After nuestro Gael-cito got “sick” this past Sunday and stood up las futboleras de Remezcla for a friendly cascarita, we ended up settling for a pre-screening of Rudo y Cursi and Q&A with the film’s director, Carlos Cuarón, on Cinco de Mayo at Cinema Tuesdas at the Montalbán in Hollywood. We weren’t too sure what to expect from the pairing of sponsors that were, well, you can just say they were eclectic: Nike Sportswear, Nacional Records, Super Estrella, and yes, even El Consulado de Mexico (no worries, the peeps wearing Consulado name badges assured everyone they were free of the mighty, puerco influenza!).
We showed up to the Montalban to find that a sea of Los Angeles’ finest hipster-inos somehow had taken over this screening (this tidbit is a fact, we saw them head straight in the direction of Silverlake-ish, Echo Park-ish, and in some cases, Los Feliz areas as soon as Rudo ended). Okay, so we weren’t really surprised about the hips’s invasion, but we were holding on to a glimmer of hope that at least a few sweaty soccer players and norteño babes playing the accordion in cowboy boots would be amongst the crowd. These folks were nowhere to be found, pero that’s Hollywood and Vine for ya, right?
Live music by deejay Clorofila of the Nortec Collective, the latest fresh-cherry Nike Dunks, spotting the super cool Melonie Diaz from Raising Victor Vargas and Be Kind Rewind, seeing LA kids wearing wingtips with shorts, Acomanchi’s live art pieces, playing futból with the Nike boys, sugar-rush bouncing off the walls from all the free RedBull, bright pink skirts, laughing and pointing at the hipsters from behind the glass who couldn’t get in to the sold out night (we said, too much RedBull already, right?), and the blinding highlighter orange Nike Blazers we must now buy were our favorite parts of the screening’s reception.
Rudo y Cursi had us breaking out into song, dance, quebradita, and rolling many a times. Some of the jokes definitely did not translate into subtitles—we could distinguish the “jajaja” from the “hahaha” oh too well! Nonetheless the crowd overall enjoyed this movie about sibling rivalries that translates into any culture and language through the sheer expression and feeling delivered by Gael and Diego alone–the focus of the movie. A focus, that according to Carlos Cuarón was intended to pay homage to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (straight from Carlos’s mouth during Q&A, feel free to use this as fact, and feel free to feel jealous that you missed this very interesting talk by the director!).
Indeed, by far our favorite part of the night was the post-screening director’s talk where Carlos described himself as a super depressed teen in the mid-90’s feeling like he was “delivering death babies” when no one would pick up scripts that he had poured his heart, soul and sweat into. At least until good friend Guillermo del Toro gave him a kick in the ass and told him to direct his own movies. Carlos took the advice, and landed a super glamorous gig directing an infomercial. Yup, we wanted to be flies on the wall during that lunch conversation between the two directors as well!
Our #1 “cursi” comment of the night went to a chica fresa sitting in the back invited by the Mexican Consulate. We tried hard not to laugh. Eh, we still did though. Our fresa friend couldn’t contain her excitement when Carlos announced a surprise giveaway being raffled off that was sitting behind the movie curtain: “Hay, no me digas que es Gael, me muero, te juro que me muero. Hay, no…que suspenso, o sea que suspenso, me muero si es el, o sea me muero, difinitivamente. Hay, no.” Hay no, we were dying from hearing her too!
Our #1 “rudo” comment of the night, of course, goes to none other than the director man himself, Carlos Cuaron. Given a very deep and complicated question by the press “What position do you play in soccer?”, Carlos proceeded to explain all of the multiple positions he has mastered in the Kama Sutra. The visuals, dear god, THE VISUALS! That’s as much as we can disclose. Quite the talented man he is, we were both a little shocked and aroused.
We definitely fell in love with Carlos’s rudo-ness, he made up for Gael’s forfeit Sunday (queremos, revancha Gael-cito, nos tienes miedo!).