Freestyle Flick

New crime drama taps the Inland Empire’s extreme lifestyle

Director Nick Parada had a lot of ideas when he wrote the script for Bro starring Danny Trejo. The concept is simple: a young man gets involved with a violent, immoral subculture, becomes seduced by a dangerous lifestyle and is nearly destroyed by it. The story could be about anyone, anywhere, but Parada wanted to be original.

“I always try to be authentic with the projects I work on,” Parada tells CULTURE. I am really into realistic films. I worked with Eddie Bunker, who wrote the gritty, realistic movie Animal Factory.”

Set in Riverside and throughout the Inland Empire, Bro is the story of Johnny (played by actor Will Chavez), who meets the right girl, makes friends with her brother (Jesse, played by actor and former Metal Mulisha member Beau Manley) and ends up with the wrong crowd. And Jesse’s “crowd” is really into tattoos, parties, racing dirt bikes, big trucks, buying guns and selling cocaine.

“Originally, the main character got into L.A. gang life,” Parada says. “I was working on another project about gangs and decided to make a different film.”

That’s when Parada started thinking about the setting.

“It’s a whole lifestyle out there in the IE with lifted trucks, punk music, tats . . . it was perfect.”

Parada also liked the landscape. “I did a lot of research into the culture and the area. We filmed in Temecula and throughout Riverside.”

For the role of Gilbert, Parada knew that Danny Trejo (Desperado, the Spy Kids movies, Machete) was perfect. “A lot of films cast Danny as a gangster. I knew him as a down-to-earth guy, so I wrote the role as I knew him since he’s a vet and he’s just chill, too.”

For first-time actor Beau Manley, working with Trejo was a challenge. How was that for a steep learning curve?

“When I went to work with Danny, I went into that whole deal with an open mind,” Manley says. “I was there to learn from that guy. By then, though, I felt like just running lines with him and filming the scene.”

One notable aspect of the film is characters’ preference for inebriants. When the characters party, it’s with beer and cannabis—but it’s not the plant that dooms them, naturally. That’s cocaine’s job.

“I just wanted to show the wrong path that Johnny takes, the edginess and the danger,” Parada says. “. . . I wanted to make him feel like it’s just downhill from there. I wanted him to get into cocaine and spiral out.”

While Parada isn’t afraid of making cannabis something the bad guys use in Bro, what does Manley himself think of using cannabis for medical purposes?

“My outspoken support for weed has cost me a lot of sponsorships in the past,” Manley admits. “I have a big weed leaf on me. I’ve been smoking it for a long time.”

And he’s eager to espouse its health benefits.

“I use cannabis,” Manley says. “It helps a lot. It can treat arthritis. It can treat insomnia, too.”

As far as Manley’s concerned, prescription meds are the true danger.

“Over-the-counter drugs that kill people every day like Oxycontin or ibuprofen are approved by the FDA because pharmaceutical corporations have lobbyists . . . They know medical cannabis is bad for business.”