The New Scarface and the Rise of Hispanic Hollywood

The ethnic makeup of the modern blockbuster is changing. No longer are we in the age of tokenism, where studios could boast “multi-ethnic” casts by simply dotting the background with an assortment of skin colors and orientations. The international box office makes up a massive percentage of American studio releases, and non-English language-speaking audiences are placed at a premium. It's not enough to load your movie with recognizable white faces any more. Ocean's Eleven with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon would probably still get made today. But not without much debate.

The one surprise is that the diversity is coming from a new place: behind the camera. The new Scarface is a case study of sorts. Recently, it was announced that Warner Bros. was moving ahead with the third big-screen rendition of the story of an immigrant named Tony who works his way up the ladder of organized crime. Whispers had persisted that the studio was pursuing a vision of the film with a more “ethnic” slant. But no one was prepared for the announcement that Pablo Larraín would be selected for the director's chair.

In 2013, Larraín’s No was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. This seemed simple enough: No featured global superstar Gael Bernal, and it focused on the story of how dictator Augusto Pinochet was pushed out of office. The title refers to the deceptively complex campaign in which citizens were called upon to cast a vote to oust the unruly despot with Bernal as an ad exec charged with creating the most important campaign in Chile's history. Though it's a period piece about a tremendous political victory, No is not a sentimental film; in fact, the decision to shoot the picture with low-quality digital film heavily utilized during the late 1980s places you in an era that manufactures the regional claustrophobia and constant level of threat that the Chilean protestors and anti-Pinochet forces lived underneath.

Larraín’s body of work becomes more intimidating when one realizes that No is part of a whole. Larraín’s life's work thus far has been a trilogy of films loosely connected by the time period in which they take place. Post Mortem is about as bleak as it sounds, a stark counterpoint to No's ultimate victory. And Tony Manero, named after the protagonist of Saturday Night Fever played by John Travolta, is ultimately a dark narrative about a man who dives head-first into denial when he begins to obsess over disco and John Badham's legendary music film as a response to the social upheaval and oppression of the era. Larraín, in essence, is not someone accustomed to the world of blockbusters.

While Paul Muni was the original Scarface, a suit-wearing Italian named Tony Camonte, most fans associate the character with his 1983 incarnation, played by Al Pacino in a pidgin-Cuban accent. It's not the most delicate re-creation of a Hispanic personality, but Spanish-speaking audiences (not to mention English-speaking ones) have long celebrated the rise of Pacino's Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's hallucinatory masterpiece. He may be a murderer and adulterer, but Tony Montana was a man of principles, and that's the sort of thing audiences can appreciate. It can be argued that his downfall is either because he violates his own principles, or because others violate them. Most fans prefer the latter.

That last bit also seems to be magnified by this new version of the story, which follows a Mexican character who has to work with the cartels. The hot button issues here are deadly ones, focusing on the serious conflict of attitudes occurring in America regarding immigration, and the ugly, lawless scourge of the cartels across the border. There's a lot of potential not only for violence, but for ideological conflict. There's also a lot regarding the issue of identity. Scarface has always been about “The American Dream,” and a Mexican character emerging from the world of drug cartels to become a major criminal force raises questions about Mexico's cultural identity and its ties to the cartels. It also raises questions as to the truth about America today, and what it means to thrive in a world (in this case, crime) where others alongside you perish. Is it American to survive? Is it American to eliminate any and all potential competition? Or is it American to work with others in building empires? Probably not that last one, given that this is a blockbuster, where the default is either blind optimism or blind cynicism.

It is a little disheartening that Larraín’s chief competition for the job was Harry Potter helmer David Yates. As complex and morally knotty as Larraín’s films are, that's how broad and scrubbed-of-identity Yates'Potter films tended to be. Yates came up from television, where he presided over the original version of State of Play, but his basic Potter work marked him as a go-along studio hand who would follow orders. In the case of Potter that meant directing a handful of films that served one continuous story without violating the universe established by Chris Columbus in the first two Potter entries. There's a depressing inevitability to watching those final Potter films: it feels as if every five minutes is a pause to allow for special effects theatrics to take hold of the story, cheap parlor tricks meant to remind the audience to keep paying attention. You couldn't possibly pit two dissimilar filmmakers against each other quite like WB did with Larrain and Yates.

