Giselle Bonilla brings a dark comedy to theaters on her own terms

Giselle Bonilla’s first feature film, The Musical, arrives in theaters Friday after a difficult path through production, financing and distribution. The dark comedy follows Doug, a middle school theater teacher who tries to damage his ex-girlfriend’s reputation by secretly steering students toward a controversial musical about 9/11 and its aftermath.

Bonilla directed the film from a screenplay by Alexander Heller. Will Brill plays Doug, while Gillian Jacobs portrays his former partner, Abigail, and Rob Lowe plays the school principal who has replaced him in her life. The film’s central school production occupies only part of the story, but its subject matter made the project difficult to sell.

According to the Los Angeles Times, distributors questioned how they could promote a comedy connected to such a sensitive event. The film did not sell at Sundance, but its executive producers provided additional money to make a self-released theatrical run possible. Bonilla has also taken an active role in promoting the movie, determined to find an audience outside the usual industry route.

A project rebuilt under pressure

The film nearly collapsed just before filming began, when the actors originally cast as Principal Brady and Abigail departed. Bonilla turned to professional relationships developed during several years as an assistant, and Lowe’s interest in the script helped restore the production.

The feature grew from a short version of The Musical that Bonilla directed while studying at the AFI Conservatory. Heller had written that earlier project with her in mind, recognizing her interest in comedy. Much of the creative team from the short returned for the feature, giving the larger production a foundation even as its circumstances repeatedly shifted.

Bonilla says comedy gives her room to confront subjects that might otherwise be difficult to address directly. Her film targets the way people can use public grief to advance private agendas, particularly through its depiction of white liberal adults manipulating a tragedy for their own purposes.

That idea also shaped her casting choices. Bonilla has consistently sought greater diversity in her work, including the short films Virgencita and Bullfighter. For The Musical, however, she decided that the adult characters needed to be white because making a person of color responsible for staging a musical about 9/11 would, in her view, distort the film’s criticism.

The students are presented differently. Bonilla wanted the classroom to resemble the multicultural character of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Lata, a determined Latina student who dreams of success in the arts, became the child with the strongest ambition. Melanie Herrera plays the role in her first credited acting performance. Bonilla recognized in Herrera’s confident, highly driven approach something of her own childhood personality.

From child actor to filmmaker

Bonilla began working professionally at 12, appearing in Freedom Writers as a younger version of Eva, one of the film’s central characters. The role involved a staged gang initiation, an ironic beginning for a performer whose parents had worked hard to keep their daughters away from that kind of danger.

Her father, Art Bonilla, grew up in Tijuana and has spent more than four decades acting in the United States. Her mother, who is from Sinaloa, works in workers’ compensation insurance. That income helped provide stability while Art pursued an uncertain acting career, often receiving small roles as gardeners or immigrants.

Bonilla encountered similar stereotypes when she began auditioning. She became increasingly uncomfortable with stories in which white characters occupied the center while Latino characters endured violence or hardship around them. Playing an illiterate South Central student on the sitcom Mr. Box Office further convinced her that she wanted influence over what appeared on screen, not only a place in front of the camera.

She studied film production at Pasadena City College before attending NYU Tisch School of the Arts, using residuals from Mr. Box Office to help pay for tuition. Coming from a sheltered upbringing as a first-generation Mexican American woman, she found the predominantly white and wealthier environment at NYU both revealing and unsettling.

After COVID restrictions eased, Bonilla applied to the AFI Conservatory. The program helped rebuild her confidence and connected her with collaborators who later worked on The Musical. Her parents remain part of that creative circle: both appear in the audience during the film’s final school performance, while her father plays the man who angrily confronts Lowe’s character in a slow-motion moment.

Bonilla’s next project will draw on memories of attending a Catholic school in Sun Valley, where a teacher was found to be a pedophile. She describes the planned film as an erotic thriller told through the perspective of virgins. Like The Musical, it will take on an uncomfortable subject while resisting the expectation that Latino filmmakers should tell only stories of victimhood.