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[0:00] Jose: David Alvarado, welcome to Token Theatre Friends. I'm very excited to be talking to you about one of the best movies I think I've seen this year. I actually saw American Pachucho, The Legend of Luis Valdez, all the way back in Sundance, and I loved it so much. You're going to tell us more about it, but Luis is such a treasure, and I feel not enough people know about his work. So I want to get started by asking you, what exactly does Luis Valdez mean to you personally as a filmmaker, and as an artist, and as a Latino artist, and why did you decide that you wanted to tell his story through film?

[1:05] David Alvarado: Well, you could say it started with La Bamba, right? I watched that movie so many times, my sister and I, two little brown mixed kids in a very white suburban North Texas, and we'd go to the blockbuster video and rent it over and over again. It meant so much to us to see that film, to see that family put on the screen like that, but also that the other white kids around us liked the movie too. It wasn't really a film about brown people to them. It was a film about a family, and the American dream, and rock and roll. It was American, and so it was both of those things, and that was what was incredible about that movie. But I also didn't know who the director was. He wasn't pasted on the posters like a Steven Spielberg or something, so I didn't know the name until I went to college, and when I got to college, he came as a keynote speaker.

I went to go see him, and I was blown away that it wasn't just about La Bamba. It was growing up as a migrant farmworker family, picking cotton and grapes in the fields, and then making theater out of the grape fields, using that as a tool of social activism, then going to the stages of Broadway with Zoot Suit, and then conquering Hollywood, and then a thousand things since. When I realized, oh, this is a guy who's figured it out. Here's a Latino artist who paved his own path, and I, for the first time, saw a path for me to follow, and so I was really inspired by that. But then in about 2021, I'd gone pretty far in my career. I'd been working about 15 years in the documentary field, making television, making feature documentaries, and I was reflecting on who got me here.

How did I get here? I feel so lucky that I'm working in this field that I only could dream of when I was a kid, and I remember that time when Luis told me his story, and I got to meet him and spend some time with him. So I was like, well, surely there's a documentary about this guy already, and so I just gave it to Google, and I was just blown away. There was no documentary on him. There were some ABC news pieces on him and stuff, but there's about 2,000 documentaries a year made these days, right? There's nothing on Luis Valdez. Are you serious? So I just went out there, and I said, I got to try it. So I reached out to him, and that's really where this got started.

[3:32] Jose: It becomes very clear in the movie, and not only in the movie, but because of his work, that Luis Valdez is such an incredible, magical storyteller. So how were you able to give shape to a film that made justice to everything he's accomplished so far?

[3:43] David Alvarado: Well, I think I didn't. To be honest with you, I think I failed at that. I was very precise about a section of his work and life, and I didn't let all the other things get in, because what I really wanted from the beginning was for this to be an entertaining 93-minute film that didn't feel stuffed, but didn't feel slow. There was a pacing to it, and I think that's why people really liked the movie. I didn't want to put too much or too little into it, so that balance was something I wanted to get from the beginning. So when you watch the movie, it kind of ends after La Bamba, but he's done so many things since, so none of that's in there. He did so many things during the phase of his life that I covered that I don't even touch, and it's just on the cutting room floor.

But what is in there, as I see it, is his work, the core work that represents all the rest of his work that speaks to this question of belonging in America. When he was a little farm-working kid in Delano, he grew up feeling like somehow he didn't belong. In the country he was born, mind you, he wasn't just born here. His parents were born here. You can't get more American than Luis Valdez, and yet, if you go to the country school, and he's the only brown kid there surrounded by white kids, and he's told not to speak Spanish, not to eat tortillas in the school. What's wrong with me? Why does the world reject me? Why does this country reject me? He's baked that into his work, and I wanted to choose the work that was focused on that.

Then in his personal life, his struggle with his older brother, Frank, who took that rejection of belonging, and instead of being proud and defiant of his heritage and trying to say, no, this is as American as it gets, Frank, his older brother, decides to try to wash it away, to say, no, I'm going to belong here by looking Caucasian, by driving a Porsche and getting a white picket fence, and maybe then I'll belong. But that doesn't work out for him. He's still rejected. The racism is still there. He ended up working at an army base, and he was still the Mexican. He couldn't get rid of that. That struggle that he and his brother had, it both reflects in his work and also his life, and I just wanted that to be the core of what we saw. For me, it's like telling really well-told stories about being very decisive and trying to hone in on the things that are at the core of it and keeping it snappy.

