Some people just have “it.” David Cruz has “it.” What “it” did Cruz acquire at birth, you ask? Being an absolutely stellar filmmaker, that’s what.
Cruz has been making some noise recently with “Llego Hoy [He Arrived Today],” his debut feature film that tells the story of a mother who tries to smuggle her son into the United States from Mexico, but when the day comes for her to do so, an unexpected presence shows up in his place, changing her plans completely. Cruz spent the early pandemic writing the script, and after a highly improvised film shoot throughout midtown Little Rock and a small village in Mexico, he has officially claimed the title of being the first Hispanic Arkansan to direct a feature film.
There are two versions of Cruz behind “Llego Hoy.” “As David Cruz the artist, it was important to get something off the ground, and hopefully be able to open some doors… or at least give me the wood to build my doors,” he said. “As David Cruz the person, I had to make it, there was no plan B. I knew I had to deliver.”
If you’ve seen “Llego Hoy,” then you know that he more than delivered. The bite-sized, 72-minute, Spanish language thriller has everything you would want from a first-time director. To put it simply, Cruz is versatile. On its face, you might call his film a drama. After all, it centers on a mysterious mother-son relationship, and is anchored by an alluring, sobering performance from its lead (who also happens to be David’s mother), Veronica Lara. That said, Cruz also delivers tense thriller set pieces, a rip-roaring camera, passages of avant-garde animation, meditative natural photography and even manages to toss in a deeply upsetting, bloody micro-spectacle set in the backseat of a car.
Cruz was born in Downey, California, but was raised in Los Angeles. His early LA years were spent running around the Hollywood Hills, wearing out Power Rangers VHS tapes and steadily developing a love for film. Some time during his sixth trip around the sun, Cruz and his family packed up their things and headed east, eventually moving to Tennessee for some time and then to Arkansas, where they settled in Alexander. Life in The Natural State was way different from out in LA, but David was content. After all, he still had those Power Rangers VHS tapes.
Growing up, his passion for movies first budded in obsessively rewatching trailers. “I was so excited when my parents got a desktop at our home,” he said. “I stayed on it and watched movie trailers every day after school, sometimes ten times to fully understand it. It was teaching me how to edit and pace things.” Cruz found films like Michael Bay’s “Transformers” to be detrimental in teaching him how to entertain audiences. Meanwhile, having the life scared out of him by the North American remake of the Austrian horror movie “Funny Games” would be a revelatory experience — one that showed him the death grip that movies can have on their audience’s emotions. A lot of these early years were also spent exploring filmmaking by working on amateur shorts in between classes with friends.
Ever since Cruz first stepped through the doors of the University of Central Arkansas, where he would enter his first film school class in the fall of 2018, he has been getting stuff done. He spent his freshman year working various jobs on tons of sets, getting zero sleep and making his first short, “Unos Huevos [Some Eggs],” which premiered at the end of his second semester. This scaled-down tale of a boy skipping his trumpet recital has some of the hallmarks of nascent filmmaking, particularly in the way it seems autobiographical. But what sets “Unos Huevos” from other student films is its patient sincerity. Backed by a sparse yet effective guitar-driven score, it’s a simple, quiet drama that doesn’t tell you how to feel straight out of the gate, and, like “Llego Hoy,” it stars family, this time Cruz’s mother and brother, Daniel, both of whom give earnest performances.
“Unos Huevos” played at various local festivals after it premiered in the spring of 2019, establishing Cruz as one of the Arkansas filmmakers to keep an eye on. For his sophomore effort, “Pigs Stand Tall But Can’t Dunk,” Cruz proved that he was anything but a one-trick pony. The short, which takes a supernatural turn in its final stretch, follows Jojo (Latavian Johnson), a paraplegic who has a complicated relationship with his roommate, Leo (Jon Navárez). Aided by an arsenal of veteran UCA seniors, clamoring freshman and everyone in between, Cruz buried himself in the project for months, with heaps of rewrites and reshoots ensuring his vision was expressed with clarity. Unfortunately, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, this Rod Serling-like tale was unable to reach as wide an audience as “Unos Huevos.” It showed at a few online festivals, and was then given a quiet rollout on Vimeo in May 2020.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, it gave Cruz time to hone his craft. Two months into that period of isolation, he had a new script ready to roll. This one, however, wasn’t a short. It would be his debut feature, “Llego Hoy.”
Earlier this year, I drove up to meet Cruz at his brand new north Fayetteville apartment on a rainy, gray January morning. Before I could climb the stairs to knock, Cruz ripped his front door open and greeted me by shouting my name in a throaty, slow-motion, Kermit the Frog-style timbre, with a big smile on his face. As I walked into the apartment, I was met with a fat whiff of the morning’s coffee and a blast of rapper ssjishmael’s track “Fast n Furious.”
“This one’s my favorite,” Cruz said. He dove straight into a committed, five-second performance of the next verse, followed by a hearty laugh. “I’ve really been listening to a lot of soul music recently,” Cruz said. Before I knew it, that warm organ from Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” glided into the room.
Cruz had just moved and was still unpacking his things. A few boxes were stowed away in various corners of the apartment, along with a large framed painting of galloping horses and a poster of Henri Matisse’s “Dance.” In the middle of the sparsely decorated room was the centerpiece: a towering standing desk, one that sheltered various humming hard drives and two computer monitors. In this moment, my eyes and ears told me everything I needed to know about Cruz.
