Madera-made ‘Ghettobusters’ gets a Hollywood showcase

For The Madera Tribune

The cast and crew of Ghettobusters gather in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater for a special viewing of the TV show, which will be available on Tubi in November.

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After years of work, including during last year’s pandemic, Falcon Pictures’ Ghettobusters had a special viewing last week before a full house at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

“We’re super excited,” said Falcon Pictures co-owner Danny Sauceda. “The team has worked very hard on it. To be able to get it out and show it to the world is exciting.

“Planning everything, we didn’t have time for what we were doing to set in. Afterwards, reading everyone’s comments and everyone was saying how amazing it was, it really puts in perspective how iconic this theater is.”

Sauceda showed the first episode before about 350 people at Grauman’s Chinese Theater and received good reviews.

“It was non-stop laughter,” he said. “It was pretty amazing. When you are putting it together, you know it’s a comedy. Your biggest thing is if people are going to laugh. When you film it and it goes through the editing process, you watch it about 100 times to get it right. Every time I watched it, I was still laughing. I knew it was going to be funny, but I didn’t know how the crowd was going to react. Just because I thought it was funny didn’t mean the world didn’t. We were in a packed theater with about 300 people there. To hear everyone laughing was probably the best moment of my life. We worked so hard for it. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it. Some people were laughing so hard, you couldn’t hear what was coming next.”

Ghettobusters was filmed 80 percent in Madera, including at Jay’s Chapel, the Tesoro Viejo fire station and Backstreet Bar and Grill.

“We filmed in a lot of places,” he said.

Sauceda is looking at a release on Tubi with a limited series of five episodes in November. However, there may be an opportunity for more.

“The screening was a success,” he said. “We had some investors watching. Now, we’re in talks to fund 10 more episodes. We have international distribution for it.”

Ghettobusters was produced by Deana Molle, Freddy Falcon and Jaime Nungaray.

Although the process to get Ghettobusters to the viewers is in the works, that doesn’t mean Falcon Pictures slows down.

“We just filmed another TV pilot, Totally Awesome Machines, that was filmed in Madera,” Sauceda said. “It’s kind of like Mythbusters. It’s three characters that go around talking about different machines. Episode one was about a fire truck. Episode two is going to be about a 747 jumbo jet, episode three is going to be about a yacht. We just filmed the pilot episode.”

Sauceda hopes for a more widespread distribution with Totally Awesome Machines.

“We already have Discovery Network interested in it,” he said. “We have a producer that does a lot of work with Discovery, History and other channels. He already loves the pitch and is waiting to see the episode.”

In addition, Falcon Pictures is getting ready to film a horror picture in Oakhurst soon.

“We just got greenlit to film another horror movie,” he said. “It’s a teenage slasher called ‘Vengeance.’ We have some A-listers on it that have been a round a long time. We have Raymond Ochoa, a Disney Channel star. We have Connor Harry, who is on the new Chris Pratt TV show on Amazon. It’s going pretty good.

“This is what I want to do. I want to bring this stuff to my hometown.”