If you’ve spent any time trying to find the connections between director Chris Weitz’s last film, "Twilight Saga: New Moon," and his latest, "A Better Life" -- which pivots on the subject of illegal immigrants -- you may have gotten so stuck that you’ve given up on the auteur theory.
But the link is there, if you look. “There’s a lot of discrimination in both films,” Weitz told the audience at a Q&A following a showing Thursday of "Better Life" at the Landmark Theater, part of TheWrap's Awards Screening Series. “Vampires are discriminated against.”
The discussion's moderator, TheWrap's Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman couldn’t help pointing out a “very strange coincidence.” Playing right next door was “the spawn of one of Chris’ earlier films,” i.e., the newest "Twilight" sequel -- “and they’re from the same studio.
(At left, Weitz with Demian Bichir, star of "A Better Life," at TheWrap's screening.)
Funnily enough,” she said, “we have the head of the studio (Summit) standing just outside the door between the 'Better Life' and 'Twilight' screenings.”
“Guess where he is,” Weitz cracked.
There’s no doubt that one of Weitz’s projects has produced far greater returns for the studio than the other. "New Dawn" grossed just a werewolf hair shy of $300 million in domestic gross alone. "A Better Life" topped out at closer to $2 million after expanding to just over 200 screens this past July -- but that's about what you might expect for a low-budget indie with an almost entirely non-Anglo cast and a tough illegal-immigration theme.
But the personal satisfaction level for Weitz surely inordinately tips in the opposite direction, given how the film has contributed to the debate over immigration.
Moreover, the DVD release of the film is reaching the Mexican-American audience in a way the initial specialty release never could. And there’s hope among Oscar prognosticators and critics that buzz about the deeply affecting lead performance by Bichir will break through Hollywood’s white ceiling.
Bichir -- who plays an undocumented gardener with a thoroughly Americanized teenage son in "A Better Life" -- is a theatrically based actor who made it big in the movies in Mexico. On this side of the border, though, he’s best known for portraying the mayor of Tijuana on "Weeds" and Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh’s "Che."
Weitz was desperate to get Bichir for his film after seeing the Castro performance … but first he called him in on a different project.
“I remember having this call from my agents about meeting with Chris Weitz,” Bichir told the capacity crowd at the Landmark. “He was doing 'New Moon'. So they called me to audition for that, as one of the vampires. That’s how we met. I remember getting to my meeting with Chris, and he started talking to me about this gardener. We were already talking about it for 20 minutes, and I just couldn’t understand, so I was asking myself: Is this a gardener vampire? Who sleeps at night under the palm trees?”
Bichir puts this up with his role in 'Che' as one of the two defining parts of his career – taking particular delight in how opposite the characters are.