[6:18] Jose: Besides everything that you talked about right now, one of my favorite things about the movie, which is something that I see regularly in documentaries, is that many filmmakers try to digest the point. They try to say, this is what I want to interpret this life as having been, and your film completely avoids that. I wonder how much of a challenge was it to achieve that beautiful, here's a story, I'll let audience members and people who watch the movie make up their mind about what this means, especially as children of immigrants or Americans or you name it.

[6:57] David Alvarado: Yeah, or immigrants. There's just such a wide breadth of what the American experience is, and this film wants to celebrate that diversity of experience and say that is all the American experience. For me, it was almost like I got to have a cheat, right? This movie's about Luis Valdez, but it's also about the Pachuco. The Pachuco is, in this film, a narrator, almost like a typical documentary narrator, except for he's a fictionalized narrator that I wrote that emulates the Pachuco from Luis Valdez's work. It was an interesting thing that I wasn't sure was going to work at the outset, this idea that the film is narrated by this character that was actually created by the subject of the film, but the narrator's aware of all that and can communicate with the audience.

To me, the film's about Luis, but also it really becomes about the Pachuco and what he is. What is the thing that Luis invented, and why was it so powerful? He starts the film, the Pachuco starts the film and ends the film, and so it becomes more about him. I see him as the spirit of the Chicano community, the strength and resilience, the revealing of himself actually as connected to our indigenous roots with this land, which actually is the essence of our belonging. Actually, Latinos were here well before Americans were and before the Europeans that came before them. To me, that's the great reveal of the movie, and it's through the Pachuco, which is why I called it American Pachuco. Luis was never a Pachuco. He never wore the zoot suit and snapped and sang jazz in the 1940s, but he discovered the Pachuco as a cultural icon, and that resonated with the Latino audiences at the time and today.

[8:54] Jose: You mentioned that you wanted to make an entertaining documentary, an entertaining film, and one of the joys for me earlier this year was also that one of my students attended Sundance, and she found herself going to American Pachuco, and she had no idea who Luis Valdez was, who Luis Valdez is, and then loved the movie so much that on her way back home to the East Coast, she spent the entire time watching Luis Valdez. She went and she saw La Bamba, and she was like, I had no idea that this movie that my parents watched. It's a great movie. It holds up so well. You went on to win the audience award at the festival, so can you talk a little bit about what it was like to hear from people after watching the film? Did they come to you and tell you what the story had meant to them, what the film meant to them?

[9:49] David Alvarado: Yeah, that's not just Sundance. We played at over 50 festivals, and now we're in our theatrical run, so we're playing in 39 different theaters around the country, and every time, I'm telling you, every time people walk up and they say how much this meant to me, either what you say, like I had no idea, and this stuff seems so fresh and awesome, and I just didn't know, and this is amazing, or the older folks are like, you've captured our lives. That was what it was like to be at Chicano in 1968. You put it on the screen, and this is incredible, and so I've been blown away by it. I get it, because that's how I felt when I first met Luis, and I heard his story, and I was really woken up by his presence.

It's just, to me, shocking. It just took this long for somebody to do it. I felt like there was a piece of bar of gold on the ground just waiting to be picked up, and I couldn't believe it was still there in 2021 to be picked up. It's so exciting to see someone like Luis Valdez get his flowers while he's still around, and fortunately, he's still alive to tell his stories and to continue to do work, but what does it mean for a filmmaker when the subject of your film is

[11:11] David Alvarado: Is there a different kind of responsibility in what you can do, what you can't do? How did Luis's presence and the fact that he was going to watch the film at some point influence the choices that you made? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, well, you know, I've done a lot of biographies of people and they've all been living. So to me, that's just a natural thing. Oh, this person's still alive. We can ask them about their lives. We can, you know, film them in their contemporary, you know, world. And, you know, if they're older, I mean, it just makes it more pressing. Like, oh, well, there's never been a better time than now to do it. So it feels natural to me to make biographies of people still living.

