I think I need to find that pen again, it was the source of my best shit |
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I've been trying to figure out how to start my column this week since I posted my last column. It's rather easy (and painfully naive) to begin to believe that you've already covered everything there is to cover in just under a year's time. Writing might be an easy thing, to sit down and start typing, watching the words spew forth across the digital page, but it's the inspiration for which topics to write about that's difficult.
There is an endless parade of actors, directors, producers, writers and movies to cover. But I need to feel as if I know enough about them to cover them with a strong brushstroke. I started off thinking that I was going to write about Danny Trejo this week. I've read enough about him and have the documentary of his life in my queue (CHAMPION, available for instant viewing on NetFlix's "Watch it Now" feature), but I don't feel solid enough to scribble out more than the basics.
I chose Danny because he's one of the most recognizable character actors in the last couple of decades. The first time that he made an imprint in my mind was as Navajas, the knife wielding con in Robert Rodriguez's DESPERADO (1995). Throwing open his vest to reveal the large tattoo of the woman wearing the sombrero (the number one most recognizable tattoo in the world as voted by International Tattoo Magazine) and a set of knives which quickly brought Steve Buscemi's life to an end, that was it for me. Trejo looked like so many of my friends' tios (Spanish for "uncle"). with his leathery skin, face creased with wrinkles and capped off with the long mustache that I welcomed his presence in film. When there are so few people on the silver screen who look like what you grew up seeing in real life, those who come around who do tend to make an impact.
I watched him in another Rodriguez movie (the two are second cousins) a year later, in 1996's FROM DUSK TIL DAWN. It was like welcoming an old buddy back from a long trip away. I felt like throwing my arms open and clapping him soundly on the back. Well, I did up until he looked like he could tear through my jugular easier than a soccer mom tearing through the clearance racks at Target.
Most of the time Trejo plays hoodlums and thieves, criminals, rapists and all around bad guys. He looks mean but is commonly referred to as being one of the nicest guys in the business to work with. After spending the majority of his younger life in prison, Danny found religion and started to set his life straight. While he was working as a inspirational speaker, a young man he was counseling came to him, asking that he attend his workplace because there were "a lot of drugs there."
The workplace turned out to be the set for a movie called RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985) starring Jon Voight and Eric Roberts. Trejo was hired on as an extra for $50 a day until he discovered that the screenwriter was a fellow inmate from back in the day, Edward Bunker. Bunker introduced Trejo to the director, explaining how Danny had been the California state prison champion in the lightweight and welterweight devisions. The director offered Danny a job as a boxing trainer to 
That doesn't look like a bad guy, does it? |
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Roberts, along with an increased salary of $350 per day. When Trejo was warned that Roberts was hot-tempered and might hit him back while they were training, Trejo laughed it off saying that for $350 a day, "give him a bat. I used to get beat up for free."
... And honestly, this is about as far as I got. There are a ton of great facts about Trejo, including the fact that he's one of the most prolific actors out there today, having appeared in 139 movie and numerous more television shows as well as having his likeness represented in video games such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
There are a few roles that he's had playing the good guy, most recently as a grief counselor to Eva Longoria's character on "Desperate Housewives." (Although I've only watch one or two episodes before needing to avoid it like the plague, so I didn't see the episodes that he was on.) The nice guy role that I preferred was seeing him as a former junkie who has cleaned up his act and bumps into Maggie Gyllenhaal after she's been released from prison and is trying to clean up hers in SHERRYBABY (2006). Kind and honest, from taking care of her after she falls off the heroin wagon and allowing her to borrow his car to telling her that he doesn't believe in relationships because of a feeling of possession and ownership, he's gritty and realistic. And it's hard to believe that he was 62 when appearing in that film.
Thinking about Trejo got me to thinking about another Hispanic actor that I recognize prominently from movies lately, Noel Gugliemi. Sure, I can't pronounce his last name but I specifically remember him from 2001's THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS where he appeared as Hector, the lead Mexican in the movie which was all about cars and stereotypes. He later made a memorable appearance in 2003's BRUCE ALMIGHTY, as the hood who taunts Jim Carrey's Bruce with that monkeys flying out of his butt remark. Honestly, if you don't remember that scene, then you just haven't watched the movie.
When I started looking over Gugliemi's resume, I stumbled onto articles about how he's involved with his friend Manny Jimenez's production company, Suspect Entertainment. Jimenez was a gang member who kept running into problems with the law up until he decided to make some changes in his life. Working hard at Toys 'R' Us, he realized that with his criminal background and lack of education, he wasn't going to rise above the circumstances that he was living in. After watching Quentin Tarantino one night on Jay Leno talking about how anyone with enough drive and determination could come to Hollywood and make it in the movie industry, Jimenez set out to do just that. He had his girlfriend drive him around Los Angeles, looking for movies that might be filming on the streets. He talked his way onto one, becoming an extra. Seeing the potential that was there, he began to collect up his friends, most of them former gang members and criminals themselves. After partnering with Jesse Acosta, another aspiring actor, the two formed Suspect 
I can't figure out if this was before or after the monkey extraction |
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Entertainment.
I have to admire these men for bringing realism to sets where there might not have been any before. Actors who might not have been Mexican would have been perpetrating the stereotypes that all Mexicans are gang bangers. Instead, there is now an outlet that provides these actors, men who have come from these backgrounds and aren't just making up a fantasy. At times, Suspect Entertainment has been criticized as being the perpetrators of the stereotypes, but in my opinion they are much like Danny Trejo. Trejo has mainly played bad guys because he knows where that mentality comes from. It isn't faked. That doesn't mean that he's a bad guy himself or that he's incapable of playing a good guy. But he's not faking.
I'd rather watch people who really came from the streets play gang members. It's phoney (although very Hollywood) to have pretenders and whether people like it or not, it's the way that we open the door for nice guy roles later down the road. If your face isn't visible, people aren't going to know that you're there. If not for pioneers like Trejo and the men of Suspect Entertainment, we'd still be getting Natalie Wood's pretending to be Puerto Rican, sprayed down with brown body paint and forcing a thin accent.
I grew up in Oxnard, California. I grew up in a city where being a blue eyed blonde made me the minority. Watching the movies was the only way that I didn't feel alone when I was a kid. Because there was always a large number of white faces on the screen, reassuring me that other white people were out there... somewhere.
I also grew up... period. The world looks different through adult eyes. There are not enough people of different ethnicities represented in Hollywood big budget films. And that bothers me. Because I'm not 10 years old anymore and I don't need to be reassured that there are other white people in this world. I watched the movie industry grow up and evolve into claiming that it was a more realistic mirror on what is out there now. I watched the last remaining fragments of an entertainment industry which was born from the stage turn into a nearly flesh and blood experience, with digital pictures, blue ray nonsense and all those other enhancing features which most people can't afford but are brainwashed to covet.
I don't want to look at some white bread woman's Botoxed forehead frozen into a non-emotional wall as she chokes on her Visine tears. I want to see real tattoos, colors other than beige and off white and those long, hardened lines in Danny Trejo's face. Because I would trust a man like that over anyone lighter or smoother. I've had more experience with people who look like Trejo, and that experience has always been overwhelmingly positive. If we're ushering in the era of real, then let's get f*cking real.
Some shit you should check out:
Suspect Entertainment profiled on Eye on America
Danny Trejo, World's Greatest Bad Guy
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| Neglected Foster Child of Hollywood |
Every other Wednesday
Not-so-gentle musings from the girl who is saving room in her uterus for Tarantino's spawn.
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| AwesomeZara |
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