Luis Guzman Talks 'Punch-Drunk Love,' 'The Limey,' 'Pluto Nash,' and His New 'Puerto Ricans in Paris'
Luis Guzman has been a ubiquitous scene-stealer in movies and TV for more than 30 years. But as he revealed to Yahoo Movies during a recent Facebook Live session, he’s lucky a trip to Australia for Crocodile Dundee II didn’t end his career before it really began. While shooting Paul Hogan’s 1988 sequel Down Under, the Puerto Rico-born actor had a close encounter of the reptilian kind: “One day, four guys go into my trailer, and the next thing I know, they come out with a 10-foot snake! It had coiled itself around the engine. They had to dismantle the dashboard to this trailer [to get it out]. I was like, ‘Can I just get a car, guys? I’ll change in the car.’”
Guzman visits equally exotic, though far less dangerous, terrain in his latest movie, Puerto Ricans in Paris, which opens theatrically and on-demand on June 10. A passion project for the actor and his co-star, childhood friend Edgar Garcia, the movie is a throwback to ‘80s comedies like Beverly Hills Cop, dispatching a pair of Big Apple cops to investigate a case in the City of Light. “We’re the ones who were responsible for putting the film together,” Guzman says. “We made our dream come true.”
During our conversation, which you can watch below, we touched on some of Guzman’s best-known roles out of the 139 credits listed on his IMDB page. (As he half-jokingly says, “139? Is that all?”) Here are some of the other stories he shared with us.
While shooting Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 visual tone poem, Punch-Drunk Love, Guzman found himself marveling at Adam Sandler’s career-best performance as Barry Egan. “You forget who Adam is five minutes into the movie. All of a sudden, you’re feeling for a guy named Barry. I was very proud of working with him in that.” Punch-Drunk also marked Guzman’s third collaboration with Anderson after memorable appearances in Boogie Nights and Magnolia. Any chance of a reunion? “I’ll let him call me–but I’m ready” he says, chuckling.
Steven Soderbergh’s cult favorite The Limey was written, shot, and edited as a straightforward crime drama. But when Guzman caught up with it in theaters, he saw a radically changed film. “It was so different than the first cut Steven showed me,” Guzman recalls. “He used my dialogue and chopped it up, and bounced the story around with the dialogue. I thought that was genius.” Guzman also loved his experience working with Soderbergh on Out of Sight and Traffic, where he witnessed the director’s chief pet peeve firsthand. “Don’t ever allow a cloud to blocks [his] light! The most pissed off I ever saw him was at a cloud.”
Guzman describes the time he spent on the set of the notorious Eddie Murphy bomb The Adventures of Pluto Nash as an “interesting experience.” But he is proud that the movie makes him the first Puerto Rican on the moon, flying the island’s flag proudly in his Moon-Car. On a more serious note, Guzman says he’d love to explore his heritage further with another dream project: a biopic about legendary New York City radio jockey, Polito Vega, who helped popularize salsa music on these shores in the 1960s. “He’s had a very interesting life, because he’s worked with all the iconic salsa musicians.”
Next up for Guzman is Nine Eleven, a drama that unfolds entirely within an elevator that’s stuck between floors in the World Trade Center on the tragic day referenced in the movie title. Co-starring Charlie Sheen, Gina Gershon, Wood Harris, Olga Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg, the Martin Guigui-directed film wrapped an intense three-and-a-half week shoot earlier this year. “It’s one of the most emotional movies I’ve ever done,” Guzman says.
