ON SCREEN: The film Cesar Chavez is filled with authentic visual details, including the religious iconography that was a staple of UFW events and the infamous “short hoes” that ravaged the bodies of farmworkers forced to use them.
Two versions of Cesar Chavez come to light in new film, book. By Hector Tobar
At least 25 streets and 46 schools are named in his honour, but many young people know little about Cesar Chavez, who in life was a polarising figure, most famous for the successful series of marches, fasts and strikes he led on behalf of mostly immigrant farmworkers.
The next big act of Chavez’s afterlife begins this month, with the first dramatic film about the towering Chicano figure and a major biography due out days before California and other states celebrate Cesar Chavez Day on March 31.
Both projects seek to reclaim Chavez’s place in the American memory. But the book and the movie offer markedly different portraits of a man who joined the pantheon of American civic saints after his death in 1993.
In the film Cesar Chavez, by a Mexican production team led by the actor-director Diego Luna, he is a heroic and beatific figure using nonviolence to lead his people to victory. The movie ends with Chavez’s United Farm Workers (UFW) winning contracts in 1970 from recalcitrant growers.
The 534-page book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez, by former Los Angeles Times editor and reporter Miriam Pawel, follows Chavez, from his birth in a Depression-era Arizona and his father’s loss of the family farm, to his death, following a long period in which the UFW was in decline.
Much of the second half of the book delves deeply into what Chavez’s old allies call “the dark side” — his isolation and his embrace of what some saw as a cult of personality. For Luna, the movie has been a four-year crusade, working largely outside the Hollywood studio system.
“We’re lucky (Hollywood) didn’t say yes,” Luna said in an interview. Hollywood executives suggested Luna cast one of two bankable Spanish heartthrobs, Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem, as the lead. Instead he gave the role to Michael Pena. Like many talented Mexican-American actors, Pena’s has a resume filled with mostly small roles, including as a sheikh in American Hustle.
Luna and his production company Canana (which he co-founded with actor Gael Garcia Bernal) have been screening the film for select, often largely Latino audiences across the US ahead of its release date. Last Wednesday, he also screened it at the White House for President Barack Obama.
“We found the right partners for the film,” Luna said. Mexican investors put up much of the funding. The $10mn film, shot in Sonora, Mexico, is being distributed by Participant Media and Lionsgate, and is opening in about 600 theaters.
Cesar Chavez is filled with authentic visual details, including the religious iconography that was a staple of UFW events and the infamous “short hoes” that ravaged the bodies of farmworkers forced to use them. America Ferrera plays Cesar’s wife, Helen, with Rosario Dawson as union leader Dolores Huerta and Jack Holmes as ally Robert F Kennedy. At 101 minutes, the film limits itself to a decade in Chavez’s life.
The book, published by Bloomsbury Press, is the first full-scale biography. “I’m writing beyond the hagiography,” Pawel said. “It does him a disservice to portray him in a more simplistic way.”
Chavez earned his saintly hue by going on a 25-day fast in 1968 that helped turned public opinion in the UFW’s favour, an event that’s key in Luna’s film. But Pawel said the film only fleetingly captures the real Chavez’s genius for strategy and tactics. He could also be gruff leader who gave no quarter to perceived enemies, a quality he readily acknowledged. Pawel made ample use of archival sources, including Chavez’s papers, which he donated to Wayne State University in Detroit. She also listened to hundreds of tapes of interviews and UFW board meetings. The early tapes capture his “lyricism” and idealism, she said. But later tapes record the ethnic slur he used in the 1970s to refer to undocumented immigrants he considered to be strikebreakers.
The sharply different perspectives reflect how the film and book were made. Canana held the Chavez family’s film rights, and the family met extensively with Luna and his cast. But author Pawel is persona non grata to Chavez’s descendants, largely because she wrote a 2006 series in the Times that portrayed the modern-day UFW as an organisation that does little to improve the lot of farmworkers. — Los Angeles Times/MCT
Paltrow posts no-make up selfie on Twitter
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has thanked water and its “healing power” by sharing her no make-up selfie on Twitter. The 41-year-old posted a selfie sans make-up on the microblogging site to celebrate World Water Day earlier this week, reports huffingtonpost.com. Paltrow had also said that her beauty routine is “very minimal”.
“After I drop my kids, I always exercise and then I take a shower and I basically just put on moisturiser — and that’s kind of it,” she said. “If I have a meeting or something I’ll put on some mascara, but that’s as far as I go,” she added. — IANS
Katie Price bitten by cycling bug
Model Katie Price, who completed a 25-mile cycling challenge for charity, now plans to embark on a 300-mile bike ride.
The former glamour model undertook a 25-mile ride at the Sainsbury’s Sport Relief Games at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, East London, on Sunday.
She enjoyed the experience so much that now she has her sights set on a tougher challenge. “Really enjoyed 25 miles today for sport relief! My next challenge for charity is a 300 mile bike ride,” she tweeted. Price was joined at the Sport Relief games by husband Kieran Hayler.
The glamour model, who has children Harvey, 11, Junior, eight, and Princess, six, from previous relationships and Jett, seven months, with Hayler, is no stranger to sporting challenges for charity. — IANS
Actor Vin Diesel has thanked fans for support towards the news that the makers of Fast & Furious franchise are resuming work on the seventh installment. He says it’s his “most significant” project ever.
“God knows we will need all of you to complete this intense experience called Seven. Though this may be one of the hardest things I have had to do in my career, I can’t help but to think that it will also be the most significant,” contactmusic.com quoted Diesel as saying.
He also recently posted a new tribute to his Fast & Furious co-star Paul Walker, who died in a fiery car crash in November 2013. Of the personal and professional bond that he and his co-star shared, Diesel shared that Walker had become close to his own family.
Alongside a picture of Walker with Diesel’s brother, also called Paul, the actor posted on Facebook: “Pablo (Walker) and my mother would have deep conversations ... she claimed, that it was no accident that this on-screen duo has come to define brotherhood in Our millennium. “You see ... the other guy in the photo is also named Paul ... and although they look more alike, he is actually my twin brother.” – IANS