AllHip Profile: Vincent Miller, Director

Profile Vincent Jay Miller
Director/Producer/Writer of the Indie Feature "Gabriela", Social Activist.

Vincent Jay Miller brings a new voice and original vision to the filmmaking scene.

He grew up in the poor, working class community of El Monte. His father, David, grew up in poverty and was a gang member in the Bronx, but eventually broke away from the gang life and became a social worker. Miller's mother, Alyce, was nationally recognized for her descriptive, humanistic poetry. All of Miller's grandparents were Russian military deserters, who fled to America to escape the Russian regime.

Inspired by the movie Inherit the Wind, which is about famous defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, Miller always assumed he would be "a crusading lawyer for the people." In fact, when he was twelve years old he visited the local library to study law books. "I was ready to take the bar exam right then and there," he says with a laugh. However, he had already started making Super-8 movies at the age of eight and his passion for moviemaking eventually led him to enroll at USC Film School, where he directed his award-winning thesis film, Lonely.

While at USC, he worked as a teacher at special schools for emotionally disturbed teenagers and gang members, and as a Social Worker in East Los Angeles for emotionally disturbed children and their families. He also worked as a Social Worker for troubled youth in South Central Los Angeles during the making of Gabriela.

Miller has had many experiences to draw from as inspiration for his filmmaking.At one point, Miller stepped between his gang member students and a rival gang who were about to square off, threatening to explode into violence outside the Imax Theatre. He and his students were chased by about twenty Crips, and bullets were fired into Miller's classroom. He repeatedly had to intervene with suicidal kids and once saved a studentís life by pulling him over a ledge.