Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl follows the true-life gender transition of artist Einar Wegener to Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) and its effect on her marriage to fellow artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). Acting as stand-in for one of Gerda’s female models ignites a reawakening in Einar as he discovers he was meant to be a woman. Met with resistance at every turn, the reborn Lili’s only supporter is Gerda, the two of them fighting together to build a life in which Lili can finally be herself.

In a roundtable interview in San Francisco, we caught up with Hooper to talk about the film, which opens tomorrow in select cities and expands wide on Christmas.

The difference between Gerda and Lili’s way of dressing struck me. Gerda is so fashion-forward and Lili is much more traditional.
Paco Delgado is a genius. He’s the costume designer. He’s done Pedro Almodovar’s films for years. We did Les Miserables together, and I thought his eye for detail was extraordinary. We were lead a lot by the photos we have of the real Gerda and Einar. It became clear that Gerda’s eye for fashion was immaculate. One of the ways she paid the bills was doing covers for fashion magazines. What was extraordinary was that Einar was aspiring to a very different idea of the feminine, which was quite bourgeois conservative. It’s actually quite conventional—she just wants to be identified with the other half of the population. I think in that kind of anxiety to be validated as a woman she felt safer in a conventional style of clothing. It’s also interesting to me that the film doesn’t involve Lili learning to be like Gerda. Gerda’s body language is actually quite masculine.

I get quite excited by actors who are good at expressing themselves with their bodies, and Alicia and Eddie are two of the best young actors doing that kind of work.
Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of screen actors kind of act from here up (brings hand to chest). They’re so used to being in close-up [that the rest of their] body goes to sleep. I started to become very aware of it when I was doing The King’s Speech. Geoffrey [Rush] was actually mime-trained and is amazing with his body. I’d be doing close-ups with Geoffrey and I’d go, “Look at what he’s doing with his hands,” so I’d pull back and do a mid shot. Then I’d go, “Actually, I like the whole profile,” so I’d pull back again. I’d come out of that experience thinking more about body shape.

What was very interesting was that, after doing all of these things as a director, you never ever say to an actor, “I’m sorry. At that moment, you betrayed your gender. You were not convincingly a man.” You never say, “You weren’t in gender.” I’ve never actually corrected someone on their gender. The really fascinating thing was having to think about the way gender is constructed. You start thinking about to what extent culture has put pressure on us to take on a certain construction of gender and how much of it is innate. I go around now seeing much more how people have constructed themselves. It’s really affected the way I look at the world.

What was your process with Eddie when you started this journey, turning him from a he to a she?
It started with a lot of research. I was lucky enough to have a meeting with Lana Wachowski because Eddie had done a film with her. She gave us a great reading list, and through her we discovered this book by Jan Morris called Conundrum. It’s the most brilliant book about transition. We met trans men and woman. There’s a great one called April Ashley who was a famous model in the ’60s in London and had an amazing life. We sat with her, drank champagne, had tea time and listened to her life story. We did some early tests on a stills camera, and a lot of it was about this idea that we were revealing Lily rather than him transforming into Lily, this late femininity being revealed. That idea of getting him to that point of confidence where he carried the woman inside him and really start to show it and reveal it was a key concept early on.

I like the way you shot the scene where Lily is posing for Gerda for the first time. It’s like she’s rediscovering her body.
It was a very key scene. To get it right, we were showing a release into anxiety. Obviously, the discovery that she’s making in that moment carries with it a lot of stress and conflict. But it’s also this release out of anxiety and into this possibility of being her authentic self and the potential experience of joy she’d never imagined. In Lili’s memoirs, that’s the moment she talks about as being key. Of all the scenes, I think it was important to get that one right. Her body’s waking up.

Something interesting I read was that Lily often referred to herself in the third person.
In her memoirs, she talks about Einar and Lily in the third person. Eddie and I had long debates about [this]. In modern trans experience, you’d probably talk about “I” rather than talk in the third person. But we wanted to capture this period in the 1920s when there wasn’t an existing language for being a trans person. She was trying to find a way to communicate this to other people, and a way she could do it was to say that there is a struggle between Einar and Lily, and Lily has to win.

