The works of Chicano lawyer, activist and author Oscar “Zeta” Costa may now become a TV series, and perhaps a movie, too nearly 50 years after his unresolved disappearance. Writer, producer and showrunner Natalie Chaidez has reportedly acquired the film and TV rights to Costa’s semi-autobiographical books Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
Both books, hybrids of fiction and autobiography, tell Costa’s account of coming of age in the 1960s, his personal challenges, activism and self-discovery in a fictionalized version of himself through the main character, the Chicano lawyer Buffalo “Zeta” Brown. Both works were published a few years before Costa disappeared during a trip to Mexico in 1974.
Chaidez is an accomplished Latina filmmaker in Hollywood. Her credentials include executive producing series like Heroes, V, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 12 Monkeys and Hunters and Queen of the South. Heroes earned her several award nominations, including the Primetime Emmy, Image Awards and Writers Guild of America Awards. For its part, Queen of the South, an action/crime/drama that recently ended after five seasons on the USA Network, won an Imagen Award and about ten other nominations.
Currently, Chaidez is a showrunner on USA Network The Flight Attendant, a series that has won two Rockie awards at Canada’s Banff World Media Festival.
To develop the projects based on Costa’s books, Chaidez has teamed up with Phillip Rodriguez, a filmmaker who produced a documentary on the late Chicano author, The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo (2017). Rodriguez also produced another documentary on the late L.A. Times and Univision journalist Chicano figure, Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle who was killed by a County Sherrif at the 1971 Chicano Moratorium. He has also produced several other TV doc series for PBS.
Joining Chaidez and Rodriguez is up-and-coming screenwriter Joe Loya, who was a writer on Queen of the South with Chaidez. Loya has also written for NBC’s crime action series Taken.
Born in El Paso, Texas, Acosta rose to prominence when he moved to East Los Angeles and joined the Chicano movement in the late 1960s. As a lawyer, he represented the leaders of the historic East L.A. Walkouts lead by students in support of civil rights and better education for Mexican Americans.
“Oscar Zeta Acosta has been a passion of mine since I first encountered his books in an East LA library,” Chaidez told the trade publication Deadline, which first reported the deal. “Acosta’s story is one of the deepest and cinematic stories in the Latinx canon. I’m thrilled to bring his story to life,” added the filmmaker, who is of Mexican and Irish descent.
Acosta is said to be the basis for the character of Dr. Gonzo in the 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. The novel was made into a movie of the same title directed by Terry Gillam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro — with the later Puerto Rican actor playing Dr. Gonzo.
Featured Photos: Natalie Chaidez (Credit: Fox) / Oscar “Zeta” Costa (Credit: Wikipedia)