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Filmmaker Marc Menchaca on his Difficult Texas Love Letter

The This is Where We Live writer and director made a movie that largely reflects his personal experience.
By Todd Jorgenson |
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Marc Menchaca knows that people don’t mean any harm when they approach his friend Thomas and start talking loudly, or treating him almost with a sense of pity.

It’s that friendship of 15 years and counting that inspired Menchaca to write This Is Where We Live, a low-budget family drama set in the Texas Hill Country about a handyman who forms a relationship with a teenager with cerebral palsy whose family is struggling to care for him.

“I ended up becoming his caregiver. His parents wanted me to hang out with him, so I did. I found it to be such a special relationship,” Menchaca said during a recent stop in Dallas. “He had a point of view about everything. Even though he couldn’t speak, he had something to say. It just wasn’t through words.”

Menchaca, who originally hails from San Angelo, met Thomas while serving as a mentor to underprivileged kids as part of an organization that included working with Thomas’ mother, who is a therapist.

So even if the film isn’t trying to speak for Thomas, it could serve as a way for outsiders to gain perspective on people with cerebral palsy — through the fictional character of August — without trivializing their plight or pushing an agenda.

“In the end, I wanted August to be seen as a person with every feeling and thought that any of us would have,” said Menchaca, who is perhaps best known for his role on the HBO series Generation Kill. “Thomas is still a big part of my life, and I get a little bit big brother-ish with him. We didn’t want him to be portrayed as a saint or to be pitied.”

The film follows the Sutton family, in which family matriarch Diane (C.K. McFarland) is dealing with some health issues as she works a meager job and tries to care for her husband (Ron Hayden) in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, along with her son August (Tobias Segal), whose cerebral palsy has left him with limited mobility and communication skills.

So the family hires Noah (Menchaca) to build a wheelchair ramp at their house, and he forms a connection with the youngster that prompts Diane to offer him some money as a caretaker. The traditional family dynamic is changed, with varied results for each of them.

The filmmakers considered casting an actor with cerebral palsy in the pivotal role of August before settling on Segal, who had worked with Menchaca on another project. But Menchaca and co-director Josh Barrett were still skeptical because they wanted to be respectful to the condition.

“He looked physically like what I wanted,” Menchaca said. “We brought him down a week early, and he spent four or five days with my buddy Thomas. They just got to bond together. I was blown away when I saw what Tobias had come up with.”

Menchaca, 38, said the desire to avoid exploiting afflictions and hardships in the film extends to Alzheimer’s, the effects of which he experienced through his grandfather and the father of an ex-girlfriend.

The filmmakers also wanted to incorporate the Hill Country setting into the texture of the film. They used several locals as extras while shooting at a church in Mason, or various locations in Llano, or at a house belonging to Menchaca’s old football coach near Brady.

“Just being from Texas, that’s what I know. I loved growing up in a smaller town,” Menchaca said. “In some ways, I hope it’s sort of a love letter to Texas, and to where I grew up, and who I grew up with.”

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