LOGAN SQUARE — Carmen Marron never went to film school. She wasn't even into movies as a kid.
With her second film premiering in Chicago, Marron is an anomaly in Hollywood.
The filmmaker's childhood growing up in Logan Square in the '80s and '90s played a huge role in her decision to make movies. Although she's found success, those memories and lessons from the neighborhood continue to steer her creative direction today.
"I just allowed myself to be absorbed by this whole community and my friends," Marron said. "That is the heart and the truth that I’m putting in my movies. That’s what's keeping me humble and keeping me focused on the real meaning of life."
Marron was one of 10 children, and at one point there were 10 family members living together in a two-bedroom apartment at Fullerton and Sacramento avenues.
Marron never planned to be a filmmaker.
The daughter of Mexican immigrant parents did it out of necessity to fill what she saw as a glaring gap.
After graduating from Lane Tech High School, obtaining a business degree from DePaul University and getting a master's degree in educational psychology, Marron had plans to help young people in a one-on-one elementary school setting as a counselor.
She chose a community in south Phoenix because it reminded her of the neighborhood growing up, Logan Square and had a large Latino population.
The kids got into trouble. Some were getting into drugs, some having sex as early as eighth grade and others were running off with their boyfriends. Role models included celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Justin Timberlake.
"They were looking for role models on television and in movies," Marron said. "That’s who they wanted to be like. I was only making a difference in one school."
If these issues were happening in Chicago neighborhoods and all the way across the country in Arizona, Marron figured they were happening everywhere.
"I thought these kids are making the same mistakes that my friends and I were making growing up in Logan Square," Marron said.
That was about 15 years ago.
In her mid 20s after a few years working as a counselor she had an epiphany, went to the library, checked out a few books on how to write a screen play and got to work.
If those role models didn't exist, she was going to create them.
A move to Los Angeles and roughly 10 years of grinding to get a foot in the film industry later, her first movie "Go For It!" premiered on the big screen.
Drawing on her youth growing up in Logan Square in the '80s and '90s, Marron has become an unlikely force in Hollywood.
The Latina filmmaker who directs, writes and produces is an extreme rarity in Hollywood.
The fact that she has no formal filmmaking education is even rarer.
Latinos make up only 2.3 percent of directors and 6 percent of writers in Hollywood, including both men and women, according to a Columbia University study between 2010-2013.
"I didn’t allow myself to be weighed down by the guidelines of society. I just said I’m going to do it. I want to do it," Marron said. "It’s not because of money. It’s not because of ego. I want to give something to this world while I’m here."
The filmmaker was in town over the weekend for the Chicago premiere of her second movie, "Endgame," which stars Rico Rodriguez ("Modern Family"), Efren Ramirez ("Napoleon Dynamite") and Ivonne Coll ("Jane the Virgin.")
The movie also features Justina Machado, a fellow Chicago native who Marron attended Lane Tech with although the two didn't know each other at the time.
They didn't make the connection until they were on the set of "Endgame."
The movie is based on a true story and tells the tale of a teacher who starts a chess program in Brownsville, Texas, the third poorest city in the United States at the time.
"I feel like these movies that I make all still represent Logan Square for me," Marron said. "It's about the community that I grew up in. What I am trying to show is your options are unlimited. It's up to you. It's not what people define for you."
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