Anderson challenges Hollywood convention
Robert Mailer Anderson has a problem.
He has made a film that is smart, topical and unexpected, loaded with all the elements Hollywood should want — from the distinguished cast and dramatic plot twists to the killer soundtrack. But Hollywood doesn’t want it.
Anderson, the 50yearold native San Franciscan who gained notoriety with his 2001 novel “Boonville,” spent more than a decade producing and cowriting the film “Windows on the World” with his cousin Zack Anderson.
Starring Edward James Olmos (FX’s “Mayans MC”) and Ryan Guzman (Fox’s TV series “911”) — and directed by the former’s son, Michael
Listen to the “Datebook” podcast episode featuring Robert Mailer Anderson at datebook.sfchronicle.com.
D. Olmos — the film is a gripping story of a man’s search for his father, an undocumented Mexican immigrant working at the Windows on the World restaurant on the top floor of the World Trade Center during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“They have a hard time because he doesn’t exist in America,” Anderson said during a recent visit to the podcast studio at The Chronicle. “They assume that he’s dead until the mother, who’s a little bit of an unreliable narrator at this point due to trauma, swears that she sees him getting out of the building alive on news footage. So the youngest son takes his savings and crosses the border to look for someone who’s either dead or doesn’t want to be found.”
“Windows on the World” has been shown at festivals in Austin, Los Angeles and Boston, and it drew a standing ovation at a screening in Sedona, Ariz. It may be set in the nottoodistant past, but its themes of immigration and identity and what makes an American are more relevant now than ever.
Miramax signed on to the project in 2004, but then that deal collapsed and the filmmakers decided to make it themselves. Now, with the finished product in hand, they can’t find a distributor. Anderson suspects it’s because the characters in “Windows on the World” don’t reflect the ethnic stereotypes that Hollywood has long embraced.
“We’re up against corporate America,” Anderson said. “They’re the same people, for the most part, that told us that you couldn’t have a girl as the lead in an action film — you know, until you have ‘The Hunger Games.’ You certainly couldn’t have a girl in an animated film because boys won’t see that either — until you have ‘Frozen.’ And, ‘You damn well can’t have a black guy in a superhero film, because who’s going to see that?’ ”
“Windows on the World” is a film about the human condition, complex and scandalous in its own subtle way, but hardly in line with how Latinos are predominantly por
“It makes some people uneasy, because it’s not the narrative that they know.” Robert Mailer Anderson, screenwriter for “Windows on the World”
trayed in mainstream films. Anderson recalled a conversation with Miramax where the studio suggested incorporating a drug dealer into the story line. He balked.
“From what I’ve read, 80% of roles for Latinos: criminals, maids, cop No. 2,” Anderson said. “We don’t have any of that. So it makes some people uneasy, because it’s not the narrative that they know. And they’re waiting for something to happen that doesn’t happen in our film.”
Anderson isn’t giving up on the prospect of getting “Windows on the World” into theaters. Even as the rejection letters pile up, he says that they expect to have a plan of distribution worked out by November.
In the meantime, the film’s soundtrack was released on Friday, Aug. 2, featuring an eclectic mix of tracks performed by members of the SFJazz Collective, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus. It also includes a spokenword track from Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets. Several of the tracks were written or cowritten by Anderson.
The class struggle underpinning “Windows on the World” is one that resonates personally with Anderson. He grew up with his two siblings in a bluecollar family, moving some 25 times to various points in the Bay Area before he turned 20 years old. He also spent a large portion of his childhood living alongside juvenile delinquents at Grapevine Group Home in Mendocino County, where his father was the home’s director.
“That truly helped formulate my sensibility,” he said of the experience.
Having dropped out of college, Anderson lived for a spell in Mexico and New York before moving back to the Bay Area. He wrote “Boonville,” a novel set in the Mendocino County city of the same name, while living in a singleroomoccupancy unit above Caffe Trieste in North Beach.
In 1999, he married Nicola Miner, the daughter of the late Oracle cofounder Robert Miner, suddenly finding himself in radically different circumstances.
“We always joke that my wife and I made our money the oldfashioned way: She inherited it, and I married it,” Anderson said. “For my family it was very difficult — very much ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ ”
He has used his position of privilege to lift up the causes closest to his heart, fundraising for the opening of the $64 million SFJazz Center building, hosting President Barack Obama at his Pacific Heights home, donating to a variety of San Francisco arts groups and providing college scholarships to Boonville students, among other things.
He also has continued to develop his creative pursuits. He was executive producer of Tom Waits’ “The Black Rider” at the American Conservatory Theater. He cowrote “Pig Hunt,” a 2008 horror flick, once again with his cousin Zack Anderson. He wrote a play in 2016, “The Death of Teddy Ballgame.”
Anderson expects, much like his other work, “Windows on the World” will find an audience one way or another, even if it means bucking Hollywood.
“I’ve never done anything to actually try to make money my whole life,” he said. “It’s just never been my outtake, ever. So if it gets out there and has its effect, great.”