Brandon Guzmán is featured in the Migrant Child Farmworkers Now High-Profile Professionals© documentary. Brandon came to the U.S. from Mexico City when he was a young child. By the time he was 7 years old he worked as a migrant child farmworker in the Central Valley of California. Excelling in school, Brandon earned a law degree at UCLA and is now a successful Hollywood talent manager and producer.
Brandon is the manager of the film’s on-camera presenter, Xolo Maridueña who played a key part in Xolo landing a lead role in the Netflix series Cobra Kai and in his being chosen to be the first Latino superhero to lead a film with Blue Beetle.
He wants to make film and TV to inspire other Latinos the way he was inspired by the movies – but with people that look like his community. Brandon wants more positive representation of Latinos with roles and characters that are not just the stereotypes but show they can be professionals – like Lincoln Lawyer does. It wasn’t until his 40’s that he got to see a show on TV with a Latino lawyer. He adds that Latinos comprise a wide range of professionals including accountants, real estate developers, doctors and more.
The pair work together to give Latinos and all individuals of color greater access to the best entertainment industry job opportunities. They push back on Hollywood type casting of only offering Latinos the opportunities to play gang bangers, gardeners, housekeepers and the like. Together, Brandon and Xolo develop and advocate for new programming that portrays their community members more accurately on screen in movies, television and all forms of media.
They know that more positive representation will have a great impact by helping people start to realize that Latinos are just like everyone else.
The Migrant Child Farmworkers Now High-Profile Professionals© documentary pushes back on that stereotyping too by showing numerous examples of career success with individuals who became engineers, lawyers, medical researchers, pediatricians, US Congressmen and national leaders in education.
See the film preview which includes Brandon’s story here: