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Planeta and Wavey, two designers tapping into the shared language of L.A. and Mexico City

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Planeta and Wavey, two designers tapping into the shared language of L.A. and Mexico City

This story is part of Image’s September Image Makers issue, celebrating some of the most daring and innovative artists working in fashion today.

Eric Solis describes his photos as “cyberghetto,” “flow 2000s,” “raver chic.” Models wearing cargos layered with neon mesh shorts, stand among the rims at a car lot, using a purse inspired by one. Remixed plaid jorts. A durag with a blinged-out butterfly bikini top. Club kid platforms accessorized with ripped black tights. The concept: Moda sin fronteras. Solis, an L.A. native who now lives in Mexico City, where much of his family is from, wanted the photos to tell a story about the connection between two brands — L.A.-based Planeta and Mexico City-based Wavey — and in a larger sense, to “blur the lines between how people perceive what fashion is, or how it should look, in both the contexts of L.A. and Mexico.”

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For Solis — a multi-hyphenate who works as an architect, event producer, photographer, art director and creative consultant, among other things — this project was an opportunity to capture the conversation he sees happening between Mexico City and L.A. in terms of fashion and style, in a way that felt expansive and not necessarily confined by gender or culture. The models themselves are young people who are mostly from Mexico City (or live there) spanning queer, trans and Indigenous communities that Solis met through fashion shows. The entire team — from the stylist Tuzza to the hair artist Ozmar Báez — was an intentional part of the conversation he was trying to create through the clothes and photos, he says.

Solis was thinking about the dichotomy of the two communities in L.A. and Mexico City, and at least in terms of style, how they were taking from each other and presenting it in new ways. He wanted to take what he was seeing and present it so that it wasn’t L.A. style, wasn’t Mexico City style, but was a hybrid of both.

Genesis wears Planeta neon mesh top and hunting pants, Wavey snakeskin bikini top.
LA MODA SIN FRONTERAS @wavey.mx + @planeta.losangeles Concept / Casting / Art Direction / Fotografia @eric_solis Styling

Genesis wears Planeta neon mesh top and hunting pants, Wavey snakeskin bikini top.

The shoot acted as a catalyst for a pop-up called “No Hablamos Inglés” that Solis is curating on Sept. 21 at Planeta’s DTLA store. He is bringing the work of more than 20 emerging Mexican designers — spotlighting a scene of alternative, young, queer artists who are morphing how we think about Mexican style — including Palida Studios, Tlacuache Muerto and Resurrected. The name is important; for Solis it stands for cultural pride and community: “Sometimes, Mexicans on the Mexico side feel like they should learn English to better their lives or to be better in business, but this is almost like a saying of defiance. It’s almost rebellious: ‘No Hablamos Inglés.’”

This project is also Solis’ contribution to an ongoing conversation artists have been sparking between L.A. and Mexico for years, chief among them artist and curator Anita Herrera. From the beginning, Herrera has infused her practice with the mission of finding the connection and disconnections between L.A. and Mexico. Her ongoing series, “Diaspora Dialogues,” has consistently used fashion as a medium to explore these topics — as has much of Herrera’s work; she went to fashion school and started her career in the fashion industry.

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Israel wears Wavey zig-zag top, beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom earring.
LA MODA SIN FRONTERAS @wavey.mx + @planeta.losangeles THE EDITORIAL EDITION Concept / Casting / Art Direction / Fotografia @eric_solis Styling @tuzza_style Hair @_chunkymonky @bdealersmx Maquillaje @li__y0rk Production Assist @proper_d_ Modelxs @elli_x_ @ggenesixx__ @galiccian @axelflooress @groser_o @li__y0rk

Israel wears Wavey zig-zag top, bejeweled beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom reflector earring.

Solis met Herrera through helping with “Diaspora Dialogues” and met the founders of Planeta at one of Herrera’s exhibitions in Mexico City, “A Través de la Moda,” where she displayed personal pieces from her closet that drew from images and symbols that Mexican Americans hold dear — La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Aztec calendar — “as an exploration of history, myths and novelties between L.A. and Mexico City,” Herrera says. Planeta, founded by designers Hoza Rodriguez and Richard Resendez, has an IYKYK cult-like kind of status among the fashion people, artists and club kids who wear it. Their work is best recognized by the magic they do with upcycling — flannel shirts layered on top of baggy denim become a new genre entirely, something from the future. When they went to Mexico City for the exhibition and were able to see the city through the eyes of Solis and Herrera (Rodriguez and Herrera have been friends since 2009, when they were both starting their careers in the fashion industry), something clicked. “Everything’s unisex,” Rodriguez says of the style he observed in Mexico. “And I learned that they are not influenced by us, we are influenced by them.”