Talk about the pool of talented trans actors out there and how filmmakers like yourself can create opportunities for them. You hired a number of trans actors for this film.
I just think it’s a necessary shift. It’s all about equality of access. I still think we have a huge issue in the film industry with equality of access with women directors. It still feels like there’s sexism operating in that world. For people of color, there are barriers of access. There’s a greater fight of making sure there’s equality of actors for people who feel their voices have been marginalized. There’s a great journey to go. I think trans employment is very important. On Les Miserables, my musical director was a woman called Jennifer White. I feel like, particularly in the U.S., there are huge issues of discrimination in the workplace against trans people. If this film in any way can keep the process of shedding a spotlight on those indignities, that would be great.

This movie’s coming out at a very interesting time because of the Caitlyn Jenner story. What do you expect this to add to that conversation?
I speak from a London perspective, not an American perspective, but I think there’s a generational thing where the older generation are perhaps far less progressive in their understanding than the kids coming through now. It would be great if the film could reach those very people who are kind of closed to this narrative and open people’s hearts to caring about Lily and trans stories in general. I don’t know whether it can do that, but it would be great.

Talk about Eddie as an actor. He’s got a one-in-a-million smile, which I think is invaluable in this movie.
He has this great gift where he takes the audience with him on every step of the journey. I don’t feel Lily is “othered” by Eddie’s performance. If anything, Lily’s journey feels inevitable in Eddie’s hands. He has this gift where you understand every step. Not many actors can do that. There would be moments that would feel strange, but he has this compassion. It allowed us to go on a journey that, in theory, could have been unwatchably painful. But you stay with him. He’s also the nicest person on the planet. He went off to the Academy Awards, came back after the weekend and was completely unchanged. He’s the same guy.

Alicia is having such a year.
One of the first things I said to her was, “Because Eddie’s working so hard to be this person, don’t be lazy. Don’t think about how different Gerda differs from you. Can you be as specific with her as Eddie’s being with Lily?” I thought she really embraced that idea. Early on, she had an idea of Gerda having a personality that is more charismatic than she is herself. She’s quite a contained person. Mainly, I was intimidated by finding someone to act opposite Eddie. If you didn’t have two actors who matched each other, it would have been quite tough. I felt like Alicia had such a great, big heart. It’s this love story, and you see how Gerda has this inexhaustible source of love for Lily that helps her through this transformation.

I love Matthias Schoenaerts.
I still can’t believe he’s in my film! [laughs] I asked my casting director Nina Gold if we could ever get Matthias and she was like, “Probably not.” But he said yes! He’s like a natural film star. He’s so still and simple and powerful. There’s a calmness to him.

Two heavy Oscar hopefuls opened the Mill Valley Film Festival last night as Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl and Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight played to packed movie houses surrounded by towering redwoods in downtown Mill Valley and in San Rafael just a few minutes up the road. Both directors were in attendance to introduce their respective films and participate in Q&As before the crowds hurried to the open-air Opening Night party to pass around their thoughts on the films.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The cast of Spotlight is arguably the best ensemble you’ll see in a movie all year. If the Oscars gave out Best Ensemble statues they’d have it in the bag, hands down. Starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci, and Liev Schreiber (whose top-notch performance will likely go unappreciated in the coming months), the film feels dynamic and alive and spontaneous despite its true-story roots. It recounts the breaking of the Catholic church child molestation cover-up by the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” news team, an investigation that shook Boston to its core. While reviews coming out of TIFF have gotten movie lovers across the country itching in anticipation to see Tom McCarthy’s latest, I feel compelled to offer a word of warning: This is an excellent movie that’s also decidedly humble; don’t expect any loud, earth-shattering performances or slow-motion, tearful eruptions meant to entice members of the Academy. Spotlight stays right in the pocket, which is exactly where it should be.

