Series showcases Valley landscape
CALEXICO — The Valley’s open vistas, remote highways and notable landmarks are given top billing in the new FX series “Mayans MC,” which debuts Tuesday.
Scenes in the much anticipated spinoff of the popular “Sons of Anarchy” series were filmed over the past year in Calexico and other Valley locales, and compliment the show’s storyline and characters, said Dan Cooley, supervising location manager.
“I think the locations are such a big part of the show. They stand out as characters themselves,” Cooley said. “It kind of helps tell the story of the road less traveled.”
Viewers may also take note of the series’ fictionalized sister cities of Santa Padre and Santa Madre, which respectively straddle the U.S.-Mexican border much like Calexico and Mexicali.
The fictionalized cities’ names are also a symbolic reference to humanity’s duality, and the fractious and tumultuous consequences that often result from living an imbalanced life, Cooley said.
“When you see the show you get a real understanding of the meaning behind it,” he said.
“Mayans MC” tells the story of Ezekiel “EZ” Reyes, a recently-released convict and prospect in the Mayans MC charter along the California-Mexico border. The Mayans’ Oakland chapter was featured prominently as rivals-turned-allies in the “Sons of Anarchy” series.
Reyes, who is played by actor J.D. Pardo, is said to have grown up near the Salton Sea and is described as the “gifted son of a proud Latino family, whose American dream was snuffed out by cartel violence,” according to the network’s promotional materials.
Cooley was part of a production crew of about 100 people who had spent time filming in the Valley for the show last year.
Their time here also benefited from the help of the Imperial County Film Commission, which helped track down the property owners of abandoned storefronts that producers wanted to use as backdrops for filming, Cooley said.
“They really made life so easy,” he said. “They showed us so much hospitality.”
Cooley also said he owes a debt of gratitude to a state park ranger who helped pull free Cooley’s two-wheeldrive SUV when it got stuck on an unpaved road during his location scouting.
That same incident also led a complete stranger to offer Cooley the use, for free, of a four-wheel-drive vehicle for the duration of his scouting expeditions.
“He didn’t even want to take the money, but we felt like it was the right thing to do,” Cooley said.
Cooley said he had visited the Valley for the first time in 2014, as part of the crew for the feature film “Last Days in the Desert,” starring Ewan McGregor as Jesus Christ, and written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, son of famed Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
It was then that Cooley said he had gotten a sense of the Valley’s visual references.
“That is when I kind of fell in love with the area,” Cooley said. “I was really looking for an excuse to come back and (“Mayans MC”) was the perfect vehicle: a motorcycle.”
Local audiences should enjoy the series and the fictionalized world its characters occupy, none the least because of the Valley’s connection to its filming, Cooley said.
The show in recent days has been in the news on account of its pending debut. Concerns that the show stereotypes its predominantly Latino cast as criminals have been readily dismissed by co-creators Kurt Sutter and Elgin James.
More than a show about a Latino motorcycle gang, “Mayans MC” is about family and identity, they said.
“The stories that I like to tell and the characters I like to create are damaged,” Sutter recently told the Associated Press. “I never write these guys or these women from the point of view of them being dangerous or bad. I write them from the idea that they’re human beings with complex feelings.”
Iconic Latino actor and producer Edward James Olmos is also cast as the father of the series’ central character. He too had praise for the show’s casting and writing on Aug. 3 during a television critics press tour in Beverly Hills.
“We’re more than 22 percent of the population and less than 4 percent of the images on screen,” Olmos said. “This show is going to move the needle. It’s about time. Everyone is going to see this show and have an opinion.”