The Argentine/Guerrilla - Che Guevara biopics

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Benicio Del Toro leads the charge for 'Che'
Benicio Del Toro has made a career of playing men on society's outskirts. Now as the revolutionary 'Che,' he shows his power.
By Mark Olsen; Los Angeles Times

In films as varied as "The Usual Suspects," "Basquiat," "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas," "Traffic" and "Things We Lost in The Fire," Benicio Del Toro seems drawn to play the eccentric outsider.

Now in director Steven Soderbergh's "Che" -- which opens for a one-week run on Friday in Los Angeles and New York -- Del Toro plays 1950s and '60s revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Following Guevara from Mexico to Cuba to New York to Bolivia, the film -- which will screen as a single 4-hour unit during its short run, and be broken into two separate films for the wider release in January -- has a broad sweep, but also an eye for the specific, becoming perhaps the ultimate expression of Del Toro's physical, enigmatic screen presence.

The project began with the 41-year-old Del Toro, who took an interest in Guevara's book "The Bolivian Diary" and pursued the idea with producer Laura Bickford. This was just before his turn in the 2000 film "Traffic" (Bickford produced and Soderbergh directed), which earned Del Toro an Academy Award for supporting actor.

"It certainly seemed that way to me immediately," said Soderbergh of the way in which Del Toro suited the part. "I had the same sensation I had when I was working with Julia Roberts on 'Erin Brockovich,' the right person in the right role at the right time."

Despite the film's controversial reception following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival -- Variety called it "defiantly nondramatic" and "a commercial impossibility" -- Del Toro, who also has a producing credit on the film, was awarded the best actor prize. Sean Penn, who led the festival jury, later called Del Toro's work "one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn't rely on the close-up."

Keeping it true

Del Toro's tall, broad frame is frequently shot by Soderbergh in a full-body shot, so that the actor works with his shoulders and hips as much as his eyes, while allowing other actors equal visual weight within the frame.

"When Che wrote he was very honest; that's one of the first things that really moved me," said Del Toro. "My first attraction toward Che was a book of letters he wrote to his family. There was an honesty in that, where he could be very self-critical, but also with a witty nod.

"The approach of the movie is to be true, factually true from what we gathered, but also true to him."

Del Toro believes the film will have a life beyond whatever it may (or may not) make at the box office during its initial theatrical releases. It recently played to cheers in Havana and protests in Miami.

"One day, the movie will pop up and they'll shake hands with it," he says. "I remember the first time I heard [ Miles Davis' landmark 1970 album] 'Bitches Brew,' I was like, 'I can't listen to that'. And then one time I was driving and one of the songs came on and everything changed. This movie, at some point it will change someone's mind, what they thought it was."

Transforming man

Before shooting the final sections of the film that portray Guevara's time in Bolivia at the end of his life, Del Toro dropped some 35 pounds. For Guevara's arrival in Bolivia in disguise, he shaved the top of his head rather than wear a bald cap. For his role in "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" (1998) as the fictional sidekick Dr. Gonzo (based on writer Hunter S. Thompson's friend and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta), Del Toro put on 40 pounds.

It seems only fitting that following the release of "Che" he will next be seen in a new version of " The Wolf Man," perhaps the ultimate story of personal transformation.

"I wish I could stay home," he said of what draws him again and again to roles that require severe physical transformation and deep emotional commitment.

"I wish I could be asleep right now. But why do I do it? That's the way the cookie crumbles for me, I'm that kind of actor. Do I invite it? Maybe. At the same time it invites me.

"It's just who I am."

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Steven Soderbergh Talks (A Lot!) about Che
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

At this point in Steven Soderbergh's career, it's a fruitless effort trying to guess what he might do next, so when it was announced a few years ago that he would be making some sort of biopic based on the life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, considered the creator of guerilla warfare, few of his fans were surprised. It also wasn't too surprising that Benicio Del Toro, the Oscar-winning star of Soderbergh's breakthrough hit Traffic, would be starring in the role of the Argentine doctor who relocated to Cuba and became the military lynchpin of Fidel Castro's coup to take over the Cuban government.

