Hello and welcome to Essay Files.

I'm Sonny Melendez, and on this episode, we're going to introduce you to an incredible San Antonio filmmaker, producer, director, editor, and cinematographer, Andrew James Gonzalez.

He's a recipient of many awards for his work locally, nationally and internationally.

His most recent work is a touching, difficult and compelling documentary on the reality of war called American Sons, focused on San Antonio Native Corporal JV Villarreal and his time on the war field in Afghanistan.

Andrew's storytelling is raw and real.

Andrew, so great to have you here at the Callahan Studios.

It's a pleasure to be here with you, Sonny.

Let me ask you to begin with to give me your thumbnail description of what this film is all about.

American Sons is a story surrounding JB Villareal, a young marine from here in San Antonio, and his closest marine brothers and family, showing how combat has affected their community.

Ten years after the Afghanistan war or after their time in Afghanistan.

The footage came home, after Jamie's death.

He died in Kajaki, Afghanistan, after stepping on an IED.

And the footage came home to his marine brothers and ended up with his sister, April.

Now, April sat on the footage for a little while and wanted to know, you know, what to do with this, because it's truly as compelling as you know.

And so she found our producer, a lot of Barela and brought the footage to her.

Laura has just finished a film about Vietnam veterans, and showing the how they dealt with their PTSD and through art.

And so she found her.

She was looking for somebody who was, a Latina.

She was looking for someone who could handle this with care and, well, someone who kind of represented who Javy was.

And so she found Laura not knowing that she was here in San Antonio.

And they met up.

And this was about 2011.

And so the footage sat for, for several years.

And later on louder.

And I had started working together, doing nonprofit work and different short documentaries here in San Antonio.

And about that time, I felt like it was time for me to do a feature film.

I'd always been told that you you weren't going to be a legitimate director until you did a feature.

And so I ventured in and said, you know what?

What do you have available?

What what kind of stories do you have access to?

Because for years she'd been saying, feature films.

I have access to these stories.

And I kind of shied away from that because I didn't feel ready.

And so when I did feel ready, I said, what do you have?

And so she showed me this, among other things, totally blown away.

Sunny.

The the footage and the photos that are also available.

You know, there's a marine, photographer that was with them at the time of Jamie's death that captured him before, during and after.

And so I was just really blown away by everything that I was seeing.

And within a month, we had, you know, met with April and we were off to California beginning the first few shoots.

You had different formats.

In some cases, you had to, to, to translate them into a, watchable format.

Right.

And she had not even seen some of this footage.

Absolutely.

So there was just kind of like, a cache of just photos and footage from all different sources.

So as, like, this was like 2010.

So back then, there was a lot of file sharing.

People were saying, hey, give me your photos, give me your video.

So some of the videos are from him.

Some of the videos are from his marine brother.

Some of the photos are from the photographers that, were embedded with the unit.

Some were just guys in the unit who were taking photos.

And so there was just a ton of different stuff in there.

All very compelling.

However, there was, several videos that were in a format that were not watchable, and so those had to be converted.

And so I had already committed to the project with all the footage that was available after I converted this footage.

This is that first person JB very own narrative in which it's his camera.

He's going in Afghanistan, he's turning the camera on himself and he's narrating his experience.

So once we saw that, we knew that this film was meant to be.

And did you feel like his narrative really took the story in the direction it needed to be?

Yeah.

So what we wanted to do, we wanted to honor him.

You know, being from San Antonio, he's one of us.

And so that's always been the core of the film.

And just seeing the what he's saying, how he's expressing.

It's a unique voice that we don't think anybody's ever seen before.

When it comes to this particular topic.

And so we know we wanted to, to showcase that, but it couldn't just be about that.

So what we did is we contacted we had April contact his marine brothers, and we held some reunions where we could meet them.

And it was supposed to just be kind of like some pre-production, some development, just getting to know people and understanding more about who he was.

But what happened when we did that?

We started to understand more of what these men were going through, and we started to see the bigger picture about what happens when you return from war and what happens a decade later after that, what you're experiencing, what these men are experiencing.

And that opened up the story to a much bigger opportunity to tell a story that is important in this day and age.

