Hi, Stage 32!

I'm Eric Nazarian, filmmaker, screenwriter, and graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. I was the recipient of the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for my screenplay, Giants.

This is my overview on making and releasing independent films that have no choice but to get made by going against the prevalent grain of formulaic notions. It is time for us to rebuild the filmmaking system through a fresh and uncompromising ethos. The power to make cinema lies entirely within us.

Stories That Never Got Onto the Screen

So much beauty and so many killings flooded L.A. at the height of the hip-hop era in the ‘90s when I was growing up. The stories got buried. We got older. Even as an undergrad at USC School of Cinematic Arts, I knew in my heart that the streets were calling me to tell these stories that never got onto the screen. Writing the film came to me years after an initial inspiration of a very young teen gangster with pimples on a bicycle, pulling out a gun when he saw the mini DV camera I had from USC as I was getting ready to shoot some B-roll in downtown LA. I somehow managed to survive that through very nervous diplomacy by noticing the name of his gang tattooed on his neck and remembering two guys I went to school with from that neighborhood. Long story short — he peddled away, and I thank God to this day that things didn’t end any worse than they could have.

13 years later, that kid came to mind in the form of Freddy’s lead character that anchors Die Like a Man. The kid on a bike with a lot to prove to the world. What could possibly go wrong with a gun in his backpack? That was the seed that became my script for Die Like A Man, a rite of passage crime thriller about a teen on a bike with a gun and a lot to prove to the world that goes horribly wrong. Die Like a Man will be released theatrically on April 17 and digitally everywhere on April 25.

I wanted to make a film about what it means to be a “man” and the universal rites of passage that exist in patriarchal societies worldwide that are misguided yet tragically all to prevalent in the blood rite expected from boys to enter manhood through acts of violence, be they gangs or military. Freddy would be a teen, full of promise and dreams yet weighed down by the codes of violence that have dominated his patch in the West Los hood where Black and Brown communities have been living for generations long before gentrification. This was the world. I wrote the script fast and gritty from my heart. It needed to be authentic without any punches pulled. The feedback from my few trusted colleagues and mentors was unanimous: “You HAVE TO make this.” Now go.

The next phase, and the hardest for all fully independent films: money. The devil’s bloody due. How do we finance it?

The Path to Production is Laced with Bloody Footprints

...and so many near misses and landmines.

Finding the bread to make the film was a grind that took many years. I wanted to cast and shoot the film from the streets, with the streets, and for the rest of the world to understand the deeper layers of what masculinity means that crosses borders through film. I wanted only what I needed to make the film, which was a stripped-down budget and Neo-Realist style that favored naturalist acting and cinematic images that capture Freddy’s long journey into the dark of his soul and how we would survive…or not. We workshopped it at Forrest Whitaker’s JuntoBox, which was a lot of fun, then proceeded to hit the pavement looking for coin and sponsors to make the film.

After many failed attempts, the production came together in early 2020, then fell flat when we had to shut down due to COVID-19 in March of 2020. Another miscarriage. Another year spent hitting pause after SO MUCH pre-production and casting. Miguel Angel Garcia’s raw, brilliant, and disciplined approach to acting was incredibly committed. He was Freddy. I tailored the script to fit his soul and spirit, and it was just pure fire in the rehearsals we did. I wanted to cast from the streets and managed to bring together a new generation of system-impacted talents, including my mentee Omar Castanada and Berenice Valle, whose lives and experiences were deeply simpatico with Freddy’s journey and the ecosystem of the streets.

Rebuild and Recreate Our Independent Film Ecosystem

I had my cast, my crew, and the no-f***s-given chutzpah one needs to do-or-die and bring this film to life, come hell or high water. We shot at the height of Covid in LA, edited in Guadalajara with my cinematic brothers-in-arms Luis Guillermo Navarro and producing partner Paco Navarro, and finished the film in Warsaw, Poland, via Zoom with my wonderful DoP Piotr Sobocinski, Jr. and finishing team Mateusz Remberk and Dado Lukic. So many people I am deeply grateful to and will cover in a much longer interview.

Regardless of how harsh our times are, today, we must rebuild and recreate our independent film ecosystem. If there is an exception to the rule, then that rule is broken, bent, cracked, or meant to be changed. Everything we do in film that is unique and culturally resonant, at its best, is outside the box.

Sales companies and distributors are an ecosystem we are never truly taught about in film school as writer-directors. I learned the hard, cold facts that have no textbook through trial and tribulation. Independent filmmakers continuously take poundings as we sprout without enough meaningful outlets and distributors in our creation phase that can help build a sustainable financial model, so we don’t have to keep chopping off our toes to run production marathons without money.

“Survive Until ‘25”

Die Like a Man survived Covid-19, the WGA-SAG strikes that I was proudly an active member of, and the constriction of the industry last year that destroyed so much in our workforce as we kept saying “Survive until ‘25” before the fires of January and the new chaos we now battle through. I finished Die Like a Man in the middle of the Los Angeles tragic fires this January. When I started the film, I wanted to cover four bases in my approach to production and distribution: film literacy through filmmaking for underserved communities, social change, and bridging academia and activism.

The film’s guerrilla distribution needed to be designed theatrically to benefit our grassroots communities in LA and then hopefully key cities nationwide while we drop the film on VOD to build on the momentum of the first theatrical launch in L.A. This is the plan we developed. It took me 18 months to negotiate and decline partnering with multiple sales companies that had no skin in the game of my film, yet wanted to sell it with so many ridiculous costs added that would lead to a miserable outcome.

I said NO until the right model came along. I relied on myself, our community of filmmakers, cineastes, and social impact communities, mainly Father Greg Boyle at Homeboy Industries, Oscar De La Torre of Pico Youth and Family Center and so many who took a chance on me in this difficult time economically to care about film culture & our healing communities together. With that support, I raised the funds and my savings for the release of the film theatrically for one week at my friend Craig Hammill’s Secret Movie Club, an awesome film theater in DTLA, starting on April 18 - April 24.

I hope to see you there for an experience you will not forget and animated conversations about how we can continue making films and helping independent cinema thrive together.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Got an idea for a post? Or have you collaborated with Stage 32 members to create a project? We'd love to hear about it. Email Ashley at blog@stage32.com and let's get your post published!

Please help support your fellow Stage 32ers by sharing this on social. Check out the social media buttons at the top to share on Instagram @stage32 , Twitter @stage32 , Facebook @stage32 , and LinkedIn @stage-32 .