Annie Chan Journal Contributor
Director Robert Patton-Spruill introduced his film Squeeze and how it got inspired by his own past experience. The film was based in Boston, explaining the dangerous life of teenagers. There were three main youths who starred in this film: Tyson, a teenage African American, and his two best friends named Hector, a Latino, and Bao, Vietnamese. The three teenagers were involved with a gang and got into trouble. When seeking for help and shelter, the three friends later joined a youth center, which was run by an African American man named JJ. Then, JJ became a guidance and mentor for these three teenagers in surviving drugs and violence.
Writer and director Robert Patton-Spruill grew up in Roxbury, MA and was dealing with a similar situation with drugs in his youth. Patton-Spruill wrote this film based on his life and had written the main character as him when he was younger. He currently teaches an acting class, where the actors in this film came from. “I chose the best actors in my class for this particular film and it only took one to two shots to make this film work,” said Patton -Spruill. “I wrote the script in ways they can act out; therefore, they didn’t need many rehearsals.”
In the film, the three friends got in trouble with a gang and avoid this particular gang as much as possible. More problems arise when Hector was dealing drugs and experiences a severe beating. The three friends thought the only way to get respect was to have money. They started out collecting change from the gas station, then later met JJ, and ventured the “Red Shirts” club, where the teenagers cleaned the city as they enjoyed the security and solidarity of the youth center.
Overall, director Robert Patton-Spruill has created an engaging film that shows how a mentor can make all the difference in the world to young teenagers who were becoming adults, dealing with life-threatening violence and drugs. “I was raised to do this,” Patton-Spruill says of filmmaking, “but I didn’t know it until I was 21.” Squeeze remains an inspiring story of how young teenagers suffer from gangs and violence, and who seek to grow out from it.
