Among Thieves is a thesis film project written and directed by Jesus Jimenez. You might have heard his name in my previous blog, as he is also the playwright of the play August 5th, 1962 in which I was fortunate to perform last month.
Meet my character “Scarlet the babe” on location. Photo by Casey Nicholas Price.
With Gabriel Guzman (Audio), Zev Lerner, Jesus Jimenez (Director/Writer), and Philip Behnam (Director of Photography). Photo by Casey Nicholas Price.
I was introduced to Jesus through his script, Among Thieves. His producer, Monica Nguyen reached out to me as fellow actor Eric Casalini thought of me to be cast to play the role of the mother (aka Scarlet the Babe) in it. I’m so glad Eric introduced me to them in the first place and I got to read the script early because if it had been only through a breakdown for the role, I would have been questioning my meeting with a potential psychopath! Let me explain why to you, the script if I may say is very controversial and also kind of pointing at some real questionable topics out there. So it gets the Wow! The Oh no! The this is so wrong! Out of your mouth while being reminded that these types of characters exist in a not always so perfect world and it is simply pointing at it which makes it very uncomfortable. Think of a Quentin Tarantino type of vibe.
With Director/Writer Jesus Jimenez tuning the character of Scarlet on the spot. Photo by Casey Nicholas Price.
Back to auditioning, the time came to audition for the part of Scarlet (a questionable mother of an adorable 8 year old scout girl, Gabby. Scarlet seems to have an “on and off” switch button of intense irritability and humanness).
Scarlet and the adorable and talented Gabby on location.
The appointment happened on the terrace of a public place: Starbucks! Excited to read for a part that is far from vanilla, I was wondering what Jesus Jimenez would be like. I had seen his work in the short film Pigs (also a very interesting short), a current selection at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival 2015.
Jesus is all smiles, grateful, full of contagious joie de vivre, creative director/writer whose major thrill is to make movies and plays! And I heard amazing cocktails too (he bartends so he can make movies for now)!
Scarlet by her broken car figuring out how to get out of there. Photo by Casey Nicholas Price.
The life of this project is just starting in the festival circuit so I won’t say more beside that the tag line for it is: Looks can be deceiving.
Poster of Among Thieves by Jesus Jimenez.
Jesus just graduated from SDSU! I’m looking forward to watch his work evolve and I hope I’ll get the chance to shoot with him again in the future, hopefully on the feature version of Among Thieves that he just completed writing.
To be continued. Thanks, Caroline
CaroLine Style 