Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorge Molina.
Jorge, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was born in Mexico City, but by the time I was three I had moved to a quiet suburb by its outskirts called Cuernavaca. I grew up there, I studied there, and I eventually also left there. I was raised with a steady diet of American television shows, cozy British murder mysteries, and whimsical cinema. Television series like Pushing Daisies, the novels of Agatha Christie, and the films of Tim Burton were as foundational for my education and development as anything my parents or my school could have ever taught me.
At the beginning of high school, I enrolled in a Creative Writing course that changed my life. I found an outlet for the angsty teenage ruminations and anxieties that I thought only I had and learned how to shape them into something somewhat meaningful. With the guidance and support of my teacher, I won the prestigious Juan Rulfo National Short Story Award twice in a row, and my stories were published as part of several anthology collections from the Universidad Iberoamericana.
Shortly after, the realization that the movies and shows that consumed my life had to be written by *someone* dawned on me, and it was game over from then on. I had my goal set on becoming a screenwriter.
My father told me that unless I got a full-tuition scholarship (a very unlikely, almost impossible feat for a family in Mexico), I would just not be able to go to school in the US. He thought he was making a threat; I took it as a dare. Somehow, after what feels like a fugue state of personal essays and reference letters, I received a full-tuition merit scholarship from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and became the first Mexican student to receive that honor in that program in over a decade. I’d never even written a screenplay before, and I suddenly was being taught by the same people that had written the very shows and movies I grew up hypnotized by.
It took me a while to understand my voice as an artist and to find exactly what stories I wanted to tell and most importantly, *how* I wanted to tell them. I tried my hand at historical dramas, teenage comedies, slasher films, and romantic epics. I think they were somewhat decent. However, while in college, I was an intern with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and I started to discover the power that entertainment, and the representation within it, hold over the personal histories of people. The movies and shows and books I grew up on had affected me in larger ways than I had contemplated: they were the language I learned to speak to understand and process the world around me. I began to understand the true power of the industry I wanted to go into and to take it seriously.
After graduation, I fell into the film festival world, more out of necessity than true calling (I needed a job to keep my student visa valid). However, I found that it is an incredibly welcoming, satisfying, and complex world to develop professionally. It is a perfect balance of curating and showcasing new voices and filmmakers and logistical production work, both of which I enormously enjoy. It’s usually these places that start to shape narratives around movies and the people behind them and give a place to people that maybe haven’t had one before.
I’ve done almost every role in festivals (from hospitality to volunteer coordination, to on-the-ground production), but I’ve found most creative satisfaction in programming. I currently am the Programming Manager at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), where I work alongside a team of amazing programmers to select the best shorts, features, and episodics to showcase at the festival. In a larger way than ever, I’m now helping to shape and uplift the narratives and stories by artists that move me and get to exercise creativity by the ways they play together throughout the festival.
But I have not forgotten writing. A few years ago, my feature murder mystery script “Detective James Mortensen and the Case of the Golden Candelabra” was accepted into the prestigious Outfest Screenwriting Lab. Only five scripts are selected out of hundreds of submissions every year. It is a deconstruction of the Agatha Christie novels I read growing up, in which a young Boy has to escape into a whodunit world after the death of his older brother. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my most personal work, which directly tapped into my childhood influences, is the one that has opened the most doors thus far.
I wrote and executive produced the short film “Muy Gay Too Mexicano”, about a young man who has to reconcile his two battling identities, which also happen to be his roommates. The short was directed by another immigrant artist, Lorena Lourenco, and had a very successful run in the 2020-2021 festival circuit. Towards the end of that run, it was picked up for distribution by HBO Max, and you can find it now there (which you should! I am incredibly proud of it). We are working on our next collaboration, a comedy horror inspired by the genre of hagsploitation that will hopefully get off the ground soon.
I’ve also found a lot of creative freedom and opportunities in the world of scripted podcasting. During the height of the pandemic, I partnered with an amazing production company called Kingdom of Pavement to write, direct, and produce a murder mystery series called “Just to be Nominated”, in which an actress is killed the night she wins the Oscar. All episodes are available now. And I’m developing other audio series that tackle similar themes in a similar genre.