Butterflies Are Free To Fly

One of the big shockers from the Oscars last year was Eddie Redmayne‘s Best Actor win, as many expected Michael Keaton to go home with the prize (including Keaton himself). Well, the young British charmer is in the race again with The Danish Girl, the Tom Hooper-helmed historical drama about trans icon Lili Elbe (Redmayne) and her wife, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). Lili’s rebirth as a woman in the 1920s (she was formerly known as Einar Wegener, a successful painter) is a staggeringly beautiful story in real life, but Hooper’s picture is too glossy and overly poetic to be truly inspiring. Redmayne exudes femininity and is as good on-screen as ever, and Vikander is his equal, but the dialogue is so maudlin that many moments, especially later in the film, feel hollow and disingenuous. The actors are knockouts across the board, though. Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard, and Ben Wishaw round out a wonderful supporting cast, though the film never provides a solid enough platform for them to look and sound their best.

At this time last year, The Theory of Everything was a week away from its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, and its star, Eddie Redmayne, was just a 32-year-old British scamp ready to shock the world with his performance as Stephen Hawking. A year later, Redmayne has positioned himself to become the first actor since Tom Hanks in ’94/’95 to win back-to-back golden statues. The Danish Girl reunites Redmayne with Les Miserables director Tom Hooper for an unexpectedly topical biopic co-starring Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Ben Whishaw.

Telling the story of transgender woman Lili Elbe, one of the first identifiable recipients of sexual reassignment surgery. Born in 1880s Denmark as Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, Lili became an artist and married her wife Gerda Gottlieb before discovering she came to her gender identity realization. The soft lighting, period setting, and expositional dialog all seem reminiscent of director Hooper’s last sweeping Oscars success, The King’s Speech; however, the depiction of Lili’s transition from a man to a woman is bound to become a discussion point as The Danish Girl aims to be part of awards conversations.

The Danish Girl premieres September 5th as part of the Venice Film Festival and will be released Stateside on November 27th.

It came as a bit of a shock how much fun I found myself having as I watched the bronzed, gyrating man-tasy that is Magic Mike: XXL. It’s the follow-up to Steven Soderbergh‘s unexpectedly artful 2012 film Magic Mike, which starred Channing Tatum and was based on the teenage stripper chapter of his life. Like its predecessor, XXL takes a vocation that’s been culturally passé for about two decades and makes it fun again.

Director Gregory Jacobs goes even deeper (*ahem*) and gets to the heart of the matter, taking a look at the virtues of “male entertainment,” from its rejuvinative properties to its nature as an outlet of expression for its oily practitioners. The movie isn’t as fun when the studly cast members start spinning their wheels with the comedically impotent dialogue-driven segments, which take up too much of the swollen (*ahem*) two-hour runtime; the real “magic” happens when the guys start speaking with their bodies.

Take the first routine we see: Mike (Tatum) is hard at work, grinding not a blushing female, but some metal parts for his new furniture-making business. He’s alone at night in his tiny workshop when suddenly his jam, Ginuwine’s “Pony,” hits the speakers like a sticky handful of dollar bills slapped on a cleanly-shaven buttock. As if compelled by the stripper gods, he begins undulating, thrusting, and swinging around the cramped environment like a bulky, after-hours Gene Kelly. The choreography is so cheesy and so smooth that you can’t help but smile, and that pretty much sums up the type of enjoyment the movie offers. At the expense of their dignity, these bros just want to make you happy, by any means possible.

Sick of toiling away on tables and bookshelves, Mike rejoins his old troupe of stripper buddies on a road trip from Central Florida to Myrtle Beach, where they hope to blow minds at the annual stripping convention. Jacobs and returning penner Reid Carolin seem determined to make the road-movie schematic more than just a way to cart us from dance routine to dance routine, protracting the male-bonding scenes and stuffing them with idiotic banter that’s semi-charming and natural sounding but woefully unfunny. I would have preferred putting the story on the fast track.

Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello), Ken (Matt Bomer), Tarzan (Kevin Nash) and Tito (Adam Rodriguez) each have a certain charm, and the actors seem to be having a genuinely good time bickering and taunting each other, but they’re the kind of guys who are most interesting at parties. On their off time, they’re high-fiving morons, for whatever level of entertainment that’s worth. Watching them drink on the beach and ride around in a cramped ice cream truck (with their trusty chauffeur, Tobias, played by Gabriel Iglesias) is grating, though their travels introduce us to new characters like a young, cagey photographer (Amber Heard) and a bad-bitch stripper overlord from Mike’s past, Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith).

Mike hits up Rome for a favor after Tobias crashes the ice cream truck, leaving the burly outfit without transport. She runs a steamy establishment in Savannah, a sprawling Victorian mansion lit like a sexy haunted house of sorts and run like 24/7 strip show, where dry-humpy performances can pop up in any room at any given time. This section is the movie’s best showcase, seeing a slew of talented male dancers (including a ridiculously spry Michael Strahan) blow the minds of the hoards of black, female beneficiaries. To earn Rome’s help, Mike is forced to take up his former “White Chocolate” persona and put on the show of his life. He obliges, putting on a borderline pornographic display that’s unbelievably entertaining in its silliness.

It’s true that Magic Mike: XXL is a shameless excuse for women (and men) to whoop and holler at the hard bodies on screen, but that ain’t a bad thing, not at all. That’s the whole point of the story: these guys are here to please and make their audiences feel special. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world to feel neglected and invisible, and for a man to devote his entire body and attention to a woman for a dance or two is a beautiful thing. (Male onlookers aren’t left out of the equation, either; a delightful early segment sees the guys compete at a drag bar to see who can queen it up the most.)

It’s an honest-to-goodness good time, and on a cinematic level, it’s far from trashy (though he’s still “retired” from directing, Soderbergh is credited as a producer and cinematographer). The camera moves and lighting are great and show off the zany choreography perfectly. Tatum’s career as an actor has been a lot of fun to watch, and it’s nice to see him be so expressive with his body in a time when everyone seems to be clamoring for more “serious,” talky performances from him. He’s a tremendous physical actor, and he continues to evolve that aspect of his repertoire. Magic Mike: XXL is a perfect movie to unwind to after a long work week, and no one will judge if you doze off during the boys’ banal chit-chat.

James Franco, ever the prolific actor, is easy to find on multiple screens at once fairly often. It’s especially interesting, however, to have just watched him in the memoir-adapted, true crime focused True Story when his most recent vehicle is also based on a memoir, also about a writer, and also involves a high-profile murder case. Whereas he is the suspected murderer in True Story, in Stephen Elliott’s adapted memoir The Adderall Diaries, Franco wears the writer’s shoes. The writer being Elliott, who, deep in a state of writer’s block, takes an interest in the public trial of an accused wife-murderer.

Pamela Romanowsky’s directorial debut has a few of the same old drug-fueled and frenzied elements one comes to expect in melt-down films. The cinematography of Bruce Thierry Cheung maxed out in color, angled sideways, and sometimes slowed down in a pretty, if not unexpected, way. The music of Michael Andrews fits well, pulsing when called for, though maybe not especially stirring at times.

Franco’s Elliott is propelled through life, and his writing career, by a zealous hatred and capitalization on his abusive relationship with his father. The reserves of his grudge-holding run deep. Thus far it’s proven lucrative for him, as his first auto-biographical novel is doing well and he’s gotten an advance from a publisher for his next. Except he can’t seem to write it. He sees the trial of Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) on television and, much to the dismay of his editor (Cynthia Nixon), decides to attempt an entirely different sort of novel. This will be his In Cold Blood, he claims.

