Reality through Magic
STOWE STORY LABS ALUM AND STOWE LAUNCH PARTICIPANT EMILY RAY REESE DISCUSSES GUADALUPE MOUNTAIN, GROWING UP IN NEW MEXICO, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MAGIC TO LIFE
By Robert Delaney
Stowe Alum, Emily Ray Reese
Emily Ray Reese is a filmmaker, performer, and professor. The most important thing from our perspective is she is the author of the touching magical realism drama GUADALUPE MOUNTAIN: “Forgotten in the midst of her parents’ crumbling marriage, Lola, a ten-year-old barrel racer, attempts to escape a sexual predator by harnessing a secret source of power within her.”
As Reese explains, the script started by trying to communicate what it was like for her growing up unconventionally in the rural mountains of New Mexico: “It was having these conversations about growing up in a ghost town, and what does that really mean for a kid. That’s where I started with the script.”
For Reese, there is a deep contrast between the beautiful yet unforgiving landscape of rural New Mexico. She wanted to integrate this tension into GUADALUPE MOUNTAIN: “I think New Mexico is the most beautiful place in the whole wide world, and it’s a really harsh world. It’s harsh in that people struggle, they really struggle. There’s not much of an economy, people are just barely squeaking by, and they’re doing it in the most beautiful place in the world. I am really trying to talk about poverty in all of it’s shades, and the effects that it has on the community.”
Harnessing this contrast, Reese decided to utilize vibrant magical realism while addressing “the dark realities of poverty, addiction, abuse, betrayal, and death.” “It’s a story that deals with parents who love you but their lives are a mess so they can’t really be parents. That puts Lola at risk to be abused by other people. That is the heart of the story, of a kid navigating adults.”
As Reese describes, the magic allows the internal to become the external: “The magic allows the audience to see what is going on inside Lola through her outside interactions with this magic. The magic took a lot of iterations before I found the right balance. It isn’t ‘pals searching through a ghost town for a treasure!’ It is magic that can go between whimsical and grotesque, to illustrate what is happening for her internally with all these experiences.”
The visual style is also influenced by films like PAN'S LABYRINTH and LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, where the magic will add a visceral quality to the film. “I want it to have a little bit of an eerie tone to it. More stop motion than CGI. Whatever I can do in camera I want to do in camera. I want more textures and for her to actually interact with these things. I think that texture adds to going between whimsical and the grotesque.”
Reese hopes the balance between the whimsical and the grotesque will create a reciprocal relationship in the film: “I hope they feed off of each other in a way. They give each other energy. The magic then energizes the things she’s experiencing, and the things she’s experiencing energizes the magic.”
Reese is also channeling her international experience into the script. She spent time in El Salvador with the Peace Corps, and the culture of Latin America has influenced this project significantly. “It’s this culture of believing in magic and so much romance. They romanticize everything! That is really in my magic, romanticizing the weird! For me as a writer I think that is a lot of what I’m trying to do. To romanticize the weird. I’m a kid who grew up with hunters gutting animals in front of me all the time, that’s never going away from who I am. There’s beauty in that I think. There’s beauty in being that close to your own survival, and those are some themes I am talking about and that comes both from growing up in New Mexico and from my travels through Latin America.”
The aspect of barrel racing in the script lends both to the intensity of the script and Reese’s drive to put female characters in places of power. “Barrel racing is a really aggressive sport, and female dominated. I’ve always been obsessed with it. When I was a kid I wanted to be a barrel racer but I had a donkey who was very slow so I was never competitive! It’s a place where women, in a world where women don’t have a lot of power, really have some power. I find that where I grew up everyone is really drawn to barrel racing, and I think it’s literally watching women have power. I think that’s what’s cool about it.”
GUADALUPE MOUNTAIN is one of the inaugural projects in Stowe Launch, which is our advanced development program for top emerging screenwriters and filmmakers. “I think this is the best thing that has happened to me as a filmmaker to be honest. I felt immediately like I had some mentorship, which I hadn’t experienced at all from any part of my filmmaking career. They’re there to support the film, but they’re also there to support me as a filmmaker. I feel this mentorship is priceless,” she said.
Reese channels her history and home into GUADALUPE MOUNTAIN, where a vivid balance between fantasy and reality culminates in a deeply personal project, one that we are excited to support. “This script is my passion project. I have other scripts that I would maybe let someone else direct, but this has to be my first film. It represents me as a filmmaker so thoroughly.”
Robert Delany is an Academic Intern with Stowe Story Labs. He graduated in 2020 with an MA in cinema studies from NYU and was a Program Associate for the 2020 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, where he now conducts interviews for their “Filmmaker Spotlight Series”. Robert also writes for Split Tooth Media, an independent film and music publication based in Portland, Oregon. He is currently acting as a researcher on the film ASCO: WITHOUT PERMISSION, directed by Travis Gutierrez Senger and produced by North of Now. He was also an Office Assistant at Senger’s production company, Asa Nisi Masa Films, where he focused on the development of numerous projects. Robert graduated in 2018 with a BS in film and TV from Boston University’s School of Communication. Robert Delany was selected for this academic internship to focus on interviews and other writing for The Story Board, Stowe Story Labs’ bi-monthly newsletter. He will also assist in the establishment of a curated short film platform for Stowe Alumni.