I can now confidently say that my best writing comes when I am able to tap into the stories, genres, and niches that I feel passionate about. Otherwise, why do it at all? I know first-hand the impact and power a dark movie theater and a compelling story can have on a person. I wouldn’t be trying to do this as a career otherwise. And I’ve wanted to hold that power ever since I knew it existed. I keep looking for opportunities that can help me nurture, properly guide and grow not only my own writing into that power but also other voices that haven’t had a chance in the past.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of course, there are always ups and downs. And in a way, that’s what makes hard work so satisfying when it does pay off.
While I know that I have been afforded tremendous opportunities and access that other people fight for every day, it still hasn’t been a smooth road. It was hard work trying to translate my abstract dream of going to Hollywood to write movies into a scholarship that I had to maintain at all times while trying to navigate a new life in a foreign country and how to forge a new identity outside of the only environment I had always known.
And as it has become painfully obvious for the past few years, it’s not hard being an immigrant right now, in any form. Making the jump from a student visa from a work visa (and then renewing that visa once it expired) was an extremely strenuous, stressful, and complicated legal procedure. It’s also something that also makes you extremely emotionally vulnerable. You are putting your future in someone else’s hands and turning over a document with basically your entire life history in it, and waiting for them to judge you based on it. t’s a hard state to be living in 24/7 for six or seven months, at the very least.
However, like I said, I am lucky that fortunately things have worked out, and I’ve come out stronger and wiser on the other side.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’d like to think I’m not known for just one thing. My career has forced me to try my hand in many aspects of the entertainment industry (from administrative work and logistical to production and writing), and there are aspects of all that work that I enjoy doing. But I think I’ve found the two that I’m most passionate about and that I’d like to focus and keep on honing as a craft.
One is film programming. I fell into it, but I really found a fondness, love, and passion for it. I find myself energized every time I am able to find the rare shining gem among a sea of submissions or when I introduce an entire theater to an obscure movie from the past, that felt entirely new to them. The feeling of helping someone discover something new, and in that maybe help them see the world in a slightly different way, is (for a lack of better words) intoxicating. I now know that I want to dedicate part of my professional life to this exchange between artist and curator; helping others see the ways in which entertainment helps us see and hope with the world.
And of course, there’s writing. That’s always been my first love and continues to be my main creative and professional focus. Like I mentioned before, it took me a while to find my writing voice and to understand exactly what are the stories that I wanted to be telling. I soon realized that my best writing will only come out if I am fully invested and actively excited about it. If I don’t want to immerse myself in a world for weeks, months, or years at a time, it is not worth doing. I’m led by my own passions, not what the industry tells me I should be writing. This led to be focusing on writing on genres, types of characters, and styles that while may seem narrow and niche at first, make me most excited: stories about and for the gay and Latino communities like mine, classic murder mysteries like the ones I read growing up, highly stylized dialogue and descriptions like the movies I watch.
I’m most proud that my projects that have gotten most traction (like the podcast “Just to be Nominated” and the short film “Muy Gay Too Mexicano”) are uncompromising extensions of myself, my voice, my interests, and my identity. I know people aren’t always that lucky and don’t take it for granted.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I’m very proud of the communities and relationships I have built. Big parts of the work I do are solitary, either rotating watching films for festival consideration or writing screenplays in my computer. But so much part is also built on collaboration. Putting together a big-scale festival, shooting a short film, being in a writer’s room. Going through the immigration process made me realize how lonely, scary, and isolating that process can be without any guidance or community, so now I strive to make that a vital part of my professional and creative life.
And I think that is the key in finding a successful mentor or networking. It’s less about what opportunities other people can offer you or how they can help further your career. It’s about finding a connection and creating community. Then, doors tend to open organically.
So I would say find people with similar interests, or people you admire, want to work with or want to learn more from, and connect on that level. People are usually very open to go for coffee, or jump on a Zoom call if they sense there’s a genuine interest to get to know each other rather than network your way to the top. Also, meeting people at your same level rather than aiming to meet those in positions of much higher power are smarter and more satisfying investments down the line.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @colormejorge
- Twitter: @colormejorge
