I went to college with a girl named Joanie who claimed she'd earned extra money in high school by having sex with guys in the back of a Good Humor truck during her lunch break. She was perky, even up-beat, when she described her experience, and I could imagine guys lining up at the window where they were supposed to order ice cream, saying, "I'd like an Eskimo Pie and a blow-job." I could imagine Joanie lying there, smoking one unfiltered Pall Mall after another between customers; I could even imagine her smoking while she had sex. She could be blase.

I remember going to a Denny's that wasn't far from where my parents lived in Rodeo during the '80s. There was a milk truck with a Mustang Ranch bumper sticker in the parking lot during the evening; the windows of the truck were covered with blankets. I imagined the milk truck was a whorehouse on wheels, and I remembered Joanie. My wife and I wondered how many men told their wives, "I think I'll go down to Denny's for a burger and some fries," and we laughed about it.

Star Maps is about a young man named Carlos (Douglas Spain), who wants to be in the movies, but he's a male prostitute and there's nothing funny about his life. Carlos' father, Pepe (Efrain Figueroa), has him working the streets of Los Angeles, having sex with anyone who can pay his price, while he dreams of stardom and sells maps locating the homes of the stars. It's a world he'll never know.

Carlos is 18 and he's just returned from two years in Mexico, where his mother, Teresa (Martha Valez), sent him to live with her parents, because she realized what Pepe was doing to him. At one point in the film Teresa tells her daughter, Maria (Lysa Flores), "I let Pepe ruin your lives," and we realize Teresa had a nervous breakdown due to that terrible knowledge.

Teresa spends most of her time in bed, watching reruns of Cantinflas movies and having imaginary conversations with him, escaping to a better, happier world, doped-up on prescription drugs. Teresa's a mystic, who believes her son is "sad and beautiful," like the moon; she tells him his eyes were crossed when he was a baby, but she "straightened them" with her fingers. She seems obsessed with the moon; looking at it, she sees the face of Cantinflas.

Meanwhile, Carlos is working the streets with his father's girlfriend, Letti (Annette Murphy), and they even go to the home of an old man who pays them to have sex while he watches, then, gradually, the old man is aroused, and he makes love to the young woman he's with.

It's easy to see why a lot of people think Pepe's a bastard. He has his son and his girlfriend working the streets for him, and he's told Letti, who hopes to marry him, his wife is dying. Pepe's a liar, a cheat and an aging pimp who has to wear a girdle to keep his gut in, but he says he was put to work, hustling, on the streets of New York by his father when he was three years younger than Carlos, and you sense he's telling the truth. You sense Pepe believes he's doing the best he can to "help" his family, even as he destroys it with his insensitivity and greed. (Although Star Maps is writer-director Miguel Arteta's first picture, the characters tend to be complex, and nothing is easily resolved.)

There's a poignant scene where Maria brings her boyfriend home for dinner, and it's interrupted by Pepe. When Pepe makes fun of Maria, the boyfriend sticks up for her, then Pepe accuses him of hanging around to get a "free piece of ass" and goes on to say, "Nothing's free around here," and demands fifty dollars from the boyfriend.

Carlos tries to hang on to his dream of becoming a "star," and, at least briefly, it seems there might be some hope for him. He meets a young woman named Jennifer (Kandeyce Jorden) who pays him to have sex with her. She's the star of her own television series, and she promises Carlos a small speaking part, although Pepe tells Carlos it will never happen and a vicious fight breaks out between them at the studio; Carlos finally grabs a shovel, hitting Pepe in the head with it—again and again and again. Arteta is a good enough director to make you flinch at times.

Star Maps may deal with a Mexican family trying to adjust to life in Los Angeles, but it's an American tragedy.