And you're right. It does seem like there wasn't enough awareness of him. So to make something like this that shows the strength from my perspective, you know, as a filmmaker, as a writer, to show what I see in his work and why it's so powerful, you know, just feels like an honor and something that needed to be done. So it all felt very natural to me. So many artists think of, you know, like they want to make art because they want to change the world in some way. And Luis Valdez with the Tetro Campesino pretty much did that. And like the way in which he incorporated art and used it to raise, you know, socially relevant themes is just like groundbreaking. It's still like something that's mind blowing, especially at the time when he was doing it.

So what do you think that Valdez understood about the power of theater and the power of art making that, you know, the establishment didn't get at that point? And I would even say like they don't get even today.

[11:23] David Alvarado: Yeah, well, you know, there's in the film, we cover this a little bit. He has an aesthetic that he calls the Rasquatchee, right? Like the sort of rugged, you know, I'm just going to do whatever I want. You know, it's a Rasquatchee, but like, it's a Rasquatchee. He has his own kind of aesthetic that is basically do with what you have. Like, you know, if you if you don't have any costumes, don't let that be an excuse not to put on a play. Put a wrap a sign around your neck and say, look, I'm the grower, you know, and then just do your piece. You know, if you don't have a stage, then get a flatbed truck, jump up on that. If you don't have lights, there's the sun. Great. Do it in the day and get the get the get the great workers out there to communicate your ideas.

And I think in 2026, we could take a real lesson from that, because that is a hell of a lot less resources than today. I mean, we have a production machine right here in our hands. We could record ourselves doing our plays if we're, if we're, you know, wanting to have a theater, you know, if if you want to write a book, you know, you don't have to wait for a publisher. You could you could do your own printing and sell it on the street or through, you know, social media or launch a Kickstarter. You know, like there's now tools to make that excuse for artists, you know, who used to say, nobody will let me in the door. Well, like Luis Valdez, I think, made a path and others like him. He's not the only one.

So many people came ahead of us making a path. And now we have more tools than ever. So really, I just I just encourage young people, especially just not to give themselves an excuse, whatever it is you're trying to do, just do it, do the thing and don't let yourself be the biggest block.

[14:32] David Alvarado: I've unfortunately never had the opportunity to watch a production of Zoot Suit. And watching your film, I couldn't help but be in complete awe. It's almost surreal. Like it's like I can't believe this was made. Like, you know, like the way in which he uses costume, but also movement and sound and how he creates something so meta theatrical in a way. And I wonder, you know, what did you learn about art making, you know, just from being exposed to Zoot Suit? Like how would you say that Zoot Suit will change the way in which you make art?

[15:10] David Alvarado: Well, you know, Zoot Suit is also a little squatchy aesthetic itself because, you know, you have so there's the movie version and the play version. I've never seen the production either. You know, it was in 1978. I was born in 1984. So I missed it. But the film, Zoot Suit, was similarly confined. I mean, it was a studio. It was his first chance to make a studio film. They let him do it after fighting him not to. They said, oh, you're not qualified for this. He fought for his right to do it. He got the directing gig. And then they gave him like a million bucks, something like that, which for a studio picture is very, very low, even in 70, by 80. And he just made it work. He had 14 days to shoot it.

And he actually shot it like a play. So just imagine like it could have been, Zoot Suit could have been where you actually were in the streets and the actual Zoot Suit riots were filmed. You know, it could have been, you know, shutting down parts of Los Angeles and costuming, you know, with hundreds of people, you know, the lighting for a scenario like that. Expensive as all heck. And it could have been like a superhero movie, like a Batman or something where the Pachuco was like, you know, in the world and, you know, in some studio situation, some film. But you can't do that with a million bucks. You couldn't do that today. You couldn't do it then. And so he decided to make it a play. So the film Zoot Suit is actually shot on a stage, you know, with all the sort of blocking of a theatrical production that he'd already had been used to, but it was filmed in a cinematic way.

