The life of Cesar Chavez is a story that must be told. He was a man who dedicated his life to accomplishing change in a community that really needed it. He helped a community that was being poorly treated by instilling confidence and providing them with dignity.
We live in a classist, racist, homophobic society into which we are very assimilated, that's all. I'm not really proud about that.
When I was 12, I used to be the best friend of the most beautiful girls, but just the best friend. They would always come to me to cry about a guy who broke their heart, and I would just be sitting there thinking, 'I wish I was the guy and not the best friend.'
As consumers, we are making choices,and we allow things to exist, and we celebrate the existence of things. And we can also boycott those things we don't want to be part of.
In Mexico, you need to be a bulldog to make a movie because everything is set up for you to go back home and get depressed and not do the movie.
You see Mexican cinema in festivals throughout the world, and you see Mexican directors getting recognized at Cannes, at the Oscars, in Berlin, but the question is, What is the end result of that in terms of the market? That's where it's lacking.
I wasn't a fan of boxing, I was a fan of Julio Cesar Chavez. All of Mexico stopped to watch his fights. Old, young, left, right and centre.
Julio Cesar Chavez is the most important sporting figure we have ever had.
I always wondered why there weren't any films about Cesar Chavez. There are movies about other civil rights leaders in this country, but why not Chavez?
With many things in life, you're there because there's a cute girl around that you want to go out with, and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with 'Amarcord' to me.
I always liked Darth Vader. I remember, when I was a kid, I went to the toy store for the Darth Vader pencil case. I took that to school for years.
I'm always going to be working on my English, and I'm always going to work on my English so that I can do different characters from different nationalities.
To me, directing movies is just that. It's a need to question myself and set the things that disturb me on the table.
I would pretty much like to forget the music that happened to me between the ages of eight and 11, so I'm going to say the first album I bought was the special edition of 'Dark Side of the Moon.'
Audiences want to feel represented, want to be able to empathize with the characters and the stories they are seeing on the screen.
Being at a film festival reminds me of the power of film. The power that we have in our hands. Telling specific stories about personal matters can start the debate that is needed today, and that connect you with realities that you had no idea were connected.
I connect much more with theatre actors than with cinema actors - insofar as you can speak of 'cinema actors' in Mexico, because there isn't a big film industry.
My dad was a theater designer, and I spent a lot of time hanging around the dressing room listening to whatever the actors were listening to, which is where I heard Pink Floyd for the first time.
I think film can change lives. Doing 'Milk' changed mine, for sure. When I see that someone like Harvey Milk changed his life and the lives of many others in just eight years, I feel powerful. I go out of the cinema saying, 'Maybe there's something I can do, too.'
You exorcise the things that haunt you. That's one good thing about any artistic discipline.
