Edward James Olmos plays James Escalante, a real-life Los Angeles businessman who quits a high-paying job to teach high school in East Los Angeles. Escalante's students, unfortunately, are loud, unruly, and uninterested in his calculus lessons. Still, they grow fond of their intense, off-the-wall instructor, and many are willing to focus and try to excel in math class for him. In the process, they become better people who are able to comprehend that they have something to offer the world.
Stand and Deliver took quite a roundabout route to the big screen. In fact, it wasn't supposed to be a theatrical film at all.
In 1984, director Ramon Menendez, who had recently graduated from UCLA film school, saw an article in the newspaper concerning Escalante and his remarkable students. Menendez enlisted one of his film school buddies, Thomas Musca, as producer and co-writer, and the two committed themselves to getting a film made. It took them six months to convince Escalante to sell the rights to his story. Then Menendez and Musca were turned down by a slew of production companies that didn't see the commercial possibilities of a story about a bunch of minority kids achieving high scores in a difficult and competitive national exam.
Eventually, Menendez and Musca received a $12,000 grant from PBS-TV's American Playhouse and were able to write a complete script. They then secured the services of some better-known Latino actors, the most important of which was Olmos, who at that time had a recurring role on NBC's hit cop show, Miami Vice. Lou Diamond Phillips and Andy Garcia, on the other hand, were still on the cusp of their own legitimate movie careers, so their names weren't as much of a draw. Olmos saw Stand and Deliver - which at this point was called Walking on Water - as both a chance to play a great character and an opportunity to make a positive social statement.
With the actors on board, a small shooting budget was raised from a variety of sources, including The National Science Foundation and the Atlantic-Richfield Corporation. It was apparent that Stand and Deliver was designed solely as a public TV project, but fate would intervene. After the picture was shown at the 1987 Mill Valley Film Festival, Paramount Pictures picked it up and put it into theaters.
Olmos committed so fully to playing Escalante, he gained 40 pounds and had his hair thinned out so he would more closely resemble him. The actor's commitment was rewarded with an Oscar® nomination for Best Actor, yet another example of the film itself experiencing a Cinderella story akin to the one experienced by Escalante's students.
Producer: Tom Musca
Director: Ramon Menendez
Screenplay: Ramon Menendez, Tom Musca
Cinematography: Tom Richmond
Art Direction: Milo
Music: Craig Safan
Film Editing: Nancy Richardson
Cast: Mark Eliot (Tito), Edward James Olmos (Jaime A. Escalante), Estelle Harris (Estelle, Principal Molina's secretary), Mark Phelan (Cop), Virginia Paris (Raquel Ortega), Adelaida Alvarez (sexy girl), Will Gotay (Pancho), Patrick Baca (Javier Perales), Ingrid Oliu (Guadalupe 'Lupe' Escobar), Carmen Argenziano (Mr. Molina, Garfield High Principal), Richard Martinez (heavy metal boy), Mark Everett (heavy metal boy), Tyde Kierney (Joe Goodell), Rosana De Soto (Fabiola Escalante), Bodie Olmos (Fernando Escalante), Karla Montana (Claudia Camejo), Vanessa Marquez (Ana Delgado).
C-104m. Letterboxed.
by Paul Tatara
