Homestead TV Magazine

The release of the movie, Hidden Rage, couldn’t have been timed better as kids get ready to go back to school. Both parents and children expect school to be a place to go to gain knowledge. Instead, today, we are hearing more and more about the violence and viciousness of students towards other students. Personally, I don’t remember seeing this level of violence and hostility demonstrated in the rash of school killings and bulling incidents when I was a student. What has changed and who is responsible for these changes?

According to filmmaker and founder of the God of Moses Entertainment, Norton Rodriguez, the blame partially lies with bad films, music, and language. One film he points to in particular is Natural Born Killers. This two Emmy awards winner convictions are real and strong here as the record speak for itself.

The year was 1996 when Norton Rodriguez first watched the movie Natural Born Killers directed by Oliver Stone, thinking it was just another action/adventure film, but the film was so violent that Norton was not able to finish viewing it. In fact, he was so disturbed by the film that he quickly wrote a letter to the Miami Herald with a petition to ban the film. The Miami Herald published Norton’s letter as an article. Miami Herald Web-Archives. The following, is the official published article that Norton Rodriguez wrote:- The Miami Herald (FL) March 31, 1996Author: Herald Staff Edition: Article Title: “Ban ‘the most dangerous film ever”

–Recently the movie Natural Born Killers was released on video. This is the most dangerous movie ever made, and it should be banned. As a South Florida filmmaker and TV-news cameraman, I’m very familiar with the power of films. When powerful images and music are edited and combined creatively, they can motivate and help trigger specific moods: love, suspense, fear, etc. Natural Born Killers motivates a negative criminal message in the minds of those few sick individuals who might tend to become real killers. The movie’s message is simple: Kill without any respect for humanity. It was shot and edited in a purposefully demonic fashion, with fast cuts, quick flashbacks of murder scenes, and horrifying violence. This dangerous film will create more criminals unless a) Florida bans the film completely, or b) all video stores ban it out of respect for all Florida victims of violence.— Film Warns Teens of Bullying Dangers as Back to School Count Down Approaches

When news about the Columbine shooting was released, Norton Rodriguez realized that what he wrote in the Miami Herald’s published article in 1996 had been very prophetic in nature, and soon after he began his five (5) year research for what would later become the movie Hidden Rage. This movie aims to reach and heal today’s youth culture of violence, before it’s too late. While conducting the research for the film Hidden Rage, Norton met Christian Filmmaker/writer Robert Kramer who had also been inspired to produce a film about a school shooting. Kramer had been a school security guard himself and was motivated to write a screenplay about youth violence. It was then that Robert Kramer wrote the original screenplay with the working title “Sliver of Light”. Once Norton read the script for “Sliver of Light”, he knew he had found the right script. It was then that producer Norton Rodriguez teamed up with writer Robert Kramer and co-writer Alejandro Leyva to include all his research findings about bullying, teen depression, teen suicide and school violence.

“Our goal was to make a powerful creative film that would touch on all those key issues, which are all part of youth violence in one way or another. And out from the new screenplay version written by Alejandro Leyva came the new title Hidden Rage. Hidden Rage was finally filmed in 2008-2009, and edited and released in 2010. Once we conducted our first film casting, and we found the awesome South Florida actors such as AARON GOLDENBERG, ROBERTO ESCOBAR, BARBARA ANN MARTIN (Que Pasa USA), DANIELLE BERKOWITZ, DARIO LADO, MARK CAPEY, BROOKE CARROLL, ERIC NELSON, KELLY “PRODIGAL SON” WILLIAMS, RAFAELLA DEBEST, FELIX SERRA, FABIOLA ROMERO, MARIELENA PEREIRA, SILVIA PEREZ and KRISTEN TARRANGO and a group of over 100 extras, we knew we were bound to produce an amazing film. The castings for the great part of the Teens are amateur’s actors which are impressive how well they carry out their rolls or should we say this is so real to them.”

The film Hidden Rage premieres Thursday, August 26, 2010, 7:00 p.m. at the Flagship Cinemas, located at 2250 NE 8th Street, Homestead, FL 33033 General Admission: $9.00. (Discount School Groups and Church Youth Groups of 25 or more at $5.00 per ticket.) Movie Tickets may be purchased online at: www.HiddenRage.com Hidden Rage’s main goal is to reach today’s youth with its important message on bullying and violence, creatively woven in a theatrical movie that has action, comedy and entertainment crafted to appeal to the entire family. Go see it, WE GIVE IT AN A+ ! log on to see trailer and more info http://www.HiddenRage.com/