Wavey, a Mexico City brand and store founded by Talulah Rodriguez-Anderson in 2018, makes the kind of things you might wear at a rave on the beach. It’s always been dedicated to communicating its clothing as unisex. Rodriguez-Anderson grew up in L.A. and was inspired by her visual experiences and memories on both sides of the border when starting her brand. The brand’s store, in Colonia Juárez, carries this same energy, with its aesthetic drawing from the cargo trailers that go from Mexico City to the States. A Wavey piece borrows from Chicano silhouettes and images, told through a Mexican streetwear lens — the latter of which Rodriguez-Anderson says is “evolving very quickly.”

LA MODA SIN FRONTERAS @wavey.mx + @planeta.losangeles Concept / Casting / Art Direction / Fotografia @eric_solis Styling

Jorge, left, wears Wavey MX* T-shirt, Planeta jersey work shirt and Planeta checkered Dickies shorts. Axel wears Wavey mariposa bikini top, Planeta plaid block shorts.

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Axel wears Wavey mariposa bikini top, Planeta plaid block shorts.
Jorge wears Wavey MX* T-shirt, Planeta jersey work shirt and Planeta checkered Dickies shorts.

Solis wanted to highlight Planeta and Wavey because they felt like family in his mind — with a shared ethos, a look that felt like it was drawing from similar references. “To me, they’re like siblings, they’re like cousins,” Solis says. “They sort of talk to each other in terms of their style.” This is shown in the styling of one of the models, Jorge, who wears reworked checkered Dickies shorts from Planeta pointing to an early-2000s L.A. skater aesthetic, and a blinged-out shirt with the initials “MX” from Wavey as a nod to Mexico City. “It’s a new aesthetic,” Solis says. “It’s not California, it’s not quite Mexican. But it’s both, it’s something else.”

With the shoot, and with the pop-up, Solis says he wanted to show a “cross-section of Mexican youth, real Mexican youth.” He chose Colonia Juárez for the location, specifically an area that’s home to many auto body shops, because it felt true to where these looks would actually be worn. The environment and the clothes are in communion with each other, Solis says. “I also wanted to shoot it in a location that was authentically Mexican. Whereas I feel like La Condesa, or Roma, it can feel foreign, almost.”

“For me, that shoot, when I look at it, it brings some sort of happiness and some sort of truth of who we are as Latinos, as the LGBTQ community, and as human beings,” says Planeta co-founder Rodriguez, also the founder of L.A. brand Hologram City. “When I see that, it makes me happy to know what we really are: we’re talented, we’re creative, we look like superheroes, we’re the s—.”

LA MODA SIN FRONTERAS @wavey.mx + @planeta.losangeles Concept / Casting / Art Direction / Fotografia @eric_solis

Ellie, left, wears Planeta button-up jersey shirt and biker vest, Wavey skirt, Tuzza custom rim bag. Israel, center, wears Wavey zig-zag top, beanie, acid cargo pants, chrome fanny pack, Planeta neon mesh shorts, Tuzza custom earring. Li, right, wears Planeta baby button-up shirt, Wavey purple flame dress, pink & white flame dress, snakeskin top, Tuzza custom reflector earrings.

Li wears Planeta baby button-up shirt, Wavey purple flame dress, pink & white flame dress, snakeskin top, Tuzza earrings.
Ellie wears Planeta button-up jersey shirt and biker vest, Wavey skirt, Tuzza custom rim bag.

Even as an architect, Solis has always worked in creative or community realms. He was on the team of designers for the 6th Street Bridge — and curated the art, photography and architecture exhibit “Nuestre Puente,” in collaboration with Estevan Oriol, in celebration of the bridge’s opening. He’s also one of the founders of the DTLA Proud festival. When he moved to Mexico City, he wanted to find a way to blend his obsession with fashion, art and culture, and embed himself into the creative community there as much as possible. Solis frequents Tianguis La Lagunilla once a month, which is where he says he came to really understand Mexico City’s fashion youth culture and meet some of the brands he’s bringing to L.A.