Now that we're had did 20 years in Afghanistan, and we're now four years after that, that we still need to understand what these men are going through, what we owe our service members, when they go fight for us, you know how they need to be treated when they come back.

And what are the opportunities we can to bring them back into society so that they can be, you know, part of what we're doing here and, you know, know that their service was meaningful and be able to give them what they desire, what they need, of course.

Now, Andrew, I have to ask you, you know, when you go to speak with you didn't know them, you introduce yourself to them.

How did you get how did you gain their confidence?

How did you gain their trust?

Well, April Villareal, Jv's older sister.

She had a great deal in helping that out.

So they had this tremendous respect for JB and loved him.

He was their brother.

And so now they have this.

They have this respect for the family.

They have this respect for April.

They have this respect for Yolanda.

And they're they want to keep JB's memory alive.

So that's what brings them in, knowing that, their contribution is going to help to keep his memory around.

And so that people all around the world can know who he is.

So that was kind of like the basis of getting everybody together.

And then I just it's they they know that I'm there filming.

That's a big part of it.

Like they're aware of that when we show up that we're going to be filming.

And then I just start filming and my style is just to film and film and film until someone tells me not to film, and I try not to be in your face.

I try to be more a fly on the wall, so I don't.

I kind of get farther away.

I use a longer lens and I mic people up so you can hear what they're saying, and over time they just forget that they're wearing a mic and you just film them in their natural interaction.

And that's how the development started.

So you're just allowing people to interact.

And for the most part, most of that footage wasn't used in the film because you're just people are just talking to each other and they haven't seen each other a while and you.

But it helps you to understand the direction of what you're looking for because they reveal things and then you say, oh, this guy's going through this, this guy hasn't seen this guy in a while.

This guy's relationship with JB was this.

And so you start to put together what could be in the documentary.

So in documentary, in a narrative film, when you're writing a script, you create everything ahead of time.

You know, in a documentary everything is done in the editing room.

So you film and then you put it together later.

And so that's kind of how we approached it.

Now, during that first, visit that we had with these marine brothers, a really compelling scene did unfold.

And that ended up and that's the midpoint of the film.

And so we were very blessed, for that to just transpire.

But those are the moments where we knew that this film was meant to be a scene like this.

I feel like I was just present.

I would just had the camera and I pointed it in a direction.

I had the camera, I made a record, in fact, on the camera, I had a big piece of tape that just said press record.

Yeah.

So that I knew, you know, that was the biggest.

Right?

If you've ever filmed before, you know that you could be sitting there in the moment capturing this amazing thing, and you look down and the camera hasn't been recording the whole time.

Anybody who's done this work has probably done that a time or two.

So, it was just about being present, getting people aware that I was there and this not being in anybody's face, you know, being respectful when the camera's not rolling.

Just be normal, you know?

And it was just you.

Well, there were times where Larry was out with us.

So she's our producer, and so she's out producing.

There's times when we do have an additional sound person with us.

But it was the times, see what was happening.

And we started filming in 2019.

And so it was just like we had all this great opportunity, this great film, all this momentum behind us.

And we we went out and shot this stuff in 2019.

I think we had 2 or 3 shoots that happened.

Well, then 2020, we all know what happened there.

You know, pandemic, global pandemic.

And so during that time, there was a lot of fear, in society, in the culture.

And I was sitting around for a while for maybe like a month or two, and I was already fully on in this project, and I wasn't willing to just sit on my hands anymore.

I knew that we had to get out there and produce, and I knew that this was important.

And so, I just ventured out, you know, on my own.

It was the safest thing to do at the time, to not have a bunch of, you know, at the time, they were advising that you just to have a bunch of people together.

So the safest thing was for me to go by myself and to be with these Marines one on one in many cases.

And so that's what happened.

I ended up they were aware of what I was doing, and then I would make the connection and I would go follow up.

I'd go visit, I'd go to Florida, I'd go to California, different places in the country where they were, and I would just hang out with them, put a mic on them and film, you know, and then when they wanted to stop filming, we would stop filming.

We'd hang out, we'd we'd watch movies, or we'd go to the movies or we'd drive around, we'd go to the beach.

I mean, we would just hang out.

