John Leguizamo

0:02Turn it up. Storm has zero sugar and 200 milligrams of caffeine, so you can turn that workout up a notch. Good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state i'm charlotte owen editor-in-chief of bustle and you're watching one night stand presented by gail daltry and the celebrity sex

0:51parts. Great, well John Leguizamo, welcome to One Night Stand. Oh, thank you for having me. We're thrilled to have you here. I'm thrilled. We're going to talk about some great books, but have you always been a big reader? I have always been a big reader, but my reading tastes have changed a lot always. Like when I was a little guy, I was kind of ADHD, so I couldn't really read long form, but I could read a ton of short form like encyclopedias and and all kinds of uh informative books I can do that because you know I could just like devour devour and then stop interesting so when did you get into fiction uh I think fiction really hit me when I was in a little older like when 10 or 11 I started to love like stories Grimm's fairy tales all that stuff and then And then when I was 19, that's when, 17, I started reading plays.

1:42Just plays. I devoured everything. William Inge, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Coppett, you name it. I just devoured every play that ever existed. I found that format, like the most powerful format. That's interesting. Did you ever listen to books or do you always read them? I always read them. I'm going to try listening. You know, I've tried it like I was going on a big road trip and I got all these books on tape and what happened was like I'm driving. This is incredible. Yeah. Oh my God. No, it puts me to sleep instantly. No matter where I'm at. Like I'll try it in the green room. I'll try it in the dressing room.

2:19I'll be out in five seconds. Interesting. Where did you go on your road trip? That time, I think I was going to Boston to do What's the Worst That Could Happen, which was the movie. Nice. The worst thing that could happen was that movie. The title was very appropriate for that movie. Well, you've also bought some of your books here, which is really exciting. You're an author yourself. And so we have your incredible first ever. Oh, my first ever children's book. Kiki and the Can. Tell us about it. Yes. Well, this was very hard to arrive at. It took me five years. I thought it'd be the easiest thing to write.

2:52I mean, what, 20 pages? Come on, I can't write 20 pages. Yeah, it was really rough. It was like four different tries, trial and error. and then I wanted to get all this information so it's about a little kid who goes to the park to hang out with his friends like I used to when I was a kid and all his friends are bragging about their heroes and he doesn't have any heroes so he runs home all sad and his mom tells him, look, what are you talking about? We have tons of Latin heroes and so he starts reading the mom's books and he goes back to his friends and he spray paints all his heroes back into history.

3:29Wow. And so tell me about the five years. Was that right? Was it the writing or coming up with the narrative? It was the writing. It was coming up with a narrative. Yes, all of it. It was like, you name it. That's what it took. It might be my first and last children's book. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But it was rough. But I'm really proud of it. I did it with my friend, John Crash Matos. I'm not sure if he's here somewhere. But we went to school together. He's one of the great graffiti artists of the world. He's in museums. he's the first to take graffiti and put it on canvas oh wow and so we use his art very cool, what do your children think of it?

4:08they haven't read it yet that's the feedback you really need yeah, I'm waiting whose feedback are you always most nervous to get with a project or are you pretty like it's different for every project obviously I go to people who are project specific like for films I go to all my director friends for scripts you know if it's a play then you know more uh writers yeah and and for this uh it was the editor Andrea Pickney was incredibly helpful yeah I mean she was really instrumental in making this happen oh I love that well very exciting well um we have some great books to talk about I thought we could start about open veins of Latin America oh my god Eduardo Galliano yeah tell me about your love of this book oh my god that book really changed me and I recommend it to everybody but obviously for Latin people to understand where we came from and why we are where we are.

