Leon Ichaso

HINOJOSA: León Ichaso, you are the director of El Cantante, Piñero, Bitter Sugar, tons and tons of television. You’re an icon!

ICHASO: Mmm. Well. If you say so.

HINOJOSA:But you don’t—you actually—what I love about you, León, is that you have achieved a level of recognition, and yet you are, I think, a true artist. You’re always looking—what is it, in fact, that you want to do with your work, León?

ICHASO: Well, I was kind of like thinking and before sitting here I was thinking: I make all the movies that I would not want to go see.

HINOJOSA: Really?

ICHASO: Yeah.

HINOJOSA: Because I actually think that you make movies for someone like me.

ICHASO: Well, I make them for me. I make them for you, perhaps. But they’re not my sort of like, you know, I said: “Oh my God, what a beautiful day. I’m gonna go see a movie about a junkie who learned to write poetry and theater in Sing Sing. Who—“

HINOJOSA: The story of Miguel Piñero.

ICHASO: --who was, yeah, borderline—you know, pedophile and had problems.” Would I? No. I’m gonna go see Sugar Hillabout a gangster Harlem. But that’s—I’m driven to documenting much more than I think filmmaking. And that’s, perhaps—the films you’ve mentioned, that have some iconic quality to it, I’ve always felt that they’re like inner lives that are falling through the cracks. In El Cantanteright now Héctor Lavoe, and salsa itself, which is I think the main character of that story—salsa was falling through the cracks.

HINOJOSA: Do you—I mean it’s interesting, because we were in New York at the same time. I was at all of those salsa clubs.

ICHASO: Yeah, you mentioned—

HINOJOSA: You know, I was there. I was at the Village Gate. But I have to say, I never felt at that moment like: “Wow, I’m living a moment in history.” Did you have that sense?

ICHASO: I did, yeah.

HINOJOSA: You did?

ICHASO: In the Seventies I will never forget one day walking into Central Park with a friend of mine, Camilo, who was a director, Camilo Vila, and we stumbled into a Fania All-Stars concert with La Lupe.

HINOJOSA: Wow! Oh, my goodness.

ICHASO: Singing, in the afternoon. And there were kind of things that were sort of colliding in that Latin movement. I mean, I was there when Madison Square Garden was, you know, packed. I was there looking at the Stones and looking at Dylan and looking at Deep Purple and looking at, you know, Emerson Lake and Palmer. And I was there looking at Rubén Blades and also Oscar de León and Joe Arroyo, Héctor Lavoe and the Fania All-Stars. So it was really a moment where all over the island, you know, and I’m talking about Manhattan, there were all these clubs where you went in—you walked out of a blizzard, you know, and you went through a little door, and everybody was sweating inside and dancing and it was almost a—kind of underground quality to it.

HINOJOSA: Yeah.

ICHASO: Like in Harlem with the speakeasy and jazz or the jazz scene when it started happening in Harlem. And so that was attractive and there was a moment when it was happening, when Rubén Blades would, you know, take the stage, and these guys that no longer wore the orchestra—the mambo orchestra outfits. You knew that something was going on. And they were like, you know, part of that Sixties thing. So historically that’s—I was there, yeah.

HINOJOSA: You know, I have to give you this quote, because I love this quote. Marc Anthony, who stars in El Cantante, this is what he said about your movies. And I think he just got it right on. He said: “In León Ichaso’s movies, you can almost smell the rooms that the actors are in. He knows how to create a period piece. He understands the streets, the humanity, the poetry of it all.” At what point in your life did you say: “Ok, I see this. I’m experiencing, I’m smelling these salsa clubs in New York City and the streets of the South Bronx.” When did you say: “And I want to put it in film.”

ICHASO: Well, you see, as an immigrant, there is something that you left behind, that you don’t know that you have to fill that hole or you don’t even know there’s a gap. You don’t even know you have a wound. It’s like an illness that you might say, “Oh, I never knew I carried that.” And something comes along and your immune system kicks it out. The whole Puerto Rican experience—I was attracted to it, because they kept, without forcing it and without being too melancholic about it, they kept it alive. They kept that kind of island in your mind going. And that, as a Cuban, to me filled that necessity and that quarter to be greasy and crazy and opposite to what perhaps I thought I was. Because by then I had been pretty, in my own mind, Americanized—

HINOJOSA: I was gonna say. You were kind of—I mean, you left Cuba—

ICHASO: I was an acid head. I was not like—

HINOJOSA: Grateful Dead too?

ICHASO: Never.

