Entertainment
Are we living in the golden age of Tejano documentary filmmaking?
A spate of documentaries focusing on the lives of Tejanos have found platforms over the last six months, showcasing how diverse, nuanced and entertaining our lives can be.
You can find the contemplative radicals of “Hummingbirds” trolling the streets of Laredo over on PBS; the determined detectives of “The Chicano Squad” solving crimes in Houston on A&E; and a dozen or so student musicians competing in “Going Varsity in Mariachi” on Netflix. On Max, the third episode of the Texas docuseries triptych “God Save Texas” takes an intimate and personal look at border life in El Paso, while Tubi has become the new home for “As I Walk Through the Valley,” an in-depth look at the history of rock ‘n’ roll in the Rio Grande Valley.
And that’s just what you can stream right now. “The In Between,” a doc about grief and reconnection set in the small border town of Eagle Pass, is currently making its way through the festival circuit and is set to air on PBS next spring. Even Texas Monthly is executive producing a documentary about iconic Tejano television host Johnny Canales. (Disclosure: De Los editorial director Fidel Martinez is featured in this project.)
As a border native, I’ve become used to a specific kind of narrative when it comes to how my homeland is depicted on screen, so this new wave of Tejano filmmaking is not only remarkable, it’s long overdue. But how did we get here?
The mainstreaming of Latino culture within the U.S. over the past decade has certainly helped, making it easier for filmmakers to convince streamers there’s an audience for their films. Alejandra Vasquez, a proud Tejana and one of the directors of the Sundance-award-winning “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” admits that Bad Bunny and other superstars are helpful for the broader Latinx media consumption moment, but more specifically, she says, people are just tired of the same sad story about the border being told over and over again. You know the type (Disney’s National Geographic has been making shows like “Border Security: America’s Front Line” and “Border Wars” since 2010): dour tales about violence, the hazards of immigration, and the frustrating politics that follow.
“Those of us who grew up near the border and who are intimately familiar with the cross-cultural exchange that is so inherent of living on the border are like, ’Hey, that’s not the only story, that’s not the only side to this,” said Vasquez, adding that she and co-director Sam Osborn deliberately wanted to make an underdog sports movie where the balls and jerseys were swapped out for music and sombreros. “We wanted to have people on the edge of their seats.”
Mario Diaz, who directed “The Chicano Squad,” agrees that there’s a fatigue that has set in for audiences but says there’s also a desire to be entertained by the stories they’re consuming.
“Latin audiences want to have a good time,” Diaz says, noting that he worked hard to incorporate both the important cultural context of Mexican immigration in Houston with cool crime-solving swagger in “The Chicano Squad.”
Perhaps then the stale story of the border, the one of tragedy and turmoil, has created an ever-growing audience of filmgoers hungry for border stories that are both nuanced, and dare I say, fun?
“I just don’t think we’ve been given the opportunity to tell these stories before,” Diaz said. “Now, because of our own making, we’re pushing these stories out into the world.”
Diaz, who hails from Puerto Rico but who has taken a shine to Tejanos and our stories (his next project is also based in Texas), argues that this moment is more than just a trend, and that it is one of the community’s own making. Vazquez says a small group of like-minded Tejano artists have started a private network online to share resources and know-how and to connect experts to continue growing the field. “No one else is giving us that opportunity,” she says. “Once we get together, things happen. We’re like, OK, let’s do it, vamos!”
Charlie Vela lived the DIY filmmaking experience when he and co-director Ronnie Garza made 2017’s “As I Walk Through the Valley,” a head-banging sociological sojourn through the punk rock music history of the Rio Grande Valley. When the duo began filming in earnest back in 2015, neither had any professional experience with filmmaking. They did, however, have a deep understanding of their subject and a scrappy get-it-done-no-matter-what attitude.
“We did our film for no money,” said Vela. The goal, he added, was to tell the story and entertain his friends. “That’s how I’ve sort of approached anything creative I’ve ever done and it’s yielded surprising results.”
Vela was shocked when the film was accepted into that year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, where it premiered on his daughter’s first birthday to critical praise and national media attention. The movie never found a buyer, but through co-director Garza’s grit and determination, the film now has a home on Tubi, where millions can stream it for free.
“I’m just relieved it’s in a place where it’s accessible,” Vela says. “And folks don’t have to hit us up for a link anymore.”
