Cinematic Calling — Glenn Palmedo-Smith
After 30 years in real estate development, film school grad Glenn Palmedo-Smith is finally seeing his vision on the big screen. His first feature film, The Hungry Woman, which he wrote and directed, opens in theaters on September 19. Making the film was a seven-year struggle, not only to secure funding and shoot it, but to get it back from Hollywood, who fired him from his own project two years in.

"I walked onto the lot and they said, ‘You’ve been fired.’ They stole my film and I’d handed it right to them. They cut out essential scenes, put it on the festival circuit, but couldn’t sell it. At that point I didn’t want my name on it."

Palmedo-Smith recouped in Hawaii where he wrote a novel, Castro City (Crown Publishing). Then, three years later, something happened.

"The film investors called me and blamed me for the film’s failure. So we reacquainted. I got to put together the version I’d always wanted to do. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists just chose our film over J. Lo’s new movie as the signature film of their annual event. It got a standing ovation."

The film, which uses Rancho Santa Fe’s infamous Ian Spiro murder case as a backdrop to tell the story of Spiro’s housekeeper, is a poignant tale that not only humanizes the plight of migrant workers in San Diego, but reveals the joy, humor, heartache, and torment experienced in migrant camps.

Palmedo-Smith, a Ranch resident, began his own investigation into the case, which reads like something from a James Bond novel, involving spies, kidnappers, and shadowy toughs. He was able to speak to Spiro’s housekeeper before she fled, and for further research, spent two weeks in a migrant camp.

"What’s so interesting about the camps is that they find order. It’s one or two people coming together and creating a sense of community and letting it grow. There’s a jefe (a police chief) and cantinas, and food vendors. The camp I visited had about 120 residents in it. If left undisturbed it could grow to 10,000."

But there is also injustice, says Palemdo-Smith, and much of it at the hands of gringos. The film’s scene of three Caucasians cutting off a boy’s fingers for stealing tools is based on a true event. Such incidents inspire the film’s title.

"The Hungry Woman refers to an Aztec legend of a goddess with a thousand mouths on her body," he says. "When the gods of good and evil could no longer feed her, they cast her to earth where she now feeds on the suffering of humans. My argument was, if migrant workers come here to feed on America, then America also feeds on them. We live on that cheap labor. They watch our kids, they clean our toilets — what do they get in return?"

They get Palmedo-Smith’s voice, which, in a time of heated illegal immigration issues, is sure to have an impact. (www.thehungrywoman.com) — Ryan Thomas