That's using your head. That's when you're given restraints, you say, well, how do I make something, you know, genius within these restraints instead of trying to break out of them? And what it ended up making was a film kind of like no other. It's a film that's about the unveiling of a play, but it's cinematic and the Pachuco has control over the film as much as he does the play. And so, you know, that was my inspiration for using the Pachuco as the narrator. I was kind of like, well, you know, how can we continue that layering of the power of the Pachuco and reach through time and space and actually have him, you know, continue on in that way? So it's like the documentary is an extension of that film Zoot Suit, really.

And you can even see like the influence of the, you know, the film of Zoot Suit, like in so many movies, like, you know, like Dick Tracy and like the Tim Burton Batman movies, even, you know, Baz Luhrmann's entire Red Curtain trilogy, it's like theater meets film. And that's just like incredible.

[17:41] David Alvarado: The mask, right?

[17:43] David Alvarado: Yeah, yeah, totally. I hadn't thought about the mask. Like that movie used to terrify me as a kid. But yeah, yeah. Like, I want to go back to talk about like, how you knew that you wanted to be a filmmaker? Like, how did you decide that this was the medium that you wanted to use to, like, you know, show the world what he thought?

[18:05] David Alvarado: Well, so I always wanted to be, I think, a writer. You know, but I always struggled through middle school, high school, I made terrible grades, you know, I was in the art club, and I took like media class, I got to hold a camera for the first time in high school. And that really excited me. But I never really saw it as like a like a path that I could go on, I frankly had no idea what I would do. I didn't fit in in my school. And, you know, I hung out with like the misfits and the punk rockers and that kind of thing. And, and then I dropped out of high school, you know, after just kind of like, being terrible at high school, just decided to get out of it. And but then I sort of after a series of events, found my way to community college.

And it was when I was in community college, I was trying to think about what I wanted to do, I considered being in real estate, because I'm actually I'm like, good with money, good with numbers, good with people, I can, I can, you know, see myself doing real estate, right. But then I had to write a paper for an English class. Define your career. And I just couldn't get myself to write it. Like, like, like, what? I don't, I don't. What did I say? I sell houses, the end, you know, it just, it just didn't feel like something that spoke to me. And while I was thinking about that, I saw a movie in the movie theaters, by Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch Drunk Love. And I don't know, I was like, at a crappy AMC in Irving, Texas, you know, I just like, I said, I went by myself, I just sat there, you know, after after a long day at the community college, and I just watched it.

I was like, Oh, my God, like, this movie, like was saying something like, I couldn't even tell you what it was saying. But you know, I sort of spoke to me, you know, I mean, like, something about the character, you know, being, you know, he's like, lonely, but ambitious, you know, and the way it was shot was like, magical, like, there's these scenes that kind of are like, Oh, I can't tell, you know, I thought this was a real movie. But like, now it's like some kind of magical thing, you know, this is basically my entrance into film school is watching this movie. And then I walked out of that movie theater. I mean, like, I want to make movies, like, I think I think movies can, like, you know, somebody got paid to make that maybe I can make a living, you know, doing something on movies, because that would be that would be so awesome.

And so I wrote that paper about, I want to be filmmaking. And you know, I started researching what that was like. I like, you know, the next semester, you know, community college, I got into like a audition for a play. I was like, Oh, well, maybe I'll be a director, I need to know how actors work, I'm gonna be played, they gave me a leading role in the play at the little community college I was at. And, you know, I did that. And then, you know, for the first time in my life, you know, these this first year in community college, I made straight A's, you know, because I was like, I found a focus and something I cared about. And so I was like, you know, like, Okay, I gotta do I gotta figure out biology, I'll do biology.

And I just actually like try applied myself and was making straight A's and all the core classes, gotten to University of North Texas, which is a four year school with a film school nearby, still was making straight A's. And you know, and so like, but but there, but there at UNT, I found documentary, took a cinema verite class with this guy named Ben Levin, and he showed me some films from the 1960s. And, you know, I was like, blown away by those, I was like, wait a minute, you can make you can make a film out of the real world, you know, with with characters and stakes, you know, like all those things I was learning about, like what makes a good, like narrative scripted film, you could actually do that out of the real world, you know, you can bring a camera into a situation and explain who people are to the audience and they and see reality unfold in a cinematic and, you know, story driven way.

