August 2017

Discovered by producer/writer Cory Rooney (Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey), Brazilian-born pop artist Laura Pieri is ready to take the music industry by storm. Her debut single “I Will Follow You” dropped in July, serving as her official introduction to American eyes and ears, and now, a combination of hard work and fate will decide if she will reach the same super stardom status as some of her iconic influences, including Michael Jackson and Shakira.

We recently sat down with Pieri to discuss career butterflies, how her Brazilian roots will always shine through in her music, and the universal themes that we all can relate to.

TrunkSpace: Your first single in the U.S. dropped in July. What was that build up like in terms of waiting to make your official introduction to American music listeners?
Pieri: It was really intense! This project has been kept as a secret, that only a handful of people knew of and listened to. Now that we’re pulling the curtains up and sharing “I Will Follow You,” I certainly feel very excited. The butterflies definitely haven’t stopped!

TrunkSpace: You were born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil. How do Brazilian music fans differ from American audiences and did you have to adapt your sound for a more mass market appeal in the U.S.?
Pieri: Well, it was certainly a cultural transition to move here, but as far as my music goes, I can’t deny where I come from; it’s in my bones. However, I do have to be reminded at times that this is not Brazil as I’ll occasionally forget. As far as my sound goes, I really developed it over here, in the U.S., and so I feel like it’s resulted in a really cool mix.

TrunkSpace: You were discovered by Grammy Award winning producer/writer Cory Rooney, who has worked with some of the biggest names in music. How did that come about and we would have to imagine that it was a big confidence booster to have someone who has seen so much talent then see that talent in you?
Pieri: For me it was really a case of being at the right place at the right time. We have an acquaintance in common that introduced the both of us. Getting into the studio with Cory has been an amazing experience. I really hadn’t had much experience before, but watching him work has really taught me a lot. Having him believe in me is still a little unbelievable, but it also makes me feel like I have some big shoes to fill.

TrunkSpace: As we said, “I Will Follow You” was released just a few weeks ago. Is that particular song just one part of a bigger career equation that you already have planned? In other words, is there more music already in the can that we can expect to hear soon?
Pieri: Absolutely there will be more! “I Will Follow You” is kind of the introduction to what’s to come. We have a lot more planned, and it’ll definitely echo “I Will Follow You,” but it’ll also be different.

TrunkSpace: What do you hope to bring to your catalog of music as a whole? Will future tracks be a departure from “I Will Follow You” or do you feel that you have adapted your sound to be sonically an exclusively yours at this point in your career?
Pieri: I believe in evolution, and I think that’s a state that I’ll always be in. I think I will never really have a specific sound, but will just be in constant change. I do think that my Brazilian upbringing will show through in everything I do, so I guess you could say that’s where, sonically, I pull the most inspiration from.

TrunkSpace: Who inspired you to pursue music? Did you have a mentor and/or support system early in your life that gave you the confidence to turn your passion into a career?
Pieri: This will for sure sound super cliché, but Michael Jackson has been one of my biggest inspirations. He’s the one that got me into believing in music and in myself. Growing up my parents always embraced my curiosity and allowed me to be as creative as I could. I remember my mom used to always have to explain to our guests that our dinner parties were “out-of-the-box” because I would, no joke, put on little mini concerts and bring my dolls out to be part of the audience. When you’re five, everyone says they want to be a singer. I really just never changed my mind.

TrunkSpace: What do you think is the most difficult aspect of being an artist in 2017?
Pieri: With social media facilitating communication, everything moves super fast. That makes it hard for me to keep up with how quick the world moves. A song can get super popular in seconds, but it also becomes “old” at the same speed. I struggle with just keeping up with the speed of things without losing sight of reality.

TrunkSpace: You are still in the early stages of your career with a full future ahead of you. If you could have your career mirror another artists’ path, whose would it be and why?
Pieri: Oh gosh, I wouldn’t say I’d mirror anyone else’s career, but I am surely very inspired and aim to follow the latinas that came before me. Both JLo and Shakira’s career have impacted me greatly. I can still remember the first time that I saw Shakira on TV and she was dancing and her hair was flawless and I felt like it was something within my reach, I saw a little of myself in seeing her. I would say I definitely hope to follow in their footsteps.

