In Mexico I am thought of as an actor rather than a director, and in late 1998 I was offered the second lead in a movie called The Law and the Gun. This was filmed in a fake town in a forest of giant cacti about an hour from Tehuacan, a city in southern Mexico. The story concerns a humble rubbish dump operative hired by the ruling political party to fill in as temporary mayor after his predecessor has been mysteriously killed.
The actor playing the mayor was Damian Alcazar, whom I had directed in Highway Patrolman. Damian is a brilliant actor - intuitive, intelligent - and one handsome dude. The director was Luis Estrada, known as "el Perrito", who had previously directed two regular films, The Long Road to Tijuana and Bandidos, and a weirder third one, Ambar.
Luis is popular within Mexico's film community, but at the time he was viewed as a not-great director embarking on his final film. Quite early in the shoot it was apparent this was not the case. First, the script - by four writers including Luis - is good: a satire on political corruption in the 40s with modern parallels. Second, the cast, assembled by Claudia Becker, Mexico's top casting director, is one of the best I've ever seen. And third, Luis was going for broke: encouraging us to be both serious and mad. "If the whole film is like this it will be quite insane," I wrote in my diary.
At this stage I didn't know what the film was about, having only - in true coarse actor fashion - read the scenes in which my character, the villainous "Gringo", appeared.
The film wrapped just before Christmas. In February 1999 I was back in Mexico playing a bent cop in another film. Luis showed me an early edit of The Law and the Gun, now called Herod's Law after a Mexican saying, "O te chingas, o te jodes" (politely, screw or be screwed). The film seemed long, but good, and I was delighted that all the Gringo's scenes had made it to the screen.
Cut to last September. Luis had asked for my help in translating the screenplay into English, so I was in Mexico again. The film was tighter, and there was already a buzz about it. The word was that Herod's Law was very funny, and was about to run into serious political trouble.
Mexican cinema has a sensitive relationship with politics. The industry receives considerable support from the government, which views film as a serious art form and cultural ambassador. Along with this support comes a certain deference and self- censorship.
Until the late 80s, foreign films shot in Mexico had state censors on the set, and there was an unspoken prohibition against showing potent images such as the president's face or the national flag. Then, in 1989, the talented director Jorge Fons secretly made a brilliant picture called Rojo Amanecer (Red Sunrise), about the government's massacre of students on the eve of the 1968 Olympics. President Salinas de Gortari (currently a fugitive in Dublin while his drug-money-laundering brother Raul resides in Almoloya jail) tried to ban it, only to be defeated by a wave of intellectual and popular protest. Rojo Amanecer eventually received wide distribution, and was popularly viewed as having broken the back of state censorship.
But Salinas had his revenge. His signature on the North American Free Trade Agreement unleashed a flood of American pictures into the domestic market. Simultaneously the Americans threatened to sue Mexico and Canada, claiming that state support of cinema was a restraint of trade. In just a few years, Mexican cinema was driven to the wall, unable to compete with a massive influx of gringo movies that distributors could pick up cheaply. Several Mexican directors gave up on their own country and moved to Hollywood. The success of Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate meant nothing: it was simply a "calling card" so that its director could join the drift to LA.
By the end of last year, a confrontation over Herod's Law was imminent. Unlike Highway Patrolman - where we agreed not to show the actual Mexican highway patrol, but to create a fictitious one - Luis's picture pulled no punches. It named the ruling party, the PRI; showed the PRI's bloodstained colours (not coincidentally, the colours of the Mexican flag); and accused it of corruption and political assassination. In a completely credible scene, the state governor (Ernesto Gomez Cruz) instructs his assistant (the formidable Pedro Armendariz Jr) to murder a party rival who has secured the presidential nomination. The parallels with Luis Colosio and Francisco Ruiz Massieu - PRI officials killed, allegedly, on the orders of the Salinas brothers - are lost on no one.
In December, Luis told me that he had been offered distribution by a major Mexican distributor - on condition that he delay the film's release until after the presidential election, due this July. The head of the company also owned a vast TV conglomerate and - like all Mexico's billionaires - was one of the ruling party's faithful. Could a comedy set in the 40s really unseat a power bloc that has never lost a presidential election?
It seemed unlikely. But there was fear in the air. Luis refused to delay the film's release. A week later, Herod's Law was screened unannounced by the financier, the state film board Imcine. The screenings were not advertised. After two days the run was cancelled and the film was canned.
In Hollywood, that would be that. Many are the films that the studios have financed, then turned against and stashed in dusty vaults. But films in Mexico aren't just about money or corporate politics. They're also about art, and the right of artists to be heard. The leading lady, the valiant Leticia Huijara, organised a campaign against Imcine's suppression of Herod's Law. The actors all sent faxes of protest to the appropriate authorities. And somehow a miracle occurred. Imcine washed its hands of the whole business, and gave Luis the negative of his film. He was to distribute it himself, if he could. If the film made money, Luis would then repay Imcine's investment.
That seemed like a tall order. I once "four-walled" a film of Borges's Death and the Compass. "Four-walling" means you rent the cinema and pay for the prints and adverts yourself. It is a thankless, time-consuming task. You cannot possibly compete with the majors, or even the minors. There is little money to be made.
But, for Herod's Law, a second miracle happened. I don't mean the premiere at Sundance, where it won the best Latin American picture prize (though this was good news), but the mysterious appearance of an "angel" who offered Luis enough money to strike 250 prints and open the picture nationwide.
That's a lot of prints. Herod's Law opened more widely, with more fanfare and more full-page ads, than any previous Mexican film. I went to Mexico City for the opening a week ago. The media reaction (apart from those papers that ignored the film) was generally good. I accompanied Luis, Claudia and Damian to two screenings, and the public response was even better. The houses were 90% full; the audience roared with laughter at the awful goings-on, booed the gringo, and applauded at the end.
The movie has confirmed Luis Estrada as a major directorial talent. One hopes he will not decamp to the US but continue making films in Mexico, whose cinema can only benefit from his particular brand of irony.
But there is something strange about his big break. Normally a distributor would be anxious to publicise itself, especially if it had just embarked upon the most ambitious opening campaign in Mexican film history. Yet no name appears on the posters or in the film. The only credit is for Luis's company, Bandidos Films, whose empire consists of two rented rooms in Churubusco Studios.
The distributor of Herod's Law is behaving with unusual modesty - keeping itself a secret, almost. But secrets are hard to keep, and there is speculation that the financial entity behind this release has a stake not only in the film but in the outcome of the July election.
It would not be surprising if this angel were connected to one of the opposition parties. Of these, the left-wing PRD has little money, while the right-wing PAN has lots of money (some of it allegedly from the United States: the PAN's presidential candidate is the former head of Coca Cola in Mexico).
Can a film make a political difference? Hard to say. Rojo Amanecer was certainly part of a wave of greater artistic freedom, but the PRI remained in power all the same. Even a work as brilliant as Peter Watkins's The War Game had little political impact, and was forgotten last year in the BFI's list of 100 influential British films.
But somebody - previously an importer of American films, they say, "trying out" a Mexican movie for the first time - is paying for all those 35mm prints, double-page newspaper ads, TV commercials and cinema rentals.
It would be ironic if Luis's film - which comes from a leftist, progressive viewpoint - helps bring down a reactionary, repressive government - so that a more reactionary, more repressive regime even more acceptable to the gringos can take its place.
But isn't that Herod's Law?