Both Vela and Vasquez point to institutions like the Laredo Film Society and Entre, a Rio Grande Valley-based cooperative community film center, as important spaces where production teams can find local staffers for projects, filmmakers and artists can network and audiences can see different types of storytelling about the border. LFS has existed in some form since 2015, while Entre was founded in 2021.
“We’re helping to better define border stories and stories in this region,” says Entre co-founder Andres Sanchez. “A lot of folks tend to speak for the border and this community and use a lot of harmful rhetoric. We’re trying to do justice to this place we call home.”
Filmmaker and former LFS board member Karen Gaytán says these spaces play a critical role in sustaining and growing the movement, but that they are just a piece of the puzzle. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” she says, “but I think we’re seeing a very exciting genesis that I hope continues to grow.”
Everyone I talked to agreed that even with the success of this wave of filmmaking, there are still plenty of obstacles to overcome.
Vasquez says she and her “Going Varsity in Mariachi” team were lucky to find producers who came onboard early to support the production, but they struggled to sell or get distribution for the film. The documentary, she was told, was both too Mexican and not Mexican enough.
“We hear it over and over as Tejanos” she said. Eventually, they were able to secure a licensing deal with Netflix for 42 months, which Vasquez says has been a blessing.
Just making sure audiences know these stories are available is a challenge, says Diaz, whose A&E series is the rare exception: a network-backed story that got a full marketing push. More common, he says, are projects that are completed and then put out on a platform without so much as a whisper. “Even if productions are getting funded,” he says, “you’d never know about them. It puts the onus on the audience and the community.”
And so, even if we are in the golden age of Tejano documentary filmmaking, everything is not quite golden. This moment, however, does seem to have a name. Back in March, Carlos A. Gutiérrez, the executive director of Cinema Tropical, a New York-based nonprofit focused on highlighting Latin American cinema in the U.S., wrote about how multiple Tejano filmmakers were “defying hegemonic narratives,” dubbing this collective body of work as the “Border New Wave.” He says it can be traced as far back to 2014 when El Paso native Cristina Ibarra debuted “Las Marthas,” a film that follows Laredo’s high society set as they prepare for an annual debutante ball and pageant. The doc originally aired on PBS and is now available to stream on Kanopy. The marker signifies the beginning of a tidy decade of diverse Tejano films that are being seen by more people than ever.
“It adds up,” Vela says, creating more and more examples of success for executives to begin to understand the gradients of stories that make up the border. Not that Tejano filmmakers are making these films for executives anyway. “Even though the economics are complicated, I would hate for someone locally who wants to tell a story, but is discouraged because they think ‘Oh, I’ll never get it distributed,’” Vela says. “If you just want to make it, you can make it.”
It seems there’s no better time.
Luis G. Rendon is a Tejano journalist who lives in New York City and writes about South Texas food and culture. He’s been published in Texas Monthly, Texas Highways and the Daily Beast. You can find him on Twitter/X @louiegrendon and Instagram @lrendon.
Comedy is a matter of taste and preference — it’s a deeply personal thing. Which makes it hard for a critic to give a blanket assessment of a specific kind of comedy, especially if it didn’t work for them, but clearly worked for others (the laughter or lack thereof is the indication). “It’s not funny,” the critic says, “well I had fun,” someone else can reply, and then we’re at an impasse.
Which is the dilemma one finds oneself in with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” a very strange and shaggy Hollywood satire of sorts from David Wain and The State crew, still riding the goodwill of “Wet Hot American Summer” after all these years. If only this were as funny.
“Gail Daughtry” lives in the same world as that iconic summer camp spoof, as well as Wain’s 2014 rom-com parody, “They Came Together,” in that he’s playing with genre convention and expectation, taking well-known norms to the goofiest extremes. But those films hewed more closely to their respective genres, while “Gail Daughtry” is totally scattered, combining crime and spy movie tropes with a fish-out-of-water comedy and a Hollywood send-up. It has far too many ideas for its own good, and yet no ideas that are good enough to sustain this bizarre curio of a comedy.
What’s ironic is that one of the problems driving this wacky plot forward is the characters have to come up with a movie idea to pitch to star Jon Hamm (playing himself of course), leading them to do some pretty inane and shockingly violent things. It’s almost as if Wain and co-writer and co-star Ken Marino had no idea for a movie, then baked their search for an idea into their script, and then turned it into a madcap adventure about a woman on a quest to have sex with Jon Hamm. What an ouroboros!