And, and that was sort of the moment that I that I, I just shifted slightly over and said, Okay, actually, documentary is a way to do all the things that I like, but also gets me to, you know, engage with the world in a way that, that, that I wanted to engage it. And so I, you know, I spent my career making documentaries with a little bit of this, like magical realism. I mean, you saw that in American Pachuco, a lot of my other work has sort of like, you know, some narrative like elements in it from time to time. And definitely, they're all story driven, you know, I try not to, unless I'm like hired for a TV thing of a certain kind of like information.

[23:53] David Alvarado: You're right. I mean, even like TikTok is in so many ways like theater. And yeah, speaking of that, you know, like Luis Valdez in so many ways was, you know, like breaking new grounds because when he went and did La Bamba, his voice, his theatrical voice like was not like, you know, like altered or changed by Hollywood. And I wonder, you know, after having done the film on Luis Valdez and going back to La Bamba, what have you noticed about his voice and any shifts or any ways in which he used cinematic language that you were like, oh wow, now that I know more about him, this is just like blowing my mind.

[24:34] David Alvarado: Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, it's funny because I've seen so much less of his stage productions because now some of them have been preserved, like the, you know, Bandido is something that somebody filmed, but they filmed it in a very like stage ways, meaning like, you know, just think about like what you saw in the film with Zoot Suit. The Zoot Suit like had camera movements, dollies, you know, that the platform would change while the camera stays still. There was like lighting and every shot was lit in a beautiful cinematic way. It was a shallow depth of field, you know, all that stuff that you see in a great movie. Most theatrical productions aren't shot like that, right? Like they're like, they just lock a camera on the tripod in the back and shoot a flat, you know, wide and maybe this following into the closeup.

So it's a different kind of experience to watch productions like that. Most of the plays were shot like that, but that's just the ones that were shot. You know, a lot of his work, I just can only read in their script form. So really what I have access to is, you know, I Am Joaquin, all the film work that we mentioned and a few others and the television work too, really, in the studios. So like to me, there's a very consistent field of topic between what Luis does, but he's always experimenting in each individual field. So television plays very differently than like Zoot Suit or La Bamba, but that's because he's a master and he knows like how to use the different mediums and the restraints within each medium.

[26:09] David Alvarado: So like maybe no spoilers about this, but has he inspired you to try something that you've never tried before in your next film?

[26:16] David Alvarado: In my next film? Well, I was, you know, did you notice how he smokes a cigar in like every shot from the 60s? I love that angle. And one of the things I didn't get to include is sort of like his background with cigars. I mean, he loves cigars. He smoked cigars with Che and Fidel Castro. And, you know, it's like there's something interesting about the cigar and how it relates to world history and America's place. I mean, tobacco, you know, comes from here. So does corn, you know, and peppers. And like, America is really the creation of all the best food on the planet. And, you know, you think about Italian food, like so much of that actually came from the Americas. But cigars, you know, when Columbus arrived, you know, cigars were essentially what the indigenous people were smoking when they arrived.

And they tried to give him some as a gift. And he, you know, threw them overboard, didn't know what to do with them. But then it took Europe by storm. And then China and so on. Now, you know, such a big part. Thankfully, you know, cigarette smoking is in decline. But, you know, cigars are still like a popular thing. So anyways, I've been thinking about doing a film about cigars, the history of cigars, because like, you know, that's sort of like, just seeing Luis being such a big fan of them. I did wonder, like, oh, what can cigars tell us about the Americas and the American experience? You know, it's got everything capitalism, addiction, you know, but also like, there's a real, you know, the people, you know, who rolled cigars, you know, are collectively, were always historically collectively powerful, you know, like, to this day, they're hand rolled.