Still, the selection of Larraín opens up intriguing new possibilities in regards to the Hollywood studio model, while confirming a sea change. Larraín is just the latest in a line of Spanish-language helmers to take Hollywood by storm, and it very much looks like the future of moviemaking is en Espanol. Hispanics make up 32 percent of all moviegoers; contrast that with a population of 17 percent. Alfonso Cuarón just became the first Hispanic filmmaker to take home the Best Director Oscar. That's not a statistic, that's a beginning.

Of course, with this onslaught of Hispanic filmmakers comes a forceful, often political viewpoint. The question is, are studios pursuing these filmmakers because of their socio-political insight, or because they think a foreign filmmaker outside of the studio system is simply going to do what they're told? It's unclear what the situation was regarding José Padilha and Robocop. The Brazilian behind the Elite Squad movies seemed like the ideal choice for the relaunch of the popular sci-fi franchise, jumping onboard after Darren Aronofsky completed a lengthy flirtation with the property. The Elite Squad series was violent, aggressive, and provocative, centering on the corrupt BOPE officers that run the slums. Detailing the failings of compromised organizations and the shaky line between cops and criminals, they're tense and upsetting films with a dark sense of humor, making Padilha an apt choice for the job.

As much as he labored, however, the end result was an intermittently-interesting studio product, one that has very little political or social insight. Padilha was never going to get his way on a film that was (ridiculously) aimed for a PG-13 rating even before shooting began. But during a candid interview, fellow director Alejandro González Iñárritu claimed that Padilha told him making the movie was “hell” and that “nine out of every ten” of his ideas were being shot down. Was Padilha hired for his insight in the law enforcement/industrial complex? Or was he just hired because he was hot and of-the-moment?

Apparently the situation wasn't bad enough to prevent Iñárritu, a former Best Director Oscar nominee, from signing onto an adaptation of The Jungle Book. He eventually fled that project before shooting, but it's indicative of the fact that several Latin American filmmakers are being hired for movies that don't seem to have any Latin roots. There's a very good chance they're all following Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican wunderkind that came to America on the back of Spanish language genre efforts, only to end up using most of his goodwill on Pacific Rim, a sci-fi action film that owed more to Japanese culture than a American or Mexican background.

Also intrigued by Japanese culture is Jaume Collet-Serra, who has directed Liam Neeson in three straight action pictures, Unknown, Non-Stop and the upcoming Run All Night. He's had his eye on the big fish for the longest time: Akira, Kazuhiro Otomo's long-thought unfilmable tome that has been bandied about by WB for years. An American Akira largely misses the point of the material, as one cannot simply transfer one tragedy for another: the graphic novel takes its eerie inspiration from the disaster at Hiroshima, while an American adaptation was said to occur in “Neo-Manhattan,” with echoes of 9/11. Collet-Serra has traveled considerably in his career. Unknown largely takes place in Germany, and he also helmed the globe-trotting soccer epic Goal 2. While not a personal filmmaker, it would be interesting to see the mark he leaves on the material.

Also intriguing is a reboot of the Mummy series by director Andrés Muschetti. Having been given his big break by producer del Toro, Muschetti's only other film is Mama, which draws its inspiration from his own Spanish-language short film. While the material was very thin, both the short and extended versions of Mama seem suffused with the notion of a matriarchal family, something that isn't specifically Hispanic, but stems from a Latino upbringing. The Mummy ostensibly deals with Egyptian folklore, but it's just as much about the early days of moviemaking and the classic Universal monsters. What will Muschetti bring to the material?

And what of Gerardo Naranjo's Death Wish? The Miss Bala director clearly knows his way around violence, but what's he going to do with an American franchise that focuses specifically on the very American idea of the lawless vigilante? Charles Bronson did five of these films. What can Naranjo bring to the table? MGM's remake of the title has been through several permutations: for a brief moment Sylvester Stallone was going to star in it, and reportedly director Joe Carnahan fled the project because the studio sought Bruce Willis. So they're transparently going for iconic. Can Naranjo, who made a suffocating, relentlessly bleak film about the relationship between cartels and beauty pageants, properly create the sort of iconography MGM is looking for?