HINOJOSA: No? Led Zeppelin, yes, Rolling Stones, no?

ICHASO: No. Well, let’s—more Velvet Underground.

HINOJOSA: Wow, so you were like serious.

ICHASO: I got to New York—I left high school and my first job was working at a place called Max’s Kansas City, which was a bar where the Velvet Underground hung out with Warhol. My first job in that place was to take Jim Morrison, drunk, and throw him out, and put him on Park Avenue--

HINOJOSA: No!

ICHASO: -- and sit him on a hydrant.

HINOJOSA: You're kidding!

ICHASO: So after I sat Jim Morrison on the hydrant, I had to make sure he wouldn’t fall to the left. And I stood there, like, hoping, “Please Jim.” And that was ’67.

HINOJOSA: You also did this television piece about Jimi Hendrix. And I remember when some of the people were talking, they were like “León has all these great credits doing these Latino movies. What’s this about Hendrix?” So you really were a rock and roll American teenager living the underground.

ICHASO: Yeah.

HINOJOSA: So then--

ICHASO: And then this thing happens, you know, with-- you know, with El Súper...(inaudible), it starts coming back to you when you least expect it.  You one day wake up, and you’re, you know, you’re tapping your hand, and the music has a different meaning. And you're aching for these things that are inside of you.

HINOJOSA: But then somebody might say “Well then you shouldn’t become a musician.” I’m trying to get, how is it that you understand that you wanted to create a visual medium, that there was a visual “something” that you wanted to capture and put it on film?

ICHASO: Well, again, I think it’s that kind of documenting moments that seem special to me. My father was a television director in Cuba. My mother was a writer, soap opera writer, for radio. I grew up in that atmosphere. I’m a failed musician myself. I always played, I always--

HINOJOSA: What instrument?

ICHASO: I didn’t commit to guitar, and I sang, and I wrote.

HINOJOSA: You sang? Oh, my God, the next American Idol right here!

ICHASO: Next American Idol. But I didn’t commit to any of those things. And movies kind of, like, hunted me down, in a way, you know. So I was ambushed by filmmaking, in that I never went to school, I never-- I never spoke about it. For many years, I would be very afraid of saying “I’m a director.” I mean I would almost say it really low.


HINOJOSA:  What years are we talking about?

ICHASO: ’79, ’80. I was doing Crossover Dreams, shooting it in ’83. There were no independent-- people didn’t say “independent movies.” And then I said “You know, I am-- this is all I do, you know, accidentally.”


HINOJOSA: Wow, because Crossover Dreams, for me is one of those
and I wish it would kind of make a comeback-- it was a moment in history, in New York City, at least, in terms of Latino visibility. You got Rubén Blades to act, a phenomenal movie there.


ICHASO: Elizabeth Peña was in the movie.

HINOJOSA: Elizabeth Peña who, of course, is huge.

ICHASO: Yeah.

HINOJOSA: But before you got there, I need you to tell this story, because it really is an amazing story. And it shows about who you are. You were actually working in advertising, and you were making commercials.

ICHASO: Yep.

HINOJOSA: Making okay money.

ICHASO: Yep.

HINOJOSA: And then you get fired from your job. And you basically-- Come on, tell the story of what happened.

ICHASO: Oh, I know this story. Well, you know, I was really angry. I was, in those days, what they call the “house hippie.” I was doing jingles with Chico O’Farrell, with people like that. I was, you know, shooting stuff and rioting. And I was fired one night, very unfairly. And I walked out. I was very much into, like-- in those days, into, like, John Lennon and the Primal Scream, and that sort of therapy. And, you know, I had to let out my feelings. And I came back that night, and I opened the agency with my own key. And I destroyed it, from the lobby all the way down, room by room.

HINOJOSA: Oh my God-- not just one room--

ICHASO: No, the whole place, the whole place. I would, you know, take giant bottles of water and crush them on the boss’s desk.

HINOJOSA: You're all alone doing this?

ICHASO: All alone, put the potted plants over the water on the glass, then broke all the trophies I had won for them, every painting, every-- everything.

HINOJOSA: But you did this because, essentially, you never wanted to work in advertising.

