Harry wrestles Jared Hess about NACHO LIBRE!!!

Hey folks, Harry here… It’s always weird to interview someone, whose next film you haven’t seen and you have 30 minutes to an hour to discuss the film with them. I can’t wait to see NACHO LIBRE – as a fan of Luche Libre movies and Jack Black – I just can’t imagine this sucker going wrong. Especially with the talent behind this. So, when I had the opportunity to spend about 30 minutes chatting with Jared Hess about the film, to share with all of you good people… How could I turn that down? Thanks goes out to our lovely intern Claire and her amazing Spanish skillz and transcription abilities! Remember - if you'd like a fun internship to earn college credit, drop RoRo a line! Here we go, enjoy…

H: How did you become involved with Nacho Libre?

J: With Nacho… Um, you know, like where the idea originated from or just how I got involved with Mike and Jack?

H: Yeah. How you got involved with Mike and Jack.

J: You know, I’ve been a fan of Mike and Jack forever it seems like. I bumped into Jack when Dynamite springed up in Aspen at the Comedy Arts Film Festival and then later hooked up with him and then eventually I met Mike and when the idea came up to do, you know, something with Lucha Libre they were both just really into in and we all, decided to do it.

H: Well, have you seen any of the old El Santo movies?

J: Absolutely man. That was definitely my first exposure to Lucha Libre. I had seen, you know, old Santo movies on TV when I as in high school and then later on when I was in college I went out and bought a whole ton, and was just completely blown away. Just by the whole world and just aesthetic of the films… I think definitely one of my favorites is Santo Contra los Marcianos, or Santo versus the Martians, as well as the…

H: I’m actually familiar with that one, yes.

J: Isn’t it a goodie?

H: Yeah, it’s a really good one.

J: The first flight of the movies is, um, “De ahora y adelante, solo hablaremos en Espanol!” That’s, “From this time forward, we will only speak in Spanish.” It’s like the first line out of that Captain Martians mouth. It’s so good. And then also, have you seen, Mystery in Bermuda?

H: No, I haven’t.

J: That one has Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, and Santo. And it’s unreal. It is so good.

H: I really do feel that the El Santo movies are something that is, you know, unfortunately not as well-known in this country as I wish they were.

J: I know. I totally agree.

H: I think they would do really well on DVD. (laughs)

J: Yeah, I think there’s a distribution company called Rise Above that has quite a few of Santos titles and I’ve bumped into them a few times at Best Buy, but… There’s a really good one that you should check out. It’s called Santo Versus La Aguila Real, or Santo Versus the Real Eagle. I first read about it online and I could never track down a copy, but I finally did and the blog that I was reading about it online said this one should win an award for the most animals actually killed in a movie and it’s totally true. Like, the opening scene, Santa’s talking to some lady and she’s telling him all these weird things that have been happening on the ranch and all these people have been dying and it cuts to like a flashback and a guy is riding a horse. It’s like a live horse with a dummy on it, and it jumps off this cliff and the camera like follows it all the way down. It’s really disturbing, but it’s like- It’s just crazy. They did crazy stuff like that.

H: Well, when I was a kid we always used to take our vacations down into Mexico and, as a little, little boy we used to buy and play these cheap wax Lucha Libre dolls.

J: Yeah, those are cool.

H: I used to bring them on up to the United States and have them play with my Star Wars figures.

J: (laughs)

H: Because they look like fantastic characters that ought to be in a science fiction movie.

J: Yeah. They are amazing.

H: I have just been kind of been amazed that there is a movie coming out that is Jack Black playing the Mexican wrestler. Was there any… because in the old days of cinema you used to have Anglo actors playing all different types races on screen. Like my favorite two performances of Hispanic or Mexican characters are Wallace Berry playing Pancho Villa and Jack Palance playing Jesus Raza in The Professionals. What did you have Jack do to become the Mexican Jack Black?

