Bread And Roses (1999) :: Cast Notes
Cast Notes
"We tried to look at Los Angeles in a way that was different to usual mainstream films or TV in which it is portrayed as full of cops in fast cars and hoodlums," Loach says. "We wanted to wipe the mist from the window and see real people there."
Ken Loach, Paul Laverty and their researcher Pablo Cruz spent various months interviewing hundreds of people in New York, Los Angeles, Tijuana and Mexico D.F. until they found the main actors and actresses as well as the rest of the large "multinational" cast.
Pilar Padilla » Maya
The Los Angeles actresses whose age and knowledge of English made them suitable for the role of Maya lacked the necessary background, naturalness and class consciousness that the character required.
Pilar Padilla, the young Mexican actress who finally got the part, did not speak English and so was not at first considered. However, during the improvisations that Loach carried out in Mexico she was the sparring partner for the other candidates. Gradually and quite naturally her presence began stealing the camera's attention until it became obvious that she was the actress needed to play Maya, a character full of fight and independence. As Loach says, "Pilar is very direct and you can read her mind. She has great spontaneity and a very strong spirit which blazes from her."
After a two-month intensive English course in San Francisco, Pilar arrived in Los Angeles to make her first film; her previous acting experience had been in independent theatre in Mexico.
"Maya wants to live the adventure Rosa lived," Pilar explains. "She wants to be responsible for her future and help the family by sending money home. When she arrives, however, she finds that her sister is not a strong as she thought and that the workers' situation is tremendously unjust. She discovers that she "does not exist", that she is a ghost, working but unable to live her life without even a modicum of dignity."
"I suppose Maya arrives kind of innocent," Loach adds. "When you first arrive from outside you see things quite simply, quite clearly."
Maya's passionate character and rebellious nature lead her to join the union's campaign. "For Maya Sam is a detonator," Pilar says. "It is he who opens her eyes, not only to the situation of her, Rosa and the other cleaners but also to her own strength. When she joins the movement she realises who she is and what she is good at. She realises she is a fighter."
Pilar revealed that working with Loach had been the best experience of her life. "I think the secret is that he gives you confidence, a confidence that spreads throughout the whole crew. I'd always thought before that films were for cameramen and directors, not for actors, but now I know that for Ken Loach actors come first. With Ken the set becomes a temple. I feel very grateful - and very lucky."
Elpidia Carrillo » Rosa
Elpidia Carrillo became famous with her roles in Oliver Stone's Salvador and Tony Richardson's The Border. It was always realised that she was the ideal actress to play Rosa, Maya's sister, a generous woman made hard by always having to fight her battles on her own.
"She's a Mexican woman who has had to struggle for work most of her life," Elpidia says, "so I can identify with that. "Still, Ken wanted me to go to Tijuana to visit the maquiladoras, the foreign-owned assembly plants on the border, the sweatshops where the character worked when she was young. We also went to Coahuila Street where all the prostitutes are. I guess that was the hardest part of the "homework", something very powerful, sad and depressing."
Rosa lives with her husband Bert, played by the veteran American actor Jack McGee, a daughter Simona (Monica Rivas) from a previous relationship and a younger child she has had by Bert. Her husband's illness and her paltry wages as a cleaner mean that Rosa has to do two jobs to keep the family's head above water. When the slightest thing can upset the precarious family economy, Maya's arrival makes Rosa's life even more tense.
Living in Los Angeles, Elpidia was well aware of the immigrants' struggles. "It's a reality that's right there and yet the Hollywood industry doesn't touch it. Most films are about action, with good guys and bad guys who are usually Negroes and Latinos. They don't want to show the dirty side of their own country, they don't want to say that there are many Tijuanas in Los Angeles."
Filmography
- The Brave directed by Johnny Depp
- My Family, Mi Familia directed by Gregory Nava
- Refuge directed by Lindy Laub
- Predator directed by John McTiernan
- Let's Get Harry directed by Stuart Rosenberg
- Salvador directed by Oliver Stone
- The Honorary Consul directed by John Mackenzie
- Under Fire directed by Roger Spottiswoode
- The Border directed by Tony Richardson
Adrien Brody » Sam
The success of a campaign like Justice for Janitors needed people with irony and imagination ready to take direct action. "As a kid I was rebellious, a troublemaker, and I got to use all that in this film," Brody says. His character, Sam, is the least serious and bureaucratic union organiser it's possible to imagine.