And in those times, they're revealing a lot more to me.

Stuff that's not on camera.

So I'm getting to know what they're going through.

I'm getting to understand their experience later on.

And so through them, having those discussions with me interactions.

And I'm not there to like, you know, tell them my point of view on anything.

I'm just really there to listen.

But we're also engaging as friends, you know, because I'm being friendly and we're near the same age.

So we're able just to interact and enjoy ourselves.

And I'm not trying to put too much pressure on anything, especially in the early days.

I wasn't trying to put too much pressure.

I'm just trying to understand the situation.

And so just all those moments of being together and just being in each other's company, being present, being aware, that's you just build that trust, you know, you just are able to build those relationships that later on will evolve into when, when maybe the stakes get raised in certain situations, the camera is there, already aware of the camera.

They're getting used to it.

They're already aware of being miked up there.

Any aware of me being there.

And I think there was always a hesitation on what was going to be shown in the film.

So there was always a concern because they're saying they're really opening up deep and they're saying certain things that they're concerned about how they'll look or you know, who reads into it or what they think about what they're saying.

But we were just very careful.

We were be as respectful as we can to both of them, but also to the story, the importance of the story, the importance of the story to all our veterans and to our to our government and just to our society to understand what these, service members have gone through and the type of care that they need and, and how we need to show up for them.

And understanding that when you say thank you for your service, you may not even understand what that means.

So what this film does, as you said, Ron Real, we peel back the curtain so you understand what that really means, because it's not just what they went through, it's what they're going through today.

And also what their family and friends and loved ones are going through.

The.

There's a real powerful moment in the documentary where you you have a his mother, Yolanda speaking.

Tell me about how that came about.

Which is one of those things where you're trying to understand more about JV and who know more about her than the mother, and it's a different perspective.

We get to know JV as a child.

We get to know the family dynamic.

So you think a lot about, you know, what someone goes through in combat.

But we don't spend enough time thinking about what the family goes through when they're both in combat or when they don't return.

Unfortunately, her son didn't return.

So we want to understand you know what that's like, what that's like to be a parent and lose a child.

You know, this is a story of humanity.

You know, there's plenty of films out there about war.

Our film is not necessarily that.

Our film is about humans.

It's about humans struggling with day to day life.

What people go through the trials and, we just want to go deeper into understand, you know, the love that we have for each other, how we relate to each other and how we're affected by the decisions that we make.

So that's what this film is about, you know, and the main theme is reconnection.

So, there's a lot of challenges.

I know the film, it does open up with, suicide, suicide statistics, because ultimately that's what we want to do is mitigate suicide.

But, we just want people to understand that human connection is really important.

And so when you isolate yourself, that's it's not good.

And it could end up you can end up making decisions that you would not make if you were around others that can help you and bring you into a more positive space in life, and find meaningful things to do and interact with, with, with different people.

And that's very important.

Human beings.

We're social, you know.

So, when working with different people that we interviewed, for instance, Yolanda is just trying to understand more of who JB was as a person, deeper, more than just this marine that went to war and then come back.

You know, that's what we need to understand when we say, you know, for the ones we've lost, well, who are the ones we've lost?

The ones we've lost.

It's not a wall just with names.

We want to understand who they really were.

This is someone's child.

This is a brother.

You know, there's a he's more.

He's a he's a real person.

And so that's what we wanted to do is this show, both who he was.

You know, he's hilarious guy.

Very charismatic.

Obviously had a whole community of people who really cared about him and whose life he touched.

So that's what we're trying to show.

And we we speak with the mother or the brothers or the people he served with.

It show that this person, although he wasn't here with us for very long, he touched so many people whose lives will never be the same.

And we should mention that the show.

The film.

The documentary premiered at South by Southwest.

That's right.

How did that come about?

Because that's that's really a big feat.

Well, that was a dream come true.

Sunny.

So South by southwest for for filmmakers, for musicians.

It's like the pinnacle of your career if that's where you want to perform.

And so having that opportunity is just something that we all just reveled in.

We loved, and we're so excited to be able to say that that's where our film premiered.

It's such a big, such a big thing.

And so, very challenging.

