All About Machete
Trejo’s ongoing passion for a MACHETE feature film also had a significant impact on the filmmaker. “Danny would talk about doing a MACHETE movie for years,” says Rodriguez. “So when we made the trailer for ‘Grindhouse,’ I figured that would maybe be enough to satisfy our need to make the full film.” But the trailer triggered even more enthusiasm for a feature. “Danny continued to call me, saying, ‘Well, now we really have to make the movie because everyone wants it.’ So my phone would not stop ringing for two years until I finally broke down and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to give the fans what they want, and Danny what he wants. And I knew of course that I more than anyone wanted to see this movie finally get made. MACHETE’s time had finally come.”
Like Rodriguez, Trejo was inspired by people’s enthusiasm for a MACHETE movie. “The fans were everywhere,” Trejo says. “When I was in England a few years ago, I was stopped by two guys who had tattoos of the character Machete on their backs. When I signed my name [above their tattoos], they had my signature tattooed, as well.”
Machete is driven by vengeance, and that says Trejo, “makes him one bad m*****r.” Indeed, Trejo’s sharp-edged instincts and passion for the film and character – his first starring role in a career that spans a quarter of a century – has him sometimes even sounding like his onscreen persona: “Machete is a man of very few words but when he does say something, someone’s gonna die!”
As a youngster, Machete lived a hard life on the mean streets of Mexico. He was accepted at the police academy, where he excelled, and as a Federale, Machete was, as one character in the film describes, “CIA, FBI, and DEA all rolled into one mean burrito.” And what about that foreboding street name? Well, when a man spends his life fighting, he tends to be nicknamed after his weapon of choice. (Machete carries no fewer than 44 blades in his custom-made leather vest.)
Machete’s affinity for knives comes in handy when he makes an incredible escape from a hospital – and his looming execution. In what promises to become one of the film’s most talked-about sequences, Machete slices open an opponent’s belly and rappels down a wall with the goon’s intestine. Is the sequence over-the-top? Sure. But as Rodriguez reminds us, “The intestine is ten times longer than the human body. True fact.”
Portraying an inventive, knife-wielding character in a Robert Rodriguez film is nothing new for Trejo. “Every character I play has some kind of knife or sharp object,” says the actor. Adds Rodriguez: “In ‘Desperado,’ Danny was called ‘Navajas,’ which means knives; in ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ he was ‘Razor Charlie’ and in ‘Predators’ he was ‘Cuchillo’ [another Spanish word for “knife”]. So, Danny’s like a whole set of cutlery in and of himself.”
Finally committing to MACHETE feature film, Rodriguez honed the screenplay with co-writer Alvaro Rodriguez, brought in Ethan Maniquis as co-director, and began casting. In short order, Robert came up with one of the most eclectic line-ups in recent motion picture history. Joining Trejo is action icon Steven Seagal, “Avatar” and “Fast and Furious” heroine Michelle Rodriguez, “Lost’s” Jeff Fahey (who also had a role in “Grindhouse” – and in the original MACHETE trailer), comedy legend and Rodriguez film stalwart Cheech Marin (“From Dusk Till Dawn”), actor/singer/tabloid headliner Lindsay Lohan, “Miami Vice” topliner Don Johnson (the veteran film and television actor gets an “introducing” credit), popular leading lady Jessica Alba (“Sin City”) – and the renowned Robert De Niro.
Rodriguez admits this is an unexpected ensemble: “The cast may have sounded bizarre to some people when first announced. But when you watch MACHETE, you see that the actors fit their roles very well. The eclectic mix really works.” The casting also reflected a kind of “Six Degrees of Danny Trejo” situation. “Danny’s worked in hundreds of movies and probably worked with everyone in MACHETE at some point,” Rodriguez laughs. “Everyone just loves Danny and appreciated the fact he was finally getting to be the star of his own film. I remember Robert De Niro, who worked with Danny in ‘Heat,’ telling him that, “[MACHETE] is going to be really good for you.”
Rodriguez also credits De Niro’s participation as a key draw for the other cast members. “From the point you get Robert De Niro in your movie, all the other actors come running.” De Niro and Rodriguez had mutual friends and collaborators – including Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney – and the Oscar-winning actor, who co-heads Tribeca Films, was interested in checking out Rodriguez’s operations at his Austin-based Troublemaker Studios.
De Niro found much to enjoy in his MACHETE role, as Texas State Senator McLaughlin, an immigration hardliner who forms an unholy alliance with a brutal minuteman and a shady corporate opportunist. “What I liked about McLaughlin is that you can’t take him seriously,” De Niro explains. “McLaughlin lives in the real world, but he’s kind of a mythical figure way out on the fringe. I really appreciated Robert [Rodriguez]’s sense of humor and irony with the character.”
