Today’s Guest: Danny Trejo, actor, Machete, Spy Kids
Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience of hardcore ex-cons who are scared silly by being anywhere close to Machete, even if it’s via Wi-Fi… in the NEW new media capital of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida!
Of course there are stereotypes in Hollywood!
Look up “Scary Mofos” in any dictionary and you’ll find a picture of actor Danny Trejo. Even when he’s smiling, he’s frightening. (No disrespect, sir.) Mention his name in casual conversation and watch the visceral fear come rising up in someone’s eyes.
As the master thespian Jon Lovitz once said, “Acting!”
Yeah, maybe.
DANNY TREJO podcast excerpt: “Machete doesn’t wear a cape and he has no superpowers. He’s just a badass. Clint Eastwood was just a badass. Iron Man needed a therapist and he had a daddy complex! Machete is just a guy, a day laborer. There is some sense of realism!”
The truth is that Trejo can terrorize moviegoers with just a look because he’s been in bad places none of us would really want to go, including San Quentin during 11 years in and out of jail. But he’s made those hard years pay off for him in the decades since.
Remember the impression he made the first time you saw him in Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado? Or how about as “Razor Charlie” in From Dusk Till Dawn with George Clooney? Or Con Air and Anaconda?
He can also play a character that I can only describe as “less than threatening” in films such as the Rodriguez’s Spy Kids series, which introduced us to the legend of Machete Cortez. Machete was spun off from those movies into a full length feature; a sequel, cleverly titled Machete Kills is now in pre-production according to IMDB.
I am thrilled – and maybe a little terrified – to have Danny Trejo on the show today to talk about his role as “Capone” in a new movie, Ranchero, in which he plays a wheelchair-bound motel pimp opposite Roger Gutierrez and Christina Woods.
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