I forget the exact numbers, but you can imagine thousands of films are being submitted to South Bay.

Sure.

And they can only accept a few hundred and even less documentaries.

So, we did apply for a couple of years.

The film wasn't ready the first time we applied, but, we have a producer, Elizabeth Avalon, from Troublemaker Studios.

Movies like El Mariachi, From Dusk till Dawn, Spy Kids, all these movies that we've grown up watching.

She's also one of our producers as well.

And so she's very tied in with the Austin community.

And she was able to, you know, help us connect with certain people that could, maybe take a look at our film a little bit deeper, knowing that she was a producer on the film.

And so that was just kind of like what helped us to get in.

Now the film does stand on its own merit.

You know, even for someone like that to want to be involved, it has its own merit.

It has its own quality.

But there are so many great filmmakers out there sending so many respectable, great filmmakers.

Anyone who is doing it and finishes the film, you know that this is a really solid individual that never gives up because it's very difficult to produce something like this.

And so all these films that are out there, it's just full of people that are worthy.

And so a lot of times with film festivals, it's really hard to get in.

In fact, you know, we applied for I can't even remember the number, but let's just say 50 film festivals and got into maybe like less than ten.

So it's really challenging.

And you really have to, you know, know somebody to get into these things.

So is helpful, along your career to be able to as anything else, anything you do to network, get to know people, make relationships because those relationships are really what's going to take you to where you want to go.

And when you were fundraising or when you were trying to to get your, your funding going, I understand that you even use your own credit cards to, to fund it.

That's right, that's right.

Certainly.

So at the very beginning, you know, there's just there's no money, you know, and that's one of those things where I just jumped in, jumped into this not knowing what to expect.

Of course, I'd already been doing this in other parts of my career, so I was not, you know, it wasn't new to me to fund the things I'm doing.

I've never followed a traditional path.

Right.

But I had good credit and I had several credit cards.

And so if we needed to put on a production, we needed to fly somewhere.

We needed to, you know, feed the crew.

We needed to get accommodations.

You know, I would just pull the credit card out and then, you know, made sure that we'd always move forward.

And so that continued to happen throughout the whole entire life of the project, especially at the beginning.

I did a lot of that at the beginning.

And then by, I'd say 2009 to 2019, 2020, we landed our first grant from Latino Public Broadcasting, which is, an organization that services PBS films.

So they gave us our first grant, and then we were able to to pay ourselves a little bit.

We were able to pay off some of that debt that I had accrued during that time, and then also allowed us to move forward in production and continue on creating.

Right.

So, then, as you know, these types of films, the funding is up and down.

It's not like we're just being funded by our rich benefactor or anything like that.

All of our funding came from federal grant money through PBS, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

And so you have to apply for grants.

Every year is on some years.

You don't get it, you know, and sometimes it takes 3 or 4 times to submit.

Before you do get it.

You have to continue to create.

You have to, you know, if they looked at your film one year, the next year, they have to see that you've made improvements that you have, move forward on your mission and you have new ideas that you're constant, and those are the people they want to film, because if they're going to give money they want to make, they're they're going to make a bet.

They want to know that it's going to come to fruition, the film is going to get made.

So we continue to create every bit of money.

But during those, you know, funding gaps, that's when the credit card look around again.

So I always make sure that that we could keep moving forward, no matter what.

And so here we are today and, you know, finally, we were fully funded in 2024 by organization Black Public Media.

They really took us to the finish line, and we're so grateful to them.

But once we got that funding and then I was finally able to get out of that credit card debt.

Before we run out of time, I want to ask you about, jv's.

Marine buddies.

What how important is it for them to stay in touch with each other going, moving forward?

It's so important because they have to continue to be connected with those who understand them.

You know, nobody's going to understand what these guys went through, like their marine brothers especially, you know, especially these guys.

They're so close.

They're so close with the family.

And they stood.

They still do continue to, to stay together.

There's a memorial held every year here in San Antonio for JV.

They come in and visit for that.

But just there's so many ways to stay connected these days.

Phone call, emails, social media, there's so many ways that people can connect in person is always the best, you know.

So you can be there one on one.

But these guys live all over the country, so it's very challenging for them to do so.