ICHASO: I never wanted to work it. I wanted to make sure that I would never be hired again in my life. Funny enough, my lawyer became-- was Edwin Torres, the novelist who wrote Carlito’s Way, After Hoursand Q & A. He represented me. Our first day in court, Miles Davis was the case in front of us. He said “That’s Miles Davis. He’s here for a rape.” And I said “Oh my God, what’s happened to my life?” You know, I’m here for a breaking and entering, vandalism, threatening-- And funny enough, I did go back to advertising. And I’m better and bigger than before. People would shake my hand and say “You are the guy who did that to those”-- you know, I don’t want to say the word-- “We want you. We applaud you.” You know, because this was the beginning of the Latin market as we know it. And the arrogance of these people was just too much, because things were too fast, too big, too successful. And they felt omnipotent, I guess. And they were, you know, mean, and--

HINOJOSA: Well after you do this movie Crossover Dreams. Essentially doors start opening up for you. I think that the other thing that you represent is, you know, this true artistic voice that you’re trying to achieve. You’ve done many projects. You’ve said, in fact, that all the projects, you were expecting something huge to happen. And then it doesn’t happen. But you’ve gotten offers to do big-budget Hollywood films, and you’ve said no.  Because-- ?

HINOJOSA: Because some of them-- I mean a movie is a commitment that, at least for me, you know, you have to believe in it, and know, more or less, how to do it craft-wise. You have to be-- And there are some projects that are so empty and so outside of me, that I could-- I would be such a hypocrite to-- I would be impersonating something that I’m not. And I always felt--

HINOJOSA: But isn’t it enticing, though?

ICHASO: Well, but, you see, I think that my age for prostitution came and went, you know. They’d know I’m not a prostitute. They know I’m not that guy. And that’s what happens, too. They know you’re not one of those. So you're liked for certain things. And you're kept for certain things. And you might shoot yourself in the foot, like maybe I had, because “Oh, he’s always doing his own things.” And, you know, they don’t think I’m Latin ...(inaudible). “Oh yeah, isn’t he Italian?” And so in their eyes, I do very well. I do what I want. I go back and forth between television and film, which is pretty interesting. I just did Canewith Jimmy Smits, and enjoyed working with those people. And I did Mediumwith Patricia Arquette, I did El Cantanteright before that. So some people can really say “Oh, you know, he’s one of us. He’s not”-- That protects me, in a way, when I turn them down.

HINOJOSA: Let me ask you about that, because you were approached, directly, by Jennifer Lopez.

ICHASO: Yeah.

HINOJOSA: Most people are not approached directly by Jennifer Lopez. What was that like? You know, I mean, when you have a huge star like that, tremendous pressure-- I mean you’ve worked with amazing actors, Sidney Poitier, who else? Benjamin Bratt, the list is long. But when J-Lo comes and says “León, I want you to do this movie,” what goes on for you, as an artist?

ICHASO: Well, I knew exactly what she wanted, and I don’t think she did. She had, you know, gotten a hold of the mother lode, hid it. But she didn’t know what-- you mentioned earlier-- the history of it. She wasn’t there at that specific moment in time. So when I went to her house, I went prepared to teach her something. And she even said to me, before I was able to do what I’m going to tell you, I said, you know, “I think it’s important that there was this Latin movement, where we stopped being busboys and waiters. And we became musicians, and we filled Madison Square Garden. And we danced in the streets, and we shut down the Lower East Side. And we had block parties, and things were happening.” And she said, “I think you're too hung up in the historical aspect of this project.” And I said “Okay, just give me a minute, and put this cassette on.” And I had brought with me a cassette of the--  León Gast is a filmmaker who won an Oscar for the movieWhen We Were Kingsabout Muhammad Ali. He also did a movie called Our Latin Thing, documenting the Fania All-Stars at their peak. And he had a moment of a block party, and she put the cassette on. The block party popped on the screen, all these people on the Lower East Side dancing, the band playing, the people on the stairways and the fire escapes watching, cooking. And she said “That’s my movie! That’s my movie!” And she started, like, went out of her mind. And so it was simple, it was simple. It was a very good relationship. Marc had seen Piñero. He was a fan of Piñero, because Marc had been asked to play Piñero, yeah.

HINOJOSA: Oh. But Benjamin Bratt, my God, what--

ICHASO: Benjamin was, I think, in the end, the right person to do it.

HINOJOSA: He became Miguel Piñero. You know, of course my question is, how come he was never nominated for an Oscar for that? But let me ask you this, you’ve done this movies that mean something to you. Do you read the reviews? Do you pick up the paper?

ICHASO: Yeah, oh sure.

HINOJOSA: You do?