What does surprise many is that the resulting Che is a four and a half hour epic that covers two very specific moments in the life of the military leader, rather than being the traditional biopic we've seen in the past. Part One covers "Che" and his friend Fidel planning their overthrow of the government and the actual military operations that resulted, intercut with Guevara's trip to New York where he would address the United Nations following the Bay of Pigs invasion and trade embargo with Cuba. Part Two covers Guevara's last military mission in Bolivia where an attempt to throw a similar coup, which ended in disaster.

Both parts of this epic are released this coming week for a limited engagement in New York at the Ziegfeld Theater and in Los Angeles at the Landmark 12, where you can see both parts back-to-back with a 15-minute intermission. If you go see this "Roadshow Edition," you'll also get a very special printed program guide. You can see it at those venues for the next week, and then have another chance to see it in January when it gets its official release.

Soderbergh is an endlessly fascinating filmmaker to talk to, and ComingSoon.net attended not one but two press conferences where Soderbergh talked about this groundbreaking film. The first was at the New York Film Festival where the entire film was screened at the Ziegfeld Theater before a Q 'n' A session with Soderbergh. The second was also in New York at a more formal press conference with Benicio Del Toro and Demián Bechir, who plays Fidel Castro in the movie, but we decided to grab some of the more interesting things Soderbergh said there and mix all of them up to make one new thing, which follows. (You can still take a 15-minute intermission at the midway point if you so choose.)

Q: Can you talk about the original inspiration that sent you on this journey?

Steven Soderbergh: The inspiration really was from Benicio and Laura Bickford, because we were on "Traffic," that's when we started talking about it, and I came along. You have a different angle on a project when you haven't initiated it and sometimes that's good. You can be more dispassionate about it and there were definitely cases where we had to make large difficult creative decisions, and we were able to make them, or at least I felt comfortable making them, because in some way, I was the Swede coming into a culture that wasn't mine. I didn't have the emotional baggage that somebody else might have, and I can say something, "We're going to cut everything that happened from the Granma to just before L'Vero because narratively, we need to do that." There's a lot of great sh*t that happens in the first six months of the Cuban Revolution, it just had to go, and that's easier for me, because I can stand back and say "That's what needs to be amputated."

Q: Through the process of getting the screenplay together and the filming, what is it that you yourself learned about Che?

Soderbergh: Well, because the process of developing and making this film was so extended--that was eight years--what I found was sometimes you say "yes," and you're not sure why you said "yes," and that reasoning changes over the course of making the film. It really wasn't until the films were finished, around the time of Cannes, that I realized what they were really about to me or what really drew them to me was this issue of "Engagement vs. Disengagement" – that every day in our lives, on a personal level, on a community level, on a global level, we are making a decision about how engaged we want to be or how disengaged we want to be. Do we want to participate or do we want to observe? I realized that what was compelling about Che to me was once he made the decision to engage that he engaged fully; that he was able to sustain whatever it is you need to sustain every day, especially when your life is at stake. You have to remember he's also an atheist, so a lot of times when you have figures that can sustain this level of engagement, they attribute it to a higher power, or there's some other element they can call upon. He didn't have that; or at least he expressed it in terms of what people were doing to each other here. So that's where I ended up landing but as I said, it sort of changes throughout, but ultimately, it was about engagement.

Q: When was your first connection with Che Guevara?

Soderbergh: I think like most people in this country I first heard Che's name in history class at school when you would get that sort of quick sketch of the history of Cuba. One of the great things about having this job is that more often than not I get paid to educate myself. A lot of the details of the Cuban Revolution obviously were not known to me. I thought that it was basically all Fidel; I had no idea about these other groups that were basically trying to do the same thing. And my idea of Che was from those images of him near the very end of the Cuban Revolution with the beret and the cast on his arm. I had no idea of this transformation from the medic to becoming a leader.

Q: How much did you have to go on as far as historical records are concerned to aid you in your research for the film?

