Lifelong baseball lover Eugene Corr’s inspiring documentary  how  follows the lives of an inner city youth baseball team in Oakland, Calif. and their coach, Roscoe Bryant. As a way to provide hope and mentorship to the children in his violent neighborhood of Ghost Town, Bryant founded the Oakland Royals team in 2005. Over in Havana, Cuba, another coach, Nicolas Reyes, has been grooming a team of his own. The two coaches organize a game between the two teams to take place in Cuba and worlds collide as the American youths learn to adapt to Cuban culture. Close friendships are made and life lessons are learned, though Corr’s film also covers the long, hard road coach Roscoa had to getting his team to Cuba.

I spoke to Eugene and Roscoe in San Francisco, where they were promoting the film and its screening tonight at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. For more info on how to watch and support the film, visit ghosttowntohavana.com

Richmond is a Bay Area city that hasn’t gotten almost any big screen time before. I like that you delve a little bit into its history. I had no idea.
Eugene: There’s such a rich history and we just barely touch on it. There’s another film right now, Romeo Is Bleeding, that drills down even deeper into the history of Richmond. But there is a rich history with my father and the baseball team he coached for many years.

Talk about the transformation of Richmond from the ’50s to the ’80s.
Eugene: When I was a kid in the ’50s and into the ’60s, even into the ’70s, Richmond and Oakland were still booming industrial centers. They were labor towns, they were tough towns. I was a factory worker, forklift driver, steel worker, auto worker, crane operator. Around ’73 was when the city was really starting to decline, and I transitioned into film. Most people in the Bay Area don’t know the history of Richmond. It wasn’t like the Bay Area of today.

In those days, baseball was king. From Richmond to Oakland, so many great baseball players came from there—Curt Flood, Vada Pinson, Frank Robinson. They were great ballplayers, Hall of Fame ballplayers. Frank Robinson was the first black manager. They transformed the face of the game. There’s a whole East Bay history here that, with the decline of industry, faded away. I don’t know how many teams Oakland has now, but they used to have scores of youth baseball teams. Levels of participation for inner-city kids back then were much greater than they are now.

Oakland and San Francisco have been going through some pretty drastic transformations over the past few years.
Roscoe: I’m not happy with the changes. West Oakland has become gentrification central. I’ve seen a lot of long-term residents leave the community. There’s a housing crisis right now, and nobody’s really making a lot of noise about it. Out goes the old and in comes the new. In the last ten years, I’ve seen my neighborhood change dramatically. Houses that couldn’t be sold before because they’re in a drug zone are going like hotcakes right now. Ten years ago, the dogs in our neighborhood were pit bulls—now you see a lot of chihuahuas. [laughs] A lot of families that have been there for generations are leaving now. It’s breaking my heart.

Like is said in the movie, Roscoe’s work may not create a lot of jobs, but it gives people hope, which to me is more important than anything during this city transformation.
Roscoe: I enjoy what I do. I really enjoy working with these kids. Sometimes when I’m working I don’t realize that I’m giving these kids hope and building them into better human beings. I just enjoy it. We have our ups and downs—some days you just shake your head, others your heart explodes with joy. I had a kid who went 0-80 the entire season. He couldn’t hit nothin’. We get into our first playoff game, we’re down one run, there are two outs, and guess who comes to bat? Every kid on the team, the parents, they all went, “Oh no!” People started putting stuff in their bags, ready to leave. The kid gets a double, and we win the game. I live for this. He’ll carry that one occasion for the rest of his life.

Eugene: So many of the kids have been surrounded by death and hardship and enormous losses. That kid is never going to remember the 0-80. He’s going to remember that one double.

There were two moments in the movie that sort of stopped my heart. One was when Roscoe talks about a bullet getting lodged in his son’s mattress.
Roscoe: Shootings in my neighborhood were very common. Most of the houses had gotten shot up, but they never shot us up. The bullet in the mattress came from a shooting a block away. It traveled a whole block, came through my house, whizzed by my daughter’s head. If my son had been standing up, the bullet would have got him. It whizzed over his head and lodged into the mattress. We’re not gang bangers. We’re not involved in any drug trade, none of that. We just live in this community. It taught me how quickly our lives can be taken. You don’t have to be in the game to be a victim of it. I’m just glad nothing happened. We got rid of that mattress after we filmed that scene.

