The
Motorcycle Diaries
July 2004
"This isn’t a tale of derring-do, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s a chunk of two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams." (Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries)
The quote above begins Guevara’s memoirs of his journey around South America at age 23. When I first read this book, I was impressionable, sheltered, naïve and the same age as Ernesto Guevara when he undertook the journey he chronicled. Although I’d lived on my own during college, I was still too self-involved to look beyond my most basic desires – comfort, friends, family – to the world outside and far away and ponder my role in all of it. But that changed fast living in L.A. and working in “the entertainment industry”, a business so embroiled in its own bureaucracy it embitters even the most hopeful aspirant.
Guevara’s journey was one of discovering your own world and realizing your sense of self-worth has more to do with whom you are rather than how far you go. It spans a personal geography of self, class, society and culture versus the physical geography of a place. It made me ask, why do we let arbitrary borders divide people? This question meant a lot to a Mexican-American, especially since I’d always believed I needed to shed my past in order to attain my dreams. Reading the book over and over – a chapter here, a few paragraphs there – reenergized me when I needed it most, for although my quest wasn’t nearly as epic as Guevara’s, it certainly was strewn with seemingly insurmountable obstacles of ego, discrimination, cruelty and greed.
Just a few years later, I began TIMBT. I like to think that reading The Motorcycle Diaries helped me to realize that although I hadn’t majored in journalism, I could be a reporter; although I hadn’t gone to film school, I could make movies; and while I wasn’t a practicing musician, my lifelong passion was enough to write about music. Most of all, I know this book helped me to believe that if I wanted to do something, I could. And today, Che’s revolution continues for me on an aesthetic and yes, political level with the cinematic adaptation of The Motorcycle Diaries.
In the Hollywood game, I am a small-time player, a journalist of no consequence who lacks the clout to put glamorous faces on magazine covers and sell millions of issues. But that isn’t why I’m here. I do what I do to honor artists who move, inspire, and educate me, with the hope that talking about their work will empower others and perhaps bring much-deserved respect and recognition back to the artist. I love what I do, and I love the people I talk to. And my experience with The Motorcycle Diaries – in viewing the film, speaking to the filmmakers, and the process behind it all – served as a resounding reminder why what I do is necessary and fulfilling.
To gain “legitimate” access (for TIMBT is a negligible outlet for the powers that be) to the cast and crew of The Motorcycle Diaries, I pitched a piece on the film to a magazine that I regularly write for. The theme of that month’s issue was to be “Fashion”. This was my initial pitch:
“The theme of the piece will be Che as a legitimate historical figure versus his chic fashionability, the icon that’s well-recognized these days (and more so this year thanks to the film) even though most kids sporting his t-shirts, stickers, etc., have no idea who he really was or what he really did. The interesting thing is that the movie doesn't really attempt to address that issue but does an amazing job instilling the larger-than-life figure with humanity, which could be exactly what Che needs in order to get some respect back and have people start paying attention to what he did, not just how cool he looked. I'm also intrigued about the global reach of this film - how it brought a Brazilian [director Walter Salles], a Mexican [co-star Gael Garcia Bernal], an Argentine [co-star Rodrigo de la Serna], and Puerto Rican [screenwriter José Rivera] together to produce a project that, for all intents and purposes, is the embodiment of a united Americas that Che idealized.” For this is one of those quotes I underlined, bracketed and put a star by when I first read the book so many years ago:
“Although we’re too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only served to confirm this belief, that the division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race with remarkable ethnographical similarities, from Mexico down to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to break free from all narrow-minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a United America.”
My editor gave me the green light and the publicity firm hired by the film’s distribution company liked what I had to say, too. However, word came back about a week later that I needed to refine the pitch just a bit and let Focus Features have a better idea of what I was going for. So I told them what I firmly believed: “The film is a true work of cinematic art, embodying universal themes of self-realization, of discovering your world and your place in it. It is about relationships and the people we all encounter in our lives who help us learn, mature, and become who we are. It is a definitive work for the artists who made it – Salles, Rivera, Garcia Bernal and de la Serna (not to forget cinematographer Eric Gautier, composer Gustavo Santaolalla, and editor Daniel Rezende) – demonstrating they are true craftsmen who believe in the beauty and power of the movie medium and have this amazing work to show for it.” I was thinking long and hard about this movie and had been for years, since I’d heard the book was being adapted into a film, and even prior to that, when I read it for the first time almost a decade ago and visualized the journey in my own mind’s cinematic eye.
As a writer, there were dilemmas I was especially interested in exploring with this film. The mixing of fact and fiction, embellishing the telling of a true story with the tricks of storytelling – was that okay? What about this question of enlivening a passive narrative – how much creative license (e.g. fictional dialogue) are you allowed? And just how do you do credit to someone’s life?
Attaining the balance between strict fact and colorful fiction was intriguing to me as I wondered whether someone’s history could accurately be depicted, especially when the factual information being relied upon is memory – a totally subjective point of view. To quote Guevara, “The person who wrote these notes died the day he stepped back on Argentine soil. The person who is reorganizing and polishing them, me, is no longer me, at least I’m not the me I was. Wandering around our ‘America with a capital A’ has changed me more than I thought.” If he was revising his own history, then how much further from the truth did things get when people who never knew Guevara personally attempted to talk about him half a century later?
