'Colma: The Musical' uses Peninsula as backdrop

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 11, 2006 | by Todd R. Brown , STAFF WRITER

Most musicals about a specific place unfold in exotic, quirky places such as Roaring '20s Chicago or the South Pacific, and most teen comedies are set in broadly appealing areas such as small town U.S.A. or the suburban Midwest.

H.P. Mendoza went in a whole other direction with the recent coming-of-age film "Colma: The Musical." He said the unlikely setting plays a more symbolical than geographic role in the story.

"The movie is as much about Colma as 'Fargo' is about Fargo," said Mendoza, 29, who wrote the film's music and screenplay.

Wong, 29, the film's director, said the pair didn't want the film to apologize for its musical nature, as "Chicago" does by setting numbers during fantasy or dream sequences.

"Now, if you like musicals, you're gay. It's just not coolanymore," he said. "People breaking out into song means people laughing. H.P. and I talked about that a lot. We wanted these kids to be singing, and it's no big deal."

The film shows at 10:30 p.m. June 24 at the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco as part of the Frameline30 International LGBT Film Festival. It screened at a film fest this week in Los Angeles after premiering in March at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

In the film, Colma is a backdrop for three high school friends deciding whether to hang on to a life of shopping-mall jobs and college parties or take a chance on leaving home to follow their dreams. Mendoza compared it with "American Graffiti" and said the music was inspired by indie-pop bands They Might Be Giants and Ben Folds Five.

Mendoza said he taught himself to play piano because his two older brothers took lessons and said they hated them.

"My parents said, 'Well, that's a waste of money,'" he said. "At the same time, they kept the piano. I kind of felt like Eve with the tree of forbidden fruit."

Mendoza drew on his own life as a student at Westmoor High School for the script, which includes having one character come out to his father. But he said the story is more a universal tale of teen angst than a gay or Asian American political statement.

Mendoza said his friends didn't fit the mold of the Asian- American "achievers" who made up a large part of the school, describing him and his clique as slackers. Most of them lived in Daly City, but Mendoza's best friend took pride in being a Colma resident.

"A lot of San Franciscans pass by and say, 'Oh, we're in Colma, I hear it's pretty dead here.' People make fun," Mendoza said.

His friend, however, "kind of saw it as this little individuality" to be from the tiny town where the dead outnumber the living a thousand to one.

Exploring how Mendoza and his friend drifted apart in "Colma: The Musical" coincides with the filmmaker's friendship with Wong.

The pair met while studying filmmaking at the College of San Mateo but wound up taking different paths. Wong, a Chinese-American native of the Richmond District, went to L.A. to work as a video engineer, eventually getting a job with the critically acclaimed TV show "Arrested Development."

"I never really officially moved to L.A. I just ended up getting more and more work," he said.

Mendoza, a Filipino-American who was born in the Mission District, moved to Philadelphia and worked in music, playing on albums by local bands and writing his own songs.

After about 10 years, a friend of Wong's put the pair back in touch. When Wong heard the music Mendoza wrote for a concept album, he suggested the story could be adapted as a musical, and they began working on the project by phone in May 2005.

They eventually shot the film in 18 days in Colma, Daly City and San Francisco, finishing the final cut in February.

For the film, Wong's mother, Irene Wong-Heringtton, who teaches ballroom dance, choreographed 20 couples waltzing in the Italian Cemetery, and Pat Hatfield of the town's historical society helped the filmmakers find houses to shoot in among Colma's lettered streets.

Wong left his job as a video engineer to produce the film himself, but he wouldn't say how much it cost.

"We're in the middle of negotiating distribution deals," he said. "If they find out how much we spent, that's all they're going to give us."

Besides steering the film through the festival circuit, Mendoza said he's working on a solo record due out in July, and he and Wong already are planning a sequel -- "Serramonte: The Musical."

On the Web: http://www.colmafilm.com

Staff writer Todd R. Brown covers Brisbane, Colma, Daly City and South San Francisco. Reach him at (650) 348-4473 or tbrown@sanmateocountytimes.com.