‘Frida’ Movie Will Be Made, Valdez Vows

Playwright and director Luis Valdez was reeling on two fronts Thursday: It was the day after he learned that New Line Cinema had pulled out of a deal to co-finance his film “Frida and Diego,” and the day of a demonstration by some Latino actors who feel he betrayed them by casting a non-Latina as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

But Valdez vowed the movie will be made, and has begun negotiations with other potential film distributors. He also defended his casting of Laura San Giacomo as Kahlo as a move to appease New Line with an established actress, which he said was necessary because of the difficulty in getting movies made in Hollywood about Latinos.

The obstacles surrounding this movie--or any project with minority characters--were summed up, he said, by one producer’s reaction to a film project that Valdez was pitching: “What? No Anglos?”

“Frida and Diego” has become a high-profile project because of growing interest within the international art community in the life and paintings of Kahlo and her tempestuous relationship with her husband, muralist Diego Rivera. At one point Madonna had hoped to play Kahlo in a separate version. Valdez’s movie is considered a “prestige” film, but as with other films with esoteric themes, financing was uphill.

“If it’s not gangs or drugs, they don’t seem to think it’s commercial,” said Dr. David Maciel, a history and film professor at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, who is writing a book on the cultural history of the Mexican cinema.

In the movie, Raul Julia is cast as Rivera. Valdez will direct from the script co-written with his wife Lupe Trujillo Valdez, and based on the 1990 biography of Kahlo by Martha Zamora.

“Frida and Diego” also has been a rallying point for Latino actors, who said they have found little opportunity for non-stereotypical roles that take them out of the barrios and gangs. With jobs so scarce, Valdez’s casting of San Giacomo, who is of Italian descent, became a particularly sensitive issue.

Despite the announcement from New Line, some Latinos affiliated with the movie business said Thursday in a protest at the Beverly Hilton Hotel that they were outraged by the decision to cast a non-Latina, according to the City News Service. Among dozens of demonstrators, several participants were dressed in traditional costumes of embroidered blouses and ruffled skirts, a motif used frequently in Kahlo’s self-portraits. One protester carried a placard that read: “If Frida Were Alive, Would You Let Her Audition?”

Margarita Martinez, who manages several Latino actors, said the “problem of underrepresentation” of Latinos in the entertainment industry “is far greater than any one studio or production company.

“We understand the profit motive behind a big-name star playing one of our people,” Martinez said. “But if you’re going to take away some of our good roles, give us back some roles that are not necessarily for Hispanics.”

Earlier this week, all had appeared to be ready for the film to go into production on location in Mexico City this fall. Valdez said the production would employ dozens of Latinos, “both in front of and behind the cameras.”

Then on Wednesday, New Line production division president Sara Risher said that the film was no longer “financially viable.”

“The co-production with the Mexican government has not been signed and is taking much longer than anyone thought,” said Risher. She added that negotiations with a separate but unnamed financing partner “fell apart.”

New Line, which typically spends $2 million to $10 million on productions, decided that it would have to put up more of “Frida and Diego’s” $10-million budget than it expected. “We concluded it would not necessarily be such a good deal for us,” Risher said. She added that the decision had nothing to do with the casting protests.

But Valdez, speaking from his home in San Jaun Bautista, Calif., where he is a founding member of the widely respected El Teatro Campisino, suggested otherwise. He said the film would cost well under $10 million, although he would not give a specific figure.

He said such distributors as the Samuel Goldwyn Co., Miramax Films and Dino DeLaurentis Corp. are now interested. Donald Zuckerman, one of the film’s producers, said interest is also coming from such major studios as TriStar Pictures, MGM and Paramount Pictures Corp. He said he had also been assured of continued support from the project’s co-partner, the Mexican government’s Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografia.

Part of the problem New Line had with the film was the casting, according to Valdez. The playwright said that even the two actors he had cast were not “big enough names” to persuade New Line to continue support for the film. San Giacomo has appeared in “sex, lies, and videotape” and “Pretty Woman.” Julia was a star of “The Addams Family” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

“I had to find someone who looked like Frida, someone who was box office enough for New Line to greenlight. As it turned out, it (the casting) was not enough for New Line. So I had to go to Mexico to seek additional funding.”

After a year and a half of negotiating with New Line and others on the project, Valdez does not seem deterred. “This picture is not dead anymore than Frida Kahlo was dead after her 1925 accident. This film will rebound from the jaws of narrow mindedness and lack of courage,” he said.

But he remains stunned by the indifference of the movie community to Latino movies and by criticisms from the Latino actors, many of whom he has worked with over the years.

Valdez says he knows of only two films made in Hollywood this year about Latinos. “They present the same, negative image of Chicanos in the barrio. . . . How is it that Hollywood is prepared to spend $50 million on gangbangers, but is not even prepared to spend less than a fifth of that to tell the story of two Mexican geniuses (Kahlo and Rivera) who lived and loved and struggled together?”

One of the films to which Valdez referred is Universal Pictures’ release of “American Me” directed by, and starring Edward James Olmos (who made his breakthrough in Valdez’s “Zoot Suit). The second is the upcoming film from Walt Disney’s Hollywood Pictures division, “Blood In Blood Out.” Like “American Me,” it also focuses on Los Angeles street gangs.

Valdez said many of the people protesting his casting have worked on these films that show the “worst” of Latino life. “I have been silent about these films because I don’t believe in attacking any film about Latinos. I see this (making films) as an evolutionary process . . . we’ll cut through the garbage and get to the essential stories.”

Valdez called the casting protests an “attempt to make me a scapegoat for the evils of Hollywood. It amounts to a form of intimidation. I have spent the last 12 years trying to get better images of Latinos on the screen. I auditioned Latinos for the role.

“Their issues are not something that I am unaware of. I have spent my life writing and performing on behalf of the dignity of Latinos everywhere. And it is absurd to think that I would have not presented my beliefs from the outset.”

In his first response to the protests, Valdez said he felt he could cast a non-Latina because Kahlo was German-Jewish on her father’s side and Mexican on her mother’s side.

“Frida was a child of America, born of a complicated system of races and beliefs. It’s too facile and too much of a cheap shot to attack me for casting Laura. I cast her because she looks the part and can play the role.

“The ultimate result will be a Mexican character on the screen,” he vowed. If the film is made, Valdez believes it can be the start of further film co-ventures between American companies and their Mexican counterparts.