An Interview with Edward D Padilla
By Rudolfo Carrillo
Edward D Padilla is an Albuquerque playwright and writer whose life broadly and intensely intersected with the AIDS crisis in this country, and more importantly, in this city and state, during the 1980s.
As a result of that transformative experience, Padilla wrote a play called Fallen Guardian Angels. That important work, set in 1985, looks at the lives of six local actors whose lives were touched and permanently changed by the health crisis that AIDs initially (and still) represents.
After years of stage productions and screenplay development, that intimate and accurate look at life became the basis for a film. That film, brought to fruition by Padilla’s belief and hope, and funded by a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, is called Colors of The Sun.
Padilla’s labor of love, produced by Asphodel Meadow Films and 9 Point Productions, premiered to an enthusiastic audience at the National Hispanic Cultural Center on June 10, 2026, in an event sponsored by Raigoza Wealth Management.
Though there has been much written about the tragic cultural landmark the AIDS epidemic created, including the very well-known and often-produced play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, it’s no surprise that most of mainstream (read non-queer) America has long forgotten about the troubles and tribulations faced by a community that ultimately endured and survived.
Padilla’s heartfelt film brings that history and those issues to the forefront of popular culture with great aplomb and much transparency at a time when American LGBTQ+ culture, and indeed, our national culture, faces questions about community, sustainability, and the marginalization and othering of whole swaths of the population.
These things have been on my mind lately. In fact I studied the AIDS epidemic and Kushner’s landmark play on the AIDS phenomenon in grad school last year. So it was a big deal, for me, for my own sense of inclusion and affiliation, to have a conversation with Padilla about his life and work.
The dialog in which we engaged was dynamic and thoughtful, and I gained a greater appreciation of history and the Albuquerque arts, film, and theatre community as a result. I also came away with an understanding about the importance of Padilla’s work, now and in a future that is still being created. Here’s a part of that wide-ranging, compassionate conversation.
Rudolfo Carrillo: How did your visionary play become an unforgettable film?
Edward D Padilla: One of the cast members who was in the stage version said we should turn it into a film, so I started writing the screenplay. It went through numerous changes; the stage play features six people; it’s a six-person monologue play. So I had to expand on each one of the monologues and added more characters. I added more of the people that I knew and put them in there, into the screenplay. Rewrites were constant throughout the entire process. It was a pretty involved process, getting it from the screenplay to the actual filming of the movie.
What about the filming of the screenplay; could you fill me in on some of the details?
It’s a choral drama, so there were 27 characters that we had to cast, try to cast, and then keep onboard. Some of them would drop out, some would leave and we’d have to replace them. Finding locations was also a challenge. Ninety percent of the interior house scenes were done at a close associate’s house The hospital scenes were done at Shandiin Child Development Center. I would remiss to not mention Glorybound Ministries. They were instrumental in helping us with a lot of the locations that weren’t in homes – Teresa Longo’s house was basically every single home interior scene – different angles … different settings. The Child Care was the hospital and a few of the office scenes and tattoo parlor – and Glorybound was everything else. The scenes at Nine Mile Hill, of course, took place at Nine Mile Hill, on the edge of town.
How is that resulting drama, at the edge of things as it were, relevant now? How does it speak to history, too?
The thing is that people don’t know about the AIDS crisis anymore. Now, thankfully, we have medications that keep people healthy and living, medicine controls the virus, but until relatively recently, it wasn’t like that at all. While doing the stage play, one of the people who was an adult in her 30s told me all that she knew about the AIDS epidemic was the story of Ryan White. That was really all most people knew about the whole AIDs epidemic. All they have been teaching in school is the Ryan White story, so nobody knows anymore the facts about how it started and what conditions were like at the beginning of the epidemic.
How do those sorts of facts make for an emotional cinematic experience, for you and for the audience?
From the original script to the 91-minute film that it ended up being, I feel there’s a lot left out, but there’s enough remaining that people can understand the feelings, the emotions … the feeling, the essence of what was going on, which is something intense. We didn’t go into the political realm. We didn’t go into the scientific realm. We just stayed with the people and I think that’s what matters; learning how the people who experienced the epidemic handled it, the fear, the not knowing. On the other hand, the younger set really like that honesty and when they find out the truth, it kind of puts it all into perspective, what older people have gone through.
If someone asked you what this film was about, what would you tell them?
First of all, it’s not a film about AIDS. It’s a film about people at a particular point in time learning how to come together, learning how to support each other. So it’s a film about community. It’s a film about our history, a history that mainstream American culture is trying to erase. It’s a history that the status quo is trying to get rid of. We need to make sure that people understand that. This really happened, no matter what they say, no matter how they’ve tried to change or revise our history. I don’t erase history; I don’t sugarcoat it, either. I make it palpable, so you learn, you feel something and you learn something. I think that’s the most important issue. If someone asks me, ‘why should I go see an AIDS film?’ I’m gonna tell them it’s not an AIDS film. It’s about a community coming together. It’s about people staying with each other when the times are tough.
Learn more about Colors of the Sun here.