5:03He traveled all over Latin America and that's where he came with this point of view of what happened. So he gives you a perspective of our empires before the conquest and then obviously the ruination of Latin culture. I mean in that time it was indigenous culture because the cultural annihilation that happened to Latin people is the worst in the history of the world. And then the theft of all our wealth and gold. And our gold funded the second half of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment period, and the silver funded Asia. And so it was like 500 ,000 tons of gold that was taken from us. But then it talks about all the oppression, all our history, our contributions scientists it's a it's a powerful read it'll change you it'll change the way your mind is wired yeah and the way it's written is so powerful and he really i mean i think later you read it oh yeah i read as much of it as i could get through because it's dense no i like and i listen to a lot of it as well and it's um it is it's so it's passionate yes and yeah he is the forward by uh isabella yende yes i was like she says you know you got to read it like five times i like she's a slow reader then when i started reading i was like whoa wait a minute i gotta read each chapter like three or four times because it's so dense he he really compresses all that information because it's really not that long i mean this is thousands of years of history yeah and um all the different like whether it's the brits or the spanish all these different cultures coming in and extracting these resources that that was really important for me because you wonder like here we are Latin people 500 years after the conquest and where are we you know why aren't we further up in the food chain and then you start to understand all the practices and oppression that goes into keeping people down and yeah so that's it it it makes you angry you go through the five stages of grief with this book you know you get rage you get depressed you you you start to feel, you know, overlooked.

7:16And then eventually you come to terms with it. How old were you when you first read it? How old were you? Oh, I was older. I was older. I was, it was like 15 years ago. Oh, wow. Yeah, I was 50. Wow. And was it when you were working on Latin history? Yeah, yes. I started doing a lot of research to, you know, empower my son. But I was the one that was getting empowered. I was like, wait a minute. How do they keep all this information from us? That's crazy. um and how do you i mean i i know that when you um we it's called um in the uk it's got a different name but on finding your roots you did your a lot about your own personal history how did you because i i think when i was watching parts of the episode you like i think you had some um ancestors from lots of different types of parts did it feel different knowing that and then reading the book oh wow i mean it first of all it was shocking to me being on finding your roots i didn't even want to go on.

8:08I really, because I was like, I only know my grandparents. Yeah, I know. Maybe I know, I know I had great grandparents. I know, but I didn't know there was a lot of history. I just didn't understand it all. And then when I get there and I find out that I'm the only person on the show who they can trace my roots 500 years back in the Americas on both sides. So that means, you know, I had conquistadors and indigenous people and, and African slaves as well in the whole lineage so it was it was really powerful to me I mean obviously I did the gratuitous crying I said to myself I'm not gonna cry this is ridiculous and then he told me about you know my my 12th grandfather who was indigenous and and was in the written about as the noble Indian yeah and that that made me that made me weep yeah it's it's um it is incredible I would love to know all that stuff I mean my oh you want to go on the show well they won't have me on the show but I've tried to do the ancestry.com stuff but well my family just seems to have like barely moved in about 400 years so England and Wales my mom's Welsh my dad's English but they're barely like in the same like hundred but like the least adventurous people ever like the biggest bunch of losers I was like I thought there'd be something interesting but yeah I don't know what can you what can you do it was interesting so when Galeano I think in 2014 he reflected that he regretted parts of like I know which I thought was crazy who writes a regretted what would what was it because I didn't I was I got so upset about hearing about it I didn't want to research it because I was like okay I think he felt that he some of it was I don't use the word emotional but like too polemical I think in tone but it's like how can it how can it not be I like that about it I like that that had emotion because if it was just bare facts it would be it would be difficult It'd be like a textbook.

9:59Totally, and there's soul in it. Yeah, there's soul in it, and there's pain, and there's remorse. There's all kinds of feelings in that book that you start to feel as well. Totally. Are you the type of person who goes back and reflects on your work like that? Do you ever look back at work from 30 years ago and think, oh, God, I wish I'd done that differently? I'm a very regretful kind of guy. Are you? Interesting. I regret everything. So, yeah, I mean, I do. I mean, do I regret some movies that I did? Yeah, did I regret some movies that I turned down? Yeah, of course, you know, I made mistakes.

