The Oscar-winning Marlon Brando movie Danny Trejo wants to remake: “I’d like that to be it”
They both made their living as actors, which is pretty much where the similarities between Marlon Brando and Danny Trejo end, not that it’s prevented the latter from holding onto his dream of remaking an Academy Award-winning epic that starred the latter in the lead role.
Screen acting has never been the same since Brando burst onto the scene after the method man brought his immersive style to the forefront of the performative consciousness and ended up reshaping the entire landscape of American cinema and inspiring many of the finest actors in history.
Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro are three of the best to ever do it, and when they’re all adamant that nobody’s ever going to dislodge Brando from his perch as the greatest of all time, his credentials as the ultimate cream of the crop are only strengthened. From an acting perspective, and with the greatest respect, Trejo can’t lace his boots.
However, the grizzled veteran does boast one of the most remarkable redemption stories the silver screen has ever seen, having emerged from a life of drugs, crime, and incarceration to become one of the most prolific names in the business and quite possibly the single most recognisable character actor of the last three decades.
Needless to say, Trejo does not daydream about playing Vito Corleone in a remake of The Godfather, but he does want to step into Brando’s shoes for a story that’s much closer to home. “There’s Viva Zapata!, that ’50s movie with Marlon Brando playing Emiliano Zapata, who was a real Mexican hero,” he told The Hollywood Reporter of his dream do-over. “He was just as big as Pancho Villa, but Pancho was fighting the revolution in the north; Zapata was fighting the revolution in the south.”
Hailing from a heavyweight team of producer Darryl F Zanuck, screenwriter John Steinbeck, and director Elia Kazan, Brando made the Oscars shortlist for ‘Best Actor’ in 1952’s Viva Zapata!, which earned another four nominations and won Anthony Quinn a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ trophy for his turn as Eufemio Zapata, the brother of the title character.
“That ’50s movie’s beautiful, and Brando is a great actor, don’t get me wrong, but I just wish I could do a Zapata movie to show the Mexican kids we had heroes,” Trejo explained. “We had real heroes who fought revolutions with sticks and knives. My kids are my real legacy, but if I have a film legacy, I’d like that to be it.”
It’s difficult to imagine Trejo following in Brando’s footsteps, but it’s understandable that he’d want to make a more authentic Zapata feature. The original was written, directed, and produced and was almost entirely populated by Americans on either side of the camera, with the Machete favourite yearning for an adaptation of the revolutionary’s life story that comes from Mexican creatives.
