STACK NZ Aug #65

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of attention to authenticity and specificity.
So, when I cast a movie like this, I always
want to go right to the truth and the truth
of this movie is kids who run, who live in
McFarland, and who also do field work.
So, we went there. In fact, we went to
a lot of similar communities in California
about 18 months before we even got into
the casting process to identify who these
kids were, through group auditions and
little improvisations. We were also casting
within the acting community but what’s
amazing about the seven of them is that
three of them are from McFarland and had
never acted before. So it was fantastic in
pre-production to put the real kids through
acting training, and put the acting kids
through physical training. They all had a
lot to learn from each other. The group is
so tight and seamless that nobody can
tell me who are the actors and who are
the non-actors. They were intensively
prepared and they worked incredibly hard.
I had a huge amount of respect for that
going in and a huge amount of confidence.
with NIKI CARO.
2 13 4
Did you enjoy working with the boys
you cast as the runners?
As a filmmaker, I love to work in real
communities and real people. I like to light
them up. There’s something special about
putting people on screen who never saw
themselves that way and don’t necessarily
see how beautiful they are. Not just these
boys, but also the community in general.
All seven of the boys we cast are worthy
of important and satisfying careers. They
all have something special.
As well as running, some of the
characters are also into low-riding. Can
you tell us about that culture?
Low-riding was very big in the Central
Valley in the mid-’80s. Bakersfield was
one of the low-riding epicenters of this
area and this country. I have a strong
connection to it because my husband is
a big part of that culture, so I know way
more about low-riding than a middle-class
white woman from New Zealand should!
Low-riding culture is vastly different to
how it’s generally portrayed on screen.
What the movie business has done to low-
riding is use it as shorthand for gangster,
when in fact it’s almost the complete
opposite. In the world of low-riding, it’s all
about family; it’s all about community and
these vehicles, how beautiful they are and
the work that you do on them and the way
you show them off. There’s a great deal of
pride in low-riding culture that’s indicative
of the pride in Mexican culture generally.
What happened to the real-life running
team?
A number of the original runners
became teachers in McFarland, in the very
high school [they themselves attended].
One of them, David Diaz, was actually the
principal of that school for some time. The
fact they’re all back working and raising
their families in their town and actively
supporting the cross-country teams of
today speaks volumes about the magic of
that community and of those people.
McFarland, USA,
is out on DVD and
Blu-ray on
August 19