10:32I think that's what I love about, if I could talk about the Odyssey. I thought the Odyssey, that's what broke me. I don't usually cry movies, and my wife never does, but we were both weeping hard at this movie because the summation of the movie at the end, when he's looking back at his life and he sees all the mistakes he made and how fallible we all are and how, you know, we just make, we're human. We're going to make mistakes no matter how important you are, how big you are, how captain of a ship. You're going to make big mistakes and you're going to regret it. And I think that's the healthier attitude, I think.

11:10Understanding your mistakes and seeing them and accepting them. I think that takes you to a better place in old age and makes wiser people as opposed to people who are in total denial and narcissistic. Yeah, you have to accept it. I think so. I think that makes you the wiser, better leader. Can I ask what movies you turned down or do you not want to share? Oh, no, I turned down a lot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. That was really stupid. Happy Feet, the Robin Williams part. Yeah. Rest in peace, I love them. Yeah, those are two big. There were a lot more on that list. I was just, you know, I thought, you know, I'm not sure what I was thinking.

11:49I was always thinking something like, I don't need to do that. Ah, that's not for me. Oh, I'm better than that. And then you go back, no, I wasn't better than that. I want that movie now. But that's, I mean, that's life, isn't it? You never, hindsight's 20-20, has to say. Yeah, absolutely, right, yeah. Tell me about your character in The Odyssey, because it's been called, you said it's the most loyal character in Western literature. Well, that's what Chris Nolan told me, how he sold it to me. Really interesting. No, no, we went to dinner at the Audion. It's a big Hollywood spot back in the day.

12:17And he said, you know, this is, you may, this is the most loyal character in Western literature. and I was like oh yeah that sounds like it's right up my alley yeah so it was a lot to live up to you know being the sort of uh I'm the caretaker of all of Odysseus's land I teach his son I protect his dog uh and I and I protect his name yeah that's amazing and so were you and you're working a lot with Tom Holland I'm guessing and yeah yeah Tom Holland and and Matt Damon are the people I'm most with. And then a little run-in with Polybus and Antinous, which is Corey Hawkins and Robert Patton. Wow. And how long was the shoot?

13:00Oh, the shoot was long. Not for me, but for Matt. And I think Matt is mostly Matt. Six months traveling seven countries around the world. I mean, Iceland, Morocco, Greece, Sicily, Scotland, and LA finally. Wow. Exotic LA. Where did you shoot your bits in? I was in Morocco, Sicily, in Favignana, I guess near where the Odyssey takes place, and L.A. Nice. And did Christopher Nolan do the classic red scripts printed out? Yes. So who wrote you your script? You get it after you sign the contract. You don't get it before. Yeah. You don't get to decide. And you get it, and you have to be home, and you have to sign for it, and it has to be you.

13:44Your assistant can't pick it up. and then it's in this that red really in this red color with like shiny black ink so you can only read it like at noon and on top of you have to be in the right sunlight otherwise you can't read it because it glares yeah it's incredible that's amazing but it's brilliant it's a brilliant script i mean i don't know if he gets enough credit for being a brilliant writer but he's He's phenomenal. I mean, this is incredibly genius. Wow. How you can reduce, compress 800 pages, what is it, 19 ,000 lines? I can't remember exactly the amount of lines. And make it make sense and make it cohesive and make it relevant.

14:25It's powerful. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's Freedom the B. Use as directed. What was the most surprising? I mean, you've worked with some incredible directors in your time.

15:00Yes, I have. You really have. How does Christopher Nolan compare? What's singular about him or different? Well, I mean, some of the people I've worked with have been visionaries, like Baz Luhrmann, Spike Lee, I mean, Brian De Palma taught me everything. But this guy is a visionary, like a real true visionary. I mean, to take this classic story and make it come to life is not an easy task. It may be one of the hardest tasks in the world. And we need more original content. I mean, I guess this has an IP, but not your typical IP. He's just, I mean, you're shooting in 70 millimeter, which is kind of daunting.

