The end of summer traditionally hails the season of cinema sludge as studios rush – well, not rush exactly – to dump their ‘low priority product’ on an unsuspecting public. Happily, September has its saving graces, often bringing the best of Sundance to even up the score.

Echo Park L.A., originally entitled Quinceanera, is one such indie delight. Executive produced by Todd Haynes, the film has screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and Sundance, where it won both the dramatic grand jury prize and the narrative audience award. It was subsequently snapped up by Sony Pictures Classics.
Made for just $400,000 in the filmmakers’ own Los Angeles suburb, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Echo Park L.A. unfolds around the fascinating traditional Latino ritual of ‘Quinceanera’, an elaborately staged ceremony celebrating a young woman’s 15th birthday. Two reject teenagers – played by Emily Rios and Jesse Garcia – come together over the course of the film to form an alternative family unit (he’s gay and she’s a pregnant virgin) in a conservative Mexican-American environment.
“It all started when we moved to Echo Park in 2001,” recalls Rich. “The place was just starting to become gentrified but we were accepted right off the bat. There were no barriers about us being the white gay couple next door. I was working in reality TV at the time and after a time we were asked by next door neighbour to film her daughter’s Quinceanera. This was six months before the time, so even though we didn’t know what it was, we knew it must be a big deal. They were a poor family, so we were impressed with how elaborate everything was. We found out later that different people in the family and community look after different aspects. We immediately thought, 'Someone has do a movie about this one day', but we didn’t think it would be us.”
One can’t help but feel that Wash and Rich themselves would make the basis of an equally delightful film. Wash grew up in Leeds but emigrated to America in 1992 with the hope of breaking into movies. After studying editing in New Orleans, he made his way to L.A. He soon found there was one subset of the industry were one could garner all the experience one wished – the adult movie sector. That’s right kids, before Wash made his name as the director of the heartfelt, highly regarded documentary Gay Republicans, you could find him at the helm of The Porno Picture Of Dorian Grey and Dr. Jerkoff And Mr. Hard.
Rich, meanwhile, came from academia, earning a PhD in detective fiction from the University of Virginia – William Faulkner’s old stomping ground. He was eventually taken under the wing of Jay Presson Allen - writer of Cabaret and Marnie - and wrote some scripts for Disney that never got made. He moved to Los Angeles to produce Divorce Court and America’s Next Top Model.
He and Wash first came to prominence as co-directors of The Fluffer, a film probing behind the scenes of the porn industry and, in particular, the valiant young men of the title whose job is to keep the leading actors, erm, perked up for the job.
Their sophomore effort is, arguably, even less glamorous. Echo Park L.A. tours the lowest socio-economic strata of society, a Californian community rarely represented on screen.
“One of the films that really influenced us is A Taste Of Honey," explains Wash. “We wanted to show economic difficulty without all those violent clichés about poverty. This is an ordinary family and the drama is in ordinary lives.”
A lively and thoroughly pleasant couple, there seems to be little overlap between Rich and Wash and the bickering Anglo-American gay couple in the film.
“Well, there has to be room from gay characters in movies who are not paradigms of virtue or two dimensional positive images,” laughs Wash. “We think after Brokeback Mountain, it’s time for someone to stand up and say we’re not all noble cowboys.”