Three years ago, John Friesen felt inspired to sit down and work on a film script celebrating a friendship between two boys from two different cultures in Ajijic: Pat, a privileged expat youngster and Paco, a Mexican street boy.
Friesen is writer, director and producer of “Pat y Paco.” Many have seen or participated in this film during the shoot in Ajijic last year and during the past few months. Having recently returned to his home in Toronto, Friesen is now editing the short film.
Pat y Paco is a heart-warming, 40-minute story with a fairytale quality involving two boys, a magical lake, a mystical white donkey and a mysterious bicycle thief.
Says Friesen: “We see the worlds they live in, very different worlds. Pat’s world is in a large, beautiful home by Lake Chapala. Paco’s world is on the streets, making deliveries on his bicycle. Paco needs his old bicycle to make a living. Pat dreams of owning a bicycle and exploring the world around him. It’s the unknown bicycle thief who brings them together at the end of the story.”
Friesen sees the film as an Ajijic community project – a cooperative, non-profit, all-volunteer labor of love that involves dozens of local people. “If you add up the performers, crew and background performers, we’re talking about well over 150 people of all ages, both Mexicans and gringos.”
Friesen’s idea for the story came from watching life around him, often from his familiar perch at a coffee shop in the Ajijic plaza or by the lake.
“Having written a number of novels and feature film scripts, I’m often obsessed with what’s going on around me. I am curious about what makes people tick and why they behave in the ways they do.”
Friesen sees the story as a reflection of the two worlds he observed co-existing and mingling at Lakeside. “That dual-culture social reality made a huge impression on me when I spent my first couple of winters here. It’s a unique and inspiring social duality that thrives here, and it’s impressive.”
One day, Friesen noticed a young boy with reddish-blond hair and freckles, maybe nine years old, running around with a wooden sword, wearing a funny paper hat, pretending to be a viking chasing an imaginary being. “I’d see him quite often and discovered that he was fluent in English and Spanish and that he had lived in Ajijic with his grandmother for the past four years. That fascinated me.”
He noticed another boy in the Ajijic plaza, about the same age, who seemed like a lost soul. “I learned that he didn’t really have a home. 
He worked at odd jobs and made deliveries on his bicycle for merchants and cafe owners. Three different women I talked to told me how they tried to encourage him to attend school and offer him food and clothing. One woman said that, on certain nights, she found him sleeping on a bench. She took him home so that he could get a good night’s sleep, a shower and a change of clothes.”
These boys became Pat and Paco, the main characters of Friesen’s story, and he built his story around them.
Like Pat and Paco, many of the story’s characters are based on actual people living in Ajijic, and many of those same people are actors in the film.
Says Friesen: “For a filmmaker, the normal process is to write a script, do your pre-production, then find the actors and the locations and begin filming. In this case, it all happened in reverse. Real people came first and they then became the story characters and the actors.”
For Friesen, having the two youngsters perform wasn’t difficult. “We were lucky in a number of ways. Playing the lead roles, they were terrific, considering that they had never acted before. Plus, they were disciplined and hung in there right to the end.”
Dealing with scripts, actors, crew, locations and weather, plus unforeseeable disasters, are some of the obstacles that come with producing a film. “We experienced many of these ‘show stoppers’ during our shooting schedule. Somehow, we refused to quit and managed to work over or around them.”
“Pat y Paco” isn’t Friesen’s first script. “I’ve written many feature-length screenplays over the years, although this was my first crack at a short narrative film. This was also my first real job as a film director, and all of my previous acting and writing experience helped me get through it.”
Since cost is a major part of producing a film, Friesen is looking at funding sources. “Even when you have a volunteer crew and you’re being very frugal and doing a low budget production, there are still many thousands of dollars involved in various unavoidable costs.”
He figures he will need around US$25,000, which will probably come from individuals, organizations and local and state government sources. He’s even considering culture and tourism departments. “After all,” he says, “this film could be a tremendous promotional device for Ajijic and Lakeside. It’s very much an Ajijic story, a celebration of the town and the people living in it.”