TrunkSpace: Nowadays artists are branching out into so many different avenues, whether it’s acting, content creation, fashion, or all around entrepreneurial endeavors. Do you see your career going beyond music alone?
Pieri: Hopefully so! Yes! I am really into fashion and art and really hope to expand into those areas soon.

TrunkSpace: What do you want people to take from your music?
Pieri: Fun! Music is a way to communicate with everyone and I make music in hopes that everyone will enjoy it. I hope that’s really what people take away from my music, that it makes them feel good.

TrunkSpace: As mentioned, you’re from Brazil. Your life experiences will be different from those who grew up in Washington or Florida. That being said, there are some things that are universal. What are some of the universal subject matters/themes that you feel always work in music and that you will be singing about now or in the future?
Pieri: Well I think my music deals with things that everyone struggles with or goes through. “I Will Follow You” is about being in love and feeling it so intensely it kind of consumes you. This is something that everyone will feel and go through in their lives. Being a daughter, a student, a girlfriend, and even a friend are all universal things and the emotions that come along with those are too. That’s what I hope to deal with in my music.

In our new feature, Between the Sheets, TrunkSpace picks the imaginative brains of authors to break down what it takes to create the various worlds and characters they breathe life into via the tools of their trade… sheets of paper. While technology continues to advance and change the pop culture landscape, the written word has remained one of the most consistent and imaginative art forms.

This time out we’re chatting with screenwriter/author Mark Perez to discuss his new novel “How To Win At Life By Cheating At Everything,” how he’s been conning people for 20 years, and… how he may actually be Greg, his own foster son?

TrunkSpace: Your debut novel, “How To Win At Life By Cheating At Everything,” is described as a con-man’s guide to life. You have worked in the entertainment business for years. Does that particular industry allow for more con-based wiggle room than others?
Perez: (Laughter) I guess one could argue that the entertainment biz is built on a sort of grift. When your whole business model is focused on the selling of an idea. Not a real thing, mind you, but the concept of a thing. You can imagine how much bullshitting has to be going on. How much hyperbole. How much shadiness. And lets be honest, how much straight up lying. If you’re an agent, it’s literally in your job description. I’ve been conning people for 20 years. Right to their faces. It’s called a “movie pitch.”

TrunkSpace: The book is part memoir and part graphic novel. What ultimately led to you deciding that a visual element was part of your vision?
Perez: It was always a part of the plan. I wrote the project for Dark Horse Books. They made their bones on comic books and they were just starting to branch out into more prose-centric novels. So, the idea was always to think of it in terms of a quasi graphic novel. Not as much art as you would see in that particular format, but still quite a bit of it. Then I thought it would be interesting to add some photos from the 80s. Reflecting the time when the character purportedly grew up. Almost as if the book were this sort of a diary of a conman.

TrunkSpace: Speaking of vision, is the novel/book world the only place a creative brain gets to fully see its vision come to fruition without outside sources having their say? Much of your career has been spent screenwriting, which is well-known for being a notes-driven outlet.
Perez: I often say that in writing a screenplay, there is a lot of math you need to always be considering. Page 30 is the hook. Page 60 is a turn. Page 90 is the fall. Page 120 is the end. Now, there have been crazy creative people who have made some amazing art inside those parameters. But, there certainly are hardened rules to be mindful of. In writing this book, there were no rules. I could basically do anything I felt like doing. And then add pictures to the mix, too. Write jokes with visuals. Age a photo and make it look like I found it in a drawer somewhere. It was freeing in a lot of ways. I let loose, didn’t give myself any rules, and then reflected on what the final product was afterwards. In other words, I didn’t hold myself back along the way.

TrunkSpace: By not writing in a note-heavy environment, did you still rely on someone to test the material out on or was the process itself more solitary than you are used to working in?
Perez: I always give everything to my wife. We have been together since college. From when I was writing scripts on a broken card table in our shitty apartment in Hollywood, to right up until this book, she’s always been a part of my process. But, beyond that, it was cool that I didn’t have to send 100 drafts to managers and producers and executives who usually only tell you what is flawed about your project. Also, I had a great editor. A book editor is on your side, so to speak. She gave notes that added to what I was trying to say in the book as opposed to saying things like, “It’s great. I love it. But can you make the lead character a woman. Set it in World War I. And can you give her super powers? Lady super powers are really hot right now.” Writing the book was less painful in that way.

TrunkSpace: While the book has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, there is also a heavy, dramatic relationship element to the storytelling. Can you tell us about that and why it was important to you to balance those elements?
Perez: First of all, thank you! I sat down to write a book that was two things. I wanted it to have a linear storytelling quality, with a main character that had a bit of an arc. But also, because it was going to have such cool art in it, I wanted it to be a book you could pick up in line at Urban Outfitters, read page 47, and maybe get a quick laugh. I have a very close relationship with my dad. And by making it a father/son relationship story, I could tap into something that was near and dear to me. So, while the book is clearly goofy, I tried to make that relationship real. Because at the end, underneath all the cons, and jokes, and cynicism, there’s a little bit of a love story between father and son.

TrunkSpace: With this being your debut novel, have you placed expectations on it, not only in terms of its success but how it may change people’s view of you as a writer?
Perez: I’m excited about it because I get to sell my writing in a different way to Hollywood. Instead of sending out a new spec script to the town, I get to send out a cool book with pictures in it! People around here have very short attention spans lately. Especially when they’re reading 100 scripts a week. So with this project, I might be able to reach them in a different way. And as far as expectations, I’m just excited that I’ve written something that some people may actually read! In my career I’ve sometimes toiled over screenplays for years that only end up getting read by literally ten people. So, if I get twenty people to read this book, I’ll be ahead of the game!

TrunkSpace: Just so we’re clear, are you conning your way through this interview right now?
Perez: I’m not actually Mark. He’s currently at a gentleman’s club he often frequents. I’m his foster son, Greg, who he forces to do this shit for him. Help me. Please.

TrunkSpace: Regarding the process, is writing a labor of love for you or does it feel more like labor? Do you enjoy the process?
Perez: I always think of the cliché. “I hate writing. But, I love having written.” And I guess it’s a cliché because it’s so true. I’ve spent the past 20 years sitting in front of a computer trying to come up with stuff. I’ve written every fat buddy character. Every foulmouthed neighbor kid. Thought of every comedy idea from The Hardy Boys grown up to be losers to a movie about ghosts raising a baby. (It was called RAISED BY GHOSTS, no bullshit.) And after every experience, I announce to my wife that I hate writing and that I’m retiring. Then I go to a batting cage or take a long drive and I come up with some other wacky idea that I feel the immediate need to write for no reason. And then the process repeats itself. It’s very healthy. I’m not at all crazy. Anyway, who am I kidding? It’s better than working for a living.

TrunkSpace: And what does that process look like? What are the ideal conditions for putting in a good day of writing?
Perez: I’ve tried them all. Locking myself in a room until I write an entire script. Or taking a year to do it by writing only half a page before I go to sleep every night. I write on a laptop at my pool. (Yep, I have a pool.) I write on a desktop in the dark. I’m always trying to trick myself that writing is actually fun and exciting. Hey, let’s try writing on a beach! It’ll be fun! With the water and the sun and… it never is though. Fun or exciting. It’s always painful, the writing part. Except this time maybe it’s painful on a beach. My wife once forbid me from bringing my laptop on vacation one year. And I maniacally wrote an entire movie in a notebook. It was called ACCEPTED and it got made at Universal. On the flipside, I’ve also spent three years writing a spec in the perfect conditions that everybody thought was terrible. So, who knows???

TrunkSpace: Do you self-edit as you write?
Perez: As far as screenplays go, I like to bust out a first draft right away. Without looking back. Because if I did stop and edit, I would be constantly changing things before I knew where I was gonna end up. I prefer to write the whole thing, read how ragged it is, and then go back and edit. As far as the book goes, I can’t even imagine if I had gone back and edited along the way. I think doing that with 30 or 40 thousand words would be maddening.

TrunkSpace: Where are you the hardest on yourself as a writer?
Perez: Oh God, you name it. Is this funny? Does this seem real? Are people going to hate this? Is this entire idea shitty? Am I a total fraud who should kill himself? I’ve sold a ton of screenplays and was lucky enough to get this book published and I still can’t believe anybody pays me to do it. I was much more confident as a dumb kid who moved to Hollywood to try and make it. I was a much worse writer, but much more confident.