But that reconnection, and that's our message in this film that we need to have that human touch, that human connection.

And that's what helps us to, you know, feel alive, to feel present in this world and to share ideas.

Right?

Because if you're alone and you're just inside of your head and inside of your thoughts, you know, sometimes they can lead to some bad outcomes.

And so we want to make sure that, the veterans feel like they're cared for, they want to feel like they can make the connection and that they continue to do so.

We still support that.

We want them to continue to do that.

And, you know, we're always there when they need us.

What do you want the audience to walk away with?

They watch this film.

But when that one thing audience to walk away from is to understand, what these what all veterans and what these particular veterans went through, you know, once again that thank you for your service.

Like to understand what that service is because it's not something that your average person would go through, you know, and these men were willing to do it.

They were willing to go on the front line knowing the danger that laid in front of them.

And it's not just like getting shot, you know, the main, the main, warfare in Afghanistan was an IED.

You know, that's an improvised explosive device.

That's a device that's being made by all different parts, buried underground.

If you step on it, it explodes.

And if you see some of these explosions, they're massive.

And they.

That was the main warfare that was happening in Afghanistan.

So it's not like when people think just getting shot.

I mean, people are getting blown up.

It's, it's it's it's really serious.

And it's not just, you know, getting blown up.

You lose your life.

But you see guys that walk around with missing limbs, you see people who had to witness some of that, some of the guys who had to deal with the aftermath.

And when somebody did go get blown up, and then they have to just stuff that down and go back to work, you know, and sometimes, you come back, you know, it's not like the job is done.

You're still living with that.

You didn't have time to cope with any of that.

You know, that's a big part of just us as humans dealing with trauma.

Trauma has to be processed out of the body.

And if you just shut it off, if you just push it down, it's going to stay there and it's going to manifest into something.

It's going to manifest in the disease.

Ultimately, whether it's disease of the body or disease of the mind.

So trauma has to be processed out.

And so when these guys come back, we need to help them process that trauma by any means necessary.

Whatever we can do to help them process that trauma.

Because I think it's like out of sight, out of mind for most people.

It's like, oh, they're back.

They should be fine.

Why can't we understand them?

Well, they dealt with a lot of stuff that they're not willing to talk about, and that will, with our wildest imaginations.

We'll never be able to even understand what they went through.

So the film peels back that layer.

It shows you a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes.

It shows what people are going on these days.

And so when you see that, yeah, it is a group of Marines, this, this unit and a small friend group, as they call it, within the unit, you see what each person is going through.

But in there you can see if you're a veteran, you can see yourself, you can see somebody you served with.

You can see a family member that you know, a family member can see their family member that they might know.

And somebody especially here in San Antonio, Military City, USA, they're going to know somebody who's experienced something like this and will help them to understand more, have more empathy, and just help us to all collectively try to deal from this aftermath.

Do you think the Marines, who are in this film and of course, who were experienced all of these, the, the incredible atrocities of of war, do you think they have benefited from being part of this project?

I like to hope that they they have.

I mean, obviously it can be challenging to view yourself, especially on a giant screen in front of a bunch of people and you revealing your most intimate parts of your psyche.

That's very challenging.

And I, I respect that, and I support anything that comes, after having viewed that, I believe that there has been improvements.

I've seen them.

Obviously when you go out on the limb and you do something out of the ordinary, you shake things up.

Life is going to get shaken up for you, you know?

But I hope that at the end of that, when the when the dust has settled, that we're all in a better place.

At the end of the day.

Well, well, Andrew, I congratulate you on, this incredible documentary.

All of your team as well.

And I know that, it's going to do a lot, to go beyond just the screens that we're on.

We'll see it on.

And, I just can't tell you how proud we are.

And San Antonians of you and your team.

Well, thank you, sunny, as a it's always a pleasure to be with you and to be here and clear.

And, you know, I just one thing I do want to say, this was one of the first places that I interviewed for a job when I got out of college.

Is that right?

That's right.

Well, full.

Circle.

That's right.

Here you.

Go.

Thank you so much for being here.

We're glad that you could join us for this episode of Essay Files.

Thank you for watching for Keller and I'm Sunny Melendez.