Taylor Hackford’s sweeping crime epic, "Blood In Blood Out," recently celebrated it’s 30th birthday. Released in 1993, the film tells the story of three Chicano relatives whose lives take different paths after starting out together in an east LA street gang.
The movie was neither a critical or financial success — thanks, in part, to its production company, Walt Disney. Director Taylor Hackford’s film was written by Jimmy Santiago Baca, a poet who spent five years in prison on drug charges. Baca’s script offered an intense and realistic portrait of marginalized communities battling racist power structures, and depicted horrific violence in the streets and prisons of Los Angeles.
Arriving in the wake of the unrest that followed Rodney King’s beating by the LAPD, the film’s authenticity made Disney nervous. At the last minute, they changed the title, and then didn’t do much to promote it.
But the movie has become a classic on its own merits. Its nuanced portrayal of Chicano life resonated deeply with Latino viewers in particular, and "Blood In Blood Out" found a massive audience when it was released on VHS.
Now, for the first time, it’s available to stream on Hulu. Film journalist Carlos Aguilar recently wrote about the movie’s complicated history in the LA Times. As he told The Show’s Sam Dingman, "Blood In Blood Out" owes much of its legacy to director Hackford’s audacious choice to write the screenplay.
Full conversation
CARLOS AGUILAR: The biggest decision ... for made was, you know, trying to search for someone specific like Santiago Baca to write the screenplay as opposed to, you know, continuing to work with, you know, Hollywood writers or people who could not bring that firsthand experience into the story.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah. And I mean, I have to say watching the film, one of the things that jumped out at me right away when we get to the part of the story that is set in prison is the tininess of the cell that one of the main characters, Miklo, is put into. The second he gets into it, it's like you feel claustrophobic watching him because the whole room basically is taken up by the two bunks and there's just a teeny little aisle of space for someone to slide along the wall to get to the toilet. And something that small to me, all of a sudden made me feel like this was written from a different perspective than most films about prison that I've ever seen.
AGUILAR: Hackford also talks about the fact that it was a very difficult experience for Jimmy Santiago Baca to be on set and sort of like be back in those spaces. And that it took a mental health toll on him so much that hacker had to sort of arrange for Santiago Baca to have a private space where he could decompress and sort of write.
DINGMAN: Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. And that really speaks to the role of writing in his life, it would seem. And that sort of makes me think about the character Cruz, who's played by Jesse Borrego. Cruz is a painter not a writer in the film, but there's this interesting trajectory over the course of the film where when he's younger, he has an enthusiasm and an excitement about painting and then as tragedy, after tragedy befalls him and his family and the other two main characters in the story, his paintings start to become much more personal, much more psychological. Is there any sense that that character is at all based on Jimmy Santiago Baca?
AGUILAR: I, I don't know if they've, if they've ever sort of like pinpoint, you know, a particular character representing someone. To me, you know, the character of Cruz represents anyone from the Latino community or any, any community that's not in the mainstream, that attempts to sort of find a way of, you know, making a living or express themselves artistically, which is always difficult when you come from situations where, you know, survival and sort of getting by is sort of the first, you know, the first barrier to even, you know, consider doing anything else. There, there are a few scenes in the film where, you know, Cruz is having an art exhibit with a lot of white patrons, and his friends from east LA come to, to see him and it's sort of like this clash of cultures.
DINGMAN: Yeah, that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I mean, it's totally heartbreaking but it's Cruz opening and his two friends show up and they're trying to get in. And the woman who's running the guest list at the gallery is like, I'm sorry, you're not on the list. And one of Cruz's friends points at one of the paintings and says that's, me in the painting.
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AGUILAR: And Latinos that, that sort of the transactional very, you know, difficult to navigate environment when you are creating art from your trauma or from your community's trauma or negative experiences, and when that hits the mainstream, how is the interpreted or perceived or appreciated.
DINGMAN: Yeah. And just as a little extension of that, one of the things that I found really powerful in watching the movie as somebody who does not speak Spanish, is there are extended sequences in the film where the characters are talking to each other in Spanish and there are no subtitles, which for me really underscored the fact that this movie is written from the perspective and presented from the perspective of the people who live this life, not watered down or translated for the benefit of, you know, in my case, a white audience.
AGUILAR: Totally. But also, you know, I feel like in that sense that the character of Miklo you know, kind of straddles that line, you know, the sense that he is entering this, this crime world and crime life out of a sense of, of needing to belong, of feeling like he is, you know, seen as white and he has to prove that he belongs with this Mexican American, you know, gang. And so I feel like each of these characters, you know, represents something so specific, you know, Benjamin Bratt's character decides to leave, you know, the gang life and become a cop. And what does that say about him and his allegiance to the neighborhood, you know. Is he a traitor because now he works for the other side in a sense, you know, or, or can he work for the other side and still look out for the wellbeing of the people that he loves, even those that are engaging in criminal activity? And so I think that the fact that it's such a spanning epic really allows for each of these characters to tap into different experiences within, you know, the collective one.
DINGMAN: And we see that exact tension played out in, I think it's the last scene between Miklo and Paco, which is Benjamin Bratt's character, where Paco comes to visit Miklo.
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DINGMAN: I think you also tell the story if I'm not mistaken that there's this kind of iconic tree in the movie, where the characters meet up, and that there was a rumor it was going to be torn, the tree was going to be cut down at one point.
AGUILAR: Yeah. Yeah. So Taylor Hackford, while location scouting, was looking for a sort of landmark location, a place that, you know, in the fiction of the story could be sort of significant for the characters. And he saw this, this pine tree in east LA and decided that that would be a great landmark for the film and asked Jimmy Santiago Baca to name it, and Santiago Baca simply named it El Piño because of the movie. It's become sort of like a place of pilgrimage in a sense, that people that visit LA from other parts of the country or from other parts of the world, you know, want to take a photo with the street and want to see it. And a few years back, I think someone spread a false rumor that it was gonna be cut down. And I think the community and people really rallied up to sort of prevent that from happening and to sort of express their love and, and the significance for this tree that has become like the landmark of the movie in the real world, right? Like this is a place that people can visit and sort of like feel connected to the movie.
DINGMAN: Right, yeah, it's almost like the tree is kind of a metaphor for the role that the movie plays in those lives.
AGUILAR: Yeah, you can make a case about, you know, it's a, it, it, it's still standing, you know, after all these years, you know, it really has quite a little, you know, planted roots in the community. It's there as a, as a signifier that you know, that the community remains there.
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KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.