At the trial he meets Lana (Amber Heard) and, with one look at his motorcycle, the two begin a relationship steeped in their mutual brokenness, hers involving an abusive step-father. It’s of course when Elliott’s life seems most together that things must coming crashing down. At a reading of his first book, wherein he’s depicted the death of his mother to cancer at an early age and the chain-reaction this had on his relationship with his father and his relationship with drugs, Elliott’s father Neil (Ed Harris) makes an appearance. Bad news is a key part of Elliott’s memoir revolves around the supposed death of his mentally abusive father. When Neil shows up, publicly decrying the lies present in Elliott’s memoir, his entire reputation and career are at stake.

The film’s source material is all about the inaccuracy of memory, the way we select and remember out of context in order to suit our feelings on our pasts. Romanowsky depicts this theme in multiple flashbacks, sometimes tweaking them to be slightly different, to add more context, as Elliott progresses. Elliott’s words also appear on the screen as he types, letting us in on his personal way of mis-remembering. Elliott as the unreliable narrator of his own life is interesting, sure, but, well, unreliable. By his own admittance. It’s hard to hope for his redemption when he doesn’t just push people away, he selfishly tries to drag them down into his dark pity party.

Franco and Harris are on point, while Slater is severely underused, his plot line of very little interest. And, I admit, there’s a certain amount of guilt one has in finding fault with a real person’s attempt to share their own difficult narrative, but somehow blaming mis-remembrance as an excuse for self-destructive behavior reeks of falsity. You can’t play the martyr if the cause never existed. Romanowsky never wins audience trust, and her film gets distracted by the lesser fleshed-out true crime story, something I’m assuming Elliott does better in his book. Added all up, The Adderall Diaries confuses itself somewhat when laying out all its many themes, and despite Franco’s masochistic charm, his protagonist remains lacking in finding his way toward empathy.

When approaching my critique of Machete Kills—Robert Rodriguez‘s second entry into the eponymous character’s bloody B-movie saga that started with a fake trailer and continued in 2010’s Machete–I made the firm decision to not deny my inner 9-year-old that was having an absolute blast in the theater. Sure, I could poke and prod at the film’s cheap-o special effects, poor acting (only in some cases–there are strong performances here), and asinine plot, but wouldn’t that be missing the point? To be distracted by the film’s “faults” (many of which, like in other Rodriguez offerings, imbue the film with a sense of big fun) would hinder me from mining Machete Kills‘ many riches–spectacular violence, gleefully shameless cameos, tasteless zinger-happy dialog, a bad-ass anti-hero, and a villain who is more fantastic than he has any right to be.

Machete (Danny Trejo) is recruited (against his will) by the president of the United States (Carlos Estevez, a peculiarly familiar face…) to stop a maniac Mexican warlord (a scene-stealing Demian Bichir) from launching a nuclear strike on Washington D.C. He’s been promised–if he’s successful–U.S. citizenship and a clean record. On his action-packed mission, he encounters allies and enemies both new and old (all played by a bucketload of A and B-list celebs) and wreaks blood-splattered havoc along the U.S.-Mexican border. The killing spree leads Machete to the mastermind behind it all–a diabolical tech wizard played earnestly and hilariously by an on-point Mel Gibson.

Again, I’m not going to deny my inner child in my critique, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give the film’s flaws a pass. I acknowledge that Rodriguez’s game isn’t to make movie Mona Lisas, but even if we play by his rules, he fumbles the ball quite a bit. A lot of the gags–including a lot of the one-liners Trejo unenthusiastically mutters (“Machete don’t text”)–aren’t funny, period. In an awful scene, Michelle Rodriguez–playing Machete’s old ally, Luz–sniffs him (after he’s gotten busy with a girl hours earlier) and says she smells “fish taco”. Lady Gaga, Cuba Gooding Jr., Antonio Banderas, and Walton Goggins play the same character (an un-cleverly conceived villain called El Camaleón), and with the exception of Goggins (he’s good in everything), the cameos are an utter waste, amounting to a parade of idiotic posing (Gaga) and a lame joke of against-type casting (Gooding Jr. and Banderas) that’s clichéd and isn’t funny for a second. Sofia Vergara plays a sadomasochist who yells and shoots bullets out of her tits and vagina, a gag that was much funnier in Austin Powers 16 years ago.

