Does that mean you’re not looking for feature films to do together?
“Actually, the next film I’m directing, I’m directing one in Columbia and there’s an L.A. contingency to that. It takes place in Columbia and Los Angeles, and I want her to be this role in the Los Angeles part of it. It’s a really beautiful story and it’s a role that I’ve never seen her do. I know she would nail it and I think people get locked into ideas of what they think people are. They’re like, ‘Oh, she’s the She’s All That girl,’ and it happened like 10 years ago or whatever. She has done dozens of other roles since then with incredible performances. But I wanted to write something which I knew was just like completely out of her comfort zone.”
So you would be directing her?
“I would be directing her.”
How do you think that will go?
“I don’t know and I’m really looking forward to being as decent and as diplomatic, and create a place where she feels like she is free to do what she does without censorship and stuff. And I might fail. I don’t know.”
It’s been done before.
“It has been done before, but if it ever looked like something that was standing in the road or obstructing our harmony as a married couple, I’d kill it. I would stop it.”
You’d stop it? Does that mean you’d fire your own wife?
“‘You’re fired. Get out.’ No, I’d get somebody else to direct the scene. I’d get somebody else to direct it.”
Is directing something you’d rather do than act?
“No, I’m directing because I have to act. I’m acting in the film as well. I just never wanted to be one of those actors who is waiting around for a job, waiting for the phone to ring. I turned 29 and I made that decision. I thought of writing that day, basically. Two weeks after I turned 29, I’ve been writing every day ever since. If you want to make any film, you can make it. I really believe that. And I don’t think that people are talking about very interesting things in film at the moment.”
What is your film about?
“It’s about the assassination of street children and child prostitutes in Bogotá. It happens in a lot of countries, not just Columbia, but like in Peru and Rio de Janeiro. They call them ‘los desechables’ which means ‘the disposable.’ These posses get sent out by right-wing and paramilitary groups to kill people on the streets who are causing problems for the cities, and no one is doing anything about it. (Joking) So it’s a comedy…it’s a Christmas movie.”
How did you get interested in that subject?
“I went to Panama last year. I shot my own movie. I wanted to prove that you could make a movie with just two guys, a camera and a couple microphones. So I made this film called Wait for Me in Panama last year. It's got its problems, because of those two guys, a camera, and a couple microphones, but it’s also like, I really believe for the amount I made it for, I’ll tell you, I made it for $5,000 and it looks like a $100,000 film. It really does. I have no problem saying that.
The sound is a problem, but I did it so that I could make it. And once I wrote this Columbia thing, and to answer your question, there was lot of human trafficking going on. I noticed there were a lot of Columbian prostitutes in Panama City, women who if they were in this culture and in this city, would be hired as models by the top agencies in three seconds. Some of the most beautiful women you have ever seen, and they were sleeping with three and four men a night for 20 U.S. a night. They were trafficked and they were locked into these deals with really dark and shady people in Panama. I just started getting really interested in how that had happened and why that happened. I started researching and one thing led to another and I realized that the problems in Columbia were so great that those drug wars in the northwest were pushing everybody to major centers and then to other cities. And if you were born pretty, chances are you’re going to be a prostitute.”
Do you have financing in place for that film?
“I’m doing that at the moment, which is an interesting thing for me as an actor because I’ve never done that before. Hustling that stuff is a whole other game, but I kind of dig it. It happened. There’s money out there. People want to make movies! People want to make movies and you just have to present them with a product that you’re going to make. They don’t always want to make your product and they more often than not don’t want to read the scripts, and they want to know that there’s five movies stars in it…”
