Local actor making mark in L.A.

Petaluma’s Perez plays Scientology-boss David Miscavage in new film|

To make a film about Scientology despite church opposition, documentarian Louis Theroux sought an actor to play the leader of the sect, David Miscavage. This would allow Theroux to dramatize key scenes in the church’s recent history. The final film, a funny yet chilling work as much about the absurdist effort to make the documentary itself as about its subject, includes the auditions. We see one actor after another fail to capture Miscavage’s legendary rage - until actor Andrew Perez arrives.

As the Petaluma native improvises a savage verbal attack on an underling, Theroux realizes he has found his actor.

“Where did that come from?” he asks, to which Perez replies that he has always been able to tap into anger.

“And into righteousness,” he adds, provoking laughter in the room.

“My Scientology Movie” was released in selected theaters and on-demand last month.

Reviewing for Variety, critic Guy Lodge wrote that while the staged dramatizations in the film “can’t claim any certain basis in fact, they’re riveting - not least because. … Andrew Perez is so chillingly persuasive as the religion’s externally glib but possibly paranoid leader. Astonishing performances in documentary re-enactments are rare indeed, but Perez barrels in as a man possessed.”

Based in Los Angeles, Perez, 34, is not an actor who waits for his agent to find him more work. He and fellow artist Aaron Freese, a friend from Casa Grande High School, have produced “Bastards y Diablos,” a Spanish-English feature film that has excited audiences and won awards in several recent independent film festivals. Perez wrote the screenplay and plays one of the leading roles, while Freese directed. They bankrolled the film with credit cards, shooting entirely on location in Colombia.

“It was a real gamble,” Perez said, “but a great experience. We used actors and non-actors, including my mother and other family members and friends. We’re proud of the film and expect to have distribution soon.”

Perez based the screenplay on his father’s life. Two Americans, Ed Rojas (Perez) and Dion Rojas (Dillon Porter), estranged half-brothers, are brought together by the unexpected death of their father in Colombia. They go to Bogota to carry out his request that his ashes be spread in the places that meant most to him (coastal Guajira, Cartagena, etc.) - a journey that will reconnect them with family, homeland and, ultimately, each other.

The film has stirred up interest during recent film festivals, including Los Angeles (2015 official selection), Petaluma (2015 official selection), Ashland (2016 Best Feature), Port Townsend (2016, Special Jury Mention) and Durango (2017 Jury Commendation, Narrative Feature Film, and Audience Award, Best Narrative Feature Film).

In its review of the Los Angeles festival, the Hollywood Reporter found “Bastards y Diablos” to be “a film whose every scene embraces darkness and light. A vividly original story … that captures the brothers’ journey with a documentary immediacy and a sure grasp of the dynamic emotional depths.”

Another of Perez’s projects is “The Second Coming of Klaus Kinski,” a one-man show he wrote and will perform next June at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, an annual showcase for new plays and other performance arts. Perez became fascinated with the German actor while in college, discovering Kinski through Werner Herzog’s documentary “My Best Fiend.” For his new play, Perez dug deep into Kinski’s life through interviews with Kinski’s friends and neighbors in Marin County, where the actor spent the last decade of his life. The new show imagines Kinski coming back from the grave for one last “command performance.”

Kinski, who died in 1991, made more than 150 films.

“Kinski was extremely intense,” Perez said. “He was passionate, wild, and funny.”

YouTube offers a glimpse of Perez’s transformation into Kinski, under “Second Coming of Klaus Kinski.”

Last year, when Perez and Freese brought “Bastards y Diablos” to the Port Townsend Film Festival, they also brought a play.

“To be different, we also offered the film festival a stage production of “The Aliens,” the 2010 Obie Award winner by Annie Baker,” he said. “The festival agreed to one late-night performance at Port Townsend’s Key City Public Theatre, so my “Bastards” co-star Dillon Porter and I rehearsed like mad for three weeks and did the play. Key City liked it so much they offered us an Equity run for January and February of 2017.”

Perez was named the 2017 Film Fellow at the festival and was provided with a cottage for the two months he spent in Port Townsend acting on stage.

Perez’s education as an actor took place primarily at Cinnabar, the nonprofit theater that has been entertaining Petaluma audiences since the early 1970s. He decided to become an actor at age five, auditioned for “The Snow Queen” at the Cinnabar Young Repertory Theater when he was twelve, and remained in the program until he graduated from Casa Grande High School in 2001. He also participated in ACT’s Young Conservatory in San Francisco.

“Cinnabar was a godsend for me,” Perez said. “We had such amazing teachers, especially Deborah Eubanks, who trained us in Shakespeare, Beckett, Pinter and many other playwrights.”

“Andrew was at the top of a group of talented kids who joined us about the same time,” recalls Ellie Lichenstein, Cinnabar’s artistic director. “I knew he would go far.”

The long resume of Andrew Perez speaks volumes about the life of a working actor - not yet a star but constantly competing for work on all fronts, including stage, television, film and Internet. How many rejections did he endure for every job listed? Only he knows. But anyone desiring a similar career should study the scene in “My Scientology Movie” where Perez gets the part.

“I’m really excited about my career,” he said. “And while I primarily view myself as an actor, I love writing and developing my own projects.”

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