Following Thursday night’s awesome screening of
Juan of the Dead, I was pretty well stoked to chat with one of the supporting cast, Jazz Vila, who had previously worked with director Alejandro Brugues on the film
Personal Belongings. We met up in the Jameson bus that morning and had a terrific discussion about the film and how he was enjoying his role as the film’s ambassador. Jazz said that from the moment people read the script, they knew they had something special, and we talked at length about the magic act of making a movie that has a social point of view without being heavy-handed about it, something that the
Juan team has managed to pull off admirably.
Jazz’s role, that of cross-dressing homosexual “China,” was one that he felt honored to play, as he knew he wanted to give the character the dignity he deserved as opposed to only being a cheap laugh as is often the case in Cuban cinema. “These people exist,” he said, “and they are real human beings. They are strong and real, and it was important to represent that.” The more we chatted, the more I realized just how easily Brugues could have turned in a cheap zombie flick instead of a genuinely rewarding and thought-provoking piece of entertainment.