J: Right. You know the interesting thing in the film that not too many people are aware of yet until they actually see the film is that he plays a guero, which is a gringo that is raised in the monastery. His mom was a Scandinavian missionary, and he father was a deacon from Mexico. So, he plays what they call in the Latin culture a guero, which is spelled…

H: G-U-E-R-O

J: Right. Exactly. So he’s like this guero in Mexico. He’s raised in the culture so he definitely speaks with and accent and everything but um, Jack is very intensive… He really wanted to learn the language and, in fact, picked it up quite well over the course of shooting with a crew down in Mexico. He became very comfortable with the language. He, yeah. Jack’s just the kind of guy that like dives into head first and wants to live and breathe whatever he’s doing. He also was, you know, here in L.A. before he came down. He had some very extensive lucha training with real luchadores and after a while they found out… They were like “Man, I don’t think you are going to need a double. Jack can throw down almost anything we throw at him.”

H: So for him, that had to be the whole fun of getting to play a lucha libre.

J: OH yeah. Yeah…

H: (laughs) Just to get in the ring and go crazy…

J: He was so into it. I mean, he injured himself while we were shooting. We were doing this scene where he dives out of the ring and he lands going after the luchador that got out of the ring. We shot one take and Jack was like “I feel good. I wanna put a little more, a little more mustard on this one. Let’s go again.” So we set up the shot and there were like ten stunt men and pads and everything just so he wouldn’t injured just because he was doing so much of the stunt. So, he came down and on his way down, just underneath his right eyebrow he caught a metal folding chair and it like popped open a huge wound and blood was everywhere.

H: (laughs) What did like the Mexican crew and the Mexican actors in the film think of a whole bunch of white people from up in the United States coming down to shoot a Lucha Libre film. Because, to me, that is such a pride-of-Mexico sort of sport.

J: Right. Right, and you know the thing that was really neat on many levels was our whole crew was all Mexican. Our cinematographer, Xavier Grobet- His mom is actually one of the big renowned Lucha Libre photographers in Mexico. She just came out with a book. You may have seen it- it’s called Lucha Libre: Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling, and her photography is unbelievable. Anyway, her son shot our film. Our costume designer was Graciela Mazon, who’s done so many things and also Mexican. Just, the whole crew was all from Mexico City and it was probably the best crew I have ever worked with in my life. It was unbelievable. And, I speak fluent Spanish. I was a Mormon missionary in Venezuela. And my Spanish definitely got better in Mexico. Just to give you an idea- When we finished the film, everybody was just… You always hear like, you know, at the end of shooting “I miss my family” and “It was hard to leave.” It was like, and I felt like that, you know, when I finished Dynamite. But even more so on this one, it was like- Jack, when we shot our final fight, which took place in Mexico City. We had like 600 Mexican extras and Jack had to take off because he was promoting King Kong, and in the last shot of the film Jack waved to everybody and he started to leave the arena and the whole crowd started chanting “Nacho! Nacho!”

H: (laughs)

J: They were just like, so into it! And Jack came back in and it was really emotional and he did a little gig for them and everyone just went nuts and Jack and Mike went back to the guy- I still had stuff that we was shooting that day but we had wrapped everything we were shooting with Jack- and Jack went into his trailer with Mike and just sobbed. It was a really emotional experience. Then, the next day when we finished photography on the film, the whole crew just went into a drag. It was so cool, man. It was like, you know, the whole spirit of the film wasn’t whether the people that wrote it were white or anything. It was like all of our film- something that we all created together.

H: To me, it was like an idea that has long been wanting to be made, ya know. Just because, being from Texas, like I said literally every vacation I took as a kid was to Mexico, so I got to go to a couple of Lucha Libre fights and...

J: That’s cool man.

H: We used to see, when we used to go to San Miguel de Allende, they had this little shoebox theater that did nothing but play Lucha Libre films. Something like 95 percent Libre. So anyway, we’d go in there and see usually one or two per visit that we went down there. So, one of the reasons that I’ve been so gung ho about contacting Paramount about Nacho Libre and about the crazy event we’re throwing here in Austin regarding that it is just such a delightful premise for comic but also good heart, ya know.

J: Yeah. That’s so true, man. And that’s one thing… Even when I watch the film now, it’s like, there were a lot of hearts that went into making this film, just from everybody involved. I truly feel like when I watch it now, you sense that surfacing in the final product.

