By Tonisha Johnson

With the ending of ‘That’s 70s Show’ actor Wilmer Valderrama wastes no time with moving on from the television screen to the big screen with Fast Food Nation; a hard look at the conditions of the meat industry and the real immigration issue that without investigation would be still a best kept secret by the government.

Valderrama portrays a slaughter house factory worker responsible for the ‘cleanup’ and convinces his wife (Catalina Sandino Moreno) to join him in the quest for quick cash. The acting in this film isn’t as important as the subject matter. Both discuss how working with this film and the subject that has been brought to their attention has reshaped their lives in regards to where they purchase their food and how healthy they eat.

How did you like playing Mexican’s? Was that difficult in any way?

Wilmer Valderrama: We focused a lot on the universal theme of the film and also the immigration issue; and coming to America. When it came to the technical part of it we worked with a dialect coach to get as close to the Mexican accent.

Catalina Sandino Moreno: But that’s the thing. They could be from any where in the world. Both of us are immigrants so we can relate to a lot of things they were going through.

Wilmer Valderrama: Mexico is so big and there are so many dialects. Every region of that country has different dialect so we focused on a particular region and tried our hardest.

Did you interview or talk to the meat packers?

Catalina Sandino Moreno: The workers were just working. It was a real slaughter house. The line was moving and you couldn’t talk to these people because they had huge knives in one hand and a hook in the other one. Their machines. Their just doing their jobs so it was hard to like say… excuse me… lol. Their energy was so… their just killing and killing and more killing.

Wilmer Valderrama: It’s like a car factory. But instead of cars its cows and this human… the machine is perfect but as humans, as we all know we’re not perfect so those mistakes end up on the killing floor and those mistakes end up in our food. But in the bigger scheme of things they’ve become much part of the machine that they are almost another piece of the machine. And that’s crazy to see because they were… in retrospect that’s what that was. To really see how they become apart of the machine and how their routine and how everything really went about. I actually got to talk to some of them. Our extras were all workers of the slaughter house. And we had a limited crew. We had a limited amount of people that could walk in and shoot. That was real movie making.

Did you find the Guerilla style filmmaking a bit difficult to work with?

Cataline Sandino Moreno: It was their energy. As soon as you walk in that place their energy is like fast.

You can’t be like no no… I need more time. It’s like fast. You get it or you just don’t get it.

Wilmer Valderrama: It was very awakening because we didn’t wear any make up. Throughout the whole movie we pretty much don’t wear any makeup. And then when we’re there we need to get it done. I come from TV and TV’s like that (snaps fingers). We have a deadline and we need to meet that. With this movie we loved the script so much.

Did you read the book?

Both. Yes.

With the conditions of the meat packing plant did that add to your character or were you just disgusted by it?

Catalina Sandino Moreno: I think it was perfect. When you read the script you know what’s going to happen to the character. You know the problems. You know everything. In this kind of film, I’ve never been to a slaughter house before but the first time that I went, I was acting but I didn’t have to act. Because it was a discovery for me. It was a surprise. It’s so nice to have little surprises in a movie. It was very helpful to me because I didn’t have to do much. I just had to look and react.

Wilmer Valderrama: Every 60 seconds a cow becomes a steak and that’s very intense. It’s intense to see such a machine working to fill a quota. That was tough. And to see what happens to the workers that no matter what kind of health issues they were having the belt must move. A lot of people had been working there so long that they develop physical problems because of the magnitude of the work. So they are either forced to take drugs and squeeze in a few hours for extra money.

When you talk about the machine is one thing but the amount of animals that are killed in so little time; the production of these animals are like breeding as oppose to naturally raised animals. They are manufactured.

Wilmer Valderrama: We had the tough hard core right in front of us.

Catalina Sandino Moreno: There are like a 100 cows in this little area.

Do you eat organic now?

Wilmer Valderrama: Well, that’s the goal. This movie taught me to be very aware of were you buy your stuff.