Eugene: His house got shot up half a dozen times while we were shooting. Just bullets flying in the neighborhood. His car got hit, the front of his house got hit.

Roscoe: It happens so much, you just put it in the back of your mind.

The second moment that got me is when you’re talking to one of the boys, Chris, a couple of years after the Cuba game. He’s getting straight A’s, and he says he’s doing it for his little sister to be a good role model. That’s amazing to me because it shows that Roscoe is molding these kids to be mentors themselves.
Eugene: That’s a deep bond he feels toward his little sister. I love it. He was a victim of all this stuff, and you see him begin to take agency and control his life. He’s doing good things.

Roscoe: I saw him just recently. He’ll come down to Ghost Town every now and then. It’s beautiful to watch Chris grow. You can see when some of these kids, because of the way they’re growing up, are going down that same road. I’m glad Chris played baseball for me, but I’m also glad his mom moved him out of Ghost Town. He was definitely on-track to be gang banging or following the steps of others he knew. He was definitely going down that path. To watch him grow and be this mentor to his sister meant a lot to me too. Me and Chris knocked heads a couple times, but he’s a wonderful kid.

Baseball coaches, in addition to the kids’ mentors and parents, are really ushering these boys into manhood via this sport everyone loves so much.
Eugene: I think baseball is a slow game, and to learn it requires a relationship with a coach. If it’s a good, positive coach like Roscoe who encourages effort, the kid learns that, if he keeps trying, he gets better. Roscoe’s strong and respected, which I think is essential to these kids. Not anybody could be a coach to these kids. It’s valuable that he’s somebody from the neighborhood who can relate. But baseball is such a joyous game. It’s not over in 60 minutes. There’s a promise of immortality—if you keep hitting, you could play forever. There’s an open-ended nature to it that’s quite beautiful.

Roscoe: I think baseball sets kids up for life. It gives them so many life skills. It’s a slow game, so you need to learn patience and perseverance. You also need social skills. If you want to be productive, you have to get along with each other. Baseball’s also a game of failure. If you hit three out of ten times, that’s a 300 hitter, which actually makes you a stud. But you failed the other seven times. I can’t go to my job and do three out of ten things well. [laughs] I won’t have a job much longer. Baseball teaches you to keep trying, how to deal with failure.

It’s a short-but-sweet episode this week as Bernard chats with filmmaker Anthony Lucero about his indie crowd-pleaser, East Side Sushi. Plus, listen in to find out why Bernard had to cut this week’s episode short and record under the influence of some yummy, mind-numbing drugs.

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In Along the Roadside, the debut feature by Zoran Lisinac, a young man from the Bay Area (Iman Crosson) and a colorblind German tourist (Angelina Häntsch) accompany each other on a road trip to a big music festival in Southern California, learning about themselves and each other as their vastly different cultural backgrounds clash.

The film made its North American premiere at this year’s Mill Valley Film Festival, where we spoke with Zoran and his brother, Vladimir (who produced the film), about writing the screenplay at a hotel desk, moving to California from Serbia, the beauty of diversity, the advantages of casting Youtube stars in the film, how they plan to explore Youtube culture further, and more.

Along the Roadside screens this Saturday, November 23rd, at the Roxie in San Francisco as a part of the San Francisco Film Society’s ‘Cinema by the Bay’ series.

What inspired you to make Along the Roadside?
Zoran: We both grew up in Serbia during the wars and economic collapse, so coming here was a journey on it’s own. Once we got to California, I was completely fascinated by the diversity that I found here and the tolerance that is probably unrivaled in the world in terms of people who look, sound, think, and act different. Somehow, everybody seems to coexist and live in harmony. To me, that was a big internal motivator to come up with a story that exposes California, racisms ugly face, and kind of sends a message. We come from the Eastern Bloc, where there’s some serious growing up to do. That was one of the motifs.

So, you built the story around that idea.
Zoran: Yeah. The main character is a black guy from Oakland, and we pair him up with a colorblind German tourist. Her being colorblind is a metaphor; she’s the only pure character in the film. All these other characters that they encounter along the way kind of bite at each other, but that’s just one aspect of the story.

How long have you lived in California?
Zoran: 8 1/2 years. I didn’t speak much English when I came here, though.

You learn quick!
Vladimir: We learned to write in English, which is a whole different challenge! First, you need to learn to speak it, then you need to learn to write it. Then, you need to learn to write well, which is a whole new ballgame. I admire Zoran. He excelled fast and put in the time. Screenwriting is a process that takes work, dedication, and experience. It takes a routine, and I think he found it.

