That's a great example, isn't it, Lee? "In 2001, this became the first foreign language film to earn over $100 million in the United States. "
It's often when people don't even care about the language, either because they know they like that director or actor or because they think of it mostly as an action movie.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cristian Mercado and Tatiana Astengo at the premiere in Lima, August 2010
(photo by Javier Fernandez)
My translations from an interview of Cristian Mercado with David Mamani Cartagena:
It was a lengthy casting process. The first contact I had with this film was through Rodrigo Bellot a year before the filming. First I sent two scenes which I prepared and filmed in La Paz with the help of friends, after which they invited me to Lima for a final screen test with the director, during which he decided to gamble on me for his project even though I am a 'famous unknown' and from a different country too [Bolivia]...
Cinema is a lottery, it also takes talent and hard work, a lot of luck, in the sense that many factors must coincide - physical and 'chemistry' factors, good scripts, good directors, roles which go with your physical type. Sometimes there are people who would like to do a role and think they could do it really well but they are looking for someone younger, someone older, or darker or lighter-skinned or taller or fatter, who knows...in film unlike in theater, your physical type has a huge effect on the roles you can get...
I consider myself a man of the theater first, as it is the place where this whole voyage started and I think I could never abandon it, however in the cinema too I have found a space I find very congenial and where I feel I can also express something a little different, it's two worlds which I don't think of as distant from each other, the principles are the same, the processes and contexts may be different but the place you get to is the same. The same is true with music, it's a space in which I discovered I could say a different type of thing, where I can relate to myself, dialog differently with the public and even with myself. Music is a language which allows me to open other doors, facets, corners of myself I didn't know were there, lets me know myself under a different form. The name of the band 'Reverso' reflects that a little, it's an "other side", a "Side B" which is part of who I am as well.