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00:00When I read the book, I hadn't read something, or maybe in a long time, but not in my memory
00:17of something that really was just addressing that very complex gray area of human beings,
00:24where it wasn't defining who was good, who was bad, what was absolute.
00:31It was dealing with post-conflict, which I feel I had studied a lot of conflict in films
00:39I directed and written, and this was an aspect of it, this after, this idea that it would
00:46end or how it lingers with us and what it does.
00:51It felt so true to what it is like for the many people that I know that have gone through
00:58war.
01:01And I liked when I read it.
01:02I thought it was going to go one way, and I was surprised that it didn't, and I was
01:08surprised that I was happy it didn't.
01:10At the beginning of the book, he says this is not a place.
01:14This is not a particular place.
01:15He wanted it to be universal, but he did say he liked Spanish names.
01:18He likes the sound of language.
01:21In the choice of the actors and actors, and these extraordinary actors, even though we
01:29weren't defining a place, we were taking a texture of a place.
01:32We were taking a place, their homeland as a center, and the tones and the feeling would
01:39inform a lot of the piece, and we chose to shoot in Italy, and that would also inform
01:45where we were.
01:46There was something about the dirt and the blood and the skin and the flesh that all
01:51kind of felt right to this, and it felt very organic, it felt of the earth.
01:58This feels very of the earth, this piece.
02:00And then also the table, there was something that I don't know if anybody notices, but
02:04as the conversation grows more difficult, it actually becomes warmer at the table.
02:11So they sit down, it's daytime, in the light of day, death in the light of day, which happens
02:17a few times in this.
02:18There's a lot of hard things in the light of day.
02:21And then as they go through the harder things, the sun sets, it gets warmer.
02:26As it gets harder, the candles get lit.
02:31It's a strange thing that hopefully brings you, and I think it felt that way maybe at
02:35the table.
02:36You kind of feel that you were kind of, the womb was closing in.
02:39When Angelina was prepping the film, we were talking and she was telling me that she wanted
02:48to do like a mood board.
02:52And she started pulling things by herself.
02:57This is a long time before the film started shooting.
03:01When she showed me what she called mood board, it was exactly the movie that I see today.
03:07It already looked like she had already shot a movie and she had put those pictures together.
03:15I wish I could hire her for any presentation of any project.
03:20It was shocking.
03:21It was perfect.
03:22It was beautiful.
03:24It was like Godfather, but in Mexico.
03:31Because I'm Mexican, she wanted to show me all these things.
03:34About that, I also want to say another thing.
03:36The book says it's an imaginary place.
03:39She could have picked anything, like any kind of new world, any kind of world for Damon
03:51and I, where sometimes they've taken our world and making it wide so that they can
03:58have, you know, bigger movie stars, you know, and things are taken away.
04:06This woman who could have taken any choice to bring it close to create a new culture
04:10that is inspired by our culture, it really feels like we are entering a new era.
04:20I've never, we were so proud that she took that base as an inspiration for her film.
04:29You know, I love sports in general and I love tennis and the only way you can have a decent
04:37match and the only way your game can exponentially grow is if you have a phenomenal tennis player
04:46playing alongside.
04:48And this is without a doubt the biggest challenge that I've encountered as an actor for many
04:54different reasons.
04:55I will always be grateful to Angelina and Salma to have moved heaven, earth and hell
05:03to allow me to make this film in terms of timing and the emotional essence of it.
05:11And to me it was, I was invited to take this huge risk and the only way you can do that
05:19is if your director is a generous human being, not only a phenomenal artist, and that's both,
05:26you know, Angelina is both.
05:27And she created this environment in which she allowed us to be free and feel safe in
05:36a way, feel safe to go through this emotional ride.
05:41And the only way I was able to survive was because of Salma, because she helped me and
05:48she had my back at all times and just the fact to have her in front of me and look at
05:54her eyes and look at each other in our eyes and all that, the rest of it was only to remember
06:01my lines, which I have never talked so much in any film in my life, not even in theater.
06:10I come from the theater and it was insane and it was the beautiful thing about all this
06:18is that our mother, she was always so calm and so relaxed and she had everything under
06:25control and warm and had everything ready for us to just go ahead and boom, do the best
06:33thing that we could.
06:34She was all that and so much more, but from time to time, even though she gave us time
06:40to explore, no, no, you will see, he's laughing already, she would come with all this elegance
06:48and loveliness and the smile, the guy said, guys, we're ahead of schedule, so I am going
06:58to give you an hour to go to your rooms and learn your next three page monologues, because
07:06I'd like to start like shooting it today, not tomorrow, since we are doing so well and
07:13we are ahead of time, and we would go like, okay, and then, oh my God, how are we going
07:20to do this?
07:21There was so much complicated emotional dialogue and at one time I said, I don't think this
07:27is possible, just give it a try, and then we did it, we would do it, I mean.
07:35I think she trusted us more than ourselves, you know what I mean?
07:42Now I'm better than I was, after this movie, because I didn't know I could do certain things
07:48that...
07:49That is the magic thing, she knew that.
07:50That she just...
07:51How?
07:52No one knows.
07:53I didn't want to eat kind of easy.
07:54But Thelma's not telling you, and I don't know if she'll ever say it, is your first
07:57day on set, she was so game, I always say this, you don't trust both of them, just that
08:05you could say, I'm going to try something, we're going to just agree that we're going
08:08to just push ourselves as people, we're going to talk about the hardest stuff, we're going
08:12to sit in the hardest stuff, we're going to share all the stuff, and we're just going
08:15to do something really like human together and, you know, that's the thing, right?
08:20And this is the first day, she said, go in there, there is no script, there are no props,
08:28and live the life of those years, explore what it was like.
08:37I am going to have one camera here, do you mind if I have a handheld really close to
08:42you?
08:43And I knew one of the operators said, fine, he's fine, I'm going to ignore him.
08:47You go and stay there.
08:52I'm not going to cut.
08:56This was so powerful.
08:59I did an improvisation, I say this very proudly, of 45 minutes that I didn't realize it was
09:0545 minutes, where so many things happened, and in this time, the first day, we got to
09:12know my character that we created together, because this character, I feel, is not just
09:17me.
09:18I think this character, it's the three of us, so I know this is a really strange one.
09:24I promise you, I really never felt it was me doing it.
09:30It always kind of just showed up as a spirit combined of the three, and in that improvisation,
09:38she did things that I would have never thought out, and we got to know that character that
09:46day.
09:47We got to meet that character that day in a deeper way than that goes beyond all the
09:53great conversations, amazing conversations.
09:55She was so brave.
09:56She won't say that.
09:57It is her.
09:58I'm not going to taunt her for it, but she was so brave, and it was a moment for me to
10:02really discover, and then I knew, then I realized just how amazing, and then, of course, I wanted
10:09to, then it was fun to push and play, because I saw this extraordinary, yeah, I know this
10:17extraordinary artist.
10:28Yeah.
10:29Yeah.
10:30Yeah.
10:31Yeah.
10:32Yeah.
10:33Yeah.
10:34Yeah.