There’s a camcorder peeking out of the corner of a box in Alex’s (Ramiro Batista) old bedroom before he lays his eyes on it in “Fallen Fruit,” setting itself up to be a companion when few others present themselves. He’s back in his hometown of Miami after a brutal breakup he still doesn’t entirely know is over and leaving behind an ex also meant giving up on his college degree, the latter hardly pleasing his mother (Nicole Quintana), who is eager to get him out of the house. His childhood friend Sam (Krystal Millie Valdes) remains, but potentially not for long when work in Hollywood — the one across the country, not the state – beckons, and even after throwing a potential job opportunity his way by setting Alex up with her mother at a summer camp she runs, she still has to be concerned that Alex won’t be able to find his way.
When it doesn’t feel like there’s anyone that Alex can talk to, he ends up dusting off the camera that once belonged to his father to be able to confide in something, having no personal or professional direction when he’s at an age where it seems like he should have both. It not only is able to bring focus to his own life, but you suspect finding a camera also had an equally powerful effect on writer/director Chris Molina, who crafts a delicate comedy in his feature debut, observing Alex having to relieve the uncertainty of his teenage years when back under his parents’ roof without the promise that his life will get any better when left to his own devices. Woefully overwhelmed by even a handful of kids at the summer camp, Alex’s online searches lead him to a potential gig at a gay rights organization and a potential new beau (Austin Cassel), neither of which look like long-term answers, but enough in the short term to get him where he needs to go.
Set amidst the tempestuous weather of South Beach where the community is on hurricane watch, “Fallen Fruit” finds plenty stirring inside Alex despite his casual demeanor and while he seems to pass through life unmoved by any encounter, be it interactions with friends and family or his sexual dalliances with strangers (which Molina employs to great comic effect), the camera can reveal how it all is leaving a deep impression on him, ultimately privy to a chrysalis you can be assured that he’ll eventually find his way out of when Molina is able to look back with such wizened perspective. On the eve of the film’s premiere at the Miami Film Festival, the director and star of the film spoke about creating a compelling character study of someone lacking in motivation, how the making of the film became the story of a community and having a homecoming of its own now.
Chris, I know that this was in your head for about a decade before, but how’d this all come together for you?
Chris Molina: I was part of the Gotham program, where I had to workshop an idea with mentors, and I didn’t have an idea, so I pulled this one from the back of my hard drive, blew the dust off of it, and started working on it. And I realized as I was working on it that it had legs. As I started going, I [thought], “Wow, how beautiful would it be of one of the first ideas that I ever had for film was my first feature?” And then that’s what ended up happening.
It must be interesting to revisit something this raw and personal when you were older and then to cast someone as essentially a version of yourself. How much did you want to give to Ramiro versus letting him create his own character?
Ramiro Batista: Yeah, the first day I came in, I had a perfect Chris impression down and he said, “Oh no, you don’t have to do that.” [laughs]
Chris Molina: It’s one of those things that kind of having to trust myself in the past when I was writing it and that [Ramiro] knew what the tone was, so it all worked out, thankfully. There were things in the script that maybe had a different tone than we than we had when we were all actually on set because we found new jokes to put in or we found some new emotional depth to add in, so it was just a process.
Ramiro Batista: The first rehearsal when we did wardrobe, I feel like that’s when we established how we were going to work throughout the rest of the shoot, and it was clear that we understood each other, so it made it all easier to just trust our instincts and let the body do the work without working it too much.
Chris Molina: There was already so much of myself in [the film], I didn’t need to add more of myself in it. Also, one of the most exciting parts about filmmaking to me is the fact that it’s so collaborative and that I can work with so many different people. If I’m hiring Ramiro, it’s because Ramiro is a fantastic actor and I trust his instincts and when we were on set or rehearsing the script, it was like, “Okay, how do you feel about the way that this line is reading? Do you want to reword it? Do you feel like you would say something totally different?” And it was that way with Ramiro and everyone.