Soderbergh: As many of you know who've read up on Che, you go to the bookstore and there's an entire wall of Che material. There's a lot to go through and we tried to go through all of it. We spoke to anyone who was still around – and willing to talk – who fought with him and knew him. J.G. Ballard once said, "Research is the refuge of the unimaginative," and there were times where I thought he was absolutely right. We were overwhelmed with information, and as John Lee Anderson who was one of our consultants said at the press conference in Cannes, "Look, there are a million Ches. He means something different to everyone." And at a certain point we, the core creative team, had to decide what to use and not to use, and frankly a lot of it was by exclusion. I went in with more of an idea of what I didn't want to do, as opposed to what I wanted to do. At least that's a start, and you can begin to shape it. I was trying to avoid scenes that I thought were too typical. Like I didn't want to have that scene where someone asks, "Hey, why do they call you Che?" or have him in battle and his hat blows off, and he runs over and picks up a beret – I didn't want to do that. But you found these crazy little stories from people. One of our favorites we found very late, and it's from the memoirs written by the Acevedo brother who we see at the end of the [first] film driving the car to Havana and Che stops him and tells him to turn around. We found that very late in the process, and I thought it was such a perfect Che scene; a perfect expression of who he was.

Q: How hard was it finding financing for the production, and could you elaborate a little bit on the shoot itself?

Soderbergh: Well, all I can say is I'm glad we're not looking for money right now! (laughter) It was complicated, but we knew it would be. I mean look at it. It took a couple people sticking it out for a long time and ultimately believing in the commercial viability of the brand of Che. I mean that's the weird paradox about this guy – here he is the icon of Marxist/Leninist economic ideology, and you stick his face on anything and it sells. It's a very weird situation. I believed that if we were just able to get the thing made, it would find enough of an audience to get its money back. The amount of money we had dictated a pretty strict shooting schedule. We had 39 days for each part, and to put that in the context of something else that I've made, that's fewer days than it took to shoot the first "Ocean's" film. We had a 10-day gap in between the shoots, and we shot the second part first, and we shot it backwards, so it was very confusing. The principal sources of funding came from Wild Bunch, which is a French sales and production company, and Telecinco, which is a very large Spanish television and film production company.

Q: Could you talk about the locations and where you shot the film?

Soderbergh: Unfortunately, as an American I'm not allowed to shoot in Cuba, but we made many trips there that were licensed through the State Department, so at least we got a look at where the events actually took place. Bolivia we were able to shoot in. Part One was [shot in] Mexico, Puerto Rico, and New York, and Part Two was [shot in] Bolivia and Spain. It turned out we had somebody working on the film who grew up in La Higuera, and when they came to the set – because we built that La Higuera set on the top of this mountain in the middle of nowhere – and when he came to the set he was stunned and said, "This is exactly where I remember growing up." So our production designer Antxón Gómez did a fantastic job.

Q: Can you talk about the decision to cut the film into two parts?

Soderbergh: At first we were doing Bolivia, and then it started to expand and really, because we started thinking, "Okay, you don't really understand Bolivia unless you've seen Cuba and then he kind of went to New York, and that was cool, then we should see him meeting Fidel in Mexico City." It became like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," it kept getting bigger and bigger, and it still at that point was one large script but it was becoming unreadable. It felt like a trailer for an even longer film. I took a cue from nature. When a cell gets too big, it divides to survive, and it felt that's what needed to be done and once we did that, all of the solutions arrived for the various problems we were having narratively and things became a lot simpler. It became more complicated in that the deals we already had in place needed to be renegotiated. Fortunately for us, all the people that came onto this project early were enthusiastic enough about it to redo the deal for the two films. But in the back of our minds, I think we always saw it as one big thing that if you can pull it off and people could see it with an intermission, that would be the "Altered States" version of total immersion for four and a half hours. That's the best way to get a sense of what they did, just the physical stamina required to pull this off. As it turns out, it's just in the States where it's going to be seen like that. Everywhere else in the world, they're cutting it in half.

