A Story to Cure Hollywood’s Ills

It’s “The Grapes of Wrath” meets “Silkwood.” It’s “Stand and Deliver” with a stethoscope.

To be honest, I’m not sure just how Michael Halperin, a Sherman Oaks screenwriter, is pitching the script he calls “Fields of Poison.” But Halperin, a veteran of “Quincy” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” has found it a harder sell than he expected.

We’re sitting in a Ventura Boulevard coffee shop called Jinky’s, which Halperin describes as something of a hangout for screenwriters. This project has him frustrated. More than a year has passed since Halperin attended his son’s graduation at UC Santa Cruz, heard Dr. Antonio Velasco’s commencement address and thought, “Is this guy a movie-of-the-week or what?”

Jimmy Smits, are you paying attention?

*

That’s the name--the one name--that Halperin keeps hearing over and over. Get Smits on board and it’s a go. And herein lies another true tale of Tinseltown.

We’ve heard a lot lately about Hollywood, with its market-driven predilection toward sex and violence and “nightmares of depravity,” as the source of America’s moral decay. Halperin, however, knows the networks have long made money with uplifting docudramas about genuine heroes. To Halperin, Dr. Velasco’s story is a testament to such traditional values as truth, justice and the American Way.

Halperin got Dr. Velasco’s permission to try to put his story on the screen. This being a movie, Halperin’s embellished it a bit for dramatic purposes. But he didn’t have to do much.

It’s true that Antonio Velasco immigrated to California from Mexico with his family at the age of 11 and toiled in the fields, picking grapes, carrots and tomatoes with his parents. It’s true that his mother once collapsed in the field with abdominal pains and had to be rushed to Natividad Medical Center in Salinas.

It’s true that Velasco graduated with top honors from high school and UC Santa Cruz, and it’s true that he and his future wife marched for farm workers’ rights with Cesar Chavez.

It’s true that the UC Davis Medical School initially rejected his application on the grounds that he was not, as yet, a U.S. citizen. And it’s true that Velasco researched the law, found nothing prohibiting non-citizens from applying, and made UC Davis relent. It’s also true that, upon graduation, his classmates chose him as valedictorian.

It’s true that Dr. Velasco returned to the Salinas Valley and opened a clinic for farm workers, and that in the early 1980s he treated scores of patients, from a 9-year-old girl to a 72-year-old man, for nausea, heart and respiratory ailments he diagnosed as the result of pesticide poisoning. It’s true that a pesticide contractor accused him of practicing politics instead of medicine, and attempted to have him stripped of his license. And it’s true that a wave of menacing phone calls had Dr. Velasco fearing for his family and himself. He forged ahead and was ultimately able to perform tests confirming that, contrary to claims made by doctors on the growers’ payroll, the workers had indeed suffered poisoning, apparently by being ordered to enter a field too soon after spraying.

It’s true that Dr. Velasco’s work prompted Monterey County to enact the state’s toughest environmental regulations to protect farm workers, requiring growers to post fields with skull and crossbones “No Entry” signs during hazardous periods. It’s true that Dr. Velasco would later testify about his work before Congress, and that in 1992, he would be named California Family Physician of the Year. He’s now chief of staff at Natividad, the same hospital that treated his ailing mother so long ago.

So the story comes full circle. “And I didn’t have to make it up,” Halperin says.

*

“What we’re seeing in the entertainment industry is a tremendous amount of sex and violence.” Dr. Velasco said. “There’s very little in terms of role models, particularly for poor people. There doesn’t seem to be any hope that there’s a way out of poverty.” It’s not just Hollywood, he adds. “We’re putting more emphasis on punitive measures, like building more jails, and spending less money on education.”

The Velasco story would be a little antidote of hope, but in Hollywood it’s got a strike against it, maybe two. First, it’s a Latino story, and only a few Latino leads, such as Smits, are considered bankable. (Halperin wonders: Would Andy Garcia do a TV movie?) Second, a screenwriter friend tells me that, ever since that Love Canal docudrama laid an egg, the biz has treated environmental tales as if they’re toxic--unless, of course, it’s the kind in which Steven Seagal saves the world with an assault rifle, some high explosives and a few well-placed karate chops.

Hmmm. So what if Dr. Velasco happened to know a little kung fu. . .