La Jolla filmmaker Tony Olmos’ latest film is part political satire, part dystopian adventure — a horror film that examines the corruptibility of power.
Olmos’ “Hemet, or The Landlady Don’t Drink Tea” will be featured on closing day of the Oceanside International Film Festival. The five-day fest runs Tuesday through Saturday at the Brooks Theater on North Coast Highway.
Olmost filmed the 89-minute film “Hemet” in both his La Jolla apartment and in Ramona.
“The moral of the story is about abuse of power and how power corrupts people and can turn neighbor against neighbor,” Olmos said.
“It’s a dark comedy, so there is a lot in the movie and there is a lot that you might not think you should laugh at that might border on cringey, but a good type of cringey,” he said.
“The story itself is about a community of people that live in an apartment that is being run by this old lady who is ruthless. She’s a fascist dictator type. It takes place in this made-up time in which things are not going well in the United States … worse than what we have been seeing, so people don’t have a lot of choices as to where they can live, so they put up with this lady.”
To make matters in the film worse, there is an epidemic of people on a drug that turns them into zombies “that’ll eat your legs if you are not fast enough,” Olmos said. “So there is a lot of silliness there, but the story itself has political undertones, stuff that mirrors the political situation of the last five or six years.”
The story draws inspiration from George Orwell’s 1945 novella “Animal Farm” and its messaging about political corruption.
The landlord character, he said, “has all these little schemes to get her tenants to fight. She has some tenants that kiss up to her and do her bidding, so she causes all this chaos. The hero of the story is this girl who figures out a way to handle the situation.”
“It was a riot making this movie,” Olmos said. “It has comedy and horror, and this was much more organized than some past projects. We had more money and a bigger crew that allowed us to do more.”
“Hemet” is Olmos’ third film as director. However, he got into filmmaking “by accident” after some time as a musician, he said.
“Someone I knew went on this venture to make a film and I went to help with camera stuff and got bit by the bug,” he said. “So I wrote a script (for a film called ‘South of Eight’) about what would happen if gangsters of the past were alive in the future. I pitched it to some actors that helped my friend with the other project, and it snowballed. I thought it would end up as a short film, but it ballooned and before I knew it, we were being entered into film festivals.”
Heavily inspired by director Martin Scorsese, Olmos said character development is his main focus in his films.
“I like telling stories,” he said. “Especially stories about people from the bad side of the tracks, people with questionable morals but also good people that get caught up in bad stuff. I also like to look at how they change and how their circumstances can change them for better or worse. My stories tend to tell that.”
Another signature is that all of Olmos’ films are set in San Diego, except for “Hemet,” which was filmed here but not set here.
Being shown in a San Diego County film festival is “pretty exciting,” he said.
13th annual Oceanside International Film Festival
The annual festival will feature dozens of feature and short films presented in themed lineups, with networking sessions, Q&A discussions, parties and a red carpet premiere.
When: Tuesday through Saturday
Where: The Brooks Theater, 217 N. Coast Highway, Oceanside
Tickets: $15 per screening; $45 festival
Online: osidefilm.org
Mackin-Solomon writes for the U.T. Community Press.
