On a freezing night in New York City back in 1996, Tamara Hernandez and Harry Ralston finished adding up the numbers and realized they simply didn't have enough money to make a feature film, the decision was clear--they decided to make two.

They had just come back from the Sundance Film Festival, where Hernandez had been the first filmmaker to ever get two short films accepted in one year.   They thought that would finally be the break they were waiting for, but it was still not enough clout to get them the money they needed to make a feature.  After five months of searching for money, they got into the Cannes Film Festival that spring with Hernandez's short film The Slap.  It was at that point they were able to secure the rest of the money they needed to go into production.

So began their three year, "two films for the price of one," project that culminated in the feature films: The Last Man and Men Cry Bullets.  "Shooting two feature films back to back cannot be recommended.  I developed a small facial tick," says Ralston.

Hernandez decided of all her scripts she wanted Men Cry Bullets to be the one to make.  She believed that, "If I only get to make one film, I want it to be this one because I want to try and prevent others from making the same idiotic mistakes I did, while working out some of my own little demons."  Hernandez continues, "I also felt like if I didn't get these feelings off my chest, I was going to end up in jail."

Hernandez chose to use role reversal and humor along with symbolic metaphors, camera angles, color, and music to communicate her point rather than saying it bluntly.  "When you beat people over the head with a message movie they don't want to listen."

The music helped set the film's mood enormously.  "Woodrow Jackson, Ivan Knight, Forest Dunn and Paul Wallfisch are four extremely talented musicians who have a special gift for capturing that feeling of beautiful pain," says Hernandez who contributed some by writing the lyrics to six of the songs in the movie.  "When you're used to being in a lot of pain all the time you feel strangely empty if you don't have it in your life anymore, so you seek it out again and again.  It's very sick, but sadly common."  Hernandez adds, "This point of view got a lot of people really pissed off at me."

Due to Hernandez's desire to have all the club acts be symbolic of Billy's ever changing emotional state, the production started off with efforts to find a cast willing to eat worms, wear diapers, and lift watermelons with their nipples--all for less than scale.

After several months of casting they had their band of brave souls collected, and immediately started shooting that summer in a 120 degree apartment in Van Nuys.  They shot at a breakneck speed: seven pages a day for sixteen days.  "I had every shot storyboarded, and three weeks of rehearsals with the actors, before we began shooting.  If we all weren't fully prepared ahead of time we would have never been able to get everything that we did," says Hernandez.  It was pretty rough says Ralston, "Our D.P., Michael Grady, sweated so profusely from all the hand-held shots that he had to lie down occasionally between takes with his head covered with wet towels."  But Grady, an ex-college line backer, ultimately felt "the heat exhaustion was worth it."  Both Grady and Hernandez "Wanted to make the audience feel disoriented and trapped the way Billy felt."

Once they moved into the night club the shooting was less taxing with more static shots.  "The only thing that was difficult during this part of the shoot was the big dance numbers, because we could only ever afford enough film for two takes, but the actors were well rehearsed so I feel pretty satisfied with what we pulled off," remarks Hernandez.  She goes on to say that, "It was extremely funny when I was teaching Harry, (who plays Freddy Fishnets), and Steven their steps to the sexy dance number they do together.  When it came time to shoot it, the crew found it surprising that Harry could be so sensuous."

The cast and crew all agree that the club was really the best part of the shoot, because everything they were shooting was so insane that they were constantly laughing.  "The dive bar/cabaret look I was going for was captured perfectly in the art direction," says Hernandez.  "People often ask me "Where the hell is that club? I want to go there."  And when Chanda, who plays the part of Tarty Tina, arrived on the set she said she thought, "This is the weirdest set I've every been on.  Everybody here is a freak!  What am I doing here?"  Then she thought, "Well, if I've been cast in this movie, then maybe I'm a freak too."  She said this moment, "Changed her a little."

With over half the cast having never worked on a movie before, the lead Steven Nelson in his first movie role, said, "A lot of us felt like we were losing our virginity… And that was especially true for me when my director told me to do naked jumping jacks." 

