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Gloria Herrera: The Dynamo in Details
By Carla Robinson
When your introduction to an artist is via the big screen, a face-to-face meeting
can be a bit disconcerting. This was certainly the case when I met with Gloria Herrera,
the writer, co-producer, and lead of “Details,” a short film about a woman
determined to end her lifelong dance with endometriosis by committing suicide. In
“Details,” Herrera inhabits the role of Angela so fully that I expected her to
be tall, artistically temperamental and reserved. My expectations were blown when a
breezy, animated woman whose diminutive stature is rivaled by her big, open personality
greeted me. Herrera is the kind of unpretentious artist who makes filmmaking seem
accessible to anyone who’s willing to roll up her sleeves and hone her craft.
An actress by training, Herrera spent some
time in Hollywood before recently returning to New York City. Out west, she found the
smattering of roles available to Latina and thirty-something actors disappointing. Intent
on creative expression, she decided it was time to hunker down and try her hand at a new
pursuit. “I wanted to write and had this story I really wanted to tell,” she
said, “so I challenged myself to do it and now writing is the focus of my work.”
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© 2000 RLP Ventures, LLC
Director Eric Daniel, Gina
Prince-Bythewood and Writer/Producer Gloria Herrera, pictured at the HBO Short Film
Competition during the Acapulco Black Film Festival 2000
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“Details” is Herrera’s first screenplay and
when she started it, she admittedly had more determination than know-how. “I
didn’t even know you could write a short, so I started it as a feature and then I
thought, let me just tell the story.” The result was a short script that led to
“an ambitious short film.”
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Short Cuts
Details Review
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Herrera is pleased with the fruits of her labor, but adds that the time
limit for shorts (30 minutes for festival eligibility) forced her and director Eric Daniel
to cut some of the character-building scenes that she liked. In the film, Angela makes a
list of things to do before her she kills herself; these are her final
“details.” They range from the mundane to favorite experiences she wants to live
one last time. One omitted scene used masturbation to explore sexual frustration in the
face of endometriosis. “I had written a masturbation scene because in reality, with
this illness, she never really felt like a woman,” Herrera said. “She
couldn’t have kids with her husband, intercourse with a man was extremely painful, so
[masturbation] was one of the last things she was going to do.”
Audiences appreciate the thoughtful, sometimes humorous way the film approaches hard
issues such as suicide, endometriosis, and abortion. Men take different things away from
the film than do women, and many people are grateful for raised awareness of
endometriosis. Herrera is careful to say she didn’t want to drive home any particular
point, but, rather, to present life as it is. “On the screen, in a movie, we want the
happy ending but you know what? This is the way life works out…I would want people to
walk away with reality and truthfulness, not judging whether a situation is good or bad.
It just is.”
M
January 2001
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