SOU, Lithia Park and Calle Guanajuato among locations used by NYU grad for her film about planning a family while navigating a career — all while entering menopause

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

If you happened to stroll through Lithia Park or the Southern Oregon University campus this weekend, you might have caught a glimpse of a short film production in progress in Ashland. Filming continues this weekend on Sunday, Nov. 10, at various locations, and at Calle Guanajuato on Monday, Nov. 11, depending on weather.

A local production team led by New York University graduate-turned-Ashland-based screenwriter Monica Lynn Cortez is shooting a film placing Ashland’s sister city of Guanajuato, Mexico, at center stage. The project also has help from SOU’s Digital Cinema students and a star-studded local cast featuring Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors. 

Filming started Friday morning at the Lithia Park pickleball courts, continuing Saturday, including at Hannon Library, with plans to shoot at SOU’s Digital Media Center over the weekend. Filming is slated to wrap up by mid-November.

Cortez is writer and co-director of the film “In a Pickle,” a story about a woman named Ofelia Luna who has reached a pivotal period in her life — menopause — and has some distinctive choices to make about her personal life and future plans. 

The film features OSF alum Barret O’Brien (“Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Tempest”) as William Shakespeare, Al Espinosa (“Much Ado About Nothing” and “Jane Eyre”) as Miguel de Cervantes and Kate Hurster (“MacBeth” and “Jane Eyre”) as a doctor who sees Ofelia, played by Cortez herself, who is faced with the relatable decision of planning a family while navigating a career — all while entering menopause. Also appearing in or helping with the film are SOU acting students, community extras and production crew.

“It’s an indie film so everybody is working really hard, putting in a lot of effort, bringing their gifts, it’s amazing,” Cortez said. “It’s going to be so beautiful.”

“The story only happens over two days, but for her it kind of feels like her body is deciding for her and this is someone who has usually been in control of every aspect of her life,” Cortez said, “so she kind of falls apart because she doesn’t know what to do.”

But hold up — The story isn’t solely about menopause, for those who might have wanted to stop reading. It also incorporates the game of pickleball, William Shakespeare and some historic figures with Guanajuato roots.

“We’re trying to tell this story in such a fun way that, I mean, even if you’re a man, hopefully you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know my mom or my sister goes through this,’” Cortez said. “That would be so helpful for everybody, right, just to be a little understanding.

“I think it’s actually for everybody,” she added. “That’s at least what I hope.

“It demystifies what menopause is a little bit and it has women talking about it.”

Cortez said she was going through menopause herself while writing the script. She noted how a man has more flexibility when it comes to when he’s going to have children, but a woman must make that decision intentionally and under a timeline. 

“I just thought that was very interesting because I’ve always lived my life kind of free, and then I thought, ‘oh no, I have to decide,’” Cortez said.

What she discovered was that the topic of menopause was not commonly talked about and, she believes, that is because the experience is different for every woman.

“So when I talked with my friends, my family, I just started asking everybody, ‘What is it like for you?’” Cortez said. “Some women don’t get hot flashes at all and then some women get it so intense they can’t drive … It’s like puberty, but later in life. That’s how intense it is, and yet it doesn’t get the same amount of attention that puberty does.”

Cortez, along with co-director Courtney Williams and producer Nisha Burton, both of whom have taught Digital Cinema courses at SOU, each expressed an eagerness to tell the story of entering menopause, with humor and flair.

“I feel like we’re seeing more menopause stories coming out with Gen X going into menopause,” Williams said.

“I love this whole idea of it’s not your mother’s menopause kind of thing,” Williams added. “We’re telling our own stories.

“And it’s funny,” she added. “I love that this movie is funny … menopause is not the end, it’s a thing you go through and you make a decision about what you’re doing next.”

Burton, who created a documentary about the “Las Calles de Guanajuato” mural, also shared about the importance of having a variety of voices in the film.

“There’s just so much freshness that comes from other voices being able to be a part of the storytelling experience,” Burton said. “Everything that Monica has brought together, all the different elements of … having to decide if you want to pursue a career or have a baby, which is a huge experience of what a lot of women are facing right now. And we don’t talk about it and we don’t have it portrayed, so then to be able to have it in a really lighthearted, fun way … with Shakespeare and (Miguel de) Cervantes and all those parts, it’s so fun and so fresh.”

Cortez, Williams and Burton all expressed pride in being part of an all-female production team leading a star-studded OSF cast.

“It’s been such an amazing thing to be a part of a female-led production,” Burton said, after posing with the production team for a photograph by the mural of Guanajuato. “I feel like there’s just subtle differences when it comes to production and being with all women and especially this story.

“It feels really empowering and like we’re really supporting one another,” Burton added, “especially with lower budget and short films, it’s such a labor of love to bring it forward, and a lot of times, people that get to make those films are ones that have a lot of money, people (who) aren’t traditionally marginalized in the film community. And so to be able to support one another and bringing our works forth and our particular voices forth is so powerful and exciting and it makes me really happy to be a filmmaker in these times.”

Burton reflected on working with SOU students, especially female students aspiring to work in film or as filmmakers themselves.

Burton said that sometimes in the film industry females can be relegated more to more supporting roles rather than the leadership and production, but this film is showing aspiring filmmakers what is possible, for both men and women. 

Both Burton and Williams noted that SOU’s Digital Cinema Program has been featured as one of the top 30 film schools in North America.

“It makes sense that they got featured that way, because giving the hands-on production experience is something that’s missing from a lot of film schools and really seeing the students through the years have this pathway to productions, I’ve seen firsthand how they go from in a classroom to PAing (production assistant) on a film, to getting actual film roles here in Southern Oregon.”

