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Writer/director Franc. Reyes shares his
experiences working with producer
John Singleton (Hustle & Flow, Four Brothers) and the cast of
Illegal Tender, his second feature
film. He starts the film in his
home town of the Bronx, and takes the
audience on a wild ride through the
suburbs, to Puerto Rico and back in this
ground-breaking action thriller starring
Rick Gonzalez and Wanda De Jesus.
What's the history behind Illegal
Tender? How did you get together
with John Singleton on this project?
I met him at a party that Spike Lee
threw for
25th Hour
or something like that, and I went up to
him, introduced myself, and told him
that we should work together one day. He
gave me his number, and you know how
those parties go, I didn’t think
anything was going to happen. I
saw him 2 years later, I was coming out
of a coffee house and he was going in
and I spoke to him and said listen, I
have this idea. And he said well, come
over tomorrow and pitch it to me. So I
went over and pitched it to him, and he
said "if you write this in 3 weeks, I’ll
get it made". So I locked myself
up for like 10 hours a day, and got it
done in 3 weeks. And actually we
shot the script, there were no rewrites.
Were
any of the characters based on people
you know?
When you sit down and write, it’s always
like an amalgamation of different
people, but the Millie character stems
from most of the women. I’m one of
those lucky men that had a lot of strong
women in their life, so in my
screenplays, I never write weaklings;
they’re always very strong women.
Growing up in the south Bronx in the
eighties was a pretty amazing time in a
sense. I grew up in a neighborhood
where, I think it was
Time magazine that called it the
most dangerous piece of real estate in
the country. At the time, I had a lot of
friends, a lot of people that where
doing drugs and stuff, and I often
wondered what happened to those
relationships, when the men go away.
So I decided to tell a story. I just
tried to do a success story from that.
The film is very
realistic, but there are times when all
of a sudden it’s reminiscent of
Sin
City with the two women with guns,
and at one point it almost seemed like a
horror film.
Well I mix genres. That was my
intention. It’s funny because
people talk about those two “hit women”,
but I knew girls like that. They
dressed just like that. They
weren’t these tough looking women. They
were sexy girls that would smoke your
boots if you did something wrong.
Any plans for horror movie?
Actually I wrote a horror film.
I’m thinking about doing it.
How did you get the idea to have the
Mother as the backbone of the story?
The way I see it, mom always held it
down. It wouldn’t have been honest, had
I done it any other way.
Given that this is
such a family story, I would’ve expected
Wilson’s girlfriend to leave.
It’s not that easy. There aren’t a
lot of men out there, real men. So she
saw him protecting her and she’s not
going anywhere.
It was refreshing to see an all Latino
cast. The film really gives an
intimate view of Latino culture and
family. What in particular were
you trying to get across about Latin
culture?
This movie was not so much about being
Puerto Rican as much as it was about
being a mother and a son, but you always
stick your culture in it, you always put
it in there.
By doing something like this, I’m always
going to stick the culture in there if I
can. I did it in
Empire, and I did it in this one,
and a little bit in
The Ministers.
What was the toughest part about casting
this film?
I don’t think it was tough at all, what
I enjoyed about casting this movie, was
realizing how much great Latino talent
there is out there, you wouldn’t know.
I remember going to see a play at the
public, and seeing these guys do amazing
work, in Taming of the Shrew, or
something, and they end up being the guy
they smack around on CSI. You go
wait a minute, I just saw you.
What that said to me, was that people of
color just don’t get the chance to do
roles, they don’t get a chance to be the
protagonist. I don’t think Rick
Gonzalez would have ever gotten a role
like this by another film maker.
Was Wanda De Jesus
always a choice of yours for Millie?
That role was the biggest joy to cast,
because they were coming in from
everywhere. Amazing actresses, one
better then the other, but when Wanda
walked through the door…that was it.
It was done. She walked in, did it
and had it on lock down. I couldn’t look
at anyone else.
It seems like
you’re starting up an ensemble cast?
Yes, Manny Perez worked on the last two
films, he worked on this one and
The Ministers. Also Wanda De Jesus, John Leguizamo.
Your films, and also
John Singleton’s
films usually have huge, often
Shakespearean or classic themes.
Do you think about that when you’re
writing?
You start with a premise, you sit there
and you think “what do I want to talk
about? And 9 out of 10 people I know
were raised by single moms; that’s the
story I wanted to talk about. It
just went on from there.
What about your next film?
I just finished a film this winter
called
The Ministers, with Harvey Keitel
and John Leguizamo. Basically it’s about
back in the seventies when landlords
were burning buildings down for
insurance purposes. There were two
Pentecostal ministers burned in the fire
and they leave behind three sons.
One becomes a Pentecostal minister, one
has his face burned, and the other one
becomes a cab driver. The
Pentecostal minister kid is killed
accidentally by police officers.
The other two go out and kill the wrong
police officer in front of his 14 year
old daughter. Years later, one of
them actually is in love with her and
ends up getting together with that
police officer’s daughter, but she’s a
cop after them.
Is this one you
wrote?
This is one I wrote, yes.
You seem driven to be a
writer/director.
Well, that was my intention. I
like to think that I want to tell the
New York story. Spike Lee has his
way of telling the African American New
York story. Woody has his way of
telling the Upper West Side story,
Scorsese has his way of telling the
Italian lower east side story, I wanted
to tell the Latino story from the New
York point of view.
Now you have your own production company
too.
Yeah I have a production company,
Alumbra films, to do my next two or
three films, but ultimately I want to
open it up to do films by other film
makers.
The music was great, who did it?
I hired a guy named Heitor Pereira to do
the score. He did
Gladiator and stuff like that with Hanz Zimmer, but I wanted to do a
modern day Lalo Schifrin. The type of
stuff Lalo was doing back in the 70’s.
I think he did a phenomenal job.
How involved were you with the music?
I wrote the songs for my last film, I
didn’t get involved musically with this
one too much, because as soon as I
finished, I had to go off and do
The Ministers. I made sure Heitor was sending me stuff all the
time when I was on the set of the other
film. That’s when John stepped in
and played a major role in putting the
music together.
Given the amount of action, and mixed
genres, how important was it for you to
have a really strong narrative?
It was important. The whole idea
of keeping that thread going, the idea
of the family. You have Wanda’s
character as a younger character
explaining, “we don’t have to do this
anymore, we’ve invested well”, and then
she’s explaining how she invested to her
son. So you have that thread, you
have that journey and that’s important
as a filmmaker and as a storyteller.
What would you say to people that have
issues about the amount of violence,
specifically about stereotypes of
violence in the Latin community?
I’ve said it before; maybe…maybe a hot
dog might be more American than
violence. I don’t think it would
have made a difference if I put violence
in there, or if I put a hot dog in.
The violence that we are seeing in the
streets and the images we are seeing are
not from Puerto Ricans, they’re from our
own army…we’re at war.
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