H: I’ve heard a rumor that Hector Jimenez basically runs away with the film. What was he like and how’d he end up being so darn great in this thing?

J: You know, I am just a good fan of finding new authentic people that don’t have to do a lot to bring their character to life, but just can kind of live them. When he came in, he came into the very first audition that we had in Mexico City and I, like, I was blown away. He came in actually for a different part. He came in for the part of one of the priests in the film and I like looked over at whoever was there and was just like “Oh my goodness. This guy could play like ten different parts in the movie.” I don’t know. There was just something about him, unlike any man I had ever seen before. On top of that, he just wound up being one of the nicest people we had ever met. We eventually decided that the dynamic between him and Jack is just going to be awesome and we’ve got to give him the role of his acting partner. He’s originally from Tijuana, but he came to Mexico City to kind of begin an acting career. He was in one other film. I don’t know if you saw it, but it was a very, very good film that called Voces Inocentes, or Innocent Voices. He played kind of like a guerilla fighter guy, but his role in this film is more substantial and he gets a lot more screen time.

H: I see that you got The Silver King to play Ramses in Nacho Libre, Cesar Gonzales. What was he like working with?

J: He was great. We really wanted somebody that embodied the classic luchador, that like Blue Demon and Santo had, just the way they carried themselves, and also how they look with a mask on. We looked at and met just about every cool luchador and a lot of the most famous ones that really wanted to participate in the film, unfortunately, their schedules wouldn’t work out. A lot of them were booked doing shows in Japan and all over the world.

H: Well, admit it. The only reason you did this movie was so you could interview every luchador. (Laughs)

J: (laughs) Exactly, so I could meet them all, man. It was very self-indulgent. Yeah, but um, when we came across Cesar he had been wrestling for years. He’s also known as the Bronco. I think he had one or two different names, or different characters, and that’s not uncommon. So, he came in and there was something to like his… You know, he came in to audition with a mask off and he just like, on camera he just had like the widest toughest looking chest I had ever seen, and to top that off, he had a really low resonant voice that was really kind of like cool and kind of freaky. But, yeah. He’s fantastic.

H: There’s nothing funnier in the luchador world than tag team midget wrestlers and in the trailer there’s stampedes of them I am personally dying to see.

J: (laughs) It’s awesome.

H: We have a pair of midget wrestlers coming in from Mexico City for our Memorial Day screening of NACHO LIBRE with the Alamo Drafthouse…

J: Oh, that’ll be great. It’ll be fun… You know, they play such a huge role in Lucha Libre, it would be a crime not to showcase how amazing they are in the ring. One of the guys we had is one of Mexico’s oldest and most famous little wrestlers. His name is Filiberto Estrella, and he’s like fifty-some odd years old right now, and we had his tag team partner in the film was 21 years old really limber, fit guy. But I tell you man, Filiberto- He was even crazier than the younger guy. Like, he wouldn’t mess around. He was so good. When you see the scene that they did, man, it’s outrageously wild. It’s really fun.

H: How’d you find Ana de la Reguera, because I saw her in Ladies’ Night, which I thought she was amazing in …

J: She like is, ya know, it was wild. Before we began shooting the whole crew went to a lucha match in Oaxaca right before we began shooting. We all bought masks. Jack had a mask on, Ana had a mask on. The whole cast and crew had masks they purchased before they went in and then half-way through the fight we started to take them off because it was getting kind of hot. Jack took his off first and then Ana took hers off and immediately, man, the whole crowd saw Ana and they like bombarded her and they were like “Can we get a picture, an autograph,” and she didn’t turn a single person away. She was just so nice and it’s just the kind of person she is. My little 2-year-old son absolutely fell in love with her when we were shooting. He was like “Daddy, I wanna go sit by Ana!” She would like hold him in between takes. She is just a really genuine, really sweet sweet amazing actress.

H: Coming from Napoleon Dynamite, which is such a genuine surprise, I know people that have literally watched it 20 or 30 times or like young kids that can quote every line in it. What kind of pressure does that put on you, since you kind of have a built in audience that, you know, hopefully will be coming along with you for this ride as well. But, how do you think that audience is going to like Nacho Libre?

