MULTIMEDIA MESSENGER
WALTER THOMPSON-HERNÁNDEZ IS ON A MISSION TO EXPOSE THE HIDDEN LIVES AROUND US, IN ANY WAY THE BORN STORYTELLER CAN.
ALTER THOMPSON-HERNÁNDEZ — whose fictional short film “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” set at the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts, won a Sundance award earlier this year — knows he needs to update his personal website. The earnest SEO copy the writer-director crafted a few years ago still describes him as a “multimedia journalist, exploring the world, asking what it means to belong.” It’s an artifact of his days covering culture for the New York Times, a job that took him to Rio de Janeiro, Japan, the Dominican Republic and Oaxaca, Mexico. ¶ “I’m like, wow, that was the lane that I was in, and now it’s almost a completely different lane,” the El Sereno-based writer-director, 37, said in a recent interview with The Times, which previously covered his 2020 book on the Compton Cowboys. Thompson-Hernández’s old lane focused a lot on identities: his own and many others. In a 2015 essay
for BuzzFeed, he wrote, “I first learned I was a Blaxican from a DJ on Power 106 FM, a Los Angeles hip-hop station . ... It changed the way I, the son of an African-American man from Oakland and a firstgeneration American from Jalisco, Mexico, self-identified forever.”
Although he’s still figuring out his place in the world, Thompson-Hernández has evolved. His trajectory from journalist to artist has given him the tools of realism that he uses to craft stories about the soul, often with L.A. as the backdrop. With five visual projects and a book in development, Thompson-Hernández is both here and seemingly everywhere, remapping the boundaries of narrative storytelling. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You have done magazine journalism; you’ve written and directed a “visual poem” about the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas; you’ve directed short-form cinema; you’ve done an ad for Dr. Dre for the Super Bowl. How do you think about medium?
One of my biggest fears in life is to be boxed in in some way that doesn’t allow me to grow and evolve as a person and a storyteller. It sort of starts with journalism, and then I go to grad school, and then I’m with the New York Times doing multimedia things there. I’m writing, dialmost
recting, taking photographs and posting, and then that sort of evolves into book writing and then podcasting and now filmmaking. I see it more as an evolution. Filmmaking is the most exciting medium because it embodies all of these different practices.
You first grew up in Huntington Park in southeast L.A. County, and after the L.A. riots in ’92 your mom moved you to the Westside when you were 7. How did that affect how you view L.A.?
Growing up in Huntington Park, I was surrounded by almost nothing but Mexicans, Mexican Americans. I felt very protected and safe in a home filled with cousins, aunts and uncles. But the Westside was incredibly lonely. My mom was getting her PhD at UCLA at the time, and so it was just us navigating an incredibly new, diverse world we had no practice in. For a lot of people, L.A. can be intimidating. It’s a very expansive, sprawling city. But I started thinking about L.A. as a larger sort of canvas, and I’ve been lucky to be able to live in different parts of the city.
How did you get the idea for your new film, “If I Go Will They Miss Me”?
The film kind of starts when I’m 5 or 6 [years old], and when I’m looking up at the airplanes above our home, and when I’m dreaming about where these airplanes are coming from, where the people are going, the larger meaning. Then it really crystallizes when the Delta jet fuel dump happens [20 schoolchildren in Cudahy were drenched by jet fuel from a plane leaving LAX]. I had already been thinking about transitioning into filmmaking, and I thought that this was a really interesting time to make that transition. The film is a collection of personal anecdotes rooted in a narrative story about a father who wants to support his son.
How much of that is fiction versus what you draw from reality or your own experiences?
It’s both. The genre I really love to work with is docunarrative, creating narrative worlds based on the experiences of real people. I love to engage with first-time actors. There’s something so raw and interesting and authentic about the way that they play fictionalized versions of lives they already lead. This comes from my experience as a journalist. My best directing on any type of set today happens when I’m doing the least amount of directing.
Who are your big cinematic or visual influences?
