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GATOPARDO Magazine
October 2003 Diego Luna’s Goals In Mexico the press pursues him everywhere, scripts from film directors of the whole continent accumulate on his desk and some of the heavyweights of Hollywood – among them Steven Soderbergh, Spielberg and Kevin Costner – want him in their movies. He, nevertheless, keeps on being the old friend of his friends and says that to live well, one only need eat, a girlfriend, work and football (soccer). One Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, he works a couple of months, Diego Luna was alone in his apartment. It was not a good day; some news of personal nature had him sad. He did not want to see anybody. He was on the verge of not answering the call in which his agent informed him that Steven Spielberg was interested in making him an offer for his next movie
“This is my life lately. When I feel things are not fine, when I am sad, something happens. And everything that has happened, up to now, is very good.”
It is true that a little magic is happening in the life of the actor. In the last two years he has been employed in five American movies with the most powerful names of the industry: Kevin Costner, Steven Soderbergh, Lawrence Bender and now Steven Spielberg. They all have put their eye on the actor of Y tu mama también.
American magazines say that he is the young actor to follow in the next year. His stock on the Hollywood Stock Exchange has doubled its value in the last six months. Scripts are piled up on his table and a day does not go by without a new work proposal. In the 2003 San Sebastian film festival Luna had to be everywhere at once. He presented three movies: the Mexican Nicotina, the American Open Range and the Spanish Soldados de Salamina.
Country by country and movie by movie, the Mexican actor of fashion has an agent for each country, a lawyer, a business manager and a publicist, but he does not have a house. In his hotel room boxes are accumulated with his clothes, scripts, books and movies. “Why would I furnish a house?” says Luna. “I have a couple of years in which I cannot plan anything. It’s entertaining and complicated. My home for the time being is the movie sets where I work.”
In the first week of September, in the international news agencies reported from the voice of several producers that Mexican actor Diego Luna would be employed in three Latin-American movies in 2004. Nobody saw that the three would be filmed on the same dates and even in different countries.
The last night of this week I sat down with Diego in Mexico City to finish this report that I had begun one month earlier in Los Angeles, California. Nothing was certain, he said to me laughing. In fact, he told me that the movie in Spanish that he wanted to do next year, by Mexican director Carlos Bolado, Only God Knows, was short of money and that he was looking for financing. And that before coming to Mexico he had chatted with Terence Mallick, who wants to film next year.
Earlier, he said, he had gotten angry. But now he understands that for reasons even he can’t explain, his name next to some project gives him better possibilities of financing. “If I can help in something, I help.” The curious thing is that everything has to do more with resources up until the day it is seen on the screen. Although he has filmed five movies since Y tu mama también, none have yet made a début on Latin-American screens.
In Mexico the press follows him all over. The gossip magazines publish the menu of what he ate and the number of beers he drank. Paparazzi were on guard outside his hotel for days. “The only thing I miss of my past life,” Diego says, “is the anonymity.”
What could happen next year when the movies are released, he does not even want to imagine. “I only know that I will work in the movies that I decide. That’s enough for me. Look, in life we need to eat, a girlfriend, to work and football.” Not any more: in one of the interview sessions Diego made me accompany him to buy new shin guards. On the following day he was making a debut on a Mexican team in Los Angeles. He was as nervous as before filming a movie. Half of the interview he was revising his strategies mentally. He had to be generous on the field, he said, to play for the team, “so that they invite me to come back.” He was happy with 10 minutes. “To score a goal?” I asked him. “This would be like the Oscar.” The following day the criticism was not all right. There was no goal, but he had played the whole the game. He had made a couple good passes, but he’d lost some balls. The worst thing was that his agent had just called and it was likely that because of work commitments, outside of Los Angeles, he might not play the next three Sundays. “You see? I cannot plan anything.”
Many years have passed since a seven-year-old small and chubby child trod for the first time on the theatrical scenarios of Mexico, pushed by his father, the most prestigious Mexican theatrical designer and art director, Alejandro Luna. And even more from the time in which his mother, the painter and wardrobe designer Fiona Alexander, would take baby Diego in her arms to the theaters where she was working.
His mother died in an accident before Diego was two years old. “My dad had to play mother and father. To a great degree I knew acting and theater because my dad was taking me all over. It was not easy for those he left me with.” For years Diego did not cry for his mother. “In that I am a little rare,” he says. “It is very difficult to miss her because the truth is that I do not remember her. I did not have the experience of a mother. I had a dad who fulfilled all rolls. If I cried a little, and sometimes up to now, it was seeing how my father’s life was determined. That does not take away that I am a normal person and deal with people that have a mother. I understand how important a mother is for any person. But I cannot miss her because I do not know what I lack.”