Then there was the issue of visual versus verbal, how to translate literature into the language of pictures. I recalled Rivera saying something to the effect of, “Write a play with your ears, write a screenplay with your eyes.” The writer in me was eager to no end to delve into these dilemmas with the artists who tackled them. So I kept on with my research as the weeks went by and I assumed everything was on track.
The week the interviews were supposed to happen, I got the word from publicists that not only was Focus “unconvinced” of my pitch but that I might not get permission at all to speak to anybody. Despite the fact that I could have gone straight to the publicists/agents representing each talent, I chose to try and placate Focus, not go behind their back, and do what they wanted: Come up with a new pitch that didn't mention, despite the fact that the movie itself mentions Che, and that almost everyone who goes to see this film will be doing so because of the Che legend.
I wore my heart on my sleeve, appealing to some sense of artistic integrity on the part of the industry machine that was now standing between me – as a journalist, an audience member, a filmmaker – and this movie. “What it comes down to is this,” I beseeched them, “Fashion and fad may come and go, history may be disputed until the cows come home, but what The Motorcycle Diaries is really about is timeless and true. And as a filmmaker myself, I can appreciate the work that went into this project, and I’m going to make sure the article celebrates that, not mire it in political rhetoric.” I was fighting for a much bigger ideal by this point. It wasn’t merely about being given permission to talk to these people and write about their movie.
And so at the 11th hour I was granted a reprieve with conditions: A generous chunk of time alone with screenwriter José Rivera, and roundtable spots with director Walter Salles and co-star Gael Garcia Bernal.
For those of you who are not journalists, it is experiences like a press junket roundtable that make me say to anyone who tells me they'd love to do what I do, “No, you wouldn’t - go become a proctologist or an IRS agent instead. You’d have more fun.” The problem with representing a smaller outlet attempting to maintain actual integrity as opposed to larger mass media which couldn't give a damn about art or talent but relies instead upon vapid gossip to make money is that you aren’t respected by the corporate automaton (which includes film studio publicity departments). So if you are lucky enough to get in, you’re lumped with entertainment insider columnists in 20-minute shouting match as the hapless director/writer/actor does their best to answer. These usually take place at some swanky Beverly Hills hotel where the studio tries to ply you with food and drink while you hop from generic suite to generic suite making the rounds. It's just not an environment conducive to creativity in the slightest.
These experiences tend to bring out the rebel in me - not that I’ve ever really pandered to the way one is “supposed” to treat a celebrity, especially considering I only ever report on artists I feel strongly about. Therefore, I’m not shy about using these opportunities to talk about what I believe really matters. In this case, it was how the Che Guevara legend was again rearing its arguably ugly head in an obnoxious partnership with Hollywood studio bullsh*t that I just wasn't going to stand for. I thought, you’re telling me that this man fought and died for his beliefs and now Hollywood - which stands to capitalize big time off his personal story - is going to censor that history in an attempt to wash their hands of any controversy or, dare I say it, intelligent, informed discussion?
To quote Ernesto again, I “clung to the thought that however bad things got, there was no reason to suppose we couldn’t handle it.” The book once again – now partnered with the movie as its own inspirational entity – became a source of reassurance to me.
At the press day, 90% of what was discussed with the screenwriter, director and co-star – of their own accord - was politics and Che Guevara. Perhaps Focus should have realized that all I (and probably so many others) wanted to do was represent the film as a work of art – which inevitably means it possesses greater cultural and sociopolitical meaning. Over the numerous times I’ve watched the film I’ve appreciated it more and more for the talent and care that went into making it. I wanted to convey that message but I also wanted the artists behind it to be free to say anything they wanted about why and how they'd brought it to fruition. I felt it was my right as well to say what I thought and felt about not only the film and its artisans, but also the larger picture of history, politics, philosophy, society, and humanity. There just doesn't seem to be room for that these days, not in Hollywood or the country at large. What is everyone so scared of? We should be more frightened at what could happen if we don’t talk.
In the end, I got my interviews. One last struggle sprung up when the magazine I was writing for attempted to have me more conform the piece to that “Fashion” theme and talk more about Che’s coolness factor rather than the film’s artistry. But I refused, and eventually my piece was left relatively unscathed. In addition, I’ve put together this presentation for TIMBT. None of the artists involved had any problem with it. Those making decisions about money might feel otherwise. But The Motorcycle Diaries – and most certainly the life of Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna – isn’t about that. As I said in my article, this is a case of substance over style.
“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people,” writes Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. If in my own world of antagonistic halves, Hollywood is on one side, then let me be on the other. Let me be with the people who actually live and learn and feel and speak and don't exist just for money.
Although the final quote below is written in Guevara’s memoir, he attributes it to an elderly man the explorer meets at some point toward the end of his journey, at a time and in a place not specified. Today it could be read as a portend from Guevara himself, a glimpse into his own future and a prediction about the systemic society he would remain victim to even in death. Or perhaps it’s a note to Hollywood. Interpret it as you will. You have that freedom.
”All of them, all those who can’t adapt – you and I, for instance – will die cursing the power which they helped bring about with often enormous sacrifices. Revolution is impersonal, so it will take their lives and even use their memory as an example or as an instrument to control the young people coming after them…you will die with your fist clenched and your jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, because you aren’t a symbol (some inanimate example), you are an authentic member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves through your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you don’t realize how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.” (Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries)
interview
with director Walter Salles
