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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Comeback kid Mickey Rourke, reformed convict Danny Trejo and current “it” girl Eva Mendes embody the past, present and future of Hollywood stardom in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon A Time In Mexico.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
By Richard Horgan
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For the better part of fifteen years, actor Mickey Rourke could not remember the names of his talent representatives at Creative Artists Agency.
“I used to call up CAA and go, what’s the guy’s name with the white Porsche and the bald head?” recalls Rourke during a recent interview in Los Angeles. “Or let me talk to the guy with the moustache. That was something I should have learned, but I was more interested in getting on my motorcycle. Looking back, I wish I had focused more attention on that side of the business.”
Since returning to acting in 1995 after a four-year stint as a professional boxer, Rourke feels he is still paying for previous mistakes in Hollywood such as turning down high-profile studio pictures in favor of more obscure independent efforts and failing to cultivate long-term friendships with industry executives.
However, he is adamant about the fact that his celebrated days of raising hell had nothing to do with the abuse of drugs or alcohol. Rather, it was all about his inability to control his temper, such as the time he was fired from a film after punching out a drug dealer selling narcotics to his future ex-wife, actress Carré Otis (Wild Orchid).
“There’s no way I can f--k up my career again, because I’ve already been tested in the most severe way a man can be tested,” suggests Rourke. “The other day, I saw a guy in the gym who was sleeping with Carré when I was shooting a movie, and I didn’t touch him. Now, six years ago, I would have put him in Cedars-Sinai for six months.”
“I was also working recently with an actor who is a big movie star and I was knocking his f--king sails out in a scene,” Rourke continues. “Then he said something about it and I thought to myself that if I cork him, I’ll never work in this town again. Because he’s the one with the great reputation, not me.”
Rourke met Once Upon A Time In Mexico director Robert Rodriguez through their respective ICM agents David Unger and Robert Newman. At the time, Rodriguez had only just begun outlining the character of Billy Chambers, an American expatriate associating with the wrong crowd in Mexico.
But when he ran into Rourke in the hallway cradling his pet Chihuahua in his arms, he was struck by the idea of casting both him and the dog.
“When I met Mickey, I was actually thinking of bringing back Steve Buscemi for the part,” says Rodriguez. “It was going to be such a quick shoot, so I thought working with people I had already worked with would help. But once I met Mickey through the agency, I went back and wrote a bigger role for him.”
After striving the past few years to regain a foothold on A-list projects such as the upcoming Meg Ryan thriller In The Cut, which Rourke says he desperately wanted to appear in, the 46-year-old actor has scored roles in a pair of marquee projects – Once Upon A Time In Mexico and next year’s Man On Fire, the latest action film from Ridley Scott’s brother Tony (Spy Game, Enemy Of The State) featuring Denzel Washington and Christopher Walken.
Although Rourke garnered critical acclaim for his portrayal of “The Cook” in last year’s little seen drug underworld drama Spun, he says it was only because of his belief that director Jonas Akerlund is destined for bigger and better things that he agreed to appear in a film with that subject matter. He is definitely grateful to filmmakers such as Scott and Rodriguez for looking past his former reputation as a troublemaker.
“Robert reminds me very much of a young Francis Ford Coppola,” explains Rourke, whose work on Once Upon A Time In Mexico was completed in four days. “He’s a f**king genius when he’s on the floor.”
“When I did Rumble Fish with Francis, we didn’t have a script and improvised the whole time,” adds Rourke. “Robert uses whatever is around him to set the pace on a set. He’s very bold and very clever that way. Robert would get an idea at lunch time and change the whole script while he was eating.”
Trejo’s True Passion
At the time that Rourke was making a name for himself in films such as Body Heat, Diner and Rumble Fish, former troubled teen and convict Danny Trejo was summoned to the set of the Jon Voight-Eric Roberts action film Runaway Train by a young man he had met at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting.
Since serving out five years for armed robbery and drug-related charges at San Quentin, where he also won welterweight and lightweight boxing titles, the Echo Park native has dedicated himself to helping wayward Los Angeles kids avoid the pitfalls of substance abuse.
“I would never in my wildest dreams have believed that I was going to be an actor,” says Trejo, who in Once Upon A Time In Mexico portrays the somewhat mythical character of Cucuy, a Mexican folk tale equivalent to the Boogeyman. “When I walked onto the movie set to help a kid who was working on the film as a production assistant and said he was afraid of using again, I ran into an old friend of mine from prison, screenwriter Eddie Bunker.”