ICHASO: Of course. That night that Piñerocame out, I was with Benjamin and Talisa Soto. And we got a call from my sister María, who is a writer. And Mari called us and said “We read The Times. It’s good.” And we almost fell on the sidewalk. And we ran to The New York Times. And Benjamin asked a man who was coming out of the door if he could get us a copy. And this was a sportswriter, and he kind of identified him from Law and Orderor something. And he went upstairs and got us the Arts and Leisure section, and we went to 43^rd and Broadway. And, right underneath the neon lights on a taxi, on the hood of a taxi, we read the review. And we cried. You care.

HINOJOSA: That was a good review.

ICHASO: It was a rave.

HINOJOSA: It was a rave.

ICHASO: Yeah.

HINOJOSA: For you and for Benjamin.

ICHASO: Everybody mentioned him.

HINOJOSA: But, El Cantante, huge stars, incredible period piece. The cinematography is amazing. It didn’t do great at the box office.

ICHASO: It’s very funny, because it did great.

HINOJOSA: It did do good?

ICHASO: It didn’t do great in criticism. Right now, in the first three weeks of rentals, it’s made $15 million dollars.

HINOJOSA: So you're good, in terms of the money?

ICHASO: Oh money-wise, we’re perfect. And we’re still to open foreign. But in terms of reviews, we were viciously attacked by most people. It was either raves or attacks that were personal.

HINOJOSA: What do you think that’s about? Is it because it’s J-Lo? Or is it because it’s Puerto Ricans? Because you’ve got a lot of attack, also, from the Latino community, many Puerto Ricans saying “Why do we have to focus on, you know, somebody else Puerto Rican, drug-addicted, failure?” You know, it was harsh. There was a lot of harsh criticism.

ICHASO: Yeah, it was personal at times. I think the Village Voicesuggested nobody ever give me money again for a movie.

HINOJOSA: So when you read that stuff, what does it do to you?

ICHASO: Well, you get angry, and you write the reviewer, and you insult him back.

HINOJOSA: [laughter] Really?

ICHASO: Of course. I do. And then you read the good ones, and you say “And this person got it.” And then you go to Puerto Rico, and you see everybody crying. And you say “I’m not wrong here. Something is wrong, but it’s not the movie.”

HINOJOSA: So it doesn’t kill you inside?

ICHASO: It doesn’t kill you, it doesn’t kill you. It makes-- It confuses you, and everything, but that’s different. You don’t-- I don’t do what I do-- I don’t do what I do  (NOISE) to get approval, you know. And I forget, sometimes, because there is a system. But what I do is not for that, you know. I do it for me, I do it for my friends, I do it for Héctor, I do it for the salsa, I do it for that, for those musicians that ran from club to club in a cab, with their instruments, running through the snow, so they could make, at the end of the night $50 dollars, two joints and a gram of coke.

HINOJOSA: Speaking of drugs, what is it with you and, kind of, this look at, again, Piñero, drug addiction, Héctor Lavoe, drug addiction, Jimi Hendrix, drug addiction. You had your own issues with drug addictions. What is it? What’s there?

A: I had—Well how do you know what I had? No, no. I am from the ‘60s. So immediately you say, you know, “’60s, you know, recreational drugs,” and all of that stuff. The life I’ve chosen had this part of very complicated-- See I think that what people didn’t get about, like, the Héctor Lavoe situation and the drug attacks, is that first of all, drugs, in the case of Héctor Lavoe, were medicine, like insulin for a diabetic. He didn’t shoot heroin to go out and dance, you know. He did it to breathe, to wash his teeth, to work, to say “Hello” to his kid. He was a man in pain.

HINOJOSA: So there was, like, profound sadness?

ICHASO: Incredible sadness.

HINOJOSA: Because he left Puerto Rico.

ICHASO: When you see his eyes, you see the eyes of a man that was pulled, uprooted, thrown into a place where he never wanted to be.

HINOJOSA: He really was a peasant.

ICHASO: He was a peasant. So some of us are not, you know, prepared for that journey. Nobody talked about death when they mentioned the drug issue. Because you know something, María, there’s more drugs in Reggaeton, and there’s more drugs in rap, and there’s more drugs in anything today than attacking Héctor Lavoe, who died of drug use.

HINOJOSA: Yeah.

ICHASO: I liked Piñero, because his poetry turned me on, because I realized that what Rubén Blades had been writing about with Pedro Navaja, it was coming from Piñero, who was also doing the French poets and very many other things. My father was a poet. I was deeply interested in forgotten people and the musicality of what was then the spoken word, which was the whole movement he started, playing poetry with Don Cherry and with Ginsberg and with jazz and stuff.

HINOJOSA: Oh my God, and creating the Nuyorican Poet Society.