Q: What about having different aspect ratios for the different parts?

Soderbergh: Well, I needed a visual corollary to the difference in the voices between the two texts we were working from. The reminiscences to the Cuban Revolution was written after the Revolution ended and there's a sort of macro-hindsight at play here that results from writing about a victory that I wanted a visual version of and that means a wider frame, a more classical approach to framing, a more traditional approach to the music. The Bolivian Diaries were contemporaneous. There's no perspective, he's isolated, he doesn't know what's going on, and so visually, I'm looking at a style that makes you feel that the outcome is unclear, the outcome of the scene isn't even clear, the color palette is less inviting, the terrain is less inviting, the cutting is a little more arrhythmic, just everything to give you the sense of dread, just as you're heading into the mountains. Normally, you wouldn't want to do that because you'd feel like you're tipping the outcome but you have the opposite problem here than you usually have in that Che has no arc, he's a straight line, so the tension is in whether he will bend so the earlier to me you set up this sense of dread, the stronger he appears throughout, and that was my idea. But yeah, it is a drag for the projectionist. During the intermission, they have to scramble to change everything, scary.

(Insert 15-Minute Intermission Here)

Q: Why did you decide to exclude Che's exploits in Africa?

Soderbergh:: Well if this film makes $100 million, I'll make the third one. We talked about it. The story of Che in the Congo is absolutely fascinating. We actually sort of sketched an idea for a very small film that took place in the Congo, and then Prague where he went after fighting in the Congo to lick his wounds and write a very self-critical book of what happened in the Congo. The glib answer is we didn't have enough money to do that. And also, it's a fascinating chapter but it didn't really fall into the bookend idea that we ended up with. When the film was first being developed, it was only about Bolivia. And it was a little more than halfway through the process of working on that that we decided Bolivia doesn't really make a lot of sense unless you've seen Cuba, because you keep wondering, "Why doesn't he just quit when it's going so badly?" You have to see what happened in Cuba to see why he thought they were really gonna pull this off. It grew from one manageable film into one GIANT film, and overseas it's going to be split in half. So, we just couldn't fit that in. We read all that material, and in fact there was a quote from one of the African rebels that fought with Che, Victor Dreke, which was fantastic, he said, "Che would rather face a bullet than reality," and it's a perfect description of him I think.

Q: One of the differences between the Cannes cut and the current incarnation is that the voiceover is in English, instead of Spanish. Why did you decide to change it?

Soderbergh: Here's how I justified it: it seemed organic to me because we used the actor who was his interpreter following him around in New York, and so it seemed appropriate to use that idea to continue hearing this guy translate Che. More importantly, there are sequences in which he is speaking in which I do not want an English-speaking audience to be reading – I want them to be able to watch the images and hear the words without having to read. Especially for instance the Battle of L'vero where he does the Tolstoy quote. I've seen the film with English subtitles and you cannot watch both things at the same time. You just can't.

Q: There's been a lot of talk about how this four and a half hour film is being released but what would be your preference? As one massive 4-hour epic?

Soderbergh:: Five one-hour films? (laughter) Here's our plan currently: that whenever the movie enters a specific market – New York, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas – that for one week, on one screen, you can see it like you just saw it [at 4 hours+]. There will be a specially-printed program with the credits from both the films, and we're referring to that as "The roadshow version," the way they used to do in the '50s and '60s. I think that's the ideal way to see it... It's a lot to ask of someone to throw away an entire day, but I guess my only argument is that cinematically we're making a demand on the audience that's very similar to the demands that Che made on the people around him. (laughter) It's a big commitment, and it requires a certain kind of personality to want to experience it like that. But it was certainly designed that way, so you get the sort of "call-and-response" between the two parts.

Q: Will you be taking the film to Argentina?

Soderbergh: As far as going to Argentina, we're trying to figure that out now... the South American tour. The release dates for the film are sort of staggered – the film has opened in Spain so far and that's it – so we're trying to figure that out now.

Q: If Che were alive today, how do you think he would view contemporary Cuba, and since he's not, how do you view it?

