"The real man is someone who recognizes that there is nothing more beautiful than women," said Eduardo Verástegui. "They are sacred and they’re beautiful, and they have dignity. You have to respect them. So everything changed five years ago and that’s when I realized that, as an actor, you don’t have so much control, power to control the message because you have to submit yourself to the script. Everything is already made, so you just work and give life to the character.
I realized that the only way you can control the message is if you become a producer. So I opened this production company with that intention of making films that will have the potential not only to entertain, but to make a difference. Films that will touch people’s hearts and minds, and light a candle in their heart. My hope as a producer now is that when people see Bella or any of the films that we will produce, they will leave wanting to love more and judge less. They will leave wanting to forgive more and complain less. They will leave with a candle in their heart. They will leave inspired to use their talents to serve others. They will leave with hope and love and wanting to be a better person.
I think there’s nothing more beautiful than really using this amazingly powerful means – television, film, music, whatever you do in the media, journalist, reporter, actor, musicians – sometimes we have so much responsibility and we forget that whatever you do, whether you like it or not, you are going to affect how people think, how they live, and how they behave. Young people live according to the standards of what they see in the media. Just recently somebody told me that the average percentage between parents and children having meaningful conversations is only six minutes a day. But in front of the media, more than eight hours a day. So we know that if parents are not educating their children, schools either – then who? Well, the media. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the media. I think it’s an amazing opportunity, but I think sometimes what comes out of the media is not the best thing for young people or not the healthiest thing. Because we have this tendency and this inclination to imitate and to copy what we see in films or television or whatever we’re reading – magazines, newspapers – or what we hear on the radio. We’re very influenced by that. So that’s when it hit for the first time in a way that I decided, ‘Okay, so why am I here? What am I going to do?’
We put this company together with two of my best friends – Alejandro Monteverde and Leo Severino and myself. We set it up in my house with a little table, sofa, and a cell phone, just dreaming of making films that would make a difference in people’s lives – a positive difference. And it took us three years of putting the whole thing together. When Alejandro wrote the script of Bella, inspired by a true story, I read it and I really liked it because it had everything that I wanted to say. Next then you know, we met Sean and Eustace Wolfington from Philadelphia, they financed the film and bought part of the company. We went to New York and in 24 days we shot the film.”
24 days is an incredibly short shoot. How difficult was it for you to juggle producing and acting when you’ve got such a short time frame to get things done?
“Oh wow, it was the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my life (laughing). One day I was thinking, ‘I’m going to die of having a heart attack if I keep doing this!’ Well, the good news is that when I met Alejandro, he’s from the same place where I’m from. I’m from a very small town called Xicotencatl, this is below Texas. Alejandro is from Tampico which is an hour away from my place. His older brother was one of my best friends when I was in Mexico when I was a teenager. So then once a year I go to visit my family at Christmas and I was visiting my friends. I was visiting his older brother and when I told him about the things that I wanted to do, he said, ‘You should meet my brother. He just graduated from the University of Austin, Texas and he’s my brother, of course, but I have to say the guy’s a genius. You have to meet him. I’m not saying this only because the guy’s my brother, but the first time he touched a camera when he was at the University of Austin, Texas, he broke the record. He won four film festivals. Second time he touched a camera he won seven film festivals. He just graduated and he’s hungry. He just wants to use his talents to make a difference. Listening to you is the same thing he’s talking about all day. You should connect.’
And so we reconnected in Mexico because I hadn’t seen Alejandro for 10 years. He moved to LA and when he was driving from Austin to LA, the story of Bella came to him and he started crying. Next thing you know, he told me the story. He went to Lake Tahoe for two months because he wanted to be in silence. He knew a friend over there that he could borrow his house. And in two months he came and showed me the script. I read it and said, ‘Okay, so what’s next?’ We needed to find the money. But the good thing is I started working with the character since day one. It’s not like they gave me the script three months before. It was like almost two years of learning that character, talking to Alejandro about many, many details. I was just giving a lot of thought to the character. I let my beard grow for almost a year. By the time I got there, I was Jose. I was already Jose.
But it’s really hard because when you’re making a film that is a very small budget, with very, very little money in New York City which is the most expensive city to shoot in the country. That means that we have only one or two takes per scene, which is very scary because whatever you do, that’s what you’re going to see in this film so you better do it right. And it was a very hard role to play, as well."