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“Moving to Mexico City four years ago and really starting to understand by living here and building community here, [I realized] how our communities are not quite as connected as they could be because of those political, policy barriers that separate communities,” Solis says. “I have a whole circle of friends here in Mexico City that are artists, designers. They have their own brands, very integrated in the creative community here, and many, almost all of my friends who want to expose their brand or expose themselves as artists in the United States, they can’t — because they literally can’t go.” He wants to create connections for these Mexican designers, and allow the people of L.A. to experience their work. As a Mexican and U.S. citizen, Solis feels like he’s able to bridge the two sides — bringing Mexican designers to L.A. through their artistry, even if they’re not able to come here themselves.

The collection of designers that Solis is bringing to his L.A. pop-up this month conjures some key phrases for him: “It’s queer as in f— you.” “Barrio bratz.” “Sin género.” “Mexa-core.” The designers include Ese Chico, known for its irreverent graphic T-shirts and slogan: “Locura sin piedad,” or “madness without piety” — Herrera included it in her “A Través de la Moda” exhibition when she brought it to L.A. earlier this year. Another is Squid, a brand “inspired by nature” that transforms garments through upcycling, airbrush and screen printing into one-of-a-kind works of art. It was crucial for Solis that the pop-up captured this moment in Mexico City’s fashion scene, which he describes as “infinite.”

Jorge Líos of Palida Studios — a brand with a style Líos describes as a balance of elegance and deterioration — is a native of Nezahualcoyotl, an area about an hour outside of Mexico City. The spirit of Mexico City’s street-level fashion scene is a mix of “vulgar, atrevido y chido,” he says. “Como que la gente justo está desmitificando esta idea de que lo que debes de usar solamente son marcas gabachas y ya está volteando a ver marcas Mexicanas. Sobre todo, la escena está construyendo o reafirmando la identidad de ser Mexicano.” (That is, people are demystifying the idea that you should only use foreign brands and are turning to Mexican brands. The Mexico City scene is building up and reaffirming Mexican identity.) Since he was a kid, it was Líos’ dream to travel to L.A. or New York. He loves hip-hop and was inspired by the music culture in both cities. The fact that he is now traveling to L.A. through his designs and that they’re reaching a new audience that might be moved by them? “Es una locura.”

The list of L.A.’s sister cities includes Salvador, Brazil; Busan, South Korea; Berlin; and, of course, Mexico City. For Solis, it’s more than just a connection or conversation: there are familial ties. “The shared passion through fashion is something that really connects us and really unites us,” he says. “I’ve begun to see how fashion can actually build an identity that is of neither place, but is of both places.”

Production Eric Solis
Models Axel, Ellie, Genesis, Israel, Jorge, Li
Makeup Beauty Dealers
Hair Ozmar Báez
Production assist Dennis Caasi

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LA MODA SIN FRONTERAS @wavey.mx + @planeta.losangeles Concept / Casting / Art Direction / Fotografia @eric_solis Styling
Planeta Wavey

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‘Fireworks’ wins Caldecott, Newbery is awarded to ‘All the Blues in the Sky’

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‘Fireworks’ wins Caldecott, Newbery is awarded to ‘All the Blues in the Sky’

Fireworks, by Matthew Burgess and illustrated by Cátia Chien has won the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, and All the Blues in the Sky, written by Renée Watson has been awarded the Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature.

Clarion Books; Bloomsbury Children’s Books


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Clarion Books; Bloomsbury Children’s Books

The best books for children and young adults were awarded the country’s top honors by the American Library Association on Monday.

Illustrator Cátia Chien and author Matthew Burgess took home the Caldecott Medal for the book Fireworks. The Caldecott is given annually to the most distinguished American picture book for children. Fireworks follows two young siblings as they eagerly await the start of a July 4th fireworks show. Paired with Chien’s vibrant illustrations, Burgess’ poetic language enhances the sensory experience of fireworks.” When you write poems with kids, you see how immediately they get this,” Burgess told NPR in 2025 in a conversation about his book Words with Wings and Magic Things. “If you read a poem aloud to kids, they start to dance in their seats.”

