Er­line An­drews

Thir­ty-one-year-old Kevon Brooks, a part-time ac­tor for more than ten years, wants to win an Os­car.

He al­so has the less am­bi­tious but still elu­sive goal of study­ing at the New York Con­ser­va­to­ry for Dra­mat­ic Arts. He was ac­cept­ed since 2011 to its three-year pro­gramme, but is still try­ing to raise $500,000 for fees. He wants to make act­ing his sole oc­cu­pa­tion.

Brooks may have got­ten just a lit­tle clos­er to his dream as he and 24 oth­er lo­cal ac­tors get a chance to raise their pro­file lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

They play roles in the US movie Girl­friends' Get­away, shot with­in one month ear­li­er this year en­tire­ly on lo­ca­tion in Trinidad.

The com­e­dy pre­miered on the US net­work TV One last Sat­ur­day and ran again on Sun­day. It opened to the T&T pub­lic yes­ter­day at mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions across the coun­try and will run for the next four weeks.

It stars a quar­tet of ac­tress­es well known in T&T for their roles in pop­u­lar TV shows and movies–Essence Atkins (Smart Guy), Ma­lin­da Williams (Soul Food; Moe­sha), Ter­ri J Vaughn (The Steve Har­vey Show), and Gar­celle Beau­vais (The Jamie Foxx Show)–as friends who fall in­to mis­ad­ven­tures while on va­ca­tion in Trinidad.

"It is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for my­self and for the oth­er ac­tors in­volved," said Brooks, in the au­di­ence at a press Q&A the day be­fore the movie's red-car­pet pre­miere at Movi­eTowne Port of Spain.

Brooks al­so had a role in the 2012 Cana­di­an film Home Again, which was shot and screened in T&T.

In Girl­friends' Get­away he plays a drug-deal­er who kid­naps Vaughn's char­ac­ter.

"We hope it opens the door for more in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors to use Trinidad for a lo­ca­tion. Once cast­ing calls go out, hope­ful­ly I'm cast," he said.

Girl­friends' Get­away was di­rect­ed by Roger Bobb, an as­sis­tant di­rec­tor on many Tyler Per­ry films.

Bobb spoke glow­ing­ly of the act­ing tal­ent in T&T.

"I'm so ec­sta­t­ic about the lo­cal tal­ent we've been able to tap in this film," he said.

"Every­body com­ments about how they kind of steal the movie a lit­tle bit," he added, laugh­ing and play­ful­ly putting up a hand in front of Atkins' face to hide her re­ac­tion.

Bobb thought about us­ing Trinidad to shoot Girl­friends' Get­away af­ter meet­ing film and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er Lisa Wick­ham and Car­la Foder­ing­ham, head of the T&T Film Com­pa­ny, at a lo­ca­tion con­ven­tion in LA last March.

Bobb's par­ents Marie and Ed­ward, in the au­di­ence at the Q&A, are Guyanese. Bobb de­scribes his fa­ther as "an hon­orary Trinida­di­an" who had come to the is­land for every Car­ni­val for 20 years. Bobb had al­so pre­vi­ous­ly vis­it­ed the is­land.

He paid a scout­ing vis­it ear­li­er this year and was sat­is­fied with what he found.

Some ad­just­ments had to be made to the script to suit the lo­cale. A ref­er­ence to bas­ket­ball was changed to crick­et and a dou­bles-eat­ing con­test was in­clud­ed.

"The fact that we used so many lo­cal ac­tors, some the di­a­logue got changed," said Cas Sigers-Bee­dles, the film's writer, shar­ing oth­er ways shoot­ing in Trinidad af­fect­ed the film.

"There were so many fun­ny lo­cal col­lo­qui­alisms that weren't orig­i­nal­ly in the film that a lot of the ac­tors con­tributed to the project. So it feels very Trinida­di­an," she said.

Un­usu­al for Amer­i­can films shot in the Caribbean, the ma­jor­i­ty of the cast and crew were from T&T. And some well-known T&T per­son­al­i­ties had cameos in the film, in­clud­ing De­stra Gar­cia, Daren Gan­ga and Olatun­ji Year­wood.

There were no con­cerns about Amer­i­can au­di­ences be­ing put off by the pre­pon­der­ance of Tri­ni ac­cents. In fact, the Amer­i­cans' oc­ca­sion­al strug­gle to un­der­stand Trinida­di­ans was used for comedic ef­fect.

"I grew up in a Caribbean house­hold around Trinida­di­ans. It wasn't an is­sue be­cause they speak Eng­lish the way I speak Eng­lish–or so I thought," said Bobb. "How­ev­er, what you'll see in the film is that our cast might have had some trou­ble un­der­stand­ing what they were say­ing, and we played it up in the film.

"It's some of the biggest jokes," he said.

Over­all Atkins, the on­ly one of the film's US ac­tress­es at the Q&A, raved about the ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing in T&T.

"Scenery is great and ac­cou­trements are great and aes­thet­ics are great, but I don't have a good ex­pe­ri­ence un­less great peo­ple are in­volved," she said. "And that's how it was be­hind the cam­era, and that's how it was in front of the cam­era, and that's how it was every­where we went in Trinidad.

"It was a great ex­pe­ri­ence," she said.

�2 Girl­friends' Get­away will be show­ing for an ini­tial run of four weeks at Movi­eTowne (Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and To­ba­go), Cin­e­mas 8 in Trinci­ty and Ho­bosco in San Fer­nan­do.