J: You know, as far as like pressure, I think there is always going to be… For me, there is always a constant pressure to do something good that really comes from inside me, that is a film that I really wanna see myself. So, there is always going to be that pressure- to create something good that I really am excited about and in to. As you know, Lucha Libre is such an unknown world to most people living outside of Mexico or just outside of the culture, I think it’s such a fresh new world. I don’t know, I just think it’s really exciting and unlike anything. You know, Lucha Libre is something that is just so unique and rich with detail and… yeah. I just hope people have a love for it as much as I do, because I just love it.

H: What are you looking at taking on next?

J: You know, I really support taking on next some time with my family. I just had a baby girl three weeks ago and um, I am looking forward to some good summer family time and then I’m gonna figure out what I’m going to do next.

H: It just seems like this is one of those films that I’m am trying to explain the fervor I have for it simply because… For one, anyone that’s a fan of jack Black from Tenacious D to you know, his film work, and then you have Mike White and then there’s you involved from Napoleon. It just really does seem like a great sort of triumvirate of fun that’s been put into this. How much of the film, for you, is about comedy and how much is about heart and soul?

J: Yeah. That’s a good question, man. To me, it’s kind of about both. There’s a lot of interesting character details and idiosyncrasies that I think will be funny in whatever context or situation those characters are in. But, just overall, the message of redemption and selflessness that are ultimately the themes of the film, I think are very important. But that doesn’t overshadow at all the comedic outrageousness that takes place during the film.

H: What were the comedies that you love?

J: You know, I am such a fan of Raising Arizona. That’s one of my favorite films of all time. Um, lately I’ve really been into… I don’t know, I’m really a big fan of documentaries. There’s just something about when people can discover characters and things in reality that are unique… I’m trying to think of a good title that recently blew me a away.

H: Well, is comedy the genre you want to stay in?

J: You know, that’s a good question. For me, that’s definitely one of the main reasons I’d like to go to the movies. But I am really excited down the road to a Western.

H: Oh really?

J: Yeah. I’d really like to do a Western.

H: Cool. What sort of Western would you… Would to want to do something comedic, or would it be something …?

J: I think it would be something a little more classic, but definitely peppered with interesting people.

H: I find that intriguing. I’m a huge Western fan.

J: What’s your favorite? Ya know, lately one of my favorites is Outlaw Josey Wales.

H: Outlaw Josey Wales, as a kid, was my favorite Western, just because I thought… First of all, I think any movie with Chief Dan George is, you know, on its way to being brilliant.

J: Right.

H: Well, I think, you know… Sometime in the nineties between Kevin Costner and what Eastwood did with Unforgiven, they sort of in a way made movies that were outstanding, but almost killed the Western because it became less about movement and speed and more about how dirty everything was and how long it took to get from one place to another. But to me, I love a movie like The Professionals where you’ve got four guys that are going on a mission to get a girl and the land between Texas and Mexico is Death Valley. (laughs) You just sort of create the landscape you want to put your characters through and you get this heightened reality instead of just plain landscape.

J: Yeah… Yeah. Something I forgot- Sam Peckinpah’s daughter was a wardrobe supervisor in our film.

H: Awesome!

J: Yeah. When Peckinpah married one of his actresses, I think from Major Dundee, the lead actress in that. Yeah, her name is Lupita Peckinpah, and she would have some totally awesome stories. Like during lunch I’d be like “Lupita, tell us another one.”

H: (laughs) Well, Peckinpah stories are just classic. Warren Oates’s daughter lives here in Austin and she was dating a friend of mine and we went out drinking a couple of times and she would tell Warren Oates and Peckinpah stories.

J: No way…

H: You know, that’s just the best!

Publicity Girl: Sorry to interrupt you guys. I have to pull Jared and this media is here and they are waiting.

H: Alright.

Publicity Girl: says something else… I can’t tell.

J: Okay.

H: Well, I hope to meet you someday and I would love it if you can make it down to the crazy NACHO LIBRE event here in Austin on Memorial Day!

J: Yeah, that would be awesome. Great. Harry, it’s been a pleasure man. Seriously, I appreciate it.

H: Okay, bye bye.