Sugar is the story of a Dominican baseball player, Miguel “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) who gets recruited to play in the US minor leagues. It is both written and directed by filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who recently made their debut with Half Nelson (2006), which centers on an inner city school teacher with a drug problem. Sugar is scheduled to appear in theaters on April 3rd.

Boden and Fleck share how much easier it was to make a second film and how they found their all star actor.

Q: This film is so different from Half Nelson, how did that happen?

Fleck: Well, when we first wrote it he was a crack-addicted baseball player, but we thought that maybe we should not go that direction. That’s a joke. I think that as a fan of baseball myself it became a really interesting story for me. I think there are some parallels to Half Nelson even though it may not seem like that on the surface. But of course there are some big differences as well. It’s about a guy who is trying to figure out his place in the world. He thinks he is trying to do the right thing, but re-examines his role and how he fits in to the system at large.

Q: Were you a baseball fan before the film?

Boden: I’ve learned to appreciate the game over the course of making the movie. No, I did not grow up a baseball fan. The extent of my fandom is that I want the A’s to win because he (Fleck) is in a better mood when they do.

Q: Can you tell us about “the academy” system in the Dominican Republic? (Baseball camps were players live and train vigorously in hopes scouts will notice them)

Fleck: It’s not really a secret that these places exist. There are lots of articles written on it, and I just happen to stumble across one of them. It really piqued my curiosity. I was really intrigued by it. One research, one book, one article, one online segment of something led to another, and the next thing we knew we were down in the Dominican Republic talking to these guys in these camps. And learning about their experiences and incorporating them into the movie.

Q: When did you start production for the film?

Boden: We started it right at the beginning of 2006, and now it’s finally coming out in 2009. So it’s been a few years in the making. We spent a long time down in the Dominican Republic researching the movie; talking to as many guys as we could who had similar experiences to our character in the movie. We took those little details that we found in their lives, and weaving them together into a tapestry of what we thought was a fairly common experience.

Q: What was it like shooting in the Dominican Republic?

Boden: It’s a beautiful country. It was great coming from those New York winters, heading down there to interview players and to visit the baseball fields.

Q: This movie is about more than sports, can you talk about that?

Fleck: Sports is a major component of the movie, but we viewed it as much like the boxing is handled in Raging Bull. You wouldn’t think of that as a boxing movie or a sports movie necessarily. It’s a movie that really tracks this character and someone who is struggling with what’s going on inside of them and outside of themselves. It’s an immigration story; it’s a story about self discovery and learning who you are and how you fit into the world.

Boden: And community.

Q: Was it easier to get Sugar made since Half Nelson had already been completed?

Boden: It was easier to get Sugar made than Half Nelson. I think it definitely helped to have made a film and have people excited about what you are trying to do. And have faith that you could actually, if they gave you money, you could complete a movie. That said, we got really lucky with HBO Films who financed the movie. They were willing to take a risk on something that isn’t a hole-in-one necessarily. There is some Spanish language in it; there are no huge movie stars or anything. We felt very lucky to get it financed.

Q: The casting was a large number, can you talk about that?

Fleck: It was 452, we won’t forget that number. We were driving all across the Dominican Republic and we would roll up on a baseball field and break out the video camera and invite baseball players, kids, just playing on the field to come be interviewed for the movie. And anyone who had a spark or any kind of charisma or could hold our attention we were interested in, and we called back to read a scene for the movie. Algenis was number 452, and we were very excited when he showed up.

Q: Is that how you found him, randomly playing baseball on a field when you showed up?

Boden: That’s exactly what it was. He was playing baseball with a bunch of friends, and we asked everyone if we could interview them for a casting for a movie. The relief we had after we talked to him, because we didn’t know if we could see another 300 people at that point. We were reaching the end of our patience.