First thoughts for The Road to Celaya

I formed this blog in order to serve as a way of documenting what happens throughout the process of making The Road to Celaya movie. But also to jot down ideas, personal comments as the director of the movie, as well as any editing or artistic perspectives.

The Road to Celaya (El Camino a Celaya) is a short film I am finishing writing, and will film no later than November of 2007. Even when I was not sure of the title, I thought it would best describe what the movie is all about. After all, it is a road movie genre. If all plans work out well, it will be finished and edited by December 2007.

The Road to Celaya in a nutshell is an original story of how events might have unfolded before and during the attack on Celaya's gas pipes last summer by the subversive Mexican guerrilla group, the EPR.

This means that all events and characters are fictional, except the end result, the explosions at Celaya by EPR guerrilla members. Who they were? We don't know, except they claimed to be EPR. What they did before the attack? We also ignore the facts, because they are secretive, for obvious reasons. How many were they? We also ignore it. What did they used? By press and government releases, we know it was done with explosive devices. They used the explosive devices in part from a quantity of "salchichas" (weiners) stolen from San Luis Potosi. They are known as weiners because of the form resembles a hot dog frank.

There was no open casting. Contrary to what I did with my previous short, Yaocihuatl, I went to select the actors from a tight theater student group. I want to rely on images, this means on actors abilities to express emotions and messages. Very different from Yaocihuatl, on which I relied in Mexican Indigenous history (contrary to Mel Gibson's Apocalypto) and in visuals such as combat and costumes. This times is different.

As of now I am missing only one master scene in The Road To Celaya's screenplay, what I call the Pharmacy scene which will serve as a flashback in the story.

There will be two male characters, which will be the leading actors. Thus, the guerrilleros.
There will be two male characters as soldiers.
One female character, which will be raped by the Mexican soldiers in the second flashback scene.
One male, who will be the buzon movil, or mobile mail. In guerrilla lingo this guy is the "contact" or "messenger".

Now here comes the problem. For the pharmacy scene I originally though the following characters.
Obviously one male of the leading actors... but an additional male as an ill family member and another additional male as the rude pharmacist. What if, instead of using too many male actors, I use females? For example, one female to be the ill family member, and a young female to be the rude pharmacist. Here's the problem, I already selected my actors and actress. This means that I will have to kick male actors and get female actors. If selecting was tedious for me, because all are great performers, it will be worst for me to go there and say kick guys out of a project, and get in females that I didn't consider them in the first place. I know, some people are just naturals when casting. I'm not. For me, I'ts the nightmarish part of the process of preproduction.