15:43It's never been done before for obvious reasons because it's really difficult because you can't really move the camera around as easily because it weighs hundreds of pounds. The mag runs three minutes. So I had some scenes that I had 10-minute monologue, so it has to get chopped up, and you have to keep revving yourself up because it has to be chopped up now into three or four parts when it takes five minutes to reload it. And he had the fastest reloader in the world because the film is like this big and it's loud. It's like a lawnmower. It's like... And so he's like, don't yell, John. And I'm like, I can't help it.

16:24I can't even hear myself. And then he invented this thing called the blimp. And so now when we're in intimate scenes, he put it over it and then it sounds like a cat purr and it's like wow it's incredible but you can't use it all the time because yeah i think it i'm not sure what it does to the to the look of the film how interesting yeah so it was a really singular experience shooting it was it was wild it was incredible i mean my you know i i am nearsighted uh not nearsighted i'm visually impaired i was trying to think of the appropriate way of saying it i'm visually impaired so you know i studied as hard as i could i have a friend from high school gina velasquez who's side impaired and i spent time with her studied her behavior and then you know i walked around the house with the lights off trying to see what it does to your body and then i'm an older person so i was trying to also create the age uh because i'm i'm ancient i hope you don't think that's the way i normally look yeah yeah was that a lot of prosthetic or like yeah gosh how long louisa louisa elba is one of the best in the world and at the first day was like four or five hours and the hair took like two days to get it done to that whiteness.

17:33Yeah. Bleached the hell out of it, burned my scalp. It was incredible. But it looks great. It was worth it, you know. It does look incredible. I mean, you sort of look, you look unrecognizable, really. That's a polite word for what you were trying to say. Yeah, unrecognizable, yeah. Well, I thought next we could talk about Long Day's Journey and Tonight. Oh, my God. What, I mean, incredible. One of the most powerful pieces of theater, literature, I mean Ibsen is I think the master for everybody even James Joyce said that Ibsen was one of the great writers because he made things psychological, personal and nobody was writing like that really and then I think Eugene O 'Neill took it to the next step with this first autobiographical piece about his family and his mother who was a junkie He didn't want it published.

18:28He didn't want it to be on stage 25 years after. And the wife, as soon as he was gone, like five minutes later, before the body's cold, she's already like... She's like, get it out there. Get it out there. Call the publisher. Hey, we could sell it. But I'm glad because it's such a powerful piece. I think it influenced me completely my whole life. I don't think I would have written what I wrote, freak, and without long deterrent tonight. Yeah. How old were you when you first read it? I was 18. Oh, wow. Gosh, that must have been moving. Oh, so moving. And have you seen any of the big Broadway productions of it?

19:02Yes, yes. I saw the one with Philip Seymour Hoffman where you got a standing ovation for Jamie. I've never, with that monologue, that's crazy. In the middle of the performance. And my wife, you know, who doesn't like long plays and, you know, it's four hours, two intermissions. Is it? Yeah, she was like, I could have sat there for another eight hours. I was like, wow, that's impressive. Yeah. She'd never read it. She didn't know anything about it. I read it this weekend and also listened to a BBC radio play version of it. And even on the radio, you could really, without the visuals, it was incredibly moving.

19:35So moving. I got to say that the Sidney Lumet version that was filmed with, I thought Catherine Hepburn was the best Mary I've ever seen. Yeah. Ever. I think he writes so tenderly about the addiction, because you feel the pain of everyone around him. But also they're sort of like, oh, we know it's not her fault. because she was given it. Do you know what I mean? Right, he gives you the back story of she was pregnant and it was too tough on her and they gave you Laudlin back then and, you know, she happened to get addicted. But he also tackles the father's too, the father's cheapness, the father's thinking he's, you know, he's the biggest actor in America and he still lives with this grandiosity that he can't drop at home.