Williams also shared her perspective as co-director of the film.

“With a female-led production, we’re able to tell stories and get into some of the nuances of really female-forward stories and I think it gives you more latitude to tell those kinds of stories and a different kind of perspective,” Williams said. 

Williams noted nuances in humor, camera angles, as well as the agency that you give to the female characters in a piece. 

“I think there’s a lot of freedom with that,” she added, “ (It provides) … filmmaking that’s just broader that we traditionally haven’t experienced.” 

“I think it’s wonderful for young women or anyone who’s been marginalized to see people who look like them … particularly in the storytelling roles, because the writing and the directing roles are people who control the story,” she added. “Those are very coveted positions.

“You see a lot of women until now in a lot of the supporting roles … being the voice of the film is creating a world and so, when you have different perspectives, you can have different worlds being created, and I think that we open that up the more and more that we have different kinds of people in the storytelling positions on films.”

Cortez couldn’t afford the tuition while studying at NYU unless she worked full-time, so, while making films, she also worked at the law school there.

“That’s probably how I ended up in Guanajuato because I was working so much, I got burnt out,” she said.

A friend from Cortez’s yoga class in New York, who happened to have a relative living in Guanajuato, suggested she visit the city while she pursued writing.

“She told me all about Guanajuato — It’s safe, it’s a university town, you can walk everywhere and I was like, ‘perfect,’” Cortez said.

Cortez was mesmerized by the town. It was only once she moved to Ashland that she realized how the cities were connected.

“It reminded me of San Francisco with all of the colors,” Cortez said. “Yes, the colors were amazing, but the way people dressed, the interactions … coming from New York City, this was simple and slow and really fun.”

Cortez was so inspired by Guanajuato that summer that she eventually decided to live there, after finishing her senior year at NYU.

“I felt at home in Mexico,” she said, fitting in as she is the daughter and granddaughter of migrant farm workers.

After living in Guanajuato for three years, she was drawn back to the United States for a variety of other film projects, in addition to her family.

In 2020, some of Cortez’s friends said they were traveling to Oregon, and she expressed a long-held desire to visit.

Cortez said she ended up falling in love with the city of Jacksonville first and lived there for two years, where she pursued screenwriting. Upon moving to Ashland about one year ago, a friend showed her the mural of Guanajuato.

“I learned that they were sister cities, that just blew my mind,” Cortez said. “Here I am, I almost didn’t come here to Ashland and I lived there (in Guanajauto) and I don’t know, there’s something, got to be something here, and so I just kept thinking, how can I write a story that connects these two places? And so I really just let it sit with me, and, because I lived in both places, I kind of had that idea, well, Guanajuato has the Cervantino Festival, we have Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

“Like all of my screenplays, I pulled from my own life,” Cortez added.

The character’s first name honors Cortez’s grandmother and is also a nod to William Shakespeare’s Ophelia in “Hamlet.” Luna, the character’s last name, is named for Cortez’s friend who suggested she first visit Guanajuato.

“This one’s very different from my life, but there are (similar) aspects,” Cortez said of the film. “That’s why I thought, what if an actress is traveling to study Shakespeare for the Cervantino Festival?”

Cortez started writing roles for actors she wanted to work with and some whom she has already worked with, culminating in a rich script.

“Pickleball came in because, honestly, I think I was just looking for a really cool environment to put these characters in,” Cortez said. “And then when I learned about the (pickleball) lingo, I thought ‘Oh my god, this is hilarious,’” she added.

Cortez said she not only learned the lingo and rules of pickleball for writing the script, but she started playing pickleball herself. She just makes sure in the film that it still looks like she is a “newbie” to the sport.

“I don’t want to look like I know what I’m doing, but I definitely want to look like I know what I’m doing, but I definitely had to do enough research to write the scene,” she said.

Cortez also incorporates Miguel de Cervantes and Calle Jon del Beso or “Alley of the Kiss,” a famous Guanajuato landmark, into the story.

“She (Ofelia) ends up going back to the mural because she needs some kind of confirmation of what she’s doing here,” Cortez said. “It’s like her safe place — she’s just staring at it, trying to figure out what direction to take.”

That’s when she is greeted with a surprise cameo from a character familiar to those studied up on Mexican history, as well as Guanajuato residents, and the rest is Ofelia’s story to tell.

The film is budgeted for $25,000 and is funded through a sponsorship by Pam Cut through the Portland Art Museum, which has a program that fiscally sponsors projects so that all contributors can get a 100%  tax deduction. 

“I’m really thankful for that,” Cortez said. “We’re still fundraising. We’re a little short on production and then we still need to fundraise for post-production.”

“Filmmaking — You just have to find a way,” she added. “It’s just for the love of doing it and getting that story out there.”

Cortez hopes to show the short film at Guanajauto’s film festival in the future, in addition to the Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF) in Ashland and beyond. She said editing will begin right away once filming has been completed and that she is hoping to have it done by early January.

The short film under production is what’s called a “proof of concept” for a full length, feature film that Cortez hopes would include a return trip to Guanajuato.

“My whole idea was to show off Ashland, so we’re filming all over SOU campus,” Cortez said. “We’re filming all over Lithia (Park). 

“It would be great to do the same (kind of filming) in Guanajuato,” she added, “film all the iconic places, because they’re both really tourist cities and it would just be wonderful to display them in that way.”

She expressed gratitude for all who are working on the film and have helped it get to where it is now, including Southern Oregon Film’s Gary Kout, who is serving as a consulting producer.

“I couldn’t make this movie without the film community here, and the community’s support,” she said. “I just don’t know how many places this could happen.”

Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].

Nov. 10: Photos added of Friday’s shoot.