Film Buff lives cinema dreams

Monty Miranda, left, on the set of “Skills Like This” with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, center, and lead actor Spencer Berger. The film was shot in Denver, and Hickenlooper had a cameo appearance that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Monty Miranda (’90) said he knew what he wanted to do with his life at age 8 when he first picked up a super-8 movie camera. But it took him 32 years to accomplish his dream of directing feature films.

In March, Miranda’s first feature film, “Skills Like This” (www.skillslikethis.com), had its world premiere at the 2007 South by Southwest Film Festival, also known as SXSW, in Austin, Texas. It also won the Audience Award for best narrative feature film. “It’s pretty crazy,” Miranda said. “We couldn’t believe it happened.”

SXSW is one of the top international film festivals and an important gathering of filmmakers in the country. This year, the festival received a total of 3,100 submissions, the highest number in the festival’s history, according to the festival’s Web site. Out of those, 100 feature films were accepted, and eight of them were selected for the narrative feature category.

“Just to get in the competition was pretty amazing,” Miranda said.

“The Audience Award is the last award of the night because it’s the big one. While the awards were being presented, my wife was all excited and said, 'We are going to win something!’ But I didn’t even want to talk about it. I was just honored to be there. Then finally the last award of the night comes up, and we won. It took me totally off guard.”

“Skills Like This” was shot in Denver. It tells the story of Max Solomon, a failed writer who turns the lives of his two buddies upside down when he decides to rob a bank, then realizes that larceny is perhaps his best skill.

Miranda said he believes a lot of people will relate to his odd sort of comedy and its characters because it’s really about “being young and knowing what you want but not being able to achieve it.”

Growing up in Colorado Springs, Miranda said he came to CU knowing he wanted to be a filmmaker. He had a passion for film, but he hadn’t quite figured out what to do about it. At that time, CU didn’t have a degree program for film studies. Journalism school was his best fit, he said, adding that when he declared a major at CU, his research showed that the SJMC was highly rated and was one of the hardest to get into. He applied and was accepted.

Miranda said he gained a lot from his journalism courses.

"Skills Like This film poster."

“Writing film scripts and writing news stories are two different things, but they do require similar skill, which is to grab your viewers and readers, and keep them engaged.”

Later, he said he found out he could take film classes and maybe even make a living by directing television commercials. He began to focus his journalism study on advertising. He also discovered that commercials “in their purest narrative form are just little movies with beginning, a middle and an ending.”

Miranda said that going to the SJMC helped him to become a more well-rounded filmmaker. One of his favorite classes, he added, was a course in which he studied some of the greatest documentaries ever made.

“This is where I was first exposed to the controversial documentarian Leni Riefenstahl. Her imagery from so long ago looks modern and powerful. I learned a lot about composition, aesthetics and propaganda from her work, which are tools I try to incorporate into my filmmaking.”

Through connections with the journalism and film studies programs, Miranda said he got an internship at Viacom in his junior year. The company was shooting the popular “Movies of the Week” series “Perry Mason” in Denver, which provided him a great opportunity to learn what it was like to be on a movie set. He worked in the lighting and sound departments, then slowly managed to do work around the whole set.

With that experience, he said he began to be hired as a freelancer to work on movie sets in his junior and senior years. He managed to juggle his curriculum with working and said he never had to wash dishes to support his love for film.

After college, Miranda lived in Denver while he tried to figure out how to live out his dream of directing movies.

In 1992, Miranda founded Incite Films with a childhood friend and began to make TV commercials.

“It’s very hard in the beginning, but I knew a regular job wouldn’t lead me into filmmaking. It’s risk-taking, but you just have to take that little step,” he said.

“I guess one of the smartest things I did was to use commercials as a means to do (filmmaking). It was a great way to make a living while learning how to become a better filmmaker.”

In the past 16 years, Miranda said he has directed hundreds of national and regional commercials, and his work has been recognized by the Cannes Film Festival, the Clios, BBC’s “Most Outrageous Commercials” and Fox’s “World’s Funniest Commercials.” He also created a national TV series, “Twitch.”

“I have to tell you, to do your own business is the hardest thing in the world. There are always scary times, but eventually it all worked out, amazingly,” he said.

However, making a real film – the dream that took root in his childhood – was always in the back of his head and part of the plan.

Miranda said he fell in love with the script “Skills Like This” the first time he read it in the spring of 2005. He felt an instant connection with the frustrated writer, Max. The following year, he said he worked with Spencer Berger, the original screenwriter and eventual lead actor, rewriting and developing the script.

“Our film rep is Cinetic Media, and it is their job to sell the movie and get the best distribution. The company is known as the best in the business. They sold 'Little Miss Sunshine,’ 'Napoleon Dynamite,’ 'Super Size Me’ and many other high-profile independent films.”

Miranda said he doesn’t know the release date yet. “Obviously, I just want the best and broadest distribution deal possible. I want more people to see it because I think it is a movie a lot of people can relate to, which the audience response at SXSW clearly demonstrated.”

What’s next for Miranda? More movies and maybe some TV and commercials, he said. “I just wish to keep making films. This is a career that encompasses so many other careers and loves of mine – music literature and art.”