At the age of eleven Diego was already in the National Theatre Company. He says he never had doubts about what he wanted to do. In his house he met playwrights, actors, actresses. It was his life. His theatrical experience took him to television. They invited him to Televisa to do soap operas.
His daily routine was going from school to the television set. There he constructed a parallel family that up to today he continues maintaining. “In addition to my dad, the most important thing in my life is my friends. The hardest thing of having spent this year and a half way away from Mexico is not seeing them, and now, to realize that they go on there. I have to be very careful (attentive) with the people that I love because I have realized now that they are there. And that if one goes on talking about someone, you bore people. It is very pretty to come and to see how everyone’s lives go, and that they have lives and do things. And what is important is to share it. The biggest risk of this that is happening to me is the temptation to surround yourself with people that just flatter you. It seems horrible to me. Fortunately these weeks that I have been in Mexico, none of my friends have asked me about Spielberg.
The fact is that Luna is only happy on the set and among his friends. The majority of them are actors that he has known in his long career. Everyone I spoke with has only affectionate words towards Diego. There is no single phrase of envy or mistrust.
When Luna speaks with someone he does not avoid the look (direct eye contact). In the days that I spent next to him there was no request that he would not deal with or question that he would not answer. The waiter that asks for his autograph, the young student who asks him for advice, the executive who wants him for a movie or the photographer who has him pose for two hours. They all end up pleased with Luna’s smile, with his hug. Diego likes embracing his friends. When Alfonso Cuarón invited him to Y tu mama también, Luna was not only a soap opera star. He had in his curriculum of a dozen of Mexican movies and about 20 works of theatre.
“Luck and work is the formula. More the second thing than the first,” says the actor. Impelled by Cuarón, Luna began to travel to Los Angeles, paid for with his money and sometimes accompanied by Gael García Bernal. “We were coming to the Standard [hotel] on Sunset Boulevard. There we were running into many like ourselves; foreigners with desire to act here. We were laughing saying that it was the hotel of hopeful actors with rare accents.” In the US his only work had been seen in a small role in Frida by Salma Hayek.
At the same time, with Jesús Ochoa and other actors he formed a small theatre company in Mexico and presented The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), a comedy that takes 700 performances, an unusual event in Mexican theatre.
Diego was traveling often to Los Angeles, but his first intention had been to test luck in other countries. He continues to believe that Spain and Latin America are the natural market for Spanish speaking actors. “That's why it is so important to try to create an industry where we all could work.” In Spain he did a role in Soldiers of Salamina, by David Trueba, based on the successful novel by Javier Cercas.
Between trip and trip, in Mexico they offered him a script that he loved: Nicotina, which is released in Mexico and Argentina in October. Directed by Hugo Rodríguez, Nicotina is a thriller in tone of comedy in the one that acts with Jesús Ochoa, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lucas Crespi, Carmen Madrid and Rafael Inclán among others. Nicotina was selected for the festivals of Toronto and San Sebastian.
“What I loved about Nicotina was that for the first time they offered me a character that was not like me. For the first time the character description did not say: a young man that still has an innocent face, with a good family, nice, rather shy. Here there was a chubby guy with glasses that was his time in front of a computer. For years I have not been fat, I do not wear glasses and I am not very skillful on the computer… an antihero. A guy that is difficult for you to like. It was my opportunity to do a different character. Here, in Los Angeles, that has not happened to me yet. They offer me characters that look like me.” After working under the orders of Costner, and making Nicotina in Mexico, the opportunity that will put him in the mind of the American spectators came to him: Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.
Under the orders of Lawrence Bender, producer of Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting, to mention some, and directed by Guy Ferland, Havana Nights tells the story of a young American girl, played by Romola Garai, that comes to Havana in the 50’s and the delight of the musical Caribbean culture, especially dancing. Of course, she falls in love with the best dancer of the island, Javier Suerez, that is to say Diego Luna. The trailers of the movie are already in American cinemas and it is the biggest release of Miramax-Artisan by the beginning of next year.
Filmed in Puerto Rico, Luna spent a month and a half just rehearsing. “They were weeks in which the only thing that we did, Romola and me, was dance.” Diego also learned what it is to make a studio movie, while those who take the decisions are in an office kilometers away. “It was very hard. I came from doing small movies and this was enormous. But to work with Romola was a luxury, I would pay to do it again.”
Luna also gave steps to turn into a popular figure. He was chosen as the presenter, together with Mario Pergollini, of the MTV Latin Awards and appeared in an advertising campaign in the United States for GAP. Furthermore, he turned to seeing other businesses. He invested in a new restaurant in Mexico City and is an associate of Naco, a clothing brand, particularly T-shirts. Diego, their major promoter, wears them everyday.