I mean, you know, maybe a black and mild can be made by a machine. But you know, every cigar you see in a cigar shop is hand rolled. So there's still like, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people rolling these things by hand, and they have collective bargaining power in ways that are rather unique for 2026. And so, you know, there's a way to look at cigars as a way, a lens through which we can look at America. And yeah, that was inspired by his cigar use. I love it so much. And like, even cigars make me think of rituals, you know, I'm from Honduras. And recently, I learned about this ritual called, la, I forgot what it's called. But it's called la siembra, I think, where like the elders of the Lenca community, like roll cigars and smoke cigars, and dig a hole in the ground and bury something.

And then because of the cigars, it rains, according to the legend. So like, it's there's so much. And you know, that's connected to, you know, your indigenous roots, like, like, there's something there that they picked up on from the past from past generations that they're still doing today. And like, you know, that's, that's why they're so they're so interesting to me, you know, and yet they are still such like, when I mostly when people think even when I think of a cigar, I think of like, almost like a like a good old boy, you know, on the golf course with a cigar, right? But like, that their recent entrance to it, like that there's actually an indigenous product. And so there's just something very American to me about cigars that like, on both ends, I mean, good and bad. And, and, and, I don't know, I was thinking of making that the next project.

[29:35] David Alvarado: Okay, I can't wait to watch that. So speaking of America, and just to wrap up, you know, Luis Valdez was born in California to migrant farm workers, and he spent his time, a lot of time working in the actual fields. And right now that birthright citizenship is under attack by the American administration. What does it mean for you to be able to have your film out in the world right now? And it's absolutely urgent that people, you know, watch it.

[30:10] David Alvarado: Yeah, well, I, you know, this was always supposed to be a film about belonging in America. You know, there's this line in there when Rose Portillo is, you know, in the film, she's like, you know, everybody's applauding the Los Angeles production went amazing. We got a standing ovation. You know, we all took a bow. And like, we knew that it was a statement about belonging, you know, like, like, like, the reason why she said that was because that's at the core of what every actor in that stage knew is that if you can, if you can achieve that level of success on the stage, then nobody can deny your belonging in America. And I just didn't know that it would be such a topical thing that, you know, and by January, when we released the film, you know, people around the country were being terrorized, essentially, being told they don't belong because of how they look.

And so, yeah, but I, you know, it's a serious context to have this film in, but also, the film was designed to be one of joy and hope and strength. So, you know, I'd like to think that the film came at the right time to give that.

[31:24] Jose: Yeah, absolutely. And I want to commend you for doing a story about an ancestor who's fortunately still alive. But now, thanks to you, we have that for all of the story. And I was hoping you would be able to invite our viewers and our listeners to go see American Pachuco and a movie theater if they can.

[31:41] David Alvarado: Yeah, yeah, it's playing in 39 cities across the country. Check AmericanPachuco.com forward slash screenings or you're just, you know, dig around there looking for it. You can also find us on Instagram, LuisValdezDoc. You can find us and see what we're up to. The theatrical run will, you know, we're in Texas this week, but depending on when you're airing next week, we're going to Chicago on Friday. We're going to be in Florida a couple places. Following that, we're going to be in Arizona in early September, Phoenix, Tucson, Sedona, and then we're going to wrap it up. But, you know, the good news is that we're also, through all this theatrical work, we've qualified for an Oscar. So what that means is we have to raise money and try to see if the Academy can see this film for what it is, which is, you know, an American story about a great American artist who should have frankly got, you know, at least nominated for La Bamba.

I mean, that was an incredible film. It's undeniable. Everybody loves it. Production was great. Script was great. Actors amazing. Discovered, you know, Lou Diamond Phillips and Isai Morales, you know. So, you know, like, you know, Hollywood should recognize Luis Valdez. And so we're going to try. And, you know, we don't have a big studio behind us. We don't have, you know, a lot of money behind us. So, you know, to whatever extent people can help out, you know, we've got a Kickstarter going right now. You know, even 50 bucks buys us a tank of gas to be on the road promoting the film. So, you know, check out our Kickstarter if you can. And if nothing else, it's also a beautiful celebration of what being Latino is like. So thank you so much for your film, David. I loved it so much. And I wish you all the best for the festivals and awards season and all of that. So thank you. It's been a true pleasure.

[33:32] David Alvarado: Okay. Take care.