Diego in Bogotá
April 2006

Actor Diego Luan is in Bogota as a spectator of the Latin-American Festival.

The protagonist of ‘Y tu mamá también’ came to accompany his dad, theatrical designer Alejandro Luna, in the premiere of 'Hamlet'. He raises his glance from the late breakfast plate and looks at his son. The most difficult thing was achieved! – he says.

Father Luna: Alejandro. Prestigious Mexican theatrical designer, with more than one entry in the Latin-American Festival. Son Luna: Diego. Mexican actor famous for movies like Nicotina, Criminal, The Terminal and especially Y tu mamá también. Both are in Bogota. The father because he is the creator of the stage design of colombo-Mexican Hamlet who presents itself in The Castilian. The son is taking a vacation and watching good theater.

Alejandro: Since you were a baby, what you heard was theater. An example: when a son is born, fathers leave the hospital with him and go home. No? Well, I left with you to go to the theater because we had to release Joyce's work.

Diego: I remember as a child the models that you were making at home, for the stage design. They were my favorite toys. I liked trying to help you. To be a part of that.

Alejandro: And I tried to make sure you did not. Actually I did not want you to become an actor.

Diego: You were imagining that I was going to have a more academic life. Now you have accepted it and sound calmer.

Alejandro: I did the impossible thing so that you were not an actor. All parents look for the best thing for their children!

Diego: I started in theatre at the age of 7, what happened is nobody found out.

Alejandro: And since you went up on stage you never came down. It’s difficult. It is a very insecure profession.

Diego: Yes, it’s difficult to live from this. Some of the work we enjoy now is a privilege that did not exist when I was a child, that is to dream that theater and cinema can give you prestige and fame enough to live from that. We are privileged that we can be paid sufficiently and do just what we like. That was not seen before.

Alejandro: I acted a couple of times, also. And I wasn’t bad.

Diego: It will be necessary to ask those that saw you.

Alejandro: I have told you that I came to the theater for sexual reasons. I was studying architecture and there were no women in the faculty. In front was a theater school with attractive and liberated women. So I combined two professions. And I have lived from architecture, because the theater does not provide. This was another reason that I did not want you to become an actor. But one must respect. You were growing and having the age of reason…

Diego: Yesterday in the Cabaret Tent he was losing it.

Alejandro: Now you talk to me about your erotic-mad adventures of last night. Yours for performance was not a whim, it was an obsession. Since you were a child you knew you were going to sacrifice everything to achieve it.

Diego: The fact is that from the age of 7 neither have I been in the projects that I wanted to do. Sometimes, to pay the rent, I was working more, especially in television. Until about 4 years ago I realized that things need a rest. Everything definitely changed with Y tu mamá también. There I understood the reaches that the work can have in a movie; the idea of traveling and presenting it to the whole world. Before this film I did 18 movies, but very few people saw them.

Alejandro: Just look, others were in the secondary (less important) part, and you were doing 18 movies.

Diego: The breaking point was with this movie by Alfonso Cuarón. That he was already directing it was guaranteeing that something could happen. I was not dreaming about results. What you must think about is that the story you’re going to tell is understood, it is created.

Alejandro: I liked Y tu mamá también very much. Your performance convinced me fully. There I confirmed your talent for this. It is very difficult to be with a camera on top of you for an hour and a half. A good scene can be achieved. The difficult thing is to maintain a level for so much time, not coming down at one point. Theater, yes, it’s been a long time since you've done it.

Diego: It was like a year and a half or two years… Up to the age of 21 I was doing a lot of theater. Now not any more, it’s true. It is difficult to combine, in the time. For example, doing Criminal and The Terminal, I had to live through a good period in Los Angeles. Truthfully I did not like it. It looks like Mexico, but it is not Mexico. It is cold and you have the subject of cinema everywhere. I need to encounter other people, who talk to me about other things, doctors, architects, dentists...

Alejandro: Architects less, I suppose.

Diego: More dentists, yes. The fact is that you saturate yourself. I have just finished a movie, Búfalo de la noche, directed by Venezuelan Jorge Hernández, with script by Guillermo Arriaga (the same of Amores perros). And in the end it is as if I really need to stop seeing the people with whom I have been working because you come to a level of...

Alejandro: Promiscuity.

Diego: That. That's why I wanted this trip round here. The pretext was to come to see Hamlet.

Alejandro: I am very afraid for you to see it. In the same way that I sometimes tell you things about your work, you also criticize me occasionally.

Diego: I am curious to see it, because we do not live together anymore, since I am not present in the process of your stage designs. They are a surprise now.

Alejandro: The fact is that to see you now I have to buy a movie ticket.

Diego: Now it is difficult for us to be in the same space, yes.

Alejandro: I was not hoping to have a famous son. He does not stop surprising me every day. He has his joke to buy the newspaper to see where he is. You do not know the confusion it was to arrange this appointment today.

Diego: Suddenly at 40 years old I am going to be calm on a farm, making milk, cheese…

Alejandro: I don’t believe it.

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