I heard so many stories that proved that truth is stranger than fiction. And there’s so many stories that didn’t make it into the film because, ultimately, I had to stay true to what Maria’s experience was. I talked to one guy who was in prison in Pennsylvania who told me in detail his whole story and part of it was that when he got to the United States, beyond getting paid his sort of salary, he was handed a bale of cash, 5s, 10s, 50s, and 100s that he was expected to take back. He had to stuff the cash into little rubber pellets and swallow the cash and carry it back in his stomach in order to smuggle the cash back to Colombia. It’s phenomenal the number of bizarre details that didn’t get into the film.
Did you ever become so immersed in the research you needed to take time off and walk away for a while?
No, because those were the moments that were actually the most inspiring to me. There was so much story there and it was so compelling. I think the thing that might have caused me to have doubt was whether or not I would actually ever get fully into the head of a 17 year-old Colombian girl. It was all a process of going to small towns and meeting them. I don’t think I was ever confident I was going to get Maria right until I actually met Catalina Sandino and that was when I felt like, “Okay, she’s going to be able to bring everything else to it that I wouldn’t be able to fully understand myself, personally.”
After doing all the research, you wound up allowing your actors to have a lot of say regarding their characters. Why did you give them so much freedom?
Because I’m not a Colombian and because I’m not a native Spanish-speaker. And because they, all the actors, have a whole set of knowledge and experience that is relevant to their characters that I could never have. It would be presumptuous of me to dictate and close off what the script was.
I think the script benefited from all the nuances and details they were able to bring to it as actors. So it was really important to me to open it back up and have a series of improvisations, see what they discovered as far as moments in each scenes, and also change the dialogue in subtle ways so that it really was not just Colombian Spanish, but a Spanish specific to the region within Colombia where the characters were supposedly from. We were rewriting together and it became a much more collaborative process. They all walked away with a real sense of ownership of their own characters, which not only benefited the script, but benefited the performances.
Your leading actress had not done a film before, and you hadn’t directed a feature before. Were there any special challenges?
The biggest challenge was just finding her. It was this long, long search. There was this whole long period of looking at actors. You’re looking for this sort of subtle find that allows you to convince yourself that this is the right person. But in the end, you are just hoping an actress is going to walk through the door and inhabit the character. It’s hard to say to the producer and the financier, “No, we have to keep looking. No, we can’t shoot yet.” And when you are pushing the shoot and a lot of people are already on the payroll, you’re spending money by the day just to be on hold in a holding pattern. It’s really hard. But fortunately I had people who understood the importance of getting Maria right. After seeing 800 girls, Catalina Sandino walked in the door and she was it.
Are you basically a writer who directs or a director who writes?
Hmm, I’ve never really broken it up that way. I just consider myself to be a filmmaker who writes and directs and creates film.
PAGE 3: On Little Colombia and Orlando Tobon