The Newbery Medal, awarded for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature, went to Renée Watson for All the Blues in the Sky. This middle-grade novel, also told in verse, follows 13-year-old Sage, who struggles with grief following the death of her best friend. Watson is also the author of Piecing Me Together, which won the 2018 Coretta Scott King Award and was also a Newbery Medal honor book. “I hope that my books provide space for young people to explore, and say, “Yeah, I feel seen,” Watson told NPR in 2018. “That’s what I want young people to do — to talk to each other and to the adults in their lives.”

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This year’s recipients of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards include Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes (author award) and The Library in the Woods, by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (illustrator award). Arriel Vinson’s Under the Neon Lights received the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent.

Los Angeles based artist Kadir Nelson was honored with the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has appeared in more than 30 children’s books.

This year’s Newbery Honor Books were The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli, by Karina Yan Glaser; A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez by María Dolores Águila and The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri.

Caldecott Honors books were Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan, Our Lake by Angie Kang, Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale from a Little Cave by Drew Beckmeyer, and Sundust by Zeke Peña.

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Edited by Jennifer Vanasco and Beth Novey.

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What if Black boys in L.A. were afforded the grace to dream?

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What if Black boys in L.A. were afforded the grace to dream?

In the soundtrack of his youth, Walter Thompson-Hernández and his friends liked to devise a game of escape. Extending their arms in a v-formation at their side, they would race down the street on weekend afternoons imagining the freedom of the airplanes soaring across the blue infinity of their Huntington Park neighborhood.

Thompson-Hernández never lost that sense of dreaming. This month, he made his feature-length debut at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival with “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” a film of audacious sight and attentive storytelling that unfolds from the perspective of its protagonist Lil Ant, a Watts-raised, 12-year-old obsessed with airplanes and Greek mythology. Where coming-of-age stories often confront the crush of innocence — the fracture and shock of stolen virtue — Thompson-Hernández instead renders one about preservation. A preservation, in part, held together by Lozita (Danielle Brooks), a mom and wife working to keep her family whole now that Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is home from prison.

The film isn’t trying to absorb or recklessly mirror the traumas of the Black family so much as make a case for its nuance. In “If I Go,” Thompson-Hernández scraps the three-act structure for something more novelistic, a risk that a lesser director might have fumbled but one he turns into a profound taxonomy on grace. It is a story that interrogates — with a searching and brutal tenderness — the how, why and who of our emotional being. Even as Lil Ant yearns to be closer to his father, what the film doesn’t do is beg you to empathize with the conditions that its characters war against; instead, it demands that you simply acknowledge their presence, their wounds and their dreaming.

Director Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Walter Thompson-Hernández, director of “If I Go Will They Miss Me.”

(Michael “Cambio” Fernandez)

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Thompson-Hernández’s cinematic canvas recalls a Los Angeles rarely afforded witness on screen. You won’t find any wasted thinking about the tired pathologies of urban decay; the film takes pleasure in depicting Black Angelenos in the fullness of their complexity, celebrating the toil and wonder of how people come together and fall apart, of how love is broken and remade. “There’s already a lyricism that exists in each of our lives,” he tells me. “In how we speak, in how our bodies move through the world, and how we touch each other. I’m sensitive to that.”

Though today he primarily works in the medium of film, Thompson-Hernández has a kaleidoscopic approach to craft. A former journalist for the New York Times, he’s as comfortable writing about the legacy of Black cowboys in Southern California (his 2020 book, “The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America’s Urban Heartland,” was a New York Times bestseller) as he is directing a Beats By Dre commercial for the Super Bowl or shooting a sports documentary for Netflix. In 2025, his Portuguese-language film “Kites” — a story about personal reclamation in favelas of Rio de Janeiro — won the Special Jury Mention for Viewpoints at the Tribeca Film Festival. What Thompson-Hernández’s art so easily dispels, no matter the genre it finds a home in, are all the knotty, misguided and trite representations of otherness in our contemporary world. He is a seer of the unseen.

On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"

(Vladimir Santos) (Kemal Cilengir)

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Jason Parham: A major theme in the film wrestles with what it means to find your place at home when you return. Was that a personal story?

Walter Thompson-Hernández: So much happens to the figures in our lives who travel away from us and eventually come back home. Thematically, this movie is about flight and transportation — both the physical flights that one takes, but also the emotional and spiritual flights. Big Ant, the father [character], returns after doing a stint in prison, but what his son sees as a Grecian 10-year war. That’s been my relationship to so many of the men who I grew up around.

JP: How so?