20:18You know, he still has to be, like, on stage all the time. That's, I mean, that's one of the first things I wrote down it really felt to me like a play about fatherhood and like about in many ways and it i wondered i mean you have two children and how did you decide what kind of father to you wanted to be wow that that's a big switcheroo sorry no uh okay uh well obviously you don't want to be a bad no of course i know but it's sort of like when you it's sort of such a no one i don't know it's just a hard no but it is but you're right you do make a conscious decision i mean i'm in show business and you see what goes on and you try to analyze that, I think a lot of the problems are an absence of the parents being around and the lifestyle, letting the lifestyle overtake your parenting.

21:11And so, you know, we had a lot of – I'm a person who loves experts. So, you know, I've been in therapy all my life. And so, you know, we did parenting therapy. Oh, wow. And then, you know, school was really smart because, you know, I thought I saw all my other friends take their kids out and travel with them. And the school said, no, you're giving the kids the wrong message. You're telling them that school is not important by pulling them out and you're giving them the wrong message. Consistency is more important. So then my kids stopped traveling with me. So then I had to make, you know, rules with my wife and myself that, you know, no more than two weeks apart.

21:43I started turning down movies because I had to be home because you can't replace being home. no and I'm and I don't regret it because I was home and I got to play sports with them I got to impart my philosophies yeah because if you're not there who's going to impart them totally I watched in one of your interviews when you're talking about Moulin Rouge that it was an eight month shoot and I think you had a baby just before that right and we had a baby like the few weeks before I got into and then my wife being the trooper that she is she's an amazing woman by the I mean, I'm everything because of her.

22:17And she came with the baby and my mom. And they came to Australia, Sydney. And my child was only like three or four weeks old. Oh, my gosh. And so they were there with you the whole time. Yeah. And that must have been a long shoot as well. Oh, that was really long. Yeah. It was incredibly long. That was the longest shoot of my life. Really? Yeah, eight months. Yeah, that's a long time. But was it fun or did it start fun and then get harder, I guess? You know. You know that old joke, that old saying, how do you make an actor miserable? You give him a job. And yeah, so that's what starts to happen after a while.

22:50You know, I was in Moulin Rouge. And, you know, I love Baz. He's a genius. And the crew, I mean, the cast was incredible. We had a whole month rehearsal before we shot, which is amazing. And I'm used to theater, you know, so I'm used to a lot of rehearsals. But yeah, I'm filmed that's unheard of. Yeah. A month, you know, and we had to do singing classes, dance classes, you know, accent, because I had to do like a British accent for everything, period. You had your Jeremy Irons, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. You were listening to Brideshead. I was listening to Brideshead trying to do the accents. I can get it perfectly.

23:20It's been a while since I've done it, doesn't it? But sometimes it comes back quickly. You've still got it. But it's interesting because, you know, in the Odyssey, we're using American. Oh, interesting. And I love that. I mean, I love your accent as well. It's beautiful. But I like hearing period pieces in an American accent. I mean, British people, I guess, obviously were the best because they did the most period stuff. Yeah. But it gets complicated sometimes when you're doing ancient Greeks or Romans and they're speaking in British accents. I know. It just takes you out for a second. Totally like Brad Pitt and Troy.

24:01We watched it recently and I was like, is he speaking with a British accent? Yeah, because that was the standard for period stuff. but it doesn't really, it's not really authentic. So I like this innovative attempt at doing it in American and how beautifully inclusive this version is. Everybody's seen, everybody's a part of it. It's such a large tent. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah. So obviously Eugene O 'Neill didn't allow the play, like you said, to come out until after his death. And a lot of the plays and one-man shows you've written have had semi-autobiographical elements. And when I was reading, I think earlier you used sort of like pseudonyms and then later on you started using real names.