The good news is, the major players in the film–Trejo, Gibson, Bichir, and a sizzling Amber Heard–are unbelievably entertaining, committing to the material with all their hearts. Unlike the rest of the cast, they don’t play it like a joke; from Bichir’s mad-man schizo lunacy, to Heard’s luscious sexuality (and perfect Spanish accent), to Gibson’s Oscar-mode performance, the quality of work these actors offer up is, frankly, surprising. Gibson is so good at being evil here one wonders why he hasn’t been cast in the villain role more often. Trejo’s dialog delivery isn’t on-par with his top-tier co-stars, but visually, physically, he embodies everything a testosterone craved moviegoer wants in an action hero.

With a title like Machete Kills, the death scenes had better be spectacular, and boy do they deliver. Rodriguez’s Mortal Kombat style violence engages the same twisted area of the imagination young boys use when blowing their action figures to smithereens with bb guns or melting their army men to puddles of plastic with matches in the backyard. It’s sadistic, sure, but it’s all in good fun. Heads roll, bullets rip flesh, innards explode (courtesy of a sci-fi gun that turns objects inside-out), and faces get melted (just like the army men!), but the most entertaining kills are the inventive ones. My personal favorite is one in which Machete latches himself to a spinning propeller of a helicopter with a grappling hook, sticks his machete out (there’s a dick joke in there, for sure), and lobs of the heads of a dozen or so baddies like some sort of gruesome, demonic carnival ride.

Rodriguez cleverly avoids showing graphic sex (be sure to bring your 3-D glasses!), though there are plenty of scantily clad ladies running around to satiate all you horn-dogs out there (I, as an esteemed journalist, am obviously not interested in such naughty things). The film bookends with trailers for the next film in the series, Machete Kills Again: In Space, keeping the spirit of the original “fake” trailer alive while nostalgically recalling the days of grainy VHS tapes, and I’ll be happy to make the trip out to the theater to watch Machete hack and slash again. The appeal of Rodriguez’s ’70s grindhouse influenced films like Machete Kills is bound to wear thin one day, but not today.

Starting as the character “Uncle Machete” in the first Spy Kids movie in 2001, DIY director Robert Rodriguez and legitimate badass Danny Trejo have breathed life into the character we now know as Machete, a Mexican anti-hero, bringer of over-the-top violence, and unlikely vixen magnet. A “fake” trailer in Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse double-feature led to the character’s first headlining feature, 2010’s Machete, a no-holds-barred breed of action flick that retains the same crass ’70s grindhouse aesthetic of Rodriguez and Tarantino’s collaboration. Machete returns in Machete Kills, a balls-to-the-wall sequel full of the craziest action scenes and death sequences you’ll likely see all year.

Machete himself, Danny Trejo, sat to chat with us during a roundtable interview about the origins of the character, his favorite death scene, how Machete appeals to kids, Mel Gibson, Carlos Estevez, other projects he’s got in the works, and more.

Machete Kills opens this Friday, October 11th

Press: The film bookends with a teaser trailer for a possible next film. Were you conscious of including these trailers, or was it more of an afterthought?
Trejo: The whole movie was an afterthought! (laughs) When [Robert Rodriguez] and I were doing Desperado, he saw the way I deal with people, [how I] mingle. I would be walking around Acuna, Mexico with no shirt, going into the barrio, eating at people’s houses and stuff. He says, “Danny, everybody [here] thinks you’re the star of [Desperado].” Nobody knew Antonio Banderas. I said, “You mean I’m not [the star]!?” He told me all about this character, Machete. He said, “[The character] is you. You don’t even have to act!” We talked about it, and when we got to doing Spy Kids, we thought, let’s name him “Uncle Machete”. We did it, and we thought, even if we never do [a Machete film], at least we put him in this movie.