Zoran: I found it in a hotel. I wrote the script at the front desk of a hotel, while working. I had all this down time; on the busiest days, you’d put in about two hours of accumulative work. The guys next to you is on Facebook, the other guy is gambling online, so it’s like, “Fuck it.” I downloaded Final Draft and started banging away. The managers were super supportive and I didn’t have to hide anything.

How does it feel to have your film playing at the Mill Valley Film Festival?
Zoran: I love it, and I’m very honored. It legitimizes our effort, and it feels great to be in the company of these other films.

Vladimir: We’re extremely proud, because the film is very personal. We wanted to shed light on the place that we call home, Serbia. Like Zoran said earlier, it has a little growing up to do in terms of being progressive and liberal, accepting different cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, you name it. This is one place on our planet that has growing up to do, but we’re very familir with it and wanted to show our film with a Serbian star in it and how he understood where we’re coming from and came to America to work on the film for free. He really wanted to help us, understood our point of view, and understood the screenplay. He wanted to help spread the message in Serbia. I think his actions speak volumes. It all started with Zoran’s idea.

Zoran: That’s just one side of the whole story. Judging from what we’ve said, you’d think we’d made a fucking documentary! It’s just one of the layers. This is a story about two people from different parts of the world who cross paths on a journey of self-discovery to a big music festival in California. It takes place over the course of 48 hours, and it takes on issues, like taking life on it’s own terms. A lot of people seem to not do that, therefore, they escape it. They run away from it. I deals with that aspect of character internal conflict.

Living in the Bay Area all my life, it’s surprising to me how little this community is represented in cinema. No one shoots in Oakland. Hell, a lot of people have no idea what Oakland’s like. But, your main character is from Oakland.
Vladimir: Another underlying theme is fatherhood and what it really takes to want fatherhood. It speaks to the staggering number of single mothers, particularly in Oakland. That’s why we put our main guy there. He’s at a crossroads; he’s always wanted a certain lifestyle, and when this big news is broken in his face–that his girlfriend is pregnant–he completely flips and doesn’t know what to do. He wasn’t ready for that. He needs to let go, accept some responsibility, grow up, and want to become a father. It’s a big deal to me. I’m a father, and I understand that. We wanted to shed light on it. African-American culture in the States, especially in the city of Oakland…the statistics show that there are way too many single mothers struggling to bring up their children. Fathers are simply goners. We wanted to say, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can be present. You don’t have to marry the woman, you don’t have to be the greatest dad on the planet, but you need to be there.

Zoran: It comes down to accepting life on its terms, not trying to set your own rules. It’s kind of impossible. That’s summed up in the ending of the film.
This is a great moment for you guys, screening here at the festival. Looking forward, are you excited about your next project? Do you have a lot of ideas swimming around your heads?

Zoran: We stumbled onto this film with this unique (by other people’s account) situation where we cast a number of Youtube stars in the film along with some mainstream stars. It gives us a prominent social media presence. With today’s landscape of indie movies, that means everything. It’s really coveted to have 300,000 views on Youtube without spending money on advertising. It’s interesting. We dipped our toes into this Youtube culture, and in our second film, which we plan on hopefully shooting in January or February, we plan to cannonball into that sphere of digital media. As I like to say, bloggers are carving into digital stone for our descendants to interpret. At this point, they’re expressionists. People don’t know how to pin them. They’re not making short films, per se, and they’re not making features. It’s new. It’s driven by pure passion, and it’s definitely found its response globally. We think it’s precious.

So, your casting of Youtube personalities in this film was strategic, in terms of marketing.
Vladimir: Very much so. There’s only maybe one other film that’s done this, but it’s a horror genre film. It doesn’t have a social side to it, and it’s more for fun. But, it’s done well. What we’re trying to do is be very strategic with it, longterm. With this film and the following two films we have in development, we want to make a big splash with it. We want to shed light on the talent that aren’t mainstream actors in Hollywood. Folks on Youtube are extremely talented, not only at creating content, but at several other things: they’re courageous; they do editing; they do marketing; they do business. They do everything.

Zoran: Most importantly, they build a relationship with their fans.

Vladimir: Exactly.

Zoran: That’s the future.

Vladimir: We like the direction we’re headed, and we’re excited.

For more info, visit www.metakwon.com