Soderbergh: (laughter) That's the question that everyone wants to know the answer to, and of course it's one we can't answer. As far as what's going on in Cuba now, I don't think we've been very smart in how we've played this. I think there could have been other moves made on our part in order to make a dialogue more inevitable. I'm still stunned that this embargo is still going on – it's just shocking to me, and doesn't seem to make much sense. It's my personal belief that if you want the embargo to end, and you want to see some change there, you should flood the place with tourists. There's nothing like exposure to new ideas that get people thinking about new ideas. So in fact our policy is the opposite to what I would be doing, but of course I'm not running the country.

Q: Can you comment on the film's political nature?

Soderbergh: Well I guess I believe that any movie that accurately presents anyone's life, or any situation – any movie that's not a fantasy, and isn't just a pure entertainment – is to me by definition a political film, whether it's a cop movie or "Erin Brockovich." Any movie that attempts to look at things in a straightforward fashion and not polish it up I think you could argue is a 'political film.' These are political films in a sense that there's an ideology being expressed and acted upon, but that's not what drew me to them ultimately. I'm obviously not a communist. As I said to someone a couple of weeks ago, "There isn't even a place for me in the society that Che was trying to build." He says in "Man and Socialism in Cuba": "There's no great artist who's also a true revolutionary." He didn't have a lot of use for the kind of stuff that I do, and I think personally he probably would have hated me. But again, I can still look at him and find him one of the most compelling political figures of the last half-century, and I do think the ideas are fascinating to debate and to look at in the context of what we live in now. One of the interesting things to me about the Cuban Revolution is that is the last time you're ever going to see a revolution like that fought. That's what I call "the last analog revolution." Today, that would have been over in two weeks. Technology just makes it impossible to fight a revolution the way they did as we see seven or eight years later. It was interesting to make a period film about a type of war that can't be fought anymore.

Q: What was the most valuable thing that you learned about Che Guevara while making this film?

Soderbergh: I think the thing that I learned about him that was interesting to me was what a hardass he was. Talking to the people that fought alongside him, one of the doctors that he fought with also had a great quote. He said, "You had to love him for free," and he just described how uncompromising he was. Most people wanted to be in Camillo's column because he was fun. Che was just a very, very strict disciplinarian, and there was no moment where he dropped the ideology, even in a personal, one-on-one situation. A lot of people found him cold and distant. So Benicio and I talked about that a lot – that he really only reserved the warmer side of his personality for when he was in the "doctor mode." When he was in the "leader/Commandante" mode he was really, really harsh and I can understand why; the stakes were pretty high.

Q: Was there anything residual from making this movie that has stayed with you or changed any of your attitudes about filmmaking?

Soderbergh: For me, there's no way to come out the other end of this without constantly being aware of your physical surroundings and what they mean. Being in this room, being in this hotel, taking the cab up from Chelsea, paying with a credit card, wearing a Paul Smith shirt, you're constantly thinking about what all of that stuff represents. Who made it? How much did it cost? Where did it get made? How did it get here? And that's good and bad. It's good because you should think about these things, it's bad because you can't stop thinking about them once you start. I've been working on trying to figure out what to do with that, because I think something should be done with it and when I have tangential interests that sustain over a long period of time, they end up as something. I don't know what this will end up being. A lot of it's in the movie, and yet, I came out of this feeling less that movies have the ability to really change how people think. So when people say, "So what are people supposed to think when they get out of this film?" Because it's certainly not made to be a recruitment film. And I say, "Look, all I would hope is that somebody comes out of the movie going, 'Is there anything I feel that strongly about? Is there anything in my life I feel that passionately about that I would engage at that level?'" That's really it. So there's a lot of residue. When we were talking about motivation, I felt so lucky to be able to talk to people who were actually with him is pretty intense. To be that close to history that's that significant is really something.

