Orinda Gets Starring Role In New Julie Rubio Film

Julie Rubio is determined to get her little city of Orinda back on the map, even if she has to break a few rules to do it.

“Too Perfect is entirely self-funded, which is the number one rule in film that you’re never supposed to do,” she said during an interview one week before the premiere screening at the Orinda Theatre on Friday. “We’re in this heinous economy, so producing it allowed me to take back my power and make this film.”

The $90,000 budget was pencil thin, compared with most independent films. And Rubio broke another unwritten, but familiar industry rule: Never work with children, dogs or family members.

Rubio’s son, Elijah Stavena, plays a leading character and Jake, one of the five boys at the center of the film about the first day of summer vacation, worries about his pet, an ailing dog.

Maybe the fact that it only took three six-hour days to write the script made her bold; or maybe it’s just in Rubio’s nature to be a maverick.

“I wanted Orinda not to be portrayed as a perfect, upscale town. Kids here do have real issues. I wanted to show that — without having them go around the corner and stick a needle in their arms,” she said.

The film was shot in Lamorinda and businesses are prominent.

“It was unbelievable how much the community supported such a small film," she said. "Theatre Square was dying: it was a ghost town. The little restaurants that have opened up there are like a shot in the arm. They wanted it to come alive."

Rubio said the cast rehearsed for a month, did a 10-day shoot, then did five more days. She added the scenes with bullying and with the principal in those extra days.

The five friends encounter more than teenage taunts and school expulsions during the single day time frame. There’s divorce, departure, deception and dizzy encounters with the opposite sex.

“I’m part of a group called Bay Area Women in Film," Rubio explained. "In all the movies I see, girls are having sex, showing cleavage down to their belly buttons. In my movie, the girls are super strong. They have a voice.”

Playing against stereotype, Rubio portrayed the boys as having deep, close relationships and intense feelings.

“Elijah, when his parents are fighting, he’s not just crying for a minute while he pounds a pillow. He’s crying while he’s running, walking downtown, in a restaurant — for an hour,” she said.

The hardest part of working with kids, only a few of whom were professional film actors, wasn’t getting them to cry, it was convincing them to stop laughing.

“There was a lot of giggling going on," Rubio said. "They had to learn we were going to run out of light and had one hour to get it right. Trying to get them to understand that this was the real deal and that they were responsible was tough.”

Another challenge was putting a girl in a glass display case.

“We had to convince the owner that we weren’t doing anything kinky. They’re very clean there, do you know that? We had to promise we wouldn’t violate any codes,” Rubio said with a laugh.

A scene with 100 extras shot at took the most time.

“Nobody got hurt, but there were times when they’d all come running out without a cue and I’d say, ‘Who called action?' " she said.

Even these days, between screenings of Too Perfect, postproduction work on a Yoga for Weight Loss DVD, and starting her next feature length film, Masked Truth, which deals with pedophilia in the Catholic Church, Rubio is not too busy to advocate.

“Seventeen percent of films have women as a lead," she said. "Our little girls are watching actors their age dressed more provocatively than an R-rated film adult actress. That shows we are still in the dark ages. These little girls can only reach to what they see.”

As a filmmaker, Rubio holds up moving pictures of her truth; whether it’s the depth and resilience of children, or the dark pain and psychological drama of the Catholic Church. And for the world, Rubio has a big image: little Orinda, California.