The secret to fulfilling a dream is to wake up and do it. Chelese Belmont, a native of Gilroy, is making her dream come true.
As a student at St. Mary School and Gilroy High School, Belmont wanted to be a movie actress. Now, after years of hard work and dedication, she’s making that happen—in Hollywood in her own film.
“Chelese doesn’t follow in the footsteps of those around her, she creates her own,” said Rachelle Struthers, Belmont’s sister, also from Gilroy. “If she sets her mind to something, she does not give up until she has accomplished what she has set out to do. She is persistent, passionate and perseveres even in the toughest of times.”
Belmont’s Indie production, “Penumbra,” is a feature-length film she co-wrote with friends Gino Costabile and Shannan Leigh Reeve. It’s a gritty story about the toll of addiction on the friends and family of two women.
“We wanted to tell a story from a different point of view, one that shows the impact of addiction on all the people around the addict,” Belmont said, sitting at First Street Coffee in Gilroy, wearing casual clothes and sporting a tight brown ponytail. Though she lives in Los Angeles, Belmont said she has immediate family in the area and visits Gilroy for many holidays.
“Shannan looks like a cop and she’s always wanted to play one but has never gotten the role. I’m always cast as the girlfriend, which is boring to me,” Belmont continued. “So we decided to do this scene, a cop versus a drug addict. We wrote a couple of paragraphs and went from there. Then I wrote out the story line for what was supposed to be a short film and asked my friend Gino to take a stab at the dialog.”
Belmont said Costabile—who both received master’s degrees from The Actors Studio in New York—then wrote the first 40 pages of a feature screenplay.
“The film is very personal to Chelese and Shannan so I think they brought me in originally as a third set of eyes in a sense,” Costabile said. “They mainly brought me on board to help write the dialog based on the story they had written.”
“It was very funny,” added Belmont. “He got what we were going for, which was good conflict, and he added a couple of other characters. Then Shannan pretty much fleshed out the rest of the film.”
Belmont said most of the cast and crew—and many of the contributors to the Indiegogo campaign that crowd-funded the production—expressed a connection to someone with addiction.
“We hope everyone sees the relevance of the story,” she said. “So many people have reached out and said, ‘I’m donating because of my friend’ or (myself)’ and yet a lot of society doesn’t want to touch it. They don’t want to deal with it.”
She warned, however, that it’s not for everyone.
“If it were a studio production it would be rated R,” Belmont said. “We may cut a more general audience version, but mostly it’s for people 18-35, who have gone beyond the experimenting phase.”
Production began in the first part of June and has continued with shoots in one new location—an apartment, a leather shop, a loft—every month around Los Angeles, San Marcos and even Gilroy.
“The third act is the biggest deal, the last 46 pages or so,” Belmont said. “It takes place in a rehab and we had to get more financing for it, so we started the crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo. We reached our goal of $10,000 and then exceeded it.”
Belmont said post-production and editing will take place throughout winter and the team, which calls itself Beleeve (a combination of Belmont of Reeve) Entertainment, hopes to start showing it at film festivals in the spring.
That’s an ambitious goal for a first-time feature filmmaker, but friends say if anyone can do it, she can.
“Chelese gives her all to the creative tasks with generosity of spirit and great care for the artist,” said Elizabeth Kemp, chair of the acting department and associate artistic director of The Actors Studio Drama School in New York. “She is driven, has a passion for her art and the eye of a storyteller.”
Early Start
Belmont’s entertainment career started early.
“I’ve been performing since I was 3 years old,” she said. “First at Lana’s Dance Studio and then at the Community Theater.”
“When she was 7, we were driving down Monterey Street in Gilroy and she spotted an audition sign at the Gaslighter Theater,” recalled Belmont’s mother, Rosanne Struthers. “She begged me to let her audition.”
Struthers allowed her daughter to audition, but Belmont froze on stage. The director helped her get beyond the stage fright by having the young girl sing Happy Birthday. Belmont went on to perform in many children’s theater productions and worked with a vocal coach, performing at county fairs in northern California.
After graduating from Gilroy High School, Belmont wanted to take up acting, but her mother wanted her to get a more serious degree. She ended up studying American history at UC Berkeley.
“I still wanted to get into acting, so I asked a friend where I might be able to take acting classes,” Belmont said. “He suggested the American Conservatory Theater’s professional studio program in San Francisco, and as soon as I looked into it I realized that was the right move.”
It was about this time Chelese Struthers decided to change her name.
“The way Belmont came about was a story Chelese read regarding Lucille Ball,” mom Rosanne Struthers said. “Lucille Ball came to Hollywood under the name Belmont and was basically sent home from her acting class and told she would never make it. But Lucille would not let that discourage her and came back with her own name to show the world she could and did make it. Chelese has that kind of determination.”
Belmont made her first film while living in the Bay Area, a student production called “Ten Cents Short,” which was filmed in Oakland.
“Then I did another small Indie production in the Berkeley area, and a horror film,” she added. “Then we did one in one day in one location, a six-minute film on schizophrenia that I directed. After that I went to New York. I had to go to New York.”
She landed in the right place: The Actors Studio School of Drama.
Belmont spent four years in New York, graduating with a master’s degree in acting. She got her directing skills in order on a film called “Red Haired Lady,” written by Adam Boyer.
“I met Chelese while directing my feature film ‘Cairefield;’ she was cast as lead, but her involvement earned her an AP credit and we became good friends,” Boyer said. “I met Shannan through Chelese on one of my trips to L.A., and we immediately tried to find a way to all work together again, and came up with ‘Red Haired Lady.’ I gave Chelese the directorial reins and Shannan hopped on as a producer and they nailed it. They’re fire-tested in L.A.’s brutal production system, so their professionalism is excellent when it comes to the industry.”