TrunkSpace: What are you working on now and what will people be able to read next?
Perez: I just finished the first draft of a memoir called JEWS OF THE CARIBBEAN. I’m first generation Cuban American. And I grew up with my dad, sister and my very Hispanic grandparents in Hinsdale, Illinois. Which is basically the John Hughes Chicago suburbs. We moved around a lot before and after that time, and my father always used to tell me that we could make it anywhere because the Cubans were the “Jews of the Caribbean.” My dad preached other weird shit like that to me growing up. So, I decided to write a book about it all. I also wrote GAME NIGHT which is a movie coming out March 2^nd, 2018 via New Line/Warner Bros. It stars Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler and Jeffery Wright. I’m pretty excited about it.

In our new column Deep Focus, TrunkSpace is going behind the camera to talk with the directors, writers, and producers who infuse our world with that perennial pop culture goodness that we can’t get enough of.

This time out we’re chatting with James Roland, creator, writer, and producer of the SyFy series “Blood Drive.” We recently sat down with Roland to discuss the psychology of the series, how he was able to shoot the show as a hard R, and why Arthur Bailey is a Frank Capra character stuck in a Roger Corman world.

TrunkSpace: The characters you have created for “Blood Drive” really help build out the world. Each one is a layer to a very tasty cake.
Roland: We got lucky with that, man. It wasn’t lucky, I should say. We had casting directors working their asses off. We had a hell of a cast. It was impressive.

TrunkSpace: And that cast is so diverse in terms of backgrounds.
Roland: Yeah. Marama is from Malta. I have never met another human being from Malta.

TrunkSpace: She has a very unique accent.
Roland: It’s amazing. We met Marama over tape because we were already in South Africa prepping by the time she was cast. So we were looking at these video submissions online and her video submission popped up with, “Hi, I’m Marama Corlett, and I’m over 18 years old.” We were like, “Whoa! What is that about?” We were a little weirded out. (Laughter) She gave a great audition and she ended up getting the part. I learned through this experience that actors are supposed to give their measurements, like their height, their weight, and all that comes with it. She shows up on set and she doesn’t even come to my shoulder. She’s so tiny and she has kind of a baby face, so she looks like she’s 10 years old. I’m like, “Oh, that’s why! We just thought you were kooky!” (Laughter) Of course, she’s all paranoid because she’s like, “I’m so much shorter than Thomas.” And I was like, “This is the one show where that doesn’t matter, and actually helps.”

TrunkSpace: There’s that one scene where she’s kneeling down near his foot and it’s as big as her head.
Roland: Yes! I know. It allowed for these amazing shot dynamics and forced directors into more interesting framing, actually. The code is that you’re supposed to get them within a reasonable distance of height of each other so that you can do over-the-shoulders very easily and move quickly. We just didn’t have that. It was pretty cool.

I can’t remember what episode it is where he picks her up, but it was amazing to watch on set because it was like she might as well not have been there. He’s so ripped. It was like, TINK… like putting a little teacup on the counter.

TrunkSpace: The size difference really works because she is the one in control, which gives it this crazy, “Blood Drive” dynamic.
Roland: Yeah, it actually is pretty cool. It brought a lot of psychology, I think, to the forefront of that dynamic because you start to go, “Why isn’t he…? Why can’t he…?” I’m sure she’s got all these super powers and stuff like that, but you start to really go, “Oh, this guy wants this on a certain level.”

I had a scene written that we never got to shoot that really hit that kind of on the head. We ran out of time, but it would have been amazing because it really was something that we saw on the page. We talked a lot about the psychology, about why he lets these things happen, and, of course, at a certain point he can’t get out. It’s because he’s physically trapped.

They brought it out in their performance, in their dynamic, and using their body types as part of that too. It was really amazing. It’s been cool to see people dig into that storyline like I kind of knew they would. At first they’re like, “What the hell is this about?” And then you start to see it unfold over time. It’s one of my favorite parts of the show.