His career has boomed recently. In the last few years he has made films with directors like Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, Steven Soderbergh and Terence Mallick. "When this film came along I thought it was really different from Hollywood and Hollywood themes. It all happens in L.A., but in a side of the city that no one sees."
Brody admits he had lots to learn. In preparation he attended meetings, went on marches and spent time with activists, "but the most beneficial was a weekend course in union organising. I even had to share the room!", he remembers laughing. "They taught you there all the techniques about companies' scare tactics, going into house visits, assessing leadership qualities, who'd be helpful among the workers... basically tactics and strategy."
As for his character, Brody imagines "Sam's parents being immigrants and Sam seeing them struggling, and seeing the empowerment you get when you have some support. I don't imagine him as the college type, good spirited, kind hearted, the altrustic rich kid. I think he is more from a tougher blue-collar background. They are also more interesting to watch."
"We saw hundreds of people," Loach commented. "The more we auditioned the more it became apparent it was a very difficult part to find the right person. A lot of men who had many good qualities were maybe a little too earnest and Adrien has a sense of mischief and some idea of what the story was about. When you see him you like him, and that's important."
Brody said he was used to working with a certain amount of freedom. Neither the way Loach shoots nor the presence in many of his scenes of non-professional actors was an obstacle for him. Quite the opposite in fact. "It worked very well because they've struggled in their own lives and can easily connect with the state of mind of the characters. Their truth can elevate your own performance."
Filmography
- Liberty Heights directed by Barry Levinson
- Summer of Sam directed by Spike Lee
- Oxygen directed by Richard Shepard
- The Thin Red Line directed by Terence Malick
- Restaurant directed by Eric Bross
- Three Ways To Sunday directed by Adam Bernstein
- The Undertaker's Wedding directed by John Bradshaw
- Last Time I Committed Suicide directed by Stephen Kay
- Solo directed by Norberto Barba
- Bullet directed by Julian Temple
- 10 Benny directed by Eric Bross
- Angels in the Outfield directed by Bill Dear
- King of the Hill directed by Steven Soderbergh
- The Bout Who Cried Bitch directed by John Campanella
Additional Cast Members
Loach, as is his wont, used professional actors side by side with people who had never been in front of a film camera before but who had had personal experience of their roles. Thus Ella (Beverly Reynolds), a janitor, is the link between the union and her fellow-workers at the racetrack where she has worked for seventeen years. Berta and Teresa, also janitors, are played by Maria Orellana, who has been a janitor for seventeen years, and by Estela Maeda from Guatemala, who has spent twenty-four years cleaning skyscrapers in L.A..
The Mexican Roscio Saenz joined the campaign at the beginning in 1988 when the Justice for Janitors office in L.A. consisted of only six people. Roscio was Laverty's inspiration for Emma, the character she plays in the film. Emma is the activist who accompanies Sam on his visits to the female workers, on marches, to meetings, in fact exactly the same as what she as doing ten years ago. When she was offered the part she faced a major dilemma because of her heavy responsibility as coordinator for the entire Justice for Janitors campaign throughout the US. In between scenes she was often with her mobile phone or sending e-mails. "Sometimes it was hard to distinguish what was going on in the film and what was going on in the disputes around the country!" she laughed.
There were also men who had been political activists, like Mayron Payes (Ben). An active member of the National Front in El Salvador, he has lived for some time in Los Angeles where he works for CHIRLA, an organization that defends the human rights of the immigrants.
Jesus "Chuy" Perez is Mexican. He has lived in the USA for twenty-nine years as bricklayer, carpenter, cook and hospital janitor. But he is famous in the Chicano movement because he is a singer and songwriter, "songs that get people into the street to protest because they use us here but they don't like us." In the film he plays another janitor, Oscar.
The Chicano George Lopez, who plays Perez the supervisor, is famous among Latinos as stand-up comic. His gags are about the Latin community and anything that affects them - like Law 187 which tried to refuse medical treatment to immigrants without papers.
Central to the film (as indeed it was to the Justice for Janitors campaign) was the participation of grass-roots organisations. Researcher Pablo Cruz spent the best part of a year working with them and identifying volunteers who wanted to participate, such as the group Jornaleros del Norte, whose music enlivens the party in the film that the janitors hold in their union premises. "There is nothing worse than a bunch of bored extras trying to look militant. The people we found were real fighters," says Pablo Cruz. Or as Rocio Saenz put it: "These people have been doing that for years so they are proud to take part."
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