ICHASO: Yeah, and he happened to be a junkie from day one. So it came with it.

HINOJOSA: So León, let me ask you this. Because you think a lot about the immigrant experience in your work, what are the films that we need to be, that you need to be making now, in this moment, when there is such a division in our country, where the anti-immigrant sentiment is so clear? What are the stories that we need-- What are the responsibilities of someone like you, who’s in there-- you know, in Hollywood? What kinds of stories do we need to tell now?

ICHASO: The thing is, that the worst thing you can do, I think, it is to soothe the beast and try to, you know, wear the collars that the beast wants you to wear, or camouflage yourself. It’s at that moment, I really feel, that the attacks on, recently, “The Times of Cholera” are  never--  regular films don’t get attacked like that one.

HINOJOSA:  So you’re feeling it, even in Hollywood, in terms--

ICHASO: Oh yeah, I mean it’s a bad film, you know.

HINOJOSA: Yeah, but the kind of attitudes--

ICHASO: You don’t say “That actor should go sell shoes” like The New York Postsaid about John. Or you don’t blast Shakira because she wrote a song-- What do they want, teenagers to come in? So things are bad. So you said what’s my next project? Well, it’s not going to be about some Latin guy with a flute dancing outside the White House, and selling tamales, no it’s not going to be anything like that. You say, you know, I should get away from it. You know, my other projects, I have one about Thelonious Monk, about jazz that I’ve wanted to do-- I’ve put that on hold. I don’t want to get attacked again for maybe “Oh, here he comes again with more music, another dark life.” So I’m cautious, even though you have-- you know, your directors do thematically repeat themselves over and over, whether it’s with the Mafia, or this, or action. So for us, it’s, I think, a moment to pause and just think. It’s about money. Movies have to make money. It’s a business.

HINOJOSA: But it seems like for you, the money thing-- yeah. But it’s never been what motivates—

ICHASO: But them.

HINOJOSA: Them.

ICHASO: If you say “What am I going to do ...(inaudible)?” Oh, I’m going to make my own films. I’m starting a film in a couple of months, you know, that is totally, you know, my type of story, you know, in Spanish--

HINOJOSA: About Cuba?

ICHASO: About Miami, about freedom, about the price of freedom.

HINOJOSA: In Spanish?

ICHASO: In Spanish-- About the extremes people get to, to get something that they cannot even identify once they have it.

HINOJOSA:  But because it’s in Spanish, that means that it’s not going to be considered a big power-brokering kind of film in Hollywood.

ICHASO: Very likely, very likely. But, because it is in Spanish, it will have a cache of authenticity. And that’s respected. You know, the worst thing you can do is, like, Spanglish or movies in English-- like even Love in the Time of Cholera.if they would have done that in Spanish, it would have been a hell of a movie.

HINOJOSA: Or even Frida, for example, doing--

ICHASO: -- or Frida-- otherwise you’re doing cartoons, you know. But if you do it in Spanish, then there’s authenticity that is recognized. And I think Americans can take it better if it’s, like, “Oh, well, yeah, I can read subtitles. I can do that.”

HINOJOSA: And so right now, in this place, in your moment, in your career, are you hungry? Are you satisfied? Is there an urgency?

ICHASO: I’m desperate.

HINOJOSA: You're desperate?

ICHASO: You know, because I’m satisfied, and because I’m not hungry, you know.

HINOJOSA: What are you desperate for?

ICHASO: Well I like being desperate, don’t get me wrong, you know, for getting to that next one. It’s, you know, Bitter Sugarwas, as you know, an adventure that took us to Cuba, took us to the rock and roll kids. They injected themselves-- there you go again-- not with drugs, with AIDS-infected blood. You covered that story. You know, even, you know, Piñero, or Sugar Hillwas something that interest me. You know, I’ve done-- I did Zooman, which was written by Charlie Fuller, you know, who wrote A Soldier’s Story. There was something about a mindless killer that turned me on, that one film. I did a story about Harvey Milk and his murder. There’s always something that I’m desperate for finding out. I’m, in a way, very much like you, an investigative filmmaker. I think that coming to this country, looking for that dream, it’s a real nightmare. And that’s what my next movie’s about. It’s called Paraíso, Paradise. And it is about a man who comes from Cuba in a raft.

HINOJOSA: So, León, we will look forward to seeing Paraíso. Thank you for comparing myself to you. Oh my goodness, you just made my day. It’s been a pleasure. Gracias.

ICHASO:  Thank you.

END