Lucas Leyva

Lucas Leyva (born October 25, 1986) is an American

Leyva was born and raised in Miami, Florida.^[7] He graduated from New World School of the Arts high school in 2005 where he studied theater, and Fordham University in 2008^[7] where he studied communications and visual art after being expelled from the theater program.^[7] Both of his parents are from Cuba.^[7]

Career

Leyva wrote his first one-act play when he was sixteen and it was published by Playscripts inc while he was still in high school.^[8][9]

In 2009 he founded a theater company called Foryoucansee Theater with Marco Ramirez and Alex Fumero.^[10] Their first production was an original reggaeton musical titled Toners in Time.^[11]

His directorial debut was the 2009 short film Day N Night Out from a screenplay by Tarell Alvin McCraney, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.^[12][13]

In 2010 he began what would become a decade-long collaboration with visual artist Jillian Mayer by producing her short film Scenic Jogging. It was shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2010 as part of YouTube Play, and was selected as one of the event's 25 winners,^[14][15] which were also shown at the sister museums in Bilbao, Berlin, and Venice.^[16]

The next year they released the one minute short film I Am Your Grandma on YouTube, which went viral with over 4 million views. The film features Mayer giving a message to her eventual grandchildren in a variety of strange, futuristic costumes. CBS blogger William Goodman described it as "oddly hypnotizing,"^[17] and it was selected to screen at many film festivals and art galleries.^[18]

His followup effort was the screenplay for 2012's Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke, which he co-directed with Mayer. A remake of

In 2012 he and Mayer directed a music video under the pseudonyms “Jacuzzi Gals”[26] for the song Glazin' by Miami garage rock band Jacuzzi Boys. The video briefly went viral before it was banned for having vagina puppets.^[1] It was called the “best music vid of the year”^[27] by Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric and “the worst music video ever”^[28] by Joseph Kahn (director of the Thong Song music video). The controversial video and legal drama^[29] surrounding it were the subject of a SXSW panel in 2013 titled “Vagina Puppets and Fair Use.”^[30]

In 2012 his short film Reinaldo Arenas, starring his father and narrated by a dying shark,^[26] premiered at the 2012 Slamdance Film Festival^[31] and played SXSW.^[32] It was called “a beautiful metaphor”^[33] by the Miami New Times.

In 2012, four different Mayer/Leyva projects were in competition at SXSW,^[26] landing them a spot on Filmmaker Magazine’s "25 New Faces of Independent Film" list.^[34]

The next year he reteamed with Mayer for 2013's #PostModem, a short musical film based on the theories of futurist

In 2014 he wrote and directed the short film The Coral Reef are Dreaming Again. Created in collaboration with marine biologists Coral Morphologic, it tells the story of two corals living in the underwater remains of Miami and premiered at the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival^[48] where it was nominated for a grand jury prize.^[49]

In 2014, the Glasgow Short Film Festival hosted a retrospective of his work.^[50][51]

In 2014 he reteamed with Mayer for yet another short film, Cool As Ice 2, described as an unauthorized sequel to the 1991 feature film Cool as Ice. According to Indiewire, the script by Leyva recounts Vanilla Ice’s rise and fall using voiceover pulled in part from his discredited autobiography, but is also a rumination on notions of failure found in the poems of Frank O’Hara and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and features a talking, dying sun that provides the main counterpoint to Ice’s attempt to get to the bottom of his post fame woes.^[41] The film was described as "side-splittingly funny" and an "absolute showstopper" with "the audacity to power a half dozen inspired features” in Indiewire^[41] and “wildly clever, insanely absurd, and surprisingly emotionally compelling”^[52] in Bullet. In a review in Art Forum, critic Nick Pinkerton said “Cool as Ice 2 proves them boundlessly resourceful artists, getting a maximum of coup de theater effect from a minimum of resources. It gets across more cinematic awe, feeling, unexpected humor, and take-home ideas than Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, in one-eighth the time and God knows what fraction of the budget.“^[53] Despite the positive reception, the film has not been screen publicly since, nor released online.

In 2015, he created and directed a web series called No Seasons for

In 2016, filmmakers Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney credited Leyva and producer Andrew Hevia with the genesis of the collaboration that would lead to the creation of the Miami-set Moonlight.^{[57][58][59][60][61]} Director Barry Jenkins has said that without Leyva and Hevia, Moonlight "would not exist."^[57] The film would go on to win three Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards in 2017. Moonlight has been cited as one of the best films of the 21st century.^{[62][63][64][65]}

His most recent short was 2017's Kaiju Bunraku, based on a play he wrote for a 24-hour theater festival.^[66] The film, made entirely with bunraku puppets, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival^[67] and later played Fantastic Fest, where it won a jury award for “Biggest Facemelter.”^[68] Known as the first Mothra film to make it to Sundance,^[67] the short was called “a technical masterpiece”^[69] by IndieWire, “breathtakingly beautiful”^[70] by the Fountain, and “a singular vision executed with flawless abandon”^[71] in an Eye on Film review. It was acquired by The Criterion Collection to be paired with the film Mothra vs. Godzilla on the streaming platform Criterion Channel.^[72]

In response to years of frustration at his inability to get financing for his own feature film ideas, Leyva created a satirical PDF ostensibly pitching potential investors on the idea of buying him a speedboat rather than financing an independent film.

Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia premiered on January 26, 2020, at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT category.^[77] The film received mixed reviews, though critics praised the film's originality.

Dennis Harvey of Variety gave the film a mixed review, describing it as "an absurdist delight until it wears out its welcome"^[78] and an "adventurous experiment with some great bits, and might yet achieve the cult status that would’ve been ensured by a less unwieldy scope"^[78] concluding "there’s so much crazy invention to this project, it’s a pity the whole is exhaustingly so much less than the sum of its parts."^[78]

Ben Pearson of /Film gave the film a positive review, calling it "the wildest movie of Sundance 2020"^[79] and "an inexplicable, unforgettable, see-it-to-believe-it ode to one of the country’s most unique cities."^[80] He goes on to conclude "in a world in which Hollywood is dominated by intellectual property, I'm thrilled that these filmmakers willed into existence a piece of IP that's actually intellectual, as well as being bonkers, bizarre, and occasionally brilliant. I wouldn't even begin to know how to give this a traditional number rating, so instead I'll simply suggest that if you're an adventurous moviegoer and the opportunity ever arises to see this, grab as many of your friends as possible and check it out."^[81]

References