The Matisse not only conveys an admiration for fine art, but shines a light on David’s own ambitions for a rich, creative resonance. His crowded editing space promises a diligent man — one whose life is his work and work is his life. More than anything, the Al Green in the air told me that he’s an artistic populist. You can dress something up all you want, but at the end of the day, it’s about meeting people where they’re at. Al knew how to make everyone boogie. Cruz knows how to rattle us.
A momentarily fatigued Cruz told me that he’s been hard at work putting the final touches on the edit for “Llego Hoy” as it was coming closer to premiering on streaming services. Since our meeting, his film has been made available on Tubi, but has yet to appear on others.
“You tryin’ to grab some lunch?” Cruz inquired, life coming to his eyebrows.
We braved the downpour and hopped in his car, blazing down the streets of Fayetteville to chow down at his favorite breakfast spot — the legendary Arsaga’s Mill District. After we pulled in, Cruz swapped out baseball caps for one from a film set he worked on in the summer of 2022 for Tyronza native Noah Arthur Woods’ upcoming feature “I Do This For A Living” (screening at this year’s Filmland festival). Moves like this prove that he isn’t just taking help from the local film scene — he’s constantly looking for ways to give back.
As always, Cruz tore into the place like the king of the castle and we cut through to a table in the back. I ordered their main breakfast item, the Brezinski (two eggs cooked to my preference of sunny-side up with bacon, smashed avocado, two slices of sourdough toast, fried potatoes and curry ketchup) while Cruz ordered a bowl of the chef’s gumbo. He immediately dove into his meal, after dousing it in a lake of hot sauce. He wasn’t starving, though. I got the feeling that food might just be fuel for him — a way to keep himself up, kicking and onto making the next picture.
As he went back to dunk a second unbelievable amount of hot sauce on his dish, I took a moment to tell him how much I loved “Llego Hoy,” which I had seen just a few days before coming up. Being the humble guy that he is, Cruz thanked me but didn’t probe for what I liked about it. Instead, he rattled off a few influences, chief among them Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” and “Boogie Nights.” And he talked up his mother’s work in “Llego Hoy.”
In it, Lara plays Marta, a mother who yearns for the presence of her absent son. In a world full of heightened, lavish performances, Veronica brings a sorrowful realism. Her eyes are her greatest weapon, which grieve louder than any words might. David brought us back to reality and spoke lovingly of his mother’s talents as a singer. He gave me a bit of her history singing in churches and eventually dropped the bomb that she isn’t really trying to act anymore.
“I hope that’s not the case,” I replied, speaking for myself and everyone else in the universe.
After taking our ticket, we headed back to his apartment, where he fired up his computer and started to show me his dense editing project for “Llego Hoy.” Despite two highly successful Arkansas screenings in 2023, Cruz felt there was still room for improvement, and used the feedback from those viewings to continue sharpening his work. He showed off a cork board covered in concept art, as well as a dingy surviving frame from one of the film’s animated sequences.
He also can’t help but brag on Ivan Salas’ score for “Llego Hoy.” “[Ivan] went back and redid the score a few times, and the last time he went back, I didn’t even ask him!” he said. “The movie was already locked in, brother. And then he was like, ‘Hey, I redid everything and I got a guy from Oklahoma who actually plays the flute.’”
Cruz slapped his keyboard’s spacebar and the film’s heavenly woodwinds flooded the room. He grinned ear to ear, almost like he still can’t believe the score kicks this much beautiful ass. “This is, like, a real flute! Played by a real flute player! I got this and was like, ‘What?! Dude, I can’t believe this.’ Ivan just said he wanted to make it sound better. I owe him a lot.”
As Cruz further let me peek behind the greater “Llego Hoy” curtain, he started to sound like a dad, a slightly anxious one wrapped up in the bittersweet joy of sending his teen off to college. This adds up, given that he finished the final cut of “Llego Hoy” earlier this year. I went on to ask him how he felt about it being out in the world soon. To put it simply, it’s complicated.
“Llego Hoy” received acclaim at its two bustling showings last year (one in Little Rock screening, the other in Fayetteville), but not everyone was thrilled with it. Cruz told me about a college student at the University of Arkansas who was disturbed by how dark his film is. “This was never going to be ‘Barbie,’” he said. “I wanted to make a movie in reality — it’s dark. You have to embrace the cactus, you know? Life has to go on.”
Cruz is also ready to move on to the next thing. It sounds like he has a Safdie Brothers, “Good Time”-esque thriller on the way, but didn’t dive too far into that. Instead, he laid out what he’s spent the last few years mapping out, a game plan that will keep him occupied for the next decade or two. This plan includes an enormous science fiction YouTube series that will, he hopes, be made into some sort of feature, and if that goes well, maybe a few sequels. He referred to it as his “Star Wars,” but then let me in on its actual title: “Pecking Lot.” The ambitious, Hayao Miyazaki-influenced potential franchise would tell the story of two genuses of Homo — erectus and sapiens — that interact in the modern day, and the way that the government navigates their odd point in evolution.
Talk about a left turn from “Llego Hoy,” but that’s what excites Cruz. “It’s funny because, during film school, I just wanted to make indie arthouse stuff. Now that I’m out, I want to return to my roots and make stupid stuff!” he said.
Cruz knows that, rain or shine, harsh reception or rapturous acclaim, it’s time to let “Llego Hoy” free. “It feels weird that the movie will be living a life of its own soon, but it has to happen eventually,” he said. Embrace the cactus, Mr. Cruz. You’ve made Arkansas cinema proud.