Rising Stars: Meet Rubén Guevara III

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rubén Guevara III.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I fell in love with stories at a very early age. It had a lot to do with playing hooky on my 5th birthday to see “Jurassic Park,” which, terrifying as it was, cemented my passion for the moving image. I’ve been pursuing those thrills ever since, and when I was around 10 or 11, I started making films with my neighborhood friends and taught myself how to write, direct, edit and produce.

Fast forward ten years later, and I landed my first real job at Warner Bros. on a movie called “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” It was an eye-opening experience, and while I didn’t enjoy the daily ritual of waking up at 4am, it taught me how precarious the film industry was. How one misstep on set could be determinative of whether or not you’d show up the next day. And I suppose that stress had some adverse effects on my personal life, but it kept me vigilant and accentuated my reverence for the art of filmmaking.

Fast forward another decade and I’m now producing my own work independently, learning how to manage crews and working within the confines of a digital media landscape defined by funders and distributors. I feel profoundly fortunate to do what I do and am supported by an exceptional network of family and friends who have believed in my irrational ambitions since day one.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition known as Crohn’s Disease during the height of the pandemic. I was also in the midst of prepping my first documentary, “Con Safos,” while taking ungodly amounts of steroids to keep the inflammation at bay. It was probably one of the worst years of my life in terms of the physical and mental anguish that I went through. However, once the project wrapped I took a prolonged break from filmmaking and altered my diet to include more fruits and vegetables, made exercising a priority, and enrolled in talk therapy. The next year ended up being the best of my life, paradoxical as it may sound. I made more of an effort to travel and create new experiences with my partner and opened myself up to the possibility of failure. It was incredibly freeing—and I recognized many of the toxic habits that led to my diagnosis were of my own making.

Life has a tendency to throw curveballs our way, and they’ll often manifest at the most inopportune moments. It sounds new-agey to admit, but these trials and tribulations can either break us or force us to invent new, healthier pathways for ourselves.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I studied painting at UCLA from 2005-2007, then transferred to NYU for film in 2008-2009. At my core, I’m an artist, and love both mediums, but never saw a viable path forward (financially speaking) for painting. Film, for all of its rampant nepotism and pecking orders, somehow felt like the easier world to break into — and I caught a lucky break after high school, which allowed me to intern on a movie set for the now-defunct Warner Independent Pictures. I still remember driving onto the studio lot and being escorted through New York Street, which is where classics like “Blade Runner” and “A Star is Born” (the 1954 version) were filmed.

I worked on and off for Warner Bros. for six years, and my film credits included “Interstellar,” “The Hangover: Part 2,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” “Gangster Squad,” “Winter’s Tale,” and “Entourage: The Movie.” I remember nearly freezing to death while waiting for a bus in New York after working a 20-hour day (I won’t mention the film, but you can probably surmise from the title), and told myself to give big Hollywood films a rest. I never took anything for granted and relished every minute of working with some of my favorite directors, but I felt disconnected from the work and found solace in the journal entries I’d scribbled down during long commutes.

Those journal entries placed me on an unusual path, away from filmmaking for at least a few years, and taught me about the incoming digital revolution that was coming: TikTok, SnapChat, Reels, etc… I was hired as an Editorial Creative Fellow at Buzzfeed and spent my mornings scouring Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr, searching for the biggest trending stories of the day. I was there the night the Blue Dress/White Dress photo broke the internet and realized media content consumption (and content curation) would never be the same. Influencers and YouTube stars now dominate the culture and are blurring the lines between audiences and customers. When I later worked for Indiewire, I brought this knowledge with me and micro-targeted their readers.

Naturally, this left me even more devoid of fulfillment… It was around this time that Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for the White House, and politics were devolving in a way I hadn’t yet seen in my lifetime. He famously painted Mexicans as criminals and rapists before jumping ahead in the polls and capturing his party’s nomination. Documentaries seemed like a powerful tool to combat injustice and fight back against stereotypes perpetuated by imbecilic, authoritarian leaders. So that was the new route I took on, and I hope that the new project I’m working on now (which is about Latin and Asian American solidarity) will be a slap in the face to the man who began his presidency by criticizing my home country and ended it by referring to Covid-19 as “Kung Flu.”

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Well, coffee is maybe too obvious an answer here. But what lurks under the caffeine is the drive to go out and succeed, to take advantage of the day and see if you can make your life slightly better than it was the day before. We’re not getting any younger.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rguevara.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rubengguevara/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rubenguevaraIII
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenguevaraiii/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rubengguevara?lang=en

Image Credits
Photos by Gabriel Rio Salazar and Adriana Rivera Garcia