To not take one of the hundreds of opportunities we had to just let this thing fall apart. There were so many times where literally by not picking up the phone or answering an Email, I could have let the movie crater, and to just make the choice, "No, pick up the phone, write the check, do whatever you gotta do, keep this thing going..." That's why getting to the end of it was all we needed out of this, frankly, because there were just so many times where you thought it wasn't going to happen or you had friends say it's not going to happen. "Why are you investing yourself in that? It's not going to happen. You're not going to get the money." But there's this vague feeling when you get out of it of was it enough in a larger sense? Was it enough?

You can't come out of this, having spent eight years on it and watch what's going on and not start thinking about that. What does a dollar represent? Does it represent anything and if it doesn't, where are we going? There's a residue that stays with you, it has to, if you're paying attention.

Che opens exclusively in New York and L.A. for a single week's Oscar consideration run, then reopens on January 9 and expands through January.

[w/o horse]

Does anyone else really want to see this right now, but have the problem of finding 4 unused hours in the day for the times the theater is playing the movie?  I think it has a one week engagement, and I don't think I'll be able to make a 3:30 or 7:30 showing all week.

It's a bummer.

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Full 'Che' for two more frames
Full version of Steven Soderbergh's film adds weekends
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Moviegoers are getting another chance to cha-cha-cha to the full four-hour-plus version of Steven Soderbergh's "Che."

To qualify for Oscar voting, the Ernesto "Che" Guevara biopic unspooled a week ago for what was planned as one-week-only runs in single venues in New York and Los Angeles. The Benicio Del Toro starrer was set to withdraw from the marketplace before reappearing Jan. 9 in limited release as two separate films, the Cuba-focused "The Argentine" and Bolivia-based "The Guerrilla."

But IFC Films on Thursday said that last weekend's sellouts have spurred execs to add two more weekends of exclusive runs for the full "Che" version of the political epic, starting Dec. 24 in New York and Dec. 26 in Los Angeles.

"We thought 'Che' would have a great deal of interest, but to sell out in Los Angeles and New York City was even beyond our expectations," IFC distribution vp Mark Boxer said.

Meanwhile, theaters that have booked the two-part "Che" installments as separate films have agreed to carry both "Argentine" and "Guerrilla," with exhibitors likely to program the pics in ways that make viewing both on the same day as convenient as possible, Boxer said.

The films -- each just more than two hours long -- will bow Jan. 9 in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco before expanding to five additional markets the following frame. By Jan. 23, the pics are expected to play in more than 50 theaters in the top 25 domestic markets.

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'Che' Director Steven Soderbergh On Creating His Controversial Epic
Published by MTV

Chronologically speaking, there's a reason why uber-prolific filmmaker Steven Soderbergh started grappling with the idea of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara right after the time he finished "Erin Brokovich" in 2000.

For one, writing and research on the sprawling 4-hour-plus two-part "Che" took seven years to get just right. Secondly, when he agreed to inherit the movie from legendary director Terrence Malick, Soderbergh felt he was firing on all cylinders and at the top of his game, so he felt now was the time to take on such a an epic beast.

"Part of my reasoning for saying yes [to the 'Che' project] was that I had just come off making 'Erin Brokovich' with Julia Roberts nad had the sensation that: 'This was the right movie, the right actor, the right time.' Everything had lined up," he told MTV News remembering the era fondly.

"When [producer] Laura Bickford and [lead] Benicio del Toro floated this idea past me, part of me felt thought, 'He's the right guy. It's an interesting subject, you should say yes,' even though underneath that I had a feeling that it was going to be ugly and difficult."

And his predictions were correct. After spending a year on research and a year writing screenwriter Peter Buchanan handed over a version of the film that almost distorted history it was so super condensed. The director was learning along the way who this Argentinian-born contentious political icon was and once he had absorbed the entire screenplay he realized they needed a second movie to fill it all in, which caused several more years of writing.

"I really didn't know anything about him," Soderbergh admitted. "I think that's why the first iteration of the movie was about Bolivia only [the second film now known as "Guerilla"]. "I was gravitating towards the period of his life I knew the least about. That's where we started and then it just kept expanding."

The director realized, that before he shot the story of what would eventually be the rