Secret Sorrows and Happiness Behind the screen with Rice Media Center’s Kristian Salinas by John W. Stiles

I was early as usual. I parked in the employee’s lot and sat in my car watching the rain. The temporary nature of the building stood in stark contrast to the classical architecture of the rest of Rice University campus. The aging corrugated metal belied what surely must have been the intent of Jean and Dominique de Menil, Colin Young (then-chair of the UCLA Theater Arts department), and Italian director Roberto Rossellini, Isabella’s dad, when they founded the Rice Media Center in 1969. The paint was peeling and the parking lot was beginning to flood on this late June day as Tropical Storm Allison made the first of two Houston appearances.

I was there to meet with Kristian Salinas, film series coordinator for Rice University’s Media Center. This particular week, Salinas was nearing the end of the fifth annual Houston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Working with his counterparts at DiverseWorks, the Angelika, Landmark Greenway Theatre, the Aurora Picture Show, and the Museum of Fine Arts, 30 films are brought to Houston (along with many of the films’ writers and directors) and screened over two weeks in early summer.

A normal week sees Salinas scouring motion picture trade publications, checking out the Internet Movie Database, making calls to the few remaining independent film distributors, and talking with or e-mailing colleagues around the country in search of films for screening at Rice. In consultation with Rice film professors and under the review of department chair Hamid Naficy, Salinas brings films to Rice that might otherwise never be seen in Houston.

Tonight, Salinas is introducing a film to the small number brave enough to venture out in the storm. He tells them he is dispensing with the introductory trailers in an effort to get them home early, and we exit the back of the theater, ducking through a half-size door into the projectionists’ booth. The Media Center’s film technician, Michael Miron, is showing the ropes to an intern. The projectors date from the 1940s. Salinas can hardly wait to share his news, "… the best news ever. The most substantial renovation in 30 years will happen in the Media Center Auditorium. Two new 35 millimeter projectors, Dolby Digital, DTS Surround, and a Silver Screen."

"We have a new dean." Salinas is referring to Gale Stokes, new dean of the School of Humanities. "[He] began his career at Rice back in the ’60s as a professor. He used to go to the Media Center regularly. One day he went into the auditorium, I didn’t know he was there, saw the conditions, said, ‘This is deplorable, we have to do something about it.’ He got the money together to upgrade the Media Center."

The rain was incessant. I asked Salinas where he lived. "Alvin," he said. "Uh-oh," I said, "maybe you should get out of here before you’re trapped." He was more concerned with inconveniencing me than he was with the rising water. It took some convincing, but we rescheduled. I made a mental note to ask this young gay man who worked at Rice University seeking out avant-garde film, what it was like living in Alvin.

The next time I saw Salinas was in his office. A small cell upstairs in the Media Center, his desk and floor were piled high with videos. I recognized few titles. I asked him if he’d seen them all. "I have to." For many of the filmmakers whose films spilled over his desk, Salinas is their last chance for an audience. He spoke with passion about the co-opting of the fledgling independent film movement by the studios in the early ’90s. Until then, independent film meant independent of the major studios. Following the surprising commercial success of The Crying Game, The Piano, and Pulp Fiction, all from independent production houses, the studio money guys moved in, and Fine Line Cinema and Fox Searchlight (among others) were born. These were simply divisions within the major studios, and the shots were called by the same MBAs that called the shots for the majors.

"They didn’t get it," Salinas explained. "They tried to sell Passion in the Desert with water-bottle giveaways. They should have marketed to the gay audience. Gay audiences are more willing to give unusual films a chance." Salinas explained the complex network of film distribution. "Traditionally, it’s broken down into first-run commercial theaters which are then subdivided into mainstream commercial and art-house commercial. Then you have the second run or dollar cinemas. Commercial theaters are in it for a profit, they have to survive. The other category is where we come in: Rice and the Museum [of Fine Arts]."

The "other category" to which Salinas refers is populated by less than 100 similar facilities nationwide. Of the 8,000 films produced annually (up from 4,000 in the 1980s) only a small percentage see commercial distribution. The vast majority are left to scramble for a slot in the handful of regional film festivals (of which Houston’s Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is one) or hope for a screening at a non-commercial venue like the Rice Media Center. I asked Salinas how many people around the country did what he does for Rice.

"Maybe 50 that I know about" was his reply.

"Age-wise, where do you fit?" I asked.

"I’ve always felt like I was much older than I am. I feel like an old man," he laughed. "In terms of career, I am probably one of the youngest."

At 28, Salinas is often in a position to determine whether a filmmaker’s work will be seen. An awesome responsibility and perhaps part of the reason Salinas feels older than he is.

I was curious why so few venues exist in Houston for independent film. Is it a function of population, I asked? "I don’t think so, even though we’re the fourth largest city, we’re still not considered a top-20 market for films. I think it’s because of the spread-out nature of our city." I used the opening to ask him why he chose to live in Alvin.

"I live with my parents; they moved to Alvin in 1974. My father worked for Monsanto. I was born in 1973." I asked him about his earliest memory of his parents. "I have several, but they’re all mixed together. I remember that they were always smiling." Their smiling faces undoubetdly helped Kristian through a difficult time early on. It was career day, the day everyone donned the garb of their intended life’s work. The 10-year-old Kristian dressed in a suit and tie declaring, "I’m going to be an actor." His dream of working in film would be short-lived. "I had this very nice English teacher who really liked me and let me read the soap opera I was writing. It was called ‘Secret Sorrows and Happiness.’ It was terrible. I quit [reading it] because people were making fun of me. I was doing something odd that the other kids couldn’t relate to. That was the end of that."

The impact on young Kristian was significant. "I didn’t watch movies for a very long period of time. Movies were what I wanted to do, but I gave up on it. It wasn’t really a conscious thought, ‘Here is a career path that’s closed to me.’ But it all ended right there. It’s a decision that I regret, but it was all I could do at the time. It was a survival instinct." It would be several years before that survival instinct would be overcome.

"I was in the ‘Close-Up’ program where a group of seniors go to Washington, D.C., to see the dynamics of politics in action. [My] eye-opening experience had nothing to do with Washington, D.C. It had to do with meeting a group of students from Berkley and Brentwood, California, and realizing I had so much more in common with them than anyone in Alvin. During the week I was there, I spent all my time with those people from California. My Alvin classmates felt betrayed. Their intent when they went to D.C. was to make a big deal out of being from a small town. They were being obnoxious and stupid. I met these very mature, intelligent students from California. I had something to say to them and they had something to say to me. That experience in D.C. with those kids changed my outlook on what was possible. [They] had an interest in things that I didn’t know existed, and that was a real turning point for me. It was fantastic. The point is, this [experience] was about things I wanted to do for years and had given up on. In this one moment in my life … I realized things were much bigger than I thought and there were people out there I could grow with."

Surprisingly, Salinas shares this without a trace of bitterness. He waxes almost Zen-like as he puts it all in perspective.

"I knew at a very young age I was different from everyone else. I don’t know if I tied it into sexuality. Maybe I did and then just blocked it out. I think at the time I wasn’t in the right environment, and that led me to feel like an outcast. Now when I’m in Alvin, I really don’t feel that way. This is where I grew up and it doesn’t affect me the same way it did when I was younger. Not because Alvin has changed but because I have. I like Alvin and I’m proud to have come from that background. It was difficult growing up there, but that experience was so integral to me because I don’t think I would be the same person I am now."

Where do you go from here? I ask. He talks of restoring the glory days of Rice Cinema. He pulls a 20-year-old Rice Cinema flyer from a file drawer. "Look at this. Isn’t it great?" He’s working on a Charlotte Rampling retrospective and hopes to get the grand dame herself to appear.

And after that? Salinas plans to go back to school and pursue graduate studies in film. He wants to be a filmmaker. Again.

When John Stiles isn't writing for OutSmart, he keeps himself busy writing film reviews and essays for his website, www.johnwstiles.com.