WTH: They would be gone for a while and we wouldn’t know where they would be. Then they would just show up after two or three or four years. We’d ask questions. It would be, “So-and-so was locked up or “So-and-so had to go away for a while but now he’s back.” Greek mythology became a North Star for understanding very complicated characters in my own life.

JP: Why was that sense of imagination important to explore?

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WTH: The aperture from which I lived my life was very small. It was a very contained world that only existed around a few geographic locations and a few blocks. Eventually I was able to leave. But very few of us get to make it out. Which is a weird sentence — get to make it out — because so many people want to be here and come here all the time. But there are those of us that got the chance to travel and to essentially fly. The older I got, the more I realized how small my world was as a child, but also how expansive and imaginative it was. In Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book “Between the World and Me,” there’s a passage that I always think about. I’m paraphrasing, but he tells his son something to the extent of — James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, those are yours. And then he says Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and Simone de Beauvoir — listing all these European artists and thinkers — those are also yours. I’m extending that care and grace to the boy in this movie. A lot of us, we don’t get to dream in that way as Black or brown boys in L.A.

Freeway system in Los Angeles
On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On the set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On the set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me." Thompson-Hernandez on the right.

JP: What did young Walter dream about?

WTH: Our home was right in between both LAX flight paths. The sound of these airplanes is something that I’ll never forget. My mom and aunts still live in that neighborhood. When I go back, I forget how strong the sound of the airplanes are, how abrasive and all-encompassing. As a child, I was drawn to the mystery of them — where they were coming from and where they were going. I would imagine who was in them. My friends and I, we made up games where we would race airplanes on our bikes or we’d sprint down the block extending our arms. They had this power over us. The movie is me making sense of that mystery and beauty while also understanding that I have asthma because of them.

JP: You’re referring to the health complications people suffer from in areas downwind of the flight paths.

WTH: Cancer rates and asthma are so prevalent among the people who I grew up around. There is an irony in airplanes. On one hand, we can dream about them and all the places they can take us, but the tangible effects are that they are harming us. Jet fuelers, all those things. As children, how do we wrestle with those complex ideas, while on the ground wrestling with complex ideas about adolescence, about our parents. To say growing up under the LAX flight path is a complicated experience, there’s so much truth in that. Taking the mythology of these airplanes and applying that to the mythology that we create about adults in our lives is something that I hope people really feel in this movie.

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JP: There are a lot of smart technical choices in the film, from the sound to the set design. Who were your influences?

WTH: I could reference films like “Killer of Sheep” or “The Battle of Algiers” or “Gummo” or “He Got Game”; there’s a list of at least 50 movies. But there’s something about looking at a Jacob Lawrence painting that offers me the biggest inspiration in terms of the dexterity and freedom and elasticity of Black bodies in space. There’s something about painting as a medium for me that lives outside of the limits of photography and film. There aren’t a lot of barriers and boundaries to how painters experience the world. Whether it’s Jacob Lawrence or Henry Taylor or Winfred Rembert or Kerry James Marshall. I obviously study literature, photography and film, but painting is where I go for ideas around framing and composition.

On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"
On set of "If I Go Will They Miss Me"

(Vladimir Santos)

JP: The film plays with different interpretations of light. How would you describe your relationship to light?

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WTH: I am so drawn to natural lighting. I’m drawn to patient frames. Usually the frame is a middle shot or a wide shot. And there’s inserts and close-ups sometimes, but I feel very confident in the way that we stage and we block the scene. I feel confident that the information is gonna exist on screen. When I was a journalist at the New York Times, I didn’t just write everything, I also photographed everything I worked on. In terms of creating a visual language, I feel very, very comfortable framing and creating compositions in film. A lot of times you watch movies that feel over-lit. There’s too much information that we are able to gather. Working with our cinematographer, Michael Fernandez, we trust the audience so much, almost too much. If something feels a bit darker, if something is not lit in a way that feels a little too highly produced, I trust that someone will still be able to recognize and find the truth and honesty in every frame.

JP: So much so that L.A. begins to feel like its own character. Was there a certain story — one that hasn’t been told about the city — that you wanted to illuminate?