TrunkSpace: You mentioned stuff that was on the page that didn’t make it in. That being said, how the hell did you get the stuff in that was on the page?!?!
Roland: (Laughter) SyFy held true to their word. They said, “We want you to push it.” But I don’t think when they said that they knew what they were getting into. (Laughter) Obviously stuff is censored with the censor bars and stuff, but we went into it saying, “I don’t want to shoot the PG-13 version and we don’t have time to because that doubles your amount of shooting time on certain things and it’s confusing, it’s a pain in the ass, and we don’t have time to edit two different versions.” Time is money and we were so low-budget and so fast-paced there was just no way.

So it was like, “We’re going to shoot the hard R version,” and even though technically we put the black bars on ourselves, because that was the cheaper option than farming it out to some company that is on the network side, we would just literally say, “You tell us what we absolutely have to have black bars over.” We’d get into a little debate with them, back and forth versions, and stuff like that, because that way it wasn’t self-censorship, right? It was the network telling us. I feel like if we self-censor, if we do a PG-13 cut, I think the fans and the audience just smell bullshit. I know I would. I’d be like, “Well, you’re saying this is Grindhouse…”

TrunkSpace: There’s also the shock value of it that makes viewers want to come back in order to see what you will attempt next.
Roland: Yeah, exactly. We treated the shock value and the craziness as… in the writers’ room we always called it a safety net, but not a crutch. And what we meant by that is that if we fuck up and don’t do our jobs to make the scenes interesting, to make the characters interesting, or we just fuck up and it just doesn’t quite meet expectations, we’ve got that craziness there as something that is interesting. But never, never did we just write a scene just to be crazy.

TrunkSpace: And we touched on this earlier, but the characters have so many layers. They’re not two-dimensional, which is another pleasant surprise for viewers who came in expecting one thing and got something else.
Roland: That was by design because when I pitched it, I pitched it on a whim as a joke. It was meant to be a silly, fake Grindhouse trailer back in 2011. I almost did it for a contest, but I couldn’t figure out how to do the blood engines, so I did something else instead, which obviously did not win. But this idea of the “Blood Drive” concept, cars that run on blood and a cross country race, all of my friends kept asking me about it. I could tell it sparked interest in people. And then when I pitched it, my manager said, “Yeah, write that, write that!” He got really excited. And then it was like, “Okay, but how do you turn it into a story?” Because it’s a “Saturday Night Live” skit. It doesn’t have legs. It doesn’t have, terrible pun intended, an engine that really keeps it going in a television format. And then I hit upon the idea of Arthur Bailey.

We named him Bailey because of George Bailey… because I wanted it to be like what happens when a Frank Capra character gets thrown into a Roger Corman movie. And then that cracked open the world, because then that set the bar. He’s a good guy, so what happens when you’re in a bad race? What does it do to you? What does it reveal about you, because everybody has dark secrets. We’re about to go on a three or four episode arc that really digs into Arthur and gets into a lot of that.

Keep in mind, Grindhouse isn’t actually a genre. If you’re going to be specific, Grindhouse is just a theater that played exploitation movies. When the movie “Grindhouse” came out, the Tarantino/Rodriguez double feature, it kind of shifted into a genre, or at least an aesthetic. So within that there are some great frickin’ movies! “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” gets thrown into that category. It’s a masterpiece. The Blood Trilogy by Herschell Gordon Lewis is not a masterpiece. (Laughter) It couldn’t be any further from it, although I love those movies for what they are. Roger Corman is considered a shock-meister and yet his pro movies are really heartfelt. “The Intruder” is just a bold, at the time, counter cultural kind of soapbox movie. In a good way! It deals with race relations, but he doesn’t get remembered for that. He gets remembered for “Death Race 2000,” which as cheesy as it is, it’s a brilliant social commentary. So yeah, that was always the goal. Just because it’s crazy doesn’t mean it can’t have dramatic value or even meaning. I don’t think that we’re a profound show. Of course not. But every episode we did say, “What is the episode about?” If we are going to be so brash and ridiculous and kind of have this ability to say things when people are not even going to realize we are saying them because they are too busy laughing or puking or whatever it is they’re doing, then let’s do it. Let’s say something.

The second part of our James Roland can be read here.