Director Angel Gracia Talks About HOW THE GRINGO STOLE CHRISTMAS

Cinema Scholars interviews Angel Gracia, the director of How The Gringo Stole Christmas. The holiday comedy stars George Lopez, Jack Kilmer, Emily Tosta, and Mariana Treviño. How The Gringo Stole Christmas will be available in Theaters, On Digital, and On Demand on December 1st.

Introduction

It’s that time of year. When storefronts become winter wonderlands, every commercial suddenly has jingles bells, and 24/7 holiday music is nearly inescapable. And with the Christmas season comes the annual onslaught of holiday entertainment. From big-budget theatrical releases to the endless parade of made-for-TV movies, the number of projects dedicated to one holiday is staggering. With all these assembly-line movies and their cookie-cutter themes, it’s sometimes tough to tell one from another. 

Enter Angel Gracia and his new Christmas comedy, How The Gringo Stole Christmas. With a twist on the traditional holiday fare, How The Gringo Stole Christmas tells the story of Bennie (George Lopez) and his quest for the perfect Mexican American holiday. When his beloved daughter Claudia (Emily Tosta) shows up to surprise her family with her new boyfriend Leif (Jack Kilmer), her arrival isn’t the only thing Bennie doesn’t expect. Her companion’s skin is a few shades lighter than he imagined.

As Leif nervously over-compensates to impress Bennie, his efforts backfire leading to more mayhem for the harried father. Soon Bennie learns that he has to let go of his own control and expectations if he wants to maintain a close relationship with his daughter.

While the movie is a lot more Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967) than anything resembling the Grinch, Gracia creates a funny and poignant story about letting go of expectations. In that spirit, The Gringo Whole Stole Christmas eschews the usual snow-covered everything for balmy L.A. days. A Saguaro cactus is lit up with lights instead of a traditional fir. Holiday games include a family outing to the football pitch. Through it all, Gracia keeps the mood light even as tensions rise and hilarious hijinks ensue.

Cinema Scholars recently chatted with Angel Gracia about his holiday heart warmer. They discuss addressing stereotypes, working with a comedy icon, and favorite Christmas traditions.

Interview

Rebecca Elliott:

How are you today?

Angel Gracia:

I’m good. Recharging with some more caffeine.

Rebecca Elliott:

I have a little right here as well! Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about How The Gringo Stole Christmas. It’s such a fun holiday movie. But you’ve worked extensively in high-end advertising for a lot of major brands with A-list celebrities. So can you tell me about shifting into narrative feature work and especially a Christmas movie of all things? Was it always the goal or is this just a fun side gig?

Angel Gracia:

All filmmakers wish we could just make movies, right? It’s just that the reality of making a film is nearly impossible. The movies you see, that’s just 2.5% of everybody trying to make a film. And so there comes advertising where we get to practice the craft and get paid for it. In fact, I had more pre-production time on a 30-second commercial than I had in this movie. Usually, I’m prepping for commercials in three or four weeks. And for this movie, I had a week and a half.

Rebecca Elliott:

Whoa!

Angel Gracia:

So I’m still in pre-production. And the thing is, what commercials do is they train you on just about every tool. Every possible political situation with difficult clients and crews and actors who cannot act to save their lives. And you build up a bag of tricks, right? Everything’s so compressed that the one thing you have to do is kind of remove yourself. I finally get to grab each one of these twelve sequences for longer than 2 seconds.

Because human beings do not behave in two-second bursts of cuts, right? Now we have normal-ish timing. There’s a regular pulse. You have to stretch it out and make sense throughout the whole sequence of events that happen in a movie, but you’re shooting out of sequence. So I think that’s the most difficult thing. You don’t get to practice on short projects like TV commercials. Because you never have to stretch it out and shoot it out of sequence and keep the tone while there’s a character arc.

So if you’re shooting tomorrow the character is at his highest or lowest peak. But today you’re shooting it in the middle or opposite tone. You have to be able to connect those because the editing will not see the distance.

Rebecca Elliott:

Right.

Angel Gracia:

The editing is just back-to-back and needs to match not only the wardrobe and the lighting and everything else, but the tone of the character and the rhythm. So I think that’s the main thing. You just strip yourself from the advertising limitations and you just keep the bag of tools behind you. Which is, you know, how to shoot everything in every circumstance imaginable. But you got to mentally exercise yourself into that. Now, we’re telling this story in a very limited amount of time to shoot it, but it’s a long amount of time in screen time. So the ratio is pretty much the opposite of a commercial.

Rebecca Elliott:

How ironic. When you’re shooting something short, you actually have even more prep time. And in this case, with a feature, you get to stretch it out but have less prep. Your first feature gave a Latina spin on Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility. And, of course, How The Gringo Stole Christmas is steeped in East LA and Mexican American Christmas traditions. Tell me about bringing a more diverse perspective to these conventional tropes.