WTH: So many of us grew up watching ’90s L.A. movies: “South Central,” “Menace II Society,” “Friday.” All the Chicano gangster movies, “Blood In Blood Out.” There was also “Heat.” There’s so many movies about Los Angeles in the ’90s that really got L.A. in a way that most modern day movies about Los Angeles don’t. Something happened along the way where people who weren’t from L.A. started to make movies about Los Angeles. It felt a bit tropey often. It created a checklist. “Oh, it needs a lowrider. It needs a palm tree. It needs perfect orange, cotton candy lighting.” It feels kinda corny, if I’m being honest. For a lot of us, I don’t have to tell you that this movie is set in L.A. You feel it, you hear it.

JP: Yes, you hear it. I appreciated how the sonic texture — whether it was a Nate Dogg track or radio spots from Power 106 — helped ground the viewer not only in what they were witnessing, but why.

WTH: Sonically, I’m having a conversation in this movie about how this once-primarily Black community set in Nickerson Gardens in Watts was once over 90% Black, today is over 80% Latino. Which is a real conversation about change, about how Black people have been getting pushed out for generations, but also a complex story about immigration. It’s not always violence, there’s also peace and all this other stuff. The way I explore that is through sound and music. If you notice, this family, the Harris family, they hear a lot of Spanish-language music coming from a neighbor’s home, coming from the outside. There’s a version of that that feels more soapboxy, where I’m telling somebody in dialogue or in the scene that this community was once Black and it’s almost no longer Black. For me, it just felt more interesting to hear that. We’re hearing a Mexican ice cream truck and all these other things. That’s also telling us that this family is experiencing demographic change.

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Inside one of the rooms on set
Walter Thompson-Hernandez directing

JP: If we can, I want to talk about the state of Hollywood —

WTH: It was so hard to get this movie made, man. It was a challenge. If I’m being incredibly honest with you, I think there was a run beginning in 2020 or so, where a lot of people felt the urge and maybe pressure to support movies made by women and people of color.

JP: Without question.

WTH: And people were supported in ways that were incredible. But for one reason or another, some of those movies didn’t do too well. They didn’t make the money back, which we can sit here and debate about why that happened. I tried to make this movie at the tail end of that run of support. Everyone in Hollywood loved the script. Everyone in Hollywood loved me. Everyone said, “Hey man, we love this. And we love you so much. But we supported something similar a year or two ago and we’re not doing that anymore.” I heard that so much, and from people that would surprise you. Then, in 2023, I got involved in the Sundance Catalyst program. The program invites financiers to finance eight independent movies. [“If I Go”] really took a lot of support and a lot of effort from people who believed in me and believed in the script. It was an interesting time to make an independent movie about a Black family from Los Angeles.

JP: Does the reality of industry have any bearing on the art you want to create versus the art it’s ready for?

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WTH: The art that I want to make looks at humans making sense of their lives and the world in a way that maybe we haven’t seen before. There’s a lot of lyricism. There’s all sorts of things. I don’t know if I’m necessarily thinking about the movie industry when I make the art that I make. People don’t know what they want until they see it, until they feel it. I always say this: Sometimes you make something that exists in time and sometimes you make things that are of time. When people are making things that are of time, it’s responding to the zeitgeist or weird ideas around marketing and what’s popular.

JP: What’s trending on TikTok.

WTH: Exactly. It feels so reactionary. That’s of time. I like to think about making things that are in time. In time, for me, is making art that is in conversation with this beautiful legacy of artistry and of filmmaking. It’s making things without thinking about the moment. It’s thinking about truth in character, truth in dialogue, truth in scene, truth in composition, truth in sound. That’s what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about honesty. When it comes to my art, I always want to be in time.

Jason Parham is a senior writer at Wired and a documentary producer. He is a frequent contributor to Image.

Director Walter Thompson-Hernandez

(Michael “Cambio” Fernandez)

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Pretty hurts (and then some) in Ryan Murphy’s body-horror ‘The Beauty’ : Pop Culture Happy Hour

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Pretty hurts (and then some) in Ryan Murphy’s body-horror ‘The Beauty’ : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Ashton Kutcher as The Corporation in The Beauty.

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Eric Liebowitz/FX

The Beauty stars familiar faces from the Ryan Murphy universe, including Evan Peters, as well as new collaborators like Ashton Kutcher. In the show, a genetic biotech serum has been engineered to transform people into ridiculously good-looking supermodels. But there’s at least one problem: Eventually, those supermodels are dying suddenly, horrifically and spectacularly. Is it astute commentary, crass exploitation, or maybe a bit of both? Well, it’s definitely a Ryan Murphy production, through and through.

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