Don Johnson is Von – he has no last name – a take-no-prisoners minuteman who serves as a tour guide to McLaughlin during a horrific border hunt. “Von is basically the devil,” says Johnson, who, several years ago had cast Rodriguez as a commercials director in an episode of Johnson’s popular “Nash Bridges” series. “Von wants to stop – with extreme prejudice – anyone crossing the border. Yet we find that he’s actually driven by greed.”
A villainous figure that Machete crosses swords – literally – is Torrez, a drug cartel chief who’s even more powerful than the politicians ostensibly manipulating the events that trigger Machete’s unstoppable vengeance. Action hero icon Steven Seagal portrays Torrez, the actor’s first villainous role. As a master of the martial art Aikido, Seagal knows his way around a sword, and he worked closely with the film’s fight choreographers to get maximum impact of Torrez’s epic showdown with Machete.
Like De Niro, Seagal appreciated MACHETE’s bigger-than-life approach to the characters, story, and filmmaking process. “Torrez is not realistic but he’s not ridiculous, either,” Seagal points out. “He reflects Robert’s ‘super-reality’ vision – his special way of looking at images, textures and color.”
Of course, Machete also has some allies, chief among them being Michelle Rodriguez’s taco-slinging Luz and Jessica Alba’s Sartana, an agent in the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rodriguez hints there’s a lot more than meets the eye with her role. “Luz’s blood boils when she sees injustice, and things start to change when she gets outraged. People get organized. S**t happens.”
I.C.E. Agent Sartana is initially hot on the trail of Machete, whose path of destruction grabs her attention. But as she learns more about the man – and the myth – Sartana realizes he represents more than mayhem and a trail of dead bodies. “Sartana is no pencil-pushing bureaucrat,” says Jessica Alba. “She’s tough, street-savvy and smart, and soon understands there’s a lot going on with this guy. When Sartana and Machete finally meet, all kinds of sparks are ignited.”
Machete also gets help from his brother, known simply as Padre, a priest who has much more than absolution in store for the assassins gunning for Machete. “God has mercy; I don’t,” Padre informs them before dispensing some un-holy justice. Cheech Marin, another member of Rodriguez’s informal repertory company, is the Padre.
When Machete meets Lindsay Lohan’s April, the privileged daughter of a manipulative businessman named Booth, the consequences are unexpected – not the least of which has April donning a nun’s habit and wielding some powerful firearms. “April was born into a life of privilege and takes everything she has for granted,” says Lohan. “But she undergoes a big change. As an actress, I like pushing the envelope.”
April’s father, Booth, has set up Machete as part of an elaborate assassination plot. Booth is a master puppeteer who thinks he’s pulling all the strings, especially those of his would-be patsy, Machete. “But maybe Booth is in deeper than he can really handle,” offers Jeff Fahey, with more than a little understatement.
MACHETE isn’t Fahey’s first encounter with his on-screen alter ego Booth. A few years ago, Fahey had just wrapped a role in Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” segment of “Grindhouse,” when he got the call to suit up for the MACHETE trailer. At the time, the “Lost” star had no idea the two-minute piece would evolve into a much-anticipated motion picture event. But he wasn’t too surprised. “Robert has an incredible vision and is very precise, and [working on his films] you feel like you’re in the middle of something both big and experiential. And that anything is possible,” states Fahey.
Those intriguing possibilities include Rodriguez combining an epic action movie feel with the run-and-gun indie filmmaking brio that characterized his feature directorial debut, “El Marichi.” Rodriguez explains: “MACHETE looks huge, but we shot it very quickly. I knew it would create a lot of the energy that we wanted to be a part of the film. We never throttled down.”
The anything-goes spirit of the production is mirrored in the film itself, which will take moviegoers – those long-awaiting a MACHETE feature, as well as those new to the character and his world – on a wild ride. “People haven’t seen this type of movie before, featuring a Latin hero,” says Rodriguez. And it confirmed for the filmmaker that a storyteller should “never throw away ideas, because if they’re really good, they’ll stick around and come back.”
Machete (2010)
Directed by: Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro, Steven Seagal, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan, Daryl Sabara, Ara Celi, Marci Madison, Electra Avellan, Elise Avellan
Screenplay by: Robert Rodriguez
Production Design by: Christopher Stull
Cinematography by: Jimmy Lindsey
Film Editing by: Rebecca Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez
Costume Design by: Nina Proctor
Set Decoration by: Bart Brown
Music by: Chingon
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence throughout, language, some sexual content and nudity.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: September 3, 2010