Angel Gracia:

Yeah. And I think I know, being an immigrant myself living in this country. But I’ve also lived in a bunch of other countries, and I’m always an immigrant, right? I was born and raised in Venezuela from Spanish parents. And then when I was in my mid-teens, I moved to this country. Then I bounced around the world. So, in a way, I always proudly feel like a foreigner everywhere I go. And I noticed that it’s the same experience. New York, L.A., Miami, Frankfurt, Germany, London, Barcelona, Madrid. There’s always this thing where there is the foreigner.

Who is the foreigner? Now we’re in Spain, so the foreigner is the Portuguese who live next door. If you’re In Barcelona, there comes a guy from Madrid. And if you’re in Rome, there’s the guy from Milan. If you’re in New York, those are the East Coast Mexicans, right? They got the Cubans going, like, what is a low rider? Why would you do such a thing? I mean, it’s just like there’s always this thing going on. And in the particular case of the Latin American experience in this country, as a victim or representative of that myself, I find humor in it. Just like I find humor in all those places where it’s the same thing.

We’re very quick to point out the difference of someone to pick at it, right? And then we can go to war if we want to for that reason, too. So I wanted always to make something that is universally understandable. It’s a broad comedy that can be understood by anybody from anywhere. And you can probably identify yourself with what’s happening there because it’s happened to your family or somebody nearby. Perhaps with a different set of cultural parameters, but it highlights the absurdity of that. And so I think that’s where the humor is so important.

Rebecca Elliott:

And of course, you have the great George Lopez starring. But he also helped produce this film. Can you tell me about his connection to the production but also about working with him and what he brought to the role?

Angel Gracia:

In a way, you cannot have another actor playing in this movie. Because it is so much like him, in a way. He’s not antiquated like that. He will not reject. But he’s had a similar experience. He’s had his daughter coming home with a white boy. He can identify with that. I’m not sure how he felt about that. But let’s say that he could be seen as a Chicano raised in East L.A. and as a person living in this country with those cultural parameters from his family, right?

He definitely can embody that role, represent that role, and make that role more interesting comedic-wise. And also from a dramatic point of view. Because a couple of moments in the movie where he’s on his downside, I could tell he’s digging into some experiences. There’s a very fine line between drama and comedy. And I think actors like him or like the late Robin Williams, can do both very well because they have a way to connect between the two sides, right? A funny side and a not-so-funny side. 

Rebecca Elliott:

So true.

Angel Gracia:

So just by being that character, being a part of it, he is the green light of the movie. The movie happens because he signs on to do this thing. He believes in this project, and he wants to do it. And then everybody comes on board, tagging along, really.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yep, I guess that’s how it happens. But, the entire cast is great. I’m currently obsessed with Mariana Treviño. I loved her in A Man Called Otto. She was so incredible. So of course I had to look up everything she’s been in, and I immediately recognized her in this film. But also, you had to pick out the perfect gringo for your movie. And you found Jack Kilmer, who, of course, comes from an incredible Hollywood pedigree himself. Can you talk about finding Jack and also the dynamic he brought to the film and the story as the titular gringo?

Angel Gracia:

So finding actors in the movie is sort of the miracle of making the movie itself, right? Just to find someone who can read, be interested, be available, accept the offer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But having gone through that process, I was really afraid that the guy playing the gringo wasn’t going to be just a token white boy in this situation.

And the good thing is that when I met Jack, I first had a conversation with him, and he told me how much he liked the story. He liked the traditional, classic story with the spin. And I’m going, great. Anything you want to change? No, I like it as it is. Wow. So then it’s on to me to make sure I don’t diminish that and it doesn’t look like just the victim. 

Rebecca Elliott:

Right, right.

Angel Gracia:

I had met his dad when I worked with him on a commercial a long time ago. So I got to thinking that, yeah, Val Kilmer is his dad, right? And even though Jack is quite different in demeanor, I think he’s got to have that same spark in there somewhere. So I told Jack, I want to make sure, I want to get that you’re smarter than you let people think. That you appear to be the victim. Trying to be nice, try to blend in.

But when he’s fed up, he knows how to kill it. He doesn’t kill it the same way that George would. That’s a louder type of thing. He’s way smarter. It’s almost like he’s the adult in the room. I like that he’s able to give you those colors, those shades, and a different perspective.

Rebecca Elliott:

That’s a really good point about his character. And I love how the script by Ezekiel Martinez Jr. addresses tropes and stereotypes head-on, but, of course, in a clever, funny way. Some of it is more subtle, like how they continually mispronounce his name, Leif. Which, of course, happens to all the time to my friends with Hispanic names. My friends Joel, Diana, Laura… everyone’s forever mispronouncing their names. Can you talk about striking that comedic balance or tone to help address those sorts of things in a more relatable way?

