Louie Sabatasso Blog - 12.5.2013
When I was a kid, Fred Sanchez worked for our neighbors. He went to UCI. He was
probably 18 yrs. old, but might as well have been 40 to us because we were 10 yrs. old. UCI
had a film school that he went to and made movies for film class, which I thought was the most
rad thing in the world. He started working for our family; cooking and driving, but it wasn’t as
glamorous as it sounds. He probably made about $150 a week and living at our house. He said,
“I have to do a movie for my senior project. I want you to be in it.”
So, we made this movie called Traffic. We had this big premiere at our house with
the family and all the neighborhood families came over. We set up this screen. It was shot on
Super 8mm; all edited by hand, and was 9 minutes long. We actually cut the film and spliced
it together. I watched him do the whole process. It was amazing. I really fell in love with the
I played this kid who is in the park playing with my Iranian friend, Bahman. We’re
playing football and he keeps throwing it over my head. There’s no sound, it’s m.o.s. I’m being
this demonsterative kid like in a silent movie to illustrate my frustration, waving my arms
around, and one time he throws it over my head into this other area of the park.
I go slouch behind these big wooden stakes in the ground and witness this drug deal go
down. My brother was playing this drug dealer. This other Iranian kid in the neighborhood was
buying drugs from my brother. The deal goes bad and the dealer ends up stabbing the other kid,
but the dealer sees me witness it. They do the whole thing on his eyes and he sees me witness it.
Then he runs off and I run off.
I go back to my house, I’m telling Bahman about this, and he’s sort of telling me not to
leave. We did the corny and commercial thing where as I’m walking up to my house, he says,
“hey,” and throws me the football. Fred had to put these weird little moments in it. Then we
go into the house and the drug dealer comes into the house looking for me. First, he sees my
sister through the sliding glass door and he has this ski glove on. He goes up behind her on
the beanbag, puts his hand on her mouth, and kills her. Then he goes in to my room, sees me
sleeping, but I escape out my door, out the back of my house, and all the way down to a golf
course where there’s this wash with all these rocks. He trips, I take this rock, crush his head, and
kill him. That’s the end of the movie.
At the end of it, my parents were clapping and like, “Oh my God, it’s so good.” All the
neighborhood kids and families were looking at us a little strangely, but my family said, “It’s so
great. You did it, this whole little movie.” We had the credits on the inside of a clothes box that
you’d get at a department store. Fred wrote “Traffic starring Louie Sabatasso” on it and lifted
it up to do the credits to make it look like it was scrolling. I mean, there was no computer stuff
back then. It was the 80s.
Afterward my dad came up to him and was like, “hey man, I’m really glad you made this
film with the guys, the family. It’s good for them, creative, but next time when you’re talking
about a 9-yr. old little girl, an 11-yr. old little boy (me), and another 13-yr. old kid, maybe you
shouldn’t make it about drug deals and murder.” And so it began.
