As we just noted, Premiere has a pretty fantastic interview with Benicio del Toro about his experiences in Steven Soderbergh’s sprawling and ambitious two-part “Che” epic.
The films are really something to behold and to witness and the interview gives a lot of great insight into how the film was made and how it turned out.
The magazine notes that the film took seven years of research (which you can totally see on screen) and the production was a 78 day, five-country shoot. As many people have noted, including us, there’s not a lot of close-ups in “Che,” and most of it is shot in large tableaux master shots. A lot of this was due to the run-and-gun nature of the shoot. The more set-ups, the more time and money, and “Che” sounds for a long shoot, it went incredibly quick.
del Toro worked with an Argentinian dialect coach, but sometimes, it was just go, go, go.
“But, you know, we were going so fast, usually it was one or two takes. Most of it is [master shots]. So, with Steven you are not going to [say], ‘You know, let’s do it again because my ‘S’ is over here.’ He’d go, ‘I don’t care!’ “
More about the precision and speed.
“It was great [working with Soderbergh] but very fast, very demanding. We shot for 78 or 79 days, which is fast and mostly [master shots]. I remember with the second movie I [was working] with the mule, [suffering from] asthma, and then I am giving a speech with asthma. We did that in one day, which, usually in another fast movie, would have been three days or two and a half days. And when we finished, it was a Monday, and I really felt like it was a Friday. I really felt like I’d worked for a whole week.”
About the decision to make two films, del Toro calls the ambitious decision bizarre, but one he was immediately with.
“If [Soderbergh] says, ‘I am going to meet you at that bus stop at 5:15 on Wednesday, the 3rd of October,’ he is going to be there. And that is one of the things I like about him. When he says he is going to do something, it is going to be done. When he called me up and said, ‘I gotta talk to you,’ I thought he was going to say that he was having problems with the script. I went to his house and he said, ‘I want to do two movies.’ But it was so bizarre and so crazy that I was like, ‘Yeah. Great.’ “
del Toro also has some choice words to say about Demián Bichir, the thesp who played Fidel Castro, which is great, because we thought he was fantastic in the film and deserves as much attention from the portrayal as possible. Every word that del Toro says is true. He’s an unwavering force in the films.
“Demián knows it, and I have told him to his face that he really saved the movie. It was great to work with him. I hope that people recognize him… Because that role can be really stupid, if you don’t do it well. I thought he did a really good job. He was solid and held it as a constant. All through the movie he was the same guy.”
Despite the difficulties of shooting the film so quickly, the Puerto Rican actor says it was the only way it could have been done.
“We’d still be in the jungle right now if it were up to me. I’d be like, “How about this other scene? No, okay. Okay, let’s do it this way.” No, you gotta make decisions. That’s a very Che thing, too. Doing it, we are going, and we are not turning back. We did it in that spirit.”
IFC is putting out “Che” sometime in December for a limited, Oscar-qualifying run. Tickets are crazy sold out, but if you can, try and see the film when it hits the New York Film Festival on October 7 where it will run in its entirety.