OK, about the sex quest. Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is a chipper hairdresser from Kansas born without the part of the brain that recognizes sarcasm or irony. She’s a cheerful, Pollyanna-ish naïf whose literal-mindedness is almost as extreme as Amelia Bedelia. Her childhood sweetheart and fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) is the same. She tells him about the concept of the “celebrity sex pass” as a joke, and he promptly boinks Jennifer Aniston at local book reading.
(Nitpicky aside: why didn’t they use the common nomenclature “hall pass”? Is it copyrighted? “Celebrity sex pass” is clunky and sounds like an off-brand version of the well-known slang.)
That infidelity crisis is how Gail ends up in Los Angeles determined to bang Hamm, collecting a motley crew of similarly clueless helpers along the way. There’s her best friend Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley), her salon bestie; Caleb (Ben Wang), an overly ambitious intern at Creative Artists Agency; Vince (Marino), a screenwriter turned paparazzo with a heart of gold; and John Slattery, as John Slattery, down on his luck. An accidental briefcase swap has a pair of thugs on their tail, in a forgettable and underdeveloped B-plot.
With a parade of celebrity cameos and collaborators in bit parts, “Gail Daughtry” at times feels like an excuse for Wain and co. to make something at home with all of their friends. Fair enough, it’s great to see all these people employed, but what about what we’re watching? Behold, the Los Angeles of the middle-aged working comedian: the CAA lobby, the Chateau Marmont, Griffith Park, etc. And the plot is as half-baked as the pitch they present to Hamm.
What’s actually interesting about this comedy is the distinct streak of despair and even resentment that reveals itself at the climax, a feeling of helplessness and uselessness. Everyone’s been striving to make it in this crazy town: the intern, the actor, the paparazzo. But not even Jon Hamm can help them get a movie made; even he feels inherently powerless. There’s an unexplored anxiety vibrating there that feels the most thematically fruitful, about what it means, some 25 years after bursting onto the scene with a generation-defining comedy, about maintaining the work, the drive, a sense of purpose, after years of strikes, and in the face of a constricting industry. Do they still have it? Is the dream still alive?
Maybe that’s why Wain and Marino need to invent a dreamer stand-in with Gail, a guileless eternal optimist who knows nothing of the craven Los Angeles and accepts everything at face value (though she is filled with a scary bit of rage too). She might behave like she has a head injury, but she’s going to achieve her goal, dammit. “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” might not be as funny as “Wet Hot American Summer” (for this critic), but reframed, it serves as a fascinating status update on life in La La Land for this troupe.
‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for sexual content, violence/bloody images and language)
Running time: 1:33
How to watch: In theaters July 10
Entertainment
Emily Ratajkowski’s viral essay on sex life as a single mom scores her a seven-figure book deal
Emily Ratajkowski’s viral essay detailing her sex life as a single mom just landed her a seven-figure book deal.
According to Page Six, the model’s essay in the Cut had publishers champing at the bit in a 12-way bidding war that culminated in the hefty pay day. Editor Helen Rouner at Penguin Press — who also edited Lauren Christensen’s memoir “Firstborn” and Michael W. Clune’s novel “Pan” — reportedly landed the deal.
Penguin Press did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Friday.
Publishers Marketplace announced the forthcoming memoir, describing it as “an examination of modern female identity through the story of the author’s own efforts as a newly single mother in New York City to discover what really constitutes a good life for a woman.”
The essay, which dropped a month ago and quickly broke the internet, drops the veil on EmRata’s sexual adventures (or maybe misadventures) since she and her former husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, split in 2022.
“It was a violent transition into a new reality of screaming baby on my aching tit and ring on my swollen finger,” Ratajkowski writes of new motherhood. “And then, in a time period that felt both instant and excruciatingly slow, my marriage collapsed. Six months after my son was born, my husband and I stopped having sex. Less than a year later, we separated.”
In the missive, the model interrogates her sexuality — is she a Madonna or a whore? — while untangling bigger questions around gender, power and self-actualization. If Carrie Bradshaw wrote about “Sex and the City,” then Ratajkowski is writing about sex, the city and single motherhood. And naturally, her fleeting paramours have vague monikers: “Vegan Graffiti Artist,” “Spanish Gen-Zer” and “Son of a Billionaire.”