24:47What was the reaction to that amongst your family and friends? I mean, you know, when I started doing biographical stuff, I was an angry young man, so I didn't care. But, you know, then my mom finally in Spickerama, she said, that woman is so funny, she's so crazy. And I was like, well, that's you, mom. She goes, what do you mean? That's not me. You know, she didn't see herself. And then, you know, she was like, came to see the play like a thousand times. And then she was like, oh, I'm so sorry for everything we need. You know, but freak. I was still an angry young man, even though I was a lot older.

25:24I was 38 or 37. And it was, you know, it was a takedown on some of the parenting and my father. and that that so i used mock-up names because my dad did try to sue me and really so yeah i didn't want to be sued no fair enough yeah and then you know uh that issue for morons i learned my lesson to i make sure that i use synonyms yeah change photos to make sure that i'm not liable you know yeah you know family my my family will sue me gosh that's that's like a difficult was that emotionally hard when that was happening oh yeah no it made me like really uh antagonistic uh but you know i i tell my friends you know be careful when you do uh biographical stuff because you don't understand the power of what you're writing and and how people react to it they feel like they don't get a chance to say what how their point of view and they're not as forgiving yeah so i tell them be careful you know this because lots of writers have written about their their personal stories but they change the whole thing you know fictionalize it and then you're fine they always say write what you know don't you yeah yeah that's true what i know yeah um and are you writing anything at the moment yes i am besides that uh that lovely book uh uh my play uh the other americans yes uh i'm touring with it and uh it's my first play with a full cast and i did it at the public theater I did at the arena stage theater and it's gone great it's really powerful pieces I'm trying to add the Latin play as part of the American canon of American tragedies yeah so I took a terrible hate crime that happened in 1998 in Long Island and I reverse engineered it and created the home life I'm Charlotte Owen editor-in-chief of bustle and you're watching one night Stand presented by Gail Daltrey and the Celebrity Sex Pass.

27:25I mean we have one of your other books here, the graphic novel for Get to a Clown. Oh yes. And you performed that on Broadway and also at Rikers Island, right? And in London. Oh did you? I did it in London. Where did you do it in London? In the West End? Yeah in the West End. Very cool. In a beautiful music hall. Yeah. And The Clash came. Oh very cool. And oh my god there were so many people that came, now I'm blanking on the names. But yeah, it was great. I had a great time there too. I traveled everywhere. This was the most autobiographical piece I wrote. And it was really difficult to have to talk about performance anxiety, all the neuroses that happens with that, and finding it difficult to go back on stage and dealing with the problematic family, the racism, systemic racism in Hollywood.

28:18So I tried to deal with it all. Some light topics. Some fun shit. What was it like performing at Rikers? Oh, Rikers? That was intense. That was amazing. I was part of this organization called Go So Get Out, Stay Out that has incredible 99 % success. It's incredible. Keeping the kids from coming back. And it's mostly with the teenagers. We're talking about 18, 19, and 20. and there's a high school that Mark Goldsmith raises all the money by himself. So I started helping him raise the funds, doing acting workshops, one-man show workshops with the inmates. And when I did the show there, it was wild.