Other more veteran actors like Jeri Ryan and Honey Lauren felt like their roles were sometimes beyond challenging.  Lauren remarks, "I never thought about quitting acting until I worked on this film.  I couldn't believe it was actually crossing my mind, but the intense emotions I had to go through everyday to play Gloria really affected me.  It was the hardest role I've every done."  Hernandez responded by saying, "I know I ask a lot from my actors, but I want to make sure the people who get in their cars, and shell out eight bucks--to see a movie I make--get their money's worth.  I believe the only way to do that is to give the audience every drop of soul you've got--even if it makes you sick."  On the other hand, Jeri Ryan who usually gets offered roles that require her to look beautiful enjoyed the chance to play a psychotic debutante who chases a pig around with an ax while covered in blood.  "It was a nice departure," says Ryan.

But as all filmmakers learn, getting the film in the can is the easiest part.  Traveling with the film through the festival circuit, and trying to learn how to sell it to a distributor is both time consuming and expensive.  Therefore, they had to put their efforts to raise the finishing funds for their second film, The Last Man, on hold for a year.  Ralston (who wrote and directed The Last Man, while Hernandez produced), had his hands quite full being the producer of Men Cry Bullets while at the same time playing the club owner Freddy Fishnets.  "It's tough getting a crew to take you seriously when you're wearing lipstick," said Ralston.

Luckily, all the effort paid off when Men Cry Bullets premiered at the 1998 South by Southwest Film Festival where it won the grand prize as Best Narrative Feature.  The film then went on to win a total of six awards including: the Audience Choice Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Best American Feature at the Avignon Film Festival, Best International Feature at the Williamsburg Brooklyn Film Festival, the Lumiere Award at the New Orleans Film & Video Festival, and the Special Jury Award at the Atlantic City Film Festival.  Their journey culminated in the film getting picked up by Phaedra Cinema and released theatrically throughout the country.  "The day the distributor phoned me, was absolutely the happiest day of my life.  I never wanted anything more--not a boy, not money, nothing!" declares Hernandez. 

"Winning the awards were great, because I never thought of myself as the type of person that could win things," maintains Hernandez.  However, she was most surprised at the intense reaction the film received from the various audiences from across the country, and in Europe.  "People would often walk out with their faces all flushed, and there was even this one girl in Texas who came up to me and told me that my film 'gave her an orgasm.'  Now I really don't know how this could happen, since I don't have any normal sex scenes in the film, but I was just happy I could satisfy her.  She made me feel like I had done my job right."  states Hernandez. 

Hernandez feels that a lot of the feedback she got made the things she'd gone through earlier in her life seem less senseless.  "When I was in Chicago a man came up to me after a screening and said, 'I'll never be able to watch a woman get raped on TV, or in a movie, the same way again.  Now I know how woman feel when they see themselves being treated that way.'  That was a very big moment for me.  I could feel some of my anger dissipating."

Nevertheless, it seems the more some people will love a film the more others will not.  "Not all of the reactions I would get were heartwarming," states Hernandez.  "Sometimes people would exit the theater just staring at me.  I think they were wondering how those kinds of feelings could be going on inside such a little person.  Then once in awhile a complete stranger would come up to me very angrily and tell me I was 'sick' or 'perverted,' and that 'I needed help,' but I had heard that before I every made movies so it really didn't have that big of an effect on me."

But despite some harsh criticism, Hernandez believes that putting yourself completely on the line is the best way to go.  During a  Q&A in Los Angeles, one woman in the audience said, "This is the first time I've every seen people like me in a movie.  I don't feel so alone in the world anymore."  "This was a very pivotal moment for me,"  insists Hernandez, "When I got out of school I wanted to dedicate my life to doing something that would make the world a more livable place to be in.  Since writing was the thing I loved doing the most, and the only thing I was ever good at,  I wanted to use it to make the people who were like me feel less alone.  I was shocked when this woman uttered my exact words back to me.  I can't really describe how it felt except, that since that time, I now feel like I'm actually a part of the world instead of just watching it."

Men Cry Bullets will be premiering October 8th in Los Angeles at the Laemmie's Sunset5, and on October 22nd at the Angelika Film Center in New York.