Everybody has that uncle that nobody knows what he does. Especially Mexicanos! (laughs) We did Spy Kids, and then [came] Grindhouse, and they needed a fake trailer. Robert said, “Boy, do I have a fake trailer!” We did the fake trailer, and when the audience came out of the theater, nobody even mentioned Grindhouse. They loved [that trailer], man! Me and Robert talked about it, and we said man, we gotta make this movie. The audience demands it. We did the first Machete, and if you look, it’s one of the first times I’ve ever seen everything that was in the trailer in the movie. Usually, you’ll see something in the trailer, and then it’s like, “Hey! It wasn’t in the movie!” After we finished Machete, Robert thought there was something missing, and he said, “I know! Machete Kills!” and that’s how we got this film.

Press: Do you think Machete is like a response to Desperado?
Trejo: I think it’s that genre. Making Westerns is very expensive, to get horses to do [all these things]. We got as close as we could to a Western without horses! Desperado was as Western as you could get without horses. One of these days, I’ll try to talk Robert into doing a Western. He’ll probably go crazy. I did a Western called Dead in Tombstone with Mickey Rourke [that’s out now]. Dina Meyer from Starship Troopers and Michael C. Hall from Dexter are in it, and everybody really did [great]. This was a hard movie to shoot because we were in Romania, it was cold, and they had the best Western town I’d ever seen. Roel Reine, the director, directed me in Death Race 2 and 3, so he knew how I liked to work. I move, you know? Don’t keep me in the trailer, because I’ll go crazy! If you’re al wet and muddy, it’s not so bad when you’re moving.

WTI: The movie is over-the-top, with violence, guns, sex–let’s be honest, that’s what everybody wants! As I was watching the film, I couldn’t deny the 9-year-old in me who was going absolutely nuts over it. In a weird way, Machete appeals to kids, would you agree?
Trejo: Absolutely. It’s a fun movie. There’s no big social comment. It’s just, “Let’s kick some ass!” My mom wanted to go see Machete. She didn’t even think I had a job! I said, “Mom, I’m an actor!” Then, I did three episodes of The Young and the Restless, and it was like she and her grey-haired friends thought I won an Oscar. I took her to see Machete, and I was about to be onscreen with the two girls in the lake. I said, “Mom, you might not want to…” and she said, “Shut up! I’m watching this!” Robert and Quentin Tarantino were behind me, and to see my mom [freaking out], they couldn’t stop laughing.

Press: To switch gears, let’s talk about your work on Breaking Bad. How was that character proposed to you? It was only in a few episodes, but it makes such a huge impact on the show.
Trejo: Gloria, my agent, got the [offer], and she said, “Do you want to do a Hollywood first? Your head will go across the desert on a turtle.” It was a lot of fun. We did that episode, and it was received so well that we had to do the backstory.

Press: Which of Machete’s kills in the film is your favorite?
Trejo: The helicopter. I mentioned to Robert something about a helicopter, and there are three helicopter deaths in the movie! My mom was 84, and we were watching it. I take three guys’ heads off with one shot of a machete, but everybody laughs because of the way the heads bounce. Robert makes the violence funny. Even though its violence, you know it’s not real and you take it seriously.

WTI: Do you help Robert come up with these death scenes?
Trejo: He doesn’t need help. I was trying to get a hold of Robert before we did Machete, when we were putting it together. I called and called him, and finally I ran into him at Comic Con. “Robert! I’ve been calling you! Why don’t you answer your phone!” He said, “Danny, I was in a meeting with someone. Text me!” I said, “Machete don’t text,” and that ended up in the movie.

