offers a coveted screening slot and you're a first-timer, you don't pass it up
... and you rush.
"It's
nerve-wracking because I'm not done," Briers said. "If anything, it's taught me
what a deadline is. Being able to get to this point also has let me know that
this is truly what I want to do. Being able to physically go through this grind,
I know I can handle a bigger-budget movie."
He
is quick to credit others for helping see it through -- his crew, his production
team, longtime partner and co-producer Jorge Ramirez Jr., and the friends who
came up with money at the last minute to speed it along.
Briers,
30, who now lives in Ventura, bills "In Your Eyes" as a tragic, "Romeo and Juliet"-style
love story set against the gritty urban realism of a Spike Lee film. This is not
an accident -- Briers studied Shakespeare in college and is a big fan of Lee and
how he handles racial issues in his movies.
The
"In Your Eyes" script was written eight years ago. It tells the story of an African-American
man named Yusef who falls in love with a Latino woman named CeCe, only to encounter
opposition from the girl's father, Sergio, who forbids them from dating because
of Yusef's skin color.
That
part of the film closely mirrors an incident in Briers' life. During his senior
year at Hueneme High School, where Briers was student body president, he began
dating a Latino girl. The two had been friends for a long time, played together
and even went to the prom together, but when the girl's father found out they
were dating seriously, he told his daughter he was opposed because of Briers'
skin color.
"That threw
me for a loop," Briers recalled. "It was a bad experience. Literally, the next
day she said, 'I can't see you because you're black.' I was like, 'When I came
to your house to play, it was OK, so why not now?' That was the first time I really
knew what racism was all about."
Though
the girl defied her dad for awhile, she and Briers eventually drifted apart.
Growing
up in Oxnard, Briers had the occasional brush with racism -- whenever a kid called
him the n-word, "I'd punch him" -- but said he grew out of that quickly, before
he was out of elementary school. He credits that to his parents, who told him
he shouldn't judge people by their skin color or return fire with fire.
For
the most part, though, he avoided overt racism ... until that day his girlfriend
told him she couldn't see him anymore.
The
incident still angers Briers, but, as he put it, "I didn't let it stop me."
He
also pointed out that he's seen the flip side of it. His wife, Rosie, is Latino,
and her family welcomed and embraced him. He and Rosie have a 10-month-old son,
Miles.
In his movie, Briers
uses the relationship between the black kid and the girl's father as a fulcrum
for looking at racial issues. His message is simple: In places such as Oxnard,
where minorities are in the majority and people mix, "we all have to get along."
But Briers also was conscious
of not making a film that reinforced stereotypes about blacks and Latinos -- such
aspects as violence, gangs and such. So while the movie doesn't skimp on street
life and language, the love angle is also played up. The "In Your Eyes" title
comes from the idea that everyone in the movie realizes the couple are in love,
except the girl's father. The film's message is that love should have no color.
Briers also plans to release
a book of his own romantic poetry with the movie, noting that he holds both English
and film degrees from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The
film was shot almost entirely in Oxnard -- from Colonia to the beaches, from the
Pacific Coast Highway to inside the Oxnard Police Department's jail cells, in
friends' homes and mall parking lots.
"I
knew," Briers said, "that I would always make my first film in Oxnard."
True
to his hometown, he also was true to his homies. He used local actors and crew
in the film -- blacks, Latinos, whites, Asians. The movie's soundtrack features
songs from local hip-hop bands. Two of them, Nevamind and Terminal Madness, will
perform live at the Sunday night screening.
Briers
also roped a few name actors into the cast, among them Caleeb Pinkett, who is
Jada's brother, and Michael DeLorenzo, who starred in the late 1990s Fox series
"New York Undercover."
A
few connections haven't hurt his film or its exposure. Briers and Caleeb Pinkett's
girlfriend were friends in high school. One of his production team members also
happened to frequent a Santa Barbara coffeehouse owned by one of the film festival's
shakers. When the team member started talking up Briers' film there, script and
film footage were forwarded, and soon a screening slot was offered.
The
road to the director's chair for Briers started in 1993. At the time, he was an
economics major at UCSB, though hardly enthused about it. Then his biological
father died (Briers also has a stepfather), and "I found myself not able to daydream
anymore." Like the character in the film "Stand By Me," Briers had been a daydreamer,
telling his friends about movies he had imagined -- something he had done since
he saw some of Lee's movies as a kid.
So
Briers decided to pursue the dreams. He quit school, got a job as a page at Paramount
Studios in Los Angeles and started studying film seriously. He returned home in
1995 and got a degree in television production from Oxnard College, where he learned
how to set up lights and cameras, and manage a stage.
He
then went back to UCSB and enrolled in its well-regarded film school. He studied
such director luminaries as Lee, Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick
and Quentin Tarantino, taking notes on how they set up scenes and arranged a movie.
Briers finished up there
in 2000 and went on to shoot a few shorts and music videos in relative obscurity.
He founded a short-lived record label, though he has resurrected it under a new
name, tlduso records, for the release of the "In Your Eyes" soundtrack.
It's
these kind of things, plus his experience making "In Your Eyes," that leads Briers
to all this ambitious talk about a local entertainment empire in Ventura County.
Latinos, blacks and others, he believes, can come together through entertainment
and perhaps overcome some differences.
"A
friend asked me why I want to be a filmmaker and I said, 'Movies shape our culture,'
" he said.
Having said
all this, Briers said his next movie will be shot in Mississippi -- though he
promises to bring locals along. But that's next year. The rest of this year, Briers
figures he'll be attending more film festivals, plugging his movie. He also wants
"In Your Eyes" to be released in Ventura County theaters.
Briers
figures he had better develop a thick skin.
"For
the first time, I'm going to get opened up, I'm going to be criticized," he said.
"I'm wondering if I'm going to get swamped, or if people are going to like it.
If it does well, I could get a big movie."
To
paraphrase an old Tom Petty line, his future is wide open.
"Yes,
it's a controversial movie and yes, it's a racially oriented movie, but sometimes
that's what it takes to start the spark," Briers said. "And they always said the
easiest stories to write about for your first film are something you know. And
this is something I know."
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