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Former Harbor High quarterback Wali Razaqi orchestrates a scene for his movie at the Catalyst. Sentinel Photo by Dan Coyro

In case you’ve ever wondered where exactly the Twilight Zone is, you might find it at the Camarillo Airport in Ventura County.

At least you would have found it there on Sept. 12 of last year — if you were, at the time, in the shoes of Wali Razaqi.

On the day after the World Changed Forever, Razaqi — a former Santa Cruz star quarterback, now an actor and aspiring film producer — was set to shoot some footage for his film "In the Wrong Hands" at the Camarillo Airport.

Remember this was the day when every airport in the country had shut down, the military was on full alert and the nation was in the throes of a panic not seen in our lifetimes.

Of all days, this was when Razaqi planned to shoot his climactic action sequence.

So as Washington warned that another cataclysmic terrorist attack could be imminent, Razaqi and his crew (some of whom looked like they could be Arabs) took a van-load of real automatic firearms (loaded with blanks) into the airport to stage a few large explosions.

Oh, did we mention the kicker — that Wali Razaqi is a native of Afghanistan?

"We didn’t know what else to do," said Razaqi of the events of Sept. 12, "so we just went ahead with it. But all the while, I kept thinking: Why isn’t anybody stopping us?"

Razaqi was the starting quarterback for the Harbor High Pirates in the mid-1990s and also played football at Cabrillo College.

Now 23, he has moved to Los Angeles with the idea of getting in the movies.

Tonight, he returns to Santa Cruz as the executive producer and star of "In the Wrong Hands," a feature-length, low-budget action/comedy/romance. He will show the movie for a one-night-only screening at the Rio Theatre.

"The idea began in early February of last year," said Razaqi. "So I’ve spent the last year eating, sleeping and breathing this movie.

"It feels like a long time, but that’s about the standard time it takes to make a film these days."

The film — much of it shot in Santa Cruz — opened earlier this month in Fremont, the site of a sizable population of Afghan-Americans often called "Little Kabul."

Razaqi and his movie have received a lot of media attention (representatives of the big three TV networks attended the Fremont openings) because of his Afghan heritage.

But "In the Wrong Hands" is only incidentally an Afghan film.

It’s a conventional piece of cinematic entertainment that happens to feature several Afghan actors, including Razaqi and co-star Haji Kamran, a big-name actor in Afghanistan.

"It’s just an action-comedy," said Razaqi. "I realize that if I weren’t an Afghan that ABC News and all these other big-media organizations wouldn’t be paying attention to me.

"But I never set out to make a film about Afghanistan or about Afghan people. I just wanted to make an entertaining movie."

However conventional in structure it is, "In the Wrong Hands" features something unusual in the movies: Roughly half the film’s dialogue is in Farsi, the dominant language of Afghanistan.

The film tells the story of Sonny (played by Razaqi), a good-hearted young man who wants to open a restaurant where his uncle Massoud (Kamran) can show off his cooking.

To get seed money, Sonny does favors for a seedy neighborhood mobster. In the middle is the lovely young daughter (Danielle Rose) of a wealthy businessman; she becomes Sonny’s love interest.

The low-budget film has a lot going for it, including the natural style of Razaqi on screen and the comic ramblings of Kamran, Sonny’s hapless sidekick throughout the movie.

Acting, however, was an afterthought for Razaqi, who served as the film’s producer and its ultimate creative and financial authority.

He came up with a basic plot and hired a Los Angeles screenwriter to write the script. From there, he went through three different directors. The film’s final directing credit went to "Alan Smithee," a widely known pseudonym used when directors are fired or otherwise don’t want their names attached to a film.

Then there was the endless fundraising. First, Razaqi drained the modest savings account he shared with his wife Emily. Then he wrote 100 letters to friends and acquaintances, most of them in Santa Cruz County, asking for contributions. He parlayed those funds into bigger investments.

"If I can survive this without my wife divorcing me, I think we can survive anything," said Razaqi.

He’s referring not only to the money problems, but the tense shoot in June, a lot of which took place in the couple’s Burbank apartment with several members of the cast and crew sleeping there at the time.

After a traumatic change of directors in June, Razaqi came up with an idea to lift the spirits of his cast and crew. He took the whole shoot out of jaded Los Angeles and moved it into Santa Cruz where, he said, law-enforcement and other officials couldn’t have been more accommodating.

"Everyone was feeling kind of down. So I had this crazy idea. In L.A., I was one of 200 other guys making low-budget movies and no one cared about whether I failed or succeeded. In Santa Cruz, everyone was so great."

Razaqi filmed at the Catalyst, at the Ristorante Italiano on Soquel Avenue, on West Cliff Drive and at the Whale City Bar & Grill in Davenport. Each of those sites made it into the final edit.

Then came the weird action sequences shot on Sept. 12 and months of post-production work. And now comes the work of finding a distributor and touring the movie.

He is already making plans to bring the film to newly liberated Kabul, the star-crossed Afghan capital where he was born shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Razaqi has not been to Afghanistan since he fled with his family as a small child.

The newly installed minister of arts and culture in Afghanistan has agreed to allow the film to be screened in Kabul’s only movie theater.

Through the ordeal, Razaqi did all the little things himself: negotiating rental fees, finding appropriate sites and cars. He likened the experience to his quarterback days wearing #1 for Harbor High.

"It’s a lot like playing quarterback," he said. "Everyone looks to you to be a leader."

Contact Wallace Baine atwbaine@santa-cruz.com.

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