This business spirit is explained, according to the actor, for the need to be provided with money to be able to have control on the artistic projects that he does. “Why is all this of use to me?” he wonders. “To be able to decide what movie I do and what movie I don’t do. To be able to sit down at a table with a Mexican, Argentine or Colombian producer and collaborate on the fundamental decisions. Here in Los Angeles I have learned that a movie is much more than weeks of filming. Your work in a movie concludes when the DVD goes out. In many movies the errors are from the mixing desk. They did not happen in the shooting. There are many movies that lack planning or money and things in which perhaps now I can help: the money so that a scriptwriter spends two more months writing, to be able to have two weeks of rehearsals, so that nobody has to do a commercial in the middle of filming. That costs money.”
And Diego is sure that millions are not needed. He gives as an example the last movie that he filmed in the United States. Criminal is a remake of the successful Argentine movie Nine Queens. Steven Soderbergh bought the rights of the script from Fabian Belinsky, re-wrote it and produced it with the direction of Gregory Jacobs, his associate and assistant director for the past years.
Luna costars next to John C. Reily and Maggie Gyllenhall. “We rehearsed two weeks and filmed it in six and a half, like a Mexican movie. The difference is that we all were concentrated and committed on only the movie. Even the driver who picked me up in the mornings had read the script and knew what we were going to do that day. This is what we have to achieve.
The first day that I saw Diego Luna for this article, he had just finished Criminal. Soderbergh and Jacobs asked him not to see Nine Queens until the end of filming. This day, I accompanied him to buy the DVD and we saw it together in his hotel room. Luna plays the role that Gastón did in Argentina. Luna praised and analyzed each decision of the Argentine actor and was grateful not to have seen it before. “My character’s decisions were different and if I had seen it, it would have been very tough for me. I do not know if I did it better or worse, because he does it very well. But I made it different, that gives me peace.”
In October Luna will face the biggest challenge of his career. The news that he will work with Spielberg occupied the front pages in Mexico. Terminal, with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones, is the story of a Central European immigrant, that when he arrives to the New York airport finds out that his country has just disappeared due to a civil war. Without having anywhere to go, he makes the air terminal his home, and those who work there, his family. Diego says that he is not nervous but anxious. “Since the deal was clinched the only thing I think about is to have time to prepare myself and film already.”
- How much does the name Spielberg influence you? Diego: “I am making use of all this to learn. Javier Bardem was my idol many years ago, but when I saw him working in Before Night Falls, I was left with my mouth open for weeks. The same thing happened to me with Robert Duvall. The big actors and directors are those who take risks; that never make themselves comfortable. I am an instrument of the director, one of his tools. Does the name influence me? Yes, clearly. But in the sense of working with the big one; learning and hoping to take risks with him.
- Has it been very difficult for you to come here? Diego: “It is not that I was saying: I want to go to Hollywood. I believe that what one thinks is: I want to do things that I like, in conditions that I like. One goes to the cinema one day and sees The Big Lebowski and says I hope some day to work with the Coens. One sees Magnolia or Boggie Nights and says I would love working for Paul Thomas Anderson. This opportunity is here, to make movies with people you respect. Sometimes I think that in Mexico we are too close to the United States and that has screwed us in so many ways.
- For example?
- When did you feel that all this began to happen for you, that you might work here? Diego: “When we won the Mastroianni award in Venice. When I saw the response to Y tu mama también I started thinking that things might go better. Perhaps a little earlier, when we finished making Y tu mama también, we stayed a few more days at the beach and Alfonso Cuarón spoke with me. He gave a pull on my ears: “this is going to be your opportunity, do not make yourself comfortable,” he told me.
- And then what did you do?
Diego: “I filled up with fear. I started working like
a madman in Mexico until I traveled to Venice. It was the first time
that I was going to a big festival. For me festivals were going away
to get drunk in Guadalajara with my friends. When we won, the rest
was almost automatic, agents look for you and scripts come to you. I
realized that what Cuarón had said to me was true. Here it is
necessary to know the mechanism and to start working. It is
necessary to meet agents, to go to parties, go to meetings. I was
coming to the Standard [hotel] or my friend Ángel Flores’ house here
in Los Angeles. They invite you to the studios, they sit you in a
room, and you chat with the executives and leave with nothing. You
have to enter this machine. It cost me money, to pay for the hotel
and car that you rent, but it is necessary to come to work. All this
was before they released Y tu mama también here. Suddenly the
movie was here from nowhere, Kevin Costner called me and invited me
to eat at his house.” - You have 5 movies in the US in a short time. Why do you think it has been quite so rapid? Diego: “I think I fill a niche and have to make use of it. In the US there are not many dramatic movies for young people, and therefore there are not many actors who have this recognition. I presented myself here as a young actor in a serious movie, beyond his content for comedy. The movies for young people here are not stories about normal people. The majority are movies with stereotyped characters with stories that are close to ridiculous. I think they are excellent actors, but since they come from TV comedies they offer these movies to adolescents without any pretension. I insist, they are excellent actors but they are stereotyped. They are the best. Much later, when they are fed up with that, they throw themselves into some independent movie or they call them for another kind of role and they demonstrate their quality. Somehow, I came from another side. From a festivals movie that was a commercial success here. That was my opportunity.
