Danny Trejo is having a busy day.
He was up long before the sun; long before the freeway clogged
with cars. His morning was typical for a promotions tour: a chauffeured ride to
a radio station. Then a TV studio. Radio. TV. Radio. TV. This went on all
morning. He's promoting Machete Kills,
his new (and second) kitschy grindhouse movie by Robert Rodriguez.
By the time he's sitting in front of me, in the concrete
cathedral of the Arizona Biltmore, he's yawning uncontrollably.
"Sorry," he says, mid-yawn, his feet kicked up and
crossed on a coffee table. "I'm running on two hours of sleep."
Trejo has 256 screen credits to his name, seven in 2013 alone. My
first question to him is, "When have you not been tired?"
"Yeah, right," he says, that long boomerang-shaped
mustache of his unrolling across his face as he smiles. "I've never really
stopped. I'll be watching something on TV and I'll look up and see myself.
'Hey, I'm in this one!' I've been in so many movies that I can't remember them
all. I can't slow down."
Even if you don't know who Trejo is, you're likely to have seen
him in something. Maybe Michael Mann's high octane heist-drama, Heat, in which Trejo played a bank
robber. Or maybe you'll remember him as Johnny-23 from Con-Air. Or perhaps on TV as undercover CIA agent Romeo on Sons of Anarchy. He played cartel snitch
Tortuga in two episodes of Breaking Bad, in which his character's severed head is loaded with explosives and perched atop a tortoise sent meandering toward some DEA agents. The show ended its glorious run the night before we spoke.
Did you watch the Breaking
Bad finale?
"No, I missed it. I just don't have time. People have been
talking about it though. I should probably watch it, but I don't watch a lot of
TV."
Trejo is smaller than I imagined. I'm short, and he's shorter
than me. In his movies, he always seems bigger. Maybe because he's always
playing the tough guy. Trejo admits he was typecast as the "macho
Mexican" early in his career, but that has since opened the door for more
opportunities.
"I've played so many tough guys. I remember one of my first
roles, I was Inmate #1," he said. "I thought it was funny, and I had
no idea what typecasting really was."
He says the typecasting never worried him, because, hey, work is
work.
"Years later, after I was acting more, I was doing an
interview and this young Latina, straight out of college, told me, 'Danny don't
you think you're being stereotyped?' She told me that I was always playing the
mean Chicano man with tattoos," he said. "I thought about it for a
second and I told her, 'I am the mean Chicano man with tattoos.' Somebody got
it right when they cast me. I mean, come on, I can't be cast as Daycare Worker
#1."
Trejo has quite a story: hooked on drugs at a young age, he was
in and out of jails and prisons through much of his early life. He was a boxer
and a weight lifter, and at one point was a champion boxer in San Quentin , California
The first one, brimming with its trademark nostalgia —
faux-scratches on the film stock, purposefully terrible acting, cheeseball
stunts and effects — was charming in its own violent little way. It had a great
tagline: "They just fucked with the wrong Mexican!" In it Trejo
played a day laborer fighting a corrupt Texas
kingpin and his congressional henchman. The sequel takes the same premise and
adds elements until the weight creates an unintended implosion. Mel Gibson, Lady
Gaga, Antonio Banderas and Cuba
Gooding Jr. all have supporting roles. At one point, during a sex scene, the
film warns you to put on your 3D glasses except, one problem, the movie isn't
in 3D. Machete Kills, despite
Trejo's warm nature and hard work, is too hyper for its own good. Frankly, I
didn't like it, but I did like Trejo, who lets this big, overeager movie roll
over him without crushing him to pieces. With his story, his extensive career
and his gentle demeanor, he is the most interesting part of the movie.
He's not your typical action hero. First of all, at 69 years old
— he was born less than a month before D-Day in the Echo
Park area of Los Angeles — he's not as spry as he once
was, though he holds his own in Machete
Kills. Second, the height thing. But height never stopped Tom Cruise.
Lastly, Trejo doesn't seem convinced he's a star yet. Or even a major player in
Hollywood . He
seems mostly focused on his next movies, none of which will feature him in the
starring role. Can you imagine Tom Cruise playing thankless bit parts at this
point in his career? I can't. But Trejo pulls it off, mostly with humility.
I ask if he considers himself a brand, a dependable commodity
within the movie business. After all, he's wearing a Machete shirt, Machete
hat and he's seated under a poster of his own face snarling with a curtain of
fire behind him.
"I can't think of stuff like that. I leave that to other
people," he said. "I'll say 'yes' to pretty much anything. If that
means anything to the movie business then I'll let someone else figure it
out."
He's been in so many movies, I wondered if there were any he was
sad to see fall through the cracks.
"Blood In, Blood Out
… I filmed that one 1993 and I'm really proud of that one," he says.
"I also did Sherrybaby with
Maggie Gyllenhaal and I learned a lot from that movie. Honestly, I didn't get
it the first time I saw it because there was so much drama and I didn't get to
kill anybody, but it's a really great movie."
He also mentions Mi Vida
Loca, a gang-drama set around a group of young female gang-bangers as they
maneuver around life and loss near Echo
Park
When I ask the flip side to that question — what big movies of
his was he tired of talking about — he clams up.
"I don't refuse to talk about anything I've done. In fact, the
only way I would regret doing a movie, is if I didn't bring my A-game. If I
showed up and phoned it in, that would be a problem to me," Trejo says.
"But honestly, I've never done a movie that I'm not proud of my performance. Some of them
are bombs, for sure, but I give my best effort for everything."
No irony is lost in the
moment as he yawns fiercely after he says this. A big yawn, too. Hands on the
back of his head, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide open kind of yawn. He might be
the hardest working man in Hollywood .
He certainly is today doing these madcap press outings.
After we part ways, he heads off to a set of roundtable
interviews with whole squadrons of young college journalists. His day isn't
even over yet. When he's done with those, it's back on a car, then back on a
plane and off to another city to start the whole thing over again. It's a
relentless cycle, but Trejo pushes onward with a smile and a yawn.