I’ve always loved the work of Charles Burnett. “Killer of Sheep,” how he creates a world within and around Watts by using first-time actors and creating a very loose narrative. The way Terrence Malick captures interiority through voice-over, and the way he captures a larger philosophical meaning, it’s almost like we’re not even watching the film, we’re engaging in a very beautiful philosophical class. I also love [Abbas] Kiarostami, the Iranian director; [Akira] Kurosawa — I just love the way he captures nature.
Malick’s work evokes transcendence. Is there any religious influence on your work?
I’ve lost a lot of people in the past two and a half years, 18 people, mostly COVID — aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. I’ve really had to think about the role of spirituality and God in all that we do. A lot of that is coming out in the work I’m doing. In “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” there’s a lot of references to God, protection and community. The father in that film is asking God to look after his child. In a way that I think Terrence Malick is maybe searching for transcendence in his films, I’m really searching for spirit and community in the work I’m doing.
Do you see your work as helping provide comfort or recognition for people who are having these experiences too?
I’d be lying to you if I told you that I’m thinking about the next person, because I think that the art I’m trying to make is a hyper-specific art. We fail as artists when we try to reach everyone, because then we actually reach no one.
I’m thinking of that old Diane Arbus quote: “The more specific you are, the more general it’ll be.”
Totally. And it’s interesting, because we’re not brought up that way. Particularly people who work in storytelling, it’s almost like, you know, we were lied to, essentially. We were told that the art we make, the things we create, were supposed to be for everyone, right? Now we’re finding that the more hyper-specific we get with our art, the more general and popular it becomes. I’m finding that with a lot of things that I’ve been doing over the years, like the story of the Compton Cowboys.
What do you do for fun?
I go to the beach a little south of Dockweiler, and I just walk there by myself and listen to Elvis Mitchell or, like, Terry Gross for an hour. I’m also getting older, so to me, there’s nothing better than an evening walk. It’s almost become like a sacred physical act.
her scene-stealing turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg ’s musical “West Side Story,” then made history as the first out queer woman of color to win an Academy Award for acting for her performance, 60 years after Rita Moreno became the first Latina to win an Oscar for the same role. For the trailblazing Afro-Latina actor, dancer and singer — who also has a BAFTA win, a Golden Globe trophy and a Tony nomination under her belt — it feels like only the beginning. DeBose, also seen on TV in “Schmigadoon!” and “Westworld,” has lined up roles in sci-fi thriller “I.S.S.,” spy ensemble pic “Argylle” and her first foray into superhero blockbuster territory as Calypso in Sony’s Marvel tentpole “Kraven the Hunter,” due in 2023.
— Jen Yamato
MARÍA ESTHER FERNÁNDEZ MUSEUM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
When the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture opened in June, the debut marked an important first for Southern California. Until the center opened, no other museum has offered a substantive permanent exhibition dedicated to any aspect of the region’s bountiful postwar art history. An opportunity also opened for Fernández, the center’s new artistic director and a specialist in the Chicano movement. The Cheech appointment came just 11 months before the opening, while Fernández was also in the midst of coorganizing a retrospective of Bay Area Chicana feminist Amalia MesaBains (opening at the Berkeley Art Museum in February). Fernández, a Chicago native who grew up in Inglewood, rose to become chief curator and deputy director during 16 years at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. A top priority, she told The Times when her Cheech appointment was announced, is to “expand the narrative of Chicanx art.” — Christopher Knight
JOSÉ GALVÁN RADIO DJ AND TALENT BOOKER
As lord of Monday nights at NPR-affiliate station KCRW-FM, DJ Galván has revitalized the city’s airwaves with his positively zany playlists, effortlessly weaving in the sounds of Björk with up-and-coming L.A. bands like the Red Pears. As curator of live music at Boyle Heights venue the Paramount — and previously at the now-defunct Hi-Hat in Highland Park — Galván has championed emerging Latin alternative acts like Silvana Estrada, Monogem and the Marías. Born in Mexico City and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Galván fondly recalls frequenting backyard shows in Baldwin Park and, eventually, the monthly DIY parties in L.A. he named “Chido Chévere Cool,” an allusion to his Mexican, Colombian and American heritage. — S.E.