“And then there was the Elder Millennial: obsessed with dental hygiene, psychedelics, and dirty talk,” she writes. “He had approached the subject coyly at first, like it was something he was kind of embarrassed about — the way a kid will test you to see if you’ll talk to them about their dorky obsession of the moment. Do you like Godzilla? What about Star Wars?”
Would-be sleuths with Ratajkowski’s essay and a gossip rag handy will have their work cut out for them.
This will be Ratajkowski’s second book. The first, “My Body,” dropped in 2021 and was a bestselling collection of essays exploring gender, power dynamics, sexuality and the commodification of female beauty in the modeling and entertainment industries.
Ratajkowski’s foray into the spotlight came more than a decade ago when Robin Thicke’s controversial “Blurred Lines” music video made the model an overnight star. She was cast in David Fincher’s adaptation of “Gone Girl,” which hit theaters the following year, and catapulted to top fashion runways — Marc Jacobs, Versace, Victoria’s Secret and Dolce & Gabbana, to name a few. She she’s been romantically linked to Harry Styles, Eric Andre, Shaboozey, Brad Pitt and Pete Davidson, among others.
In 2023, she moonlighted as the host of the “High Low With EmRata” podcast, where she interviewed sex workers, investigated ethical nonmonogamy and pondered the etymology of the word “toxic.” The same year, she told The Times that she was coming into herself post-divorce, “Being able to assert what I want — that feels like it just started: My life as a creator and not as a muse.”
Wainheads will be delighted to see his alums in cameos: Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, and supporting roles for Zickel and Truglio. A large portion of the cast are his homies. But with Deutch, Gutierrez-Riley, Wang, Slattery, Impacciatore, and yes, Hamm, it’s as if they’re being inducted into a new mad family. Wain and Marino are basically catching Pokémon and hoping they can hold onto the roster (by that logic, yes, Paul Rudd is a legendary Pokémon). The film is anchored by Zoey — everything everywhere all this summer with Voicemails From Isabelle to Minions & Monsters — Deutch in the Dorothy Gale role, exuding a high level of perkiness consistent with the character’s can-do, wide-eyed, midwestern charm and heart.
A major standout, Ben Wang finally gets to show off his comedic abilities, portraying a self-assured, quick-witted agent who makes me laugh every time he reveals his sheltered upbringing in snappy whines at every inconvenience. Sabrina Impacciatore, who has proven to be a comedic juggernaut in The Paper, is having so much fun hamming it up as the mob boss-esque wicked witch counterpart, torturing her henchmen and deliciously chewing up the scenery whenever onscreen. I don’t think they use her to the height of her comedic prowess, but she’s a delight nonetheless. John Slattery is the film’s comedic MVP. The way the writers use his over-the-top character for comedy is downright hilarious every time. They use him as either a punchline or a force of nature, and he’s great. This movie is like Mad Men propaganda, and by God, it works. As someone who’s never seen it, Gail allowed me a better appreciation for Slattery and Hamm.
Man, we don’t deserve Jon Hamm. This is the second time I’ve seen him play a silly, fictionalized version of himself this year (the other being the SXSW crowd-pleasing rom-com Wishful Thinking, which Gail distributor Sony Pictures Classics acquired), and he also voice-acted in his comedic Mayor Jerry role in Hoppers. Maybe working with Wain in 2007’s The Ten was the canon event, but I consider his weird little sex scene with Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids his awakening. Since then, I’ve only seen him as unserious, and it’s delightful. Oz-like in appearance, he’s funny and befitting the film’s overall light, joyful nature.
LAST STATEMENT
Ultimately, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a campy, delightful romp that succeeds as both a distinctive Hollywood‑centric riff and a Wizard of Oz reimagining, retaining a loving, twisted, demented charm. It’s a weird description, but it’s so high‑spirited and light‑hearted despite being strangely ultraviolent. It might as well be a live‑action episode of Smiling Friends (RIP), yet it’s everything the theatrical market needs today. Ten years ago, this would’ve been a studio production rather than an indie Sundance acquisition, but thank God it exists for the big screen. More absurdist Gail Daughtrys for cinemas (not streaming), please, because this is the most fun to be had in a theater all summer, if not the year thus far.
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