Alejandro Salinas

I was born in a small border town, Weslaco, Texas in winter 1996. The population was small enough that everyone who grew up there usually stayed there. The Rio Grande Valley is quiet and peaceful, and filled with incredible texmex food. Aside from that, there’s not much opportunity for branching out. Fortunately, I was only there for 5 years until my Dad got a call for a job in Houston in spring 2001. We moved to the bayou city, Houston, TX, that summer. 

I grew up with a big love for movies, inspired by my mom. The only early childhood memories I can recall are from some of the first movies I ever watched with her - The Iron Giant, Starship Troopers, My Neighbor Totoro, Alien (my mom didn’t let me watch that. I snuck out of my room at night and watched it from behind the couch). My mom did, however, excuse me from kindergarten class the day Spiderman (2002) came out so we could go watch it together. That love of film stayed with me throughout adolescence and my teenage years - as every date I had was usually to the movie theaters…. I never actually thought movies were something I could do until much much later. 

I stayed in Houston until I graduated high school - and left for LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Aside from movies, I also really enjoyed math and physics so I studied engineering. It was only by chance that I ended up pursuing the arts after I was required to take an elective. So I took a theater elective because I thought it would be easy. And it was incredibly easy since all you had to do was show up, but I also discovered after the “final exam” which was a short scene from Death of an Anarchist, that I was absolutely enamored with performing. I loved the feeling of being someone else in front of other people, letting emotions free that I felt had to be contained for social constructs. 

After class, I spoke with the professor. He mentioned I wasn’t bad and if I liked it then it should be worth pursuing. So I did. I auditioned for a few school plays and got some parts and ultimately went abroad to perform with the LSU theater group at the 2018 Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland (only after I told my mom I wanted to pursue this and she secretly paid for this expensive venture without my dad knowing…) I “lived” as an actor there for nearly 2 months, and it was one of the best summer experiences I’ve had until the summer of Liquid Lady just 4 years later. More on that later.

I graduated engineering and took a job with a firm in Houston. I was still aching for acting roles so I sent my resume in to a couple theaters in Houston but didn’t hear any good news. I was fairly discouraged since everything happened so easily for me before so I took 6 months off from acting entirely. I ultimately rediscovered it after I took a trip to Peru and sat in an Ayahuasca circle.

I had always been interested in psychedelics since college. I usually just had fun with them, But it was here during this first-time experience that I saw some extraordinary visions that ended up inspiring the film. The combination of the flute and guitar inspired desert-like visions. I was a baby born in a desert in a teepee held by my mother. Purple, green, gold geometric shapes filled my surroundings. They fit together and intertwined like puzzle pieces. In the vision, my mom swaddled me in a cloth. She kissed me and brought me outside the teepee and a tribe of strange beings praised me and welcomed me coming home. It was a feeling like none other and I didn’t know what it meant. The shaman mentioned that this is active medicine. It stays with you even weeks, months, years after the experience. And to take advantage of it, is to listen to intuition. 

Back in Houston, a few weeks later, I drove by an acting studio and heard a voice from my head so clearly “you need to be here.” suddenly, it clicked - ah, that’s probably what the shaman meant. I searched up the studio online, saw it was a film acting studio, felt unsure since I had no formal training and applied anyway.

From Summer 2019 until Summer 2021, I performed at Next Actor Studio where I met and worked with a lot of friends that I ended up casting in Liquid Lady. Todd (who played Mike), Romario (who played Miguel, the suited musician), Andrea (who played the Shaman), Lance (who played Jeff, the bartender), and Ally (who played Gena). In fact, we owe Liquid Lady’s origins to the studio’s director, who mentioned that if we really wanna get more parts then we should make our own reels and short films. “Just write out a scene and film it, there’s no excuse not to make your own stuff.” That sparked an idea for me to write out a scene and would be how I met my best friend and eventual collaborator, Jim Wadkins. 

I wrote 7 pages of this small-town Texas story about Aaron, a musician-cowboy, who was to leave town and his partner, Rita (who eventually became Tara) to embark on a cross-country trip through the desert to find his mom in California. I only knew one film guy from Houston, my friend Gustavo, who graduated from Baylor Film school. I asked if he would be interested to help. He was tied up with another gig, but recommended to me one of his friends, Jim. I met up with Jim and we hit it off - sharing conversation about philosophy, film, psychedelics, supernatural, ancient aliens, magic. It was a terrific match.  I knew we had to collaborate together so I sent off the rough draft to him and he was intrigued with the idea of a small town musician wanting to embark on a journey. So in the summer of 2021, Jim and I started writing what would become Liquid Lady. 

Ambition and energy were incredibly high. Two kids who didn’t know how to make a movie, but were young and ignorant enough to just keep going and keep having fun. It never felt like work during pre-production. Writing was incredibly fun as we sculpted out this story - always bouncing ideas off each other for hours on end at a time. We probably spoke 2-3 hours most nights for a year as we wrote our screenplay. Eventually the story became less about finding Aaron’s mom and became more about finding himself. Spring 2022 approached and we knew we needed to start planning the trips, even though we felt unprepared for this venture (maybe that was just me. Jim was always the calm one). Ultimately, the trip and script became half in Texas in “small towns” and half in the “desert” for this spiritual odyssey. In June 2022, we started production in Galveston, TX. 

We filmed for 2 weeks in Galveston, and LaPorte Texas from mid June to late June. All of the small-town stuff was filmed in those two weeks with a small crew (usually about 5). We took a few days off before embarking on our own “spiritual” journey through the desert with our skeleton crew - Jim, Romario (who plays Miguel in the desert) and myself. For roughly 30 days, we trekked nearly 3000 miles through 4 different states, sleeping in motels, tents or sometimes the car as we made several all night drives in Jim’s trusty blue Nissan just to get to the next filming location. 

That trip shaped and molded us. We quickly learned how daunting of a task we were undertaking shooting this guerilla style - just a camera and actors. We also learned of the frailty of human life amidst the pursuit of art. Jim may be too humble to share this, but we almost lost him in Death Valley to heat exhaustion. Trekking out half a mile in 130 degree leather-crunching heat, he set up for the infamous sand dune sequence. Despite the heat, the sun was perfect in its right place and he directed us to head over the dune and repeat the walking 3-4 times. We did the sequence a few times before calling out to him below asking if we’re good. We noticed he didn’t respond and was swaying back and forth by the camera. We ran down and covered him, offering him to drink our water since he was low on his. I’ve never seen him that out of it. We all breathed a sigh of relief when he cooled down knowing our best friend was alive (and he got the shot). It’s just a testament to the kind of selfless dedication Jim strives for as an artist. 

Native Americans believe the desert holds the history of our ancestors before us, gathered to test your physical limits as a human being and examine your spiritual essence to reap the blessings of its barren land. These themes were most apparent with the visual of the shadows in Liquid Lady. 

After reflecting and shooting, it became clear that the film is a spiritual odyssey of a literal ghost embodied by Aaron set against the location of ghosts - hosted by the desert. 

In fact, there’s proof of the supernatural majesty of the desert caught on film. At the climactic shot of Aaron at the tree of life, there’s a ghostly shadow moving behind Aaron as he stays still praying. Jim and I have struggled for almost a year trying to arrive to a logical conclusion as to what that is since we never added SFX to that shot. Since Romario was sitting on a log on the other side of the mountain, Jim was holding the camera steady on the branch, and there was no one in site for miles, there’s not many explanations left. 

It might be wishful thinking or conspiratorial belief, but after undergoing this 3 year long journey with my best friend with nothing but ambition, creativity, and the sheer will to keep going, I believe anything is possible.