- What up to today have they offered you as ethnic roles, where you are always the Latino? Diego: “One is what he is. I have a condition, I was not born in Massachusetts and my language is Spanish. I have to be employed in my accent. If English is not your first language or as far as you trained as an actor, it is very complicated. I had a small character in Before Night Falls and after days of practice, when Julian Schnabel said ‘action’, I realized that it is not the same to read or think it than it is to act in another language. I think the problem is not that one plays the role of a Mexican or a Cuban or a Colombian. No. The matter is in the universal approach of movies. I did not want to read for Papi chulo, for example. I waited. I did not snatch the first movie that they gave me.”
- I say it because before there was this sort of complaint about Latin-American actors in Hollywood. Diego: “Sometimes in our countries we love complaining. In Mexico in particular, the success of others does not give us too much pleasure. The first reaction is to discredit. The press spends its time comparing me with Gael in terms of provocation. As if they did not know that Gael and I are like brothers, and that what happens to him he enjoys what happens to me. We are used to speaking badly that they are fine.”
- Some Mexican film makers are not very generous with this generation of Mexicans abroad. Diego: “It’s incredible. I remember when Y tu mama también was in Venice, the newspapers in Mexico were saying that it was a light movie; that it was not that of a festival. Five million people paid for a ticket in Mexico to see it and still it was not convinced of the worshipers. According to me, what they must have done was make a fuss (lowered the boom?).”
- Being the sort of soap opera king in Latin-America, many actors say that Latin-American cinema despises television actors. Do you not think that they have some reason? Diego: “I think that its part of this habit we have of complaining. I owe television that I never stopped paying my rent and I never stopped being an actor. I owe it because there I met some of my best friends, Chema Yazpik or Oswaldo Benavides. But I also owe it for the energy to leave Mexico to construct a future where I could do what I want to do, with people that want quality above all. There are great actors in Mexican television. Great actors!! Doing soap operas that occur like very long chores, where they do not have opportunity to show their real talent. That motivated me to look for other horizons. Many film and theatre actors have to do soap operas to survive. I do not think that it is not possible to make good television but in Mexico at least, nobody has too much interest to do it well. There have been attempts, but very few. It is also true that there are actors in Mexico who are very well-off. They call them for all the few movies that they do. They record a couple of soaps, a couple TV/radio commercials and there they take it.”
- Was leaving your only option? Diego: “In order to do what I want to do, yes. I don’t mean Hollywood specifically. But yes to work in an industry where everyone is concentrated in what it’s doing. Many bad movies are made here, too. The difference is that here people are thinking about what it’s doing. Not like in Mexico or in our countries in which while you are filming a movie, the actor has to do five TV/radio commercials, go for the student at school, perhaps do two theater functions on the weekend, negotiate the next soap opera and see how he’s going to live through the year that comes. To have an industry means that here the writers write, the directors direct and the actors devote themselves to acting. It is the professionalism of what we do.”
- Impossible in Mexico? Diego: “Impossible under the current scheme in which the only ones that prosper are the exhibitors. Look what happens in Mexico. In the last years the big box offices have been Mexican movies, over those of other countries. Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas, Amores Perros, Y tu mama también, El Crimen del Padre Amaro, and it continues without money to produce. Does it not seem strange to you? The government talks and talks, but does not do anything. There are no fiscal ways of thinking like in Brazil, there are no incentives for production and the law keeps favoring those that don’t take risks. We do very little cinema but our batting average is very high. There is talent there. What does not exist is the industry.”
- How long do you think you’ll be in Los Angeles? Diego: It lacks a lot, I am beginning. Until my goals have been fulfilled.”
- The Cohens, P.T. Anderson? Diego: “And I met both. I have chatted with them. They liked Y tu mama también.”
- And next? Diego: “The same. I cannot do something else. I do not like doing something else. Work, food, girlfriend and football. Of course, a lot of football.” |