29:00I mean, I was nervous as hell because I don't know if they're going to find it funny. Am I going to bore them? They used to have such a hard life. And they were incredible, man. They laughed really hard. uh you know they told me don't you know the don't don't be don't incite violence don't sexualize the situation don't be vulgar and of course my play is all that's all my plays so i was left with no content so i just did me and and the kids laughed and no no violence and nothing happened uh and then i did a i sat with them and and uh talked to them and they made me eat the food which was horrific it was all gray gray ham gray cabbage it was in the soapy water it was disgusting wow yeah that's an incredible organization though that's really yes it really special mark's done it for like over 20 years by himself it's incredible yeah amazing um well i loved reading long day's journey into night it gave me i mean is that was that the first time you read it yeah it's the first time i know i hadn't read that because they don't because it's an american play right maybe unfortunately we've still rather british focused in the uk i know but it was i mean i was just so struck by the i mean the dialogue is so and and just the way that they in one monologue can flip between like three different it really just captures the way your mind was yes absolutely like i mean everybody's influenced by joyce and ipson i think those are the two biggest influences of our modern times in terms of writing dialogue and and and capturing the psychology of family and and and and and humanity you know totally well i thought it was i thought it was brilliant and oh yeah i think it's one of the greatest plays ever written it's one of the of all time and i loved that um when spikorama came out a critic in newsweek compared edit oh my god that that oh my god he goes um that hits me right here like i i get emotional all of a sudden it says not as tragic as o 'neill but he's funnier and every laugh he gets his booby trapped with pain and pathos about your writing which i thought was lovely oh my god that's lovely yeah that is lovely thank you for reminding me you forget you know yeah you move on i mean it's been decades now yeah i've been in the business so you forget that's amazing these were the most important things that I've done in my life or my plays yeah because it's a fabric woven from my pain you know yeah totally well I thought next we could talk about the brief wondrous life of Austin Wow Wow Gino Diaz incredible yeah you know that book was such a powerful read for me first of all because he's legitimizing our street vernacular Latin vernacular street culture which is really important to me because that's where I come from and I don't find it gets the love and respect it deserves.

31:54And the book was just incredible. I mean, first of all, I didn't know enough about Dominican history,

32:03Dominican, what happened with Trujillo, who was an autocrat, a dictator, and the killings. And he made it so accessible about this kid just going to college who wants to get laid. and he's giving you the whole history of the Dominican Republic. It's incredible. I read that before I did Latin History for Morenz, and I think subconsciously it definitely influenced me. Letting me know that you can weave history into the fabric of a story. Yeah, I think also it's got that really powerful sense of how, I think sometimes when you're trying to make art, you can feel like you need to conform to how other people have made it before.

32:42Right, absolutely. This really finds its own voice, and it's so powerful as a result. With the footnotes and the way he's weaving it between this college kid trying to find himself at the same time as he's giving you this intense history at the same time. I mean, they're kind of like incongruent in some ways, but that's what makes it so fun and exciting. Yeah, and the different perspectives. I love the fact that at the start, you know, you're seeing it from one side and then you start to hear the sister's perspective and then you realize the way that you'd earlier been described how she was behaving you're like oh it's because all this was going on invisibly in the background it gives you that way that all stories are like overlapping yes it's so beautiful that way uh and and then it just the latin culture i mean it's latin culture forward which you know a poetry prize winning i mean it's and it deserves it it's such a great read yeah uh you know obviously i'm influenced by latin writers i mean nia pinero was the first to like bring real street vernacular to theater he was the first to do that i mean he might have been even before uh david mammoth using you know vulgarity and theater and plays using the f-word uh you know not sparingly yeah it's amazing i also thought it was so interesting uh on masculinity and like the sort of different pressures of masculinity both at large and then specifically within like dominican culture do you have you have your like views about masculinity evolved as you've got older i hope so i hope i really do hope so i think i think definitely especially i don't know everybody says you go to machu picchu and you and you and it can be life-changing and you know i never really believe any of that stuff but i went there and i had a life-changing moment i don't know what happened but to me for some reason that that moment i realized that being a man is not fighting all the time or or or never having to say you're sorry it is actually the manlier man can say I'm sorry can walk away from a fight can take the higher road I just that that was I don't know why that happened there but I felt like that was a big flip for me because I grew up you know in the street and you know you always you always had to throw the first punch you never could walk away from a fight you always had the you know loyalty was a big deal so that's the way i grew up and and to undo all that you know obviously i was trying to do it for my son in landis of remorens as well as not i didn't want to continue the cycle of violence yeah with the bullies i wanted to use words you know and language defend themselves yeah so i was already evolving hopefully a different kind of masculinity yeah yeah how old were you when you went on the Machu Picchu trip?