Press: You make a lot of blockbuster films, but you pepper in a lot of smaller projects. How do you choose what smaller projects to work on?
Trejo: I kinda let them come to me. Some people with a lot of money try to make low-budget movies. Low-budget movies, for me, are for people who are struggling. Those I’ll do in a minute. Student films ain’t got no money–they’ll take you to lunch and give you a hundred bucks or something. It’s good enough, especially to get someone started.

Press: I liked Bad Ass a lot.
Trejo: I’ve got Bad Ass 2 coming out with Mel Gibson, which is awesome…wait! It’s not Mel Gibson! Mel Gibson is in Machete Kills! (laughs) It’s been a long day. Bad Ass 2 is with Danny Glover. I gotta say, Mel Gibson was awesome in this movie. I had a sword fight with him, and when Robert yelled, “Action!”,  I threw my sword down. Robert said, “What’s wrong?” and I said, “I’ve got to fight William Wallace?! He freed Scotland!” Mel has a great sense of humor. He laughed.

Press: What’s the tone like on the set?
Trejo: One day, we were in an abandoned Home Depot, completely empty. No AC, in Texas. I was looking around, and I was thinking, how could the morale on this movie be up? And it was so up! Nobody cared. We were having so much [fun]. Robert’s like me–he won’t do something if it’s not fun. If we’re not having fun, it’s like, let’s go home early. It starts from the top–if the director is having a good time, everybody is having a good time.

WTI: I think you’ve been blessed with this great face for film…
Trejo: That’s what Robert says!

WTI: It’s probably the most bad ass face I’ve ever seen. Is there anyone who you’d be afraid to face off with?
Trejo: Chuck Norris! (laughs) Let me tell you something–all of these guys who are supposed to be karate experts in the movies? If you want to make them shut up, just ask, “How would you do against Chuck Norris?” and they’ll go “Uh…”. Chuck’s the real deal. Everybody else is Hollywood. We were doing Con Air, which was the biggest test of testosterone. You 50 Hollywood wanna-be bad guys. You’d spit, and somebody else would spit a little further. Soon, everybody’s [spitting]! Everything was a contest. This guy who used to fight Chuck Norris, Benny Urquidez, a kickboxing champion, was John Cusack’s sensei. Now, nobody believes it, but John Cusack is a BMF! He’s bad. He looks like the kind of guy you’d pick on, but he’d kick your ass, man. At lunch, Benny would grab me and say, “Let’s go to the dojo.” We’d meditate, work out and stuff. We’d all throw rocks to see who could throw the farthest, and they said, “No, Dan. If you lose, you’ll throw a rock at somebody!”

Press: Is there any question you wish journalists would stop asking you?
Trejo: No. Everybody’s pretty considerate.

Press: No one crosses the line?
Trejo: I just give them a dirty look. It’s funny, everybody has trouble with the paparazzi, but they’ve always been polite to me.

Press: Who would win in a fight–Machete or Rambo?
Trejo: I think Machete would be a little too slick, and I think Rambo knows it!

WTI: Do you have any intention of stopping making the Machete movies?
Trejo: No. As long as the audience likes them. Even with Rocky, they said, “Why are you making Rocky V?” Because Rocky IV made money! When they stop making money, we’ll stop making them. So far, we’re batting 1000. We’re doing really well.

Press: How was it working with Demian Bichir?
Trejo: He’s awesome. He’s so beautiful. We hit it off the minute we met. He said, “I’ve always been a fan,” and I said, “Shut up! You got nominated for an Oscar!” He’s a great actor. Carlos Estevez! Everybody wanted to be in this movie because the last one was so good. We got Amber Heard. I have a love scene with her. Robert said action, and he said, “Why are you laughing, Amber!” She said, “Because Danny won’t stop saying ‘Thank you Jesus! Thank you Jesus!'” She’s such a Texas girl. Her dad’s from Texas. We all went to look at this car somebody got–everybody was looking at the interior, the color, etc. Amber’s a Texas girl–“What kind of horsepower does it have?” (laughs)