Angel Gracia:

Yeah, I think the thing you do is that you try to, let’s say, have fun with it. I myself had difficulty with it, is it pronounced “Leaf” or “Lafe?” And I’m dyslexic, so that doesn’t help. Bilingual, dyslexic. I never met anybody named like that. So the fact that I was actually struggling with it, and then Mariana was struggling with it. And also Romy Peniche, playing the crazy aunt with hormones. So all the Hispanics couldn’t figure out how to pronounce his name.

And so I just said, okay, let’s just punch that out further. Because it is a reality. It is funny, and by exaggerating it further, in a way, we were exaggerating it ourselves. We’re kind of stumbling ourselves trying to figure this out. So I may as well highlight it. It’s almost like we’re not exaggerating. We did have trouble with it, and it’s funny in and of itself. So we just went to town with that idea. But the thing is, you want to do it where it’s still a sweet mistake. Not mean.

Rebecca Elliott:

Right? It’s not malicious, of course, but it’s just such a pervasive theme for a lot of people with non-Anglo names. Even a person named Leif. That’s a tough one. And I love how the characters naturally switch back and forth between Spanish and English, just like in real life. Even within a sentence or a thought. Was this all on the page, or did the actors have room to improvise if it felt right to switch back and forth?

Angel Gracia:

Ezekiel wrote a great script. Great solid characters with a lot of that dialogue. I call him the Chicano Tarantino. He has a way with words and crazy characters. It’s just endless fun. But on set, I did want Mariana, George, Romy, and the Vatos to bring some of that banter themselves. Because we speak that way.

And it’s funny how the brain can stop it, right? If I’m speaking to you, I won’t throw in a Spanish line unless you start talking to me in Spanish and you’re fluent. Then my brain thinks, oh, you understand that? So if I can get quicker to the thought, I’ll say it. Otherwise, I’m restraining myself. It’s kind of weird, but you can’t avoid it, right? So we have to embrace it. And it’s part of the culture, it’s part of the thing, and it happens in every culture. It’s not just Spanish. 

Rebecca Elliott:

True.

Angel Gracia:

We have it with everyone. The Italians, the Russians, the Chinese. So we just wanted to highlight that because it’s the way it is. So a lot of it comes out of the actors on top of what was on the page. The problem was subtitling it.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yeah, I appreciated the subtitles! But, I bet there’s just certain things that just don’t really have a direct translation. It just makes me wish I was bilingual like half the world.

Angel Gracia:

My wife Remy plays Carmen, the crazy aunt. But she’s also a producer on the film and she’s doing my graphics. So we’re doing all the graphics and the subtitles. We’ll just sit there and we’ll subtitle stuff. “What do you think?” “Oh, I don’t know how to say that in English. How will you say that?” And so we’re literally having a hard time finding it, Googling it, chat GPT-ing it and all kinds of things.

Then it comes down to the technicians who don’t speak Spanish. Color correction and all that. I’m putting in the titles and I’m going like, you get that? And they’re like, what do you actually mean? Well, what I meant is this, so that’s not good already. The fact that you’re asking me what it means tells me that you didn’t get it. It means this. You’re changing the subtitles literally while color correcting with the non-Spanish speaking color correction post-production supervisor.

Rebecca Elliott:

Ha! That’s kind of hilarious.

Angel Gracia:

So you still need to run it through people who don’t speak the language. Make sure they get it.

Rebecca Elliott:

That’s a very good point. It sounds more complicated than anyone would think. I think I only have time for one more question, so I always like to ask a fun one at the end. Do you have any favorite holiday traditions?

Angel Gracia:

Let’s see. I’ve had holidays in so many different places, I just kind of mold to what is happening. But I remember as a kid, my dad wouldn’t allow fireworks. So we had the crazy uncle who would come in with the big ones.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yes!

Angel Gracia:

The things that just explode are very dangerous. And I always remember him smoking a cigarette. I was a kid and I was like, yes! Someone smart brings fireworks and explosives! So I kind of miss that. While we were in Jackson, Mississippi, shooting this thing, there was the 4th of July. So we went to go and buy some fireworks at this tent full of fireworks and stuff. But now I felt the danger because I was like, oh, this is really dangerous. This stuff can just go.

Rebecca Elliott:

You have to be careful! Now you know what your dad was saying.

Angel Gracia:

Yeah. So I calmed down a bit. Now I’m in Portland, Oregon, and I don’t know what’s happening at Christmas here. It’s my first one. So I’m going to probably get in the car with my wife and daughter and the dog and roam around and see what’s. It’s definitely cold, so we’ll probably have snow. So that’s different from L.A. or all the tropical places I’ve lived. 

Rebecca Elliott:

Well, you would definitely get along well where I live. The fireworks go off all Christmas Eve here in Austin, Texas. Well, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about How The Gringo Stole Christmas. I’m excited to spread the word. Good luck with the rest of your interviews.

Angel Gracia:

You’re very welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed it. And Feliz Navidad!

Rebecca Elliott:

Yes! Feliz Navidad!

How The Gringo Stole Christmas will be available in Theaters, On Digital, and On Demand on December 1st.

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