CAROLINA GARCIA DIRECTOR OF ORIGINAL SERIES AT NETFLIX
As a director of original series at Netf lix, Garcia was instrumental in shepherding such popular series as “Stranger Things,” “13 Reasons Why” and “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Garcia was drawn to the entertainment industry from her love of the action-drama series “24.” She landed an internship at 20th Century Fox and, after college, joined Fox as an assistant. Garcia worked at 20th Century Fox for nine years, moving up the ranks to manager of current programming. In 2016, she joined Netf lix, where she oversees some of the streamer’s deals with talent and production companies, including the Duffer Brothers, the Duke & Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell Productions and Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps. The native of Argentina who grew up in Claremont is also an avid singer and dancer who often collaborates with her sister, who is a singer-songwriter. — Wendy Lee
RITA GONZALEZ LACMA’S HEAD OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Gonzalez is among the most widely known curators of contemporary art working at a major U.S. museum. Some of her focus at LACMA, where she has been on staff for 16 years and for the last four has headed its contemporary department, has been Latino art — most notably “Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987,” unraveling the tangled history of the influential L.A. Chicano performance and Conceptual art group; and, with Howard N. Fox and Chon Noriega in 2008, “Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement.” With 100 works by 30 artists, “Phantom” is reportedly the largest museum survey exhibition of new Chicano art anywhere, before or since. Farther afield, Gonzalez served as a curatorial and program advisor to Prospect New Orleans, the triennial exhibition of commissioned works around the Louisiana city that grew out of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. — C.K.
JIMMY HUMILDE MUSIC EXECUTIVE
Humilde, founder and CEO of the powerhouse independent record label Rancho Humilde, looks to the future without abandoning the past. It’s how he’s become a leader in popularizing “corridos tumbados,” which updates regional Mexican music for a new generation. As he told The Times in 2021: “We still use the regional [Mexican] instruments, but our movement comes from urban life, the city life. At this point, calling what we do ‘regional Mexican’ … is like calling reggaeton salsa.” Before founding the Downey-based label in 2011, he was scouting and developing artists, only to watch them abandon him for the major label system. A decade later, the artists on Rancho Humilde are becoming stars in their own right, such as multiplatinum singer Natanael Cano, whose album “Corridos Tumbados” spent 31 weeks atop Billboard’s Regional Mexican Albums chart. The label is home to more than 80 artists, including Junior H and the quartet Fuerza Regida. — K.D.
GUSTAVO LOPEZ MUSIC EXECUTIVE
Over a decades-long career at Universal Music, the Puerto Rican-born, Cal State Northridge grad Lopez helmed Machete Music, the conglomerate’s first Latin urban imprint that helped launch Daddy Yankee, Don Omar and Wisin & Yandel into stardom. He’s also a formative figure in the current wave of regional Mexican music, having led the Fonovisa and Disa imprints, which released LPs from Marco Antonio Solis, Los Ángeles Azules, Los Tigres Del Norte, Jenni Rivera and Banda El Recodo. He left Universal
to found the Talento Uno Music firm in 2017, and after entertainment impresario Haim Saban bought the company in 2019, Saban put him atop the new $500million firm right as Latin urban music became the sound of global pop.
— A.B.
JOSE LUIS PALACIOS DESIGN DIRECTOR AT SOM
Chances are you’ve been around a building that Palacios helped shape. As a young architect in the ’80s, he worked under Richard Keating of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on structures such as the skyline-defining Gas Company Tower in downtown L.A. Now a principal at SOM, Palacios has been part of a team of architects (including Paul Danna, who leads the firm’s L.A. studio), who have given civic spaces greater permeability. For the Long Beach Civic Center City Hall and Port Headquarters, they brought glassy translucence to government functions, and their critically wellreceived U.S. Courthouse in downtown L.A., with its serrated glass facades and soaring atrium, saturates traditionally impregnable courtrooms in light. The Ecuadorean-born architect says the best buildings rest on collaboration. “Diversity is always richer than single authorship,” he says. “That is a product of thinking of architecture as a piece of art. But it’s both art and science — and very few people can do both.”
— C.A.M.