Maybe, like del Toro and Muschetti, these filmmakers are best suited for monsters. Fede Alvarez came out of seemingly nowhere to make his directorial debut on Sam Raimi's Evil Dead reboot, showing a serious dedication to letting blood spill. It's one of the most gruesome films to ever pass through the system with only an R-rating. And Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who previously helmed the British 28 Weeks Later, is due to get down with the dead once again in a World War Z sequel. Working in genre is maybe the best step towards longevity in this career: just ask Robert Rodriguez, whose latest, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For his theaters at the tail-end of this summer.

Rodriguez himself has stumbled on a potential goldmine. In launching his channel El Rey, he's aiming for the audience that the studios could be targeting with these latest films, specifically Latino males who have grown up watching primarily English-language movies. In between original programming like From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series the channel also shows popular fare like Escape From New York, movies that, not coincidentally, are up for a (likely) multi-culti remake in the coming years. Rodriguez, as always, seems ahead of the curve. Who could have guessed that the guy who remade his debut, the Spanish-language El Mariachi, into the star-packed English-language Desperado, would be where he was ten years later? Rodriguez argues that today's movie fan speaks one language and one language alone: the language of cinema. What he and filmmakers like him are doing are creating fully-realized roles and positions for Hispanics to fit in the mainstream media. There might not be anything in Escape From New York or Total Recall that seems Hispanic, Rodriguez argues, but when they are programmed on El Rey, it establishes that they now belong to those people.

These Hispanic directors also seem to be part of a growing trend in American film, as studios shy away from American-born directors completely. Baltasar Kormakur was plucked from obscurity to remake his own film into the Mark Wahlberg actioner Contraband; now he's handling an all-star cast in the 3D film Everest. Daniel Espinosa rose from the European crime film scene with Snabba Cash to make Safe House and the upcoming WWII drama Child 44. Even franchises are in the hands of foreigners. Russian journeyman Sergei Bodrov was the choice to introduce filmgoers to the world of The Seventh Son, while the Norwegian Harald Zwart was entrusted with the Mortal Instruments series. Earlier this month, Blood Ties was released, within the most American genre to exist, the 1970s cop film. Except that the cast was almost primarily European, and the director was the French Guillaume Canet.

Most of these creative choices did not pan out, however, with some directors presiding over bombs. If the industry is having a great big Director-Off, Latin America looks like they could very well be the winner. Animation already has its champion with Rio director Carlos Saldanha. And great new voices are emerging in that world: Bernal is one of the world's leading producers, while Y Tu Mama Tambien pal Diego Luna just helmed his first movie, Cesar Chavez. And Cuarón's co-writer on Gravity, his son Jonás, is already prepping his directorial debut. Jonás is a part of this younger generation, an expanding Hispanic demographic that is eager to hear new stories, see new movie stars, feel new sensations. The landscape is changing dramatically.

As for Scarface, we'll see. The project has had several writers and directors attached over the years, and it's ultimate a candidate to undergo several other revisions over the years. Larraín is an exciting choice, but an obscure one: it's nothing lost for the studio if they eventually get him to hit the road, or if a lack of creative freedom allows him to flee. What's so exciting is that Larraín didn't earn his way doing shampoo commercials, or making scuzzy genre pics. He wasn't hired by the studio because he has a reputation for cranking out product. He was hired for his work, which is decidedly Chilean in nature. The WB made a decision, and it's a decision based on films that have a strong Latin American identity, films that speak greatly to one small demographic's way of life.

Scarface could end up being expensive junk: as good as Larraín is, no one in Hollywood is above taking a paycheck to pay for a new backyard. But his hiring means that we're a long way from the 1983 version, starring “noted Hispanics” like Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer and F. Murray Abraham, written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian De Palma. We still haven't solved a diversity issue in filmmaking: women continue to be dramatically under-represented, with only two wide release live action films directed by women to be seen this year. But it appears that Hispanics are slowly, and confidently, taking over the industry.

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