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Read Bjork's2001 interview with Juergen Teller from the index archives. |
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Kathleen Hanna discusses writing and making music in this interview from 2000 with Laurie Weeks. |
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Isabella Rossellini spoke with Peter Halley in this 1999 interview. |
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Alexander McQueen's 2003 interview with Bjork. |
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| Diego Luna, 2002
WITH EDUARDO MACHADO
PHOTOGRAPHED BY RYAN MCGINLEY |
He punched a hole through the screen in the Mexican break-out Y Tu Mamá También. His visceral talent and youthful sincerity are bringing him to the verge of international stardom.
EDUARDO: Your performance in Y Tu Mamá También was quite brave, very sexually open. When I was watching it I knew it was a star-making role. It was just so daring.
DIEGO: When you do something small but you put your whole heart into it, it can be very powerful. It can change your whole world. This movie made it possible for me to work in Spain and in Hollywood, and it brought me the attention to do interviews in a country that is not mine. I think one of the things that made the movie so successful here is that it's not a movie that you can imagine being made in America.
EDUARDO: Americans have a very hard time with male actors showing frontal nudity, especially in a sexual situation. It's something an American actor would never do.
DIEGO: I have to tell you — the first time I was completely nude on stage I was seven. It was a play called Pelicula. It starts with a little kid walking on stage nude with a flower in his hand, and then everyone gets undressed. So, yeah, I've been a porno star since I was seven. (laughs) But I didn't do any other naked roles until Y Tu Mamá También.
EDUARDO: You waited twelve years.
DIEGO: I waited to grow! But I began acting very young, I started to work in TV doing the telenovela El Abuelo y Yo when I was eleven. I did my first movie when I was twelve.
EDUARDO: You don't do the telenovelas anymore?
DIEGO: No, no. I'm really happy not to do TV. I think you can do good television, but it's very tough, especially in my country.
EDUARDO: Because they work so fast?
DIEGO: Yeah. You have to produce an hour every day. In the movies, you do two hours in three months. Television asks you for too many things and there just isn't any time. But movies are a chance to create exactly what you want to show. Like a good painting.
EDUARDO: Y Tu Mamá También employs a lot of the techniques that Tomás Gutiérrez used in Strawberry and Chocolate. You're in a very personal scene watching the main characters, and then the camera moves and shows you the condition of the people preparing them lunch, who are totally rural and very poor.
DIEGO: I think it's a courageous film because it focuses on the story about the main characters and their relationships, but at the same time it shows the real Mexico with all the good and the bad things. Latin America is very political. The people know a lot about politics and they talk about it all the time. Even the kids in this movie have a political position — I like that.
EDUARDO: Watching the audience, I thought they were scared at first because the film was so politically incorrect. This is a sex romp put in a political context, and American movies, including independent films, are very careful in how they show sex. The United States can be a very puritanical country.
DIEGO: The puritans are the people in the government. Most Americans are not puritans. They're normal, they have sex, I think. But it's not about them; it's about the people who say what is good or not good for them. This movie was a great proof of the audience's ability to choose what's best. It's an example of what not to do, at least not in bed. But it's a good film.
EDUARDO: Do you still live in Mexico?
DIEGO: I still have my house in Mexico City. In fact, when I'm there, I perform in a play called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Whenever I have a chance, I go to Mexico to be in it. This year has been a bit crazy for me. I haven't been in my country at all.
EDUARDO: So what are you doing in the US?
DIEGO: Having fun. I'm doing promotion for my new film, Frida, directed by Julie Taymor. I play Alejandro Gonzalez Arias, Frida Kahlo's first lover.
EDUARDO: Frida Kahlo is an icon. She was someone who was willing to take a revolutionary stand. She had an affair with Trotsky! But she's a dichotomy — at the same time she was totally submissive to Diego Rivera.
DIEGO: This was the first time that I got to play a character that I really care about. It's a very important story, one that I think every Mexican wants to tell. And it was an important step for me to act in English. I'm also making a western with Kevin Costner called Open Range. I play a cowboy. Kevin is both directing and acting in it. It also stars Robert Duvall and Annette Bening. I have more clothes on in this movie than I did in Y Tu Mamá También. The cowboys wear pants and chaps. That's a lot of clothes!
EDUARDO: What differences do you notice between the United States and the other places in the world where you work?
DIEGO: It's definitely different from Mexico. I can do ten, fifteen movies a year in my country. But there's no money, no industry. You do a movie for fun and because you really want to do it. And it's always a very personal project, not a big studio thing.
EDUARDO: What do you think of Hollywood?
DIEGO: This is the place where they make the most movies and I want to work here. But I don't have this feeling like, oh, I want to live in the United States and make movies and become famous just because the money is here. I like to make movies that tell stories that I care about. I wish some day that a movie like Y Tu Mama could be made in America.
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©
index magazine
Diego Luna by Ryan McGinley, 2002 |
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Site Design: Teddy Blanks. All photos by index photographers: Leeta Harding,
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