Meet Carlos Garcia Aceves | Film Director / Publisher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Carlos Garcia Aceves and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Carlos Garcia, let’s talk legacy – what do you want yours to be?
My legacy will be my art, written stories, and productions. One of my best childhood memories was written into a Tv commercial that I directed in 2014 for the Southern California Rotisserie Chicken Giant Juan Pollo. That one-minute commercial relived my life from the age of 7 years old walking through my grandmother’s house full of family at gatherings. It told a story of how a family comes together to spend quality time with all the right ingredients, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, grandparents, balloons, great food, music, and fun. The Tv campaign that I produced for the company was placed in numerous places at the same time such as all TV network channels, radio stations, YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and also in cinema movie Theaters. It attracted so many new customers during the super bowl and also on national rotisserie day (June 2nd) that each location had lines of people in the hundreds selling out fresh rotisserie chicken from opening at 10 am till past closing at 10 pm. Since my campaign ended with that company in 2017 there hasn’t been a pulse reaction like it. Their customers still talk about that regional campaign and the commercial that left an impression with the way I produced the professional custom-written Juan Pollo theme song choice of music licensing and the awesome voiceover. Not to mention it was filmed with, at the time the all-new RED Epic Dragon 6K camera The Juan Pollo Tv spots now sit as legacy commercials on the platform youtube for anyone to watch anytime with a viewership of over a quarter of a million views. These are what I want people to remember me by some of my visuals as works of art. Now my next steps in life are producing a collection of short films to showcase my skills behind the camera as well as starring in my first short film called Mysterious Ways 23. This film also has scenes that inspired me also family stories brought to life. My second short film is called Linkage it was written from a dream I had while taking a nap during the day trying to come up with some film ideas that would be easy to produce with minimal cost and cast. My idea is to bring all my short film scripts to the screen with the same idea as done by Steven Spielberg in 1985 with his American anthology collection called Amazing Stories. I used to watch these over and over and fell in love with the way Spielberg’s vision was produced and in shorts with a theme song that was looking forward to watching. I choose to watch these rather than Twilight Zone because at 8 years old twilight zone was too serious for my taste. I hope my new ventures catch the hearts of many people the way they did to me at a young age. That would be the way I want to be remembered.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
No matter how many things I have created so far I still consider myself in the beginning stage of my life. I married early at the age of 21 and started my family and labored very hard during my early years to have a good life for my wife, four children, and my two granddaughters. I feel that I did a great job because all my children are very smart and talented and have my family’s love instincts that show. During my hard labor years, I was injured with a rare artery valve paralyzed in my right foot that led to a chronic disease called Lymphedema. I first noticed this problem in the year 2000 while sitting on the floor in front of the TV late at night. I noticed the size of my right leg was swollen. I went through many years of treatment just to find out it is a chronic disease and a lifelong injury. This has limited me from doing the heavy lifting and hard labor. the first few years I would deal with extreme pain and throughout the years I just learned how to live with extreme pain. This is not something that I have overcome it’s just something I have as part of my life. My goal in life was to become a film director where I could do my work from a director’s chair and still do what I loved doing. Getting away from the hard life of construction was the one-way direction I made for myself. I fell back on being self-employed working on classic cars as my family income. Even though it is still hard labor at times I was able to do it on my time and in my shop resting as needed. I still try to manage my pain alone but it never goes away it’s there as my lifelong partner. After 25 years of marriage, my wife decided not to take part anymore and went on her way to being independent. So the next chapter in my life is securing my artworks to be a profitable legacy for my children and my two 3-year-old granddaughters who already show signs of talent. As a recognizable family man all my life I wanted to have a large family and grow as each of my children grew their own families and create my visions from life-long lessons learned and influences that I had thorough my childhood till now. Even though my marriage did not work out I cherish the time and the journey it was the best un regrettable course of my life.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My favorite place to go when I get the chance is a park in Riverside county called Fairmount Park. It has a large man-made lake and lots of tall trees to bring the whole park shade and lots of room for cruising and plenty of room for family outings. My family spent many trips there and spent lots of great memories. The most notable was the first outing my wife and I took our firstborn 1-week old daughter and spent the day laying in the shade. After that, there is a Mexican food restaurant in Fontana, California called La Cascada where they serve the best food that I know. I have been going to that restaurant since the age of 6 years old and some of the waitresses have been working there that long too. The next coolest place to go to is Victoria Gardens in Ontario Ca. There are so many nice shops and great tasting restaurants like Lucilles BBQ.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would like to give recognition to a friend and former employer the late Albert Okura The Chicken Man. I met him at the end of 2008 and immediately started working “with him” not for him and it lasted a long 10 years. He was already in business for over 30 years when I came on board. I have a high respect for Mr. Okura because he was a very focused businessman trying to build his legacy still. During my time there I shared my sporadic skills in construction, architect design, graphic design, video production, custom car building, law, book publishing, website creation, cooking, food chemistry, cooker burner design and development, management, gold mining research, and location, and yes the list goes on. In one interview Mr. Okura talks about me and called me a man that could do it all. Every day was a surprise for me working side by side with this man. As I mentioned he was a very focused businessman that seemed like he had one thing on his mind and which was to perfect his business and grow to reach other countries and one day go public and offer his restaurant chain on the stock exchange. In 2023 Feb 4th he passed away from heart complications. Leaving his Legacy of personally cooking over 2 million chickens in his lifetime. When I first met Albert in 2008 I had been recovering from a mini-stroke at the age of 30 during my recovery I was writing a book about my life and doing some research on some of the stories my grandfather would say led me to find Alberts website where I read his story about him waiting for the right person to walk into his life to help him achieve some of his plans. I called the number on his website and never expected him to answer but he did and we talked for a few mins and I told him about my publishing business and my plans to become a film director. He came to my home that day within the hour and took me on a 3-hour drive to his town on the old Route 66 called Amboy. I was impressed it’s not every day you meet someone who owns their town. I guess you could say the rest from that point on is our history. I want to thank Albert Okura the Chickenman for all the help and support he has done for my family during our time together and also for paying for my tuition to film school I’m very sad that his life was cut short and his plans were not complete but he was extremely happy to see his children get old enough to join the company and take over his legacy and they are doing a great job and I know he is very proud.

Website: www.locompany.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kandyandchrome/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-garcia-aceves-90266059/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carlosgarciaacevesofficial

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialCarlosGarciaAceves/featured

Image Credits
Picture of Carlos Garcia Aceves with Camera done By Fernando Aceves 2023 Picture of Cali-love girl done By Carlos Garcia Aceves in LoCompany Studios 2005