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The story of YELLOW ROSE is so touching, poignant and powerful that its roots must be based in some reality. We sat down with Director Diane Paragas to talk about the inspiration behind the film and what it was like for her growing up as a punk rock loving kid in Lubbock Texas.
“I can’t say I loved country music, but I definitely was a square peg in a round hole, I used music as my outlet. Back then I shaved my head off and I was in a punk band called Avant Garde which was very bad.
She saw that part of the story is a little bit autobiographical. “Certainty feeling isolated, weird in the south as an Asian person and a Philippino specifically. Years later when I was a little bit older, I was starting to write scripts, someone had suggested that I write about my experiences growing up in Texas.
I didn’t think people wanted to hear about that… but when I thought about a character that was kind of like me but loved Texas, not me, I couldn’t wait to get out and get to New York or wherever. What if this character loved Texas and the most Texas thing, country music? It just felt like a character that you could really root for and you could really care about, right away. That was the basis for the story. That was a long time ago, that was 15 years ago when I first started to pursue this project and no one was making movies like this back then, and people were automatically saying no to me.”
It took her a couple of tries to come back to it, but she finally got to make her movie. “It shifted the focus more towards the immigration story after Trump was elected. Right when I met Ava he was putting up the wall and kids were being thrown in cages, so it became more poignant because of the times that we live in.”
This story was always rooted in immigration, “the inspiring incident was that her mother was arrested by ICE, but in this version of the film we get to follow the Mom’s journey as well and it became Rose’s search for a home.”
It became even more poignant for Diane while filming, “When we were shooting the film there were news stories coming out saying that there were 100% more deportations, more arrests, that is right when the stories about children getting separated from their families came out.” When we were filming those scenes of Rose’s mom getting arrested, we were all crying because it was happening!” “Right there in Texas not far from where we were shooting.” “We were making a story of our time!”
It really is a story that we will be looking at for years to come, and you can take journey with YELLOW ROSE now at AMC Theatres!
Get Tickets YELLOW ROSE is now playing