Ramiro Batista: And I didn’t know Chris before this, but I reached out very soon after I sent my [audition] tape saying that I was very interested in reading the rest of the script after he sent me some sides because the dialogue was great. Finding dialogue that is written the way people talk is very exciting and that’s what drew me to the to the script originally.
Once this started taking on a life of its own, were there directions it took that could get you excited?
Chris Molina: Yeah, one thing that really got me excited is that without realizing it, I had hired a bunch of actors that were improvisers. Austin [Cassel], who plays Chris, the romantic lead, is a crazy good improviser and every take would be different, but he brought something that was so unique and so special. We’ve had mutual friends for a while and he’s always been someone that’s been on my radar but I never got the chance to work with him, so when he asked to audition for this, I was super excited and then as we started to get to know each other, it was exciting because he just awoke in this love for improv for me and that’s one of those things that I’m taking away from the movie is the hope that I can incorporate more into my movies.
Then there were so many little jokes or little things that you love about that character in the movie because Ramiro added so many different quirks and different little funny moments. Same thing with the parents — the mom who’s played by Nicole [Quintana], she is actually my high school drama teacher. And I was a little worried going on to set how we would work together, but she’s someone who’s also a trained improviser, and she knows how this all works, so she and her husband [Ozzie Quintana], who also plays the husband in the movie, brought something totally cool to it. There’s so many moments between their characters that would only be there, one, because they’re trained improvisers, but also because they’re a real married couple who just naturally have these instincts together.
Does that keep you on your toes, Ramiro?
Ramiro Batista: Yeah, in a perfect way. It kept it alive, so it was very exciting to shoot. It was very exciting to do takes over and over and over. [laughs] I’m kidding. We didn’t, but it was very helpful.
Chris, besides your drama teacher, I get the sense you really pulled together a community to make this. What was the atmosphere like?
Chris Molina: It was so fun. Every day felt like summer camp because there were people that I went to film school with or people that go to my film school now. I have a friend who would call it like a “crossover episode,” because there’s like so many different parts of my life coming together. Carolina, one of our producers, I went to middle school with, and one of my best friends, Damian [Gutierrez], is a part of this band called Cannibal Kids, and he and his bandmate Eli [Feingold] did the soundtrack. It was really beautiful to get to be a part of.
Was there a particularly crazy day on set?
Chris Molina: Yeah, the weather in Miami is so unpredictable. It’s part of the plot, but there were quite a few days where we were delayed because of rain, and we had to take an extra lunch or our call time got pushed to later because the weather is unforgiving and can change at any moment.
Ramiro Batista: I do love an extra lunch, so the rain was always good. [laughs] It was very fun. It was warm. And my parents lived in Miami for a while, so in a way it felt like I was visiting them and that was very helpful for the movie too.
Chris, were there any locations in mind that you were really excited about utilizing in the city?
Chris Molina: Yeah, I made a conscious effort to use Miami locations that my friends and I would go to, and not so much the classic, big Michael Bay action movie [backdrops], not that those are bad, but those are like the classic Miami locations that everyone knows. I wanted the Matheson Hammock Park, and all these places that Miami people that have grown up in Miami would probably know and love.
What’s it having the premiere in Miami?
Ramiro Batista: It’s very scary and exciting. Whatever is to come with this movie is very exciting already. but all of what’s happened already makes me very happy and it’s been a wonderful experience. I’m really excited to watch the movie witheverybody that we shot the movie with.
Chris Molina: It’s insane. I never thought I would have been here. One of my first jobs in film was at the Miami Film Festival as a theater manager and I would see these people showing their first features and I would be so excited and hope that I could be there one day. But that was just one of those dreams that I thought could never happen. And now I’m here and it’s happening. I’m going to be a wreck on Friday, but I’m so excited and even to just be here feels like I’ve climbed Mount Everest. Everything else is just something extra. It’s all icing.
“Fallen Fruit” will screen at the Miami Film Festival on April 5th at 7:30 pm at the Coral Gables Art Cinema and April 10th at 9:30 pm at the Silverspot Cinema 11.
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