“He asked me to train an actor how to box, for $325 per day, which was far more than the $50 I might have made as extra,” Trejo continues. “The director of Runaway Train, Andrei Konchalovsky, saw how I was with the actor and gave me a role as a boxer, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Trejo credits the late Charles Bronson with helping him move beyond initial parts such as a street gang hooligan and other typical Latino stereotypes. As Art Senella in Death Wish 4, Trejo finally had his first substantive on-screen role in 1987 and has gradually progressed to the point of being able to recently start his own production company, Starburst.
Still, Trejo says his first love remains drug counseling and that his Hollywood bad guy fame has afforded him an unusual advantage when speaking to crowds of unruly teenage high school students.
“The amazing part is that when I step on to a school campus, the tough kids who don’t usually go to those kinds of assemblies are drawn to me,” states Trejo. “It’s the best hook I’ve ever had and the more movies I make, the better hook I’ve got. In fact, all my kids have been calling me, asking me when Desperado 2 (a.k.a Once Upon A Time In Mexico) is coming out.”
Amazingly, Trejo did not realize he was related to Rodriguez until he worked on the San Antonio, Texas set of Desperado in 1994. Much of the actor’s extended family lives in the region and when they came to visit him on set, they made him aware of the fact that the director was in fact his cousin.
Trejo is getting ready to produce Winnebago, his next feature film effort under his Starburst production banner, about three Hispanic American surfers who travel down to Mexico together and come of age.
“Robert is probably the most passionate director that I’ve ever met, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve been in five of his movies (Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico and all three Spy Kids movies),” says Trejo. “He literally has a passion for making movies that boil over into everybody, and pretty soon you’re swallowed up into it all. Even when you’re not supposed to be working as an actor, you still find yourself on the set because you want to see what he’s doing next.”
Eve Mendes On The Rise
Current sensation Eva Mendes sees a similarity between the directing styles of Rodriguez and fellow independently schooled filmmaker John Singleton, who cast her in the recent sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious. Both have what she describes as a male teenager’s enthusiasm level for the art form, constantly energizing those around them with their gleeful attempts to blow things up.
In the space of a few short years, Mendes has managed to overcome an inauspicious debut in the 1998 horror sequel Children Of The Corn 5: Fields Of Terror after she was discovered at a garage sale in Los Angeles. In addition to Once Upon A Time In Mexico and 2 Fast 2 Furious, Mendes will appear this fall with her Training Day co-star Denzel Washington in Out Of Time and as Greg Kinnear’s love interest in the Farrelly Brothers latest opus Stuck On You, which also co-stars Matt Damon.
“Matt, who I just adore, gave me the best advice about dealing with celebrity,” says Mendes. “He said that you’re not going to change but the people around you are going to change, so just surround yourself with the people that you really care about, and keep that little tight-knit group together, and I’ve found that invaluable.”
“I’m good at that, but I’m not your typical Hollywood party girl,” Mendes continues. “I like to spend my time with friends and listening to music. My longtime boyfriend George and I are managing a band together, The Tigers, a little indie rock group. They’re very sweet sounding, nothing hard.”
Mendes says she knew she wanted to be a part of Once Upon A Time In Mexico the moment she got off a plane en route to San Antonio, Texas to discuss the project with director Rodriguez. Instead of the usual anonymous driver waiting to pick her up, Rodriguez had sent over his wife and producing partner, Elizabeth Avellan, along with the couple’s three sons.
Rodriguez filmed Once Upon A Time In Mexico two years ago, in between his sequels Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3. In each case, acting as his own cameraman, the multi-hyphenate filmmaker worked with high-definition digital video.
| Seeing the film two years after she made it, Mendes says there are a number of things she would do differently in her scenes with Johnny Depp, a last minute choice for the part of a corrupt CIA agent named Sands. However, it’s still a far cry from the first time she saw herself in Children Of The Corn 5 and was so disgusted by her performance that she was reduced to tears.
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Meanwhile, when Rodriguez first started toying with the idea of turning El Mariachi and Desperado into a trilogy, he sketched out a few brief notes about a scene in which Depp’s character appears in a restaurant. The 35-year-old filmmaker hurriedly wrote the full script when Sony expressed an interest in financing the project.
“With Johnny’s character, I wanted something really surrealistic, iconic and Mexican, referencing skulls and the Day Of The Dead,” recalls Rodriguez. “As a kid growing up Catholic in Texas, I had this illustrated children’s bible with a picture of Samson, his eyes taken out, pressing against the pillars. Everything is coming down, it’s beautiful, horrific.”
| “That image stuck with me forever and I wanted to have something like that with Johnny, that people would remember,” adds Rodriguez. “That’s why the blood stops flowing at a certain point from his injured eyes. I didn’t want it gushing out like a horror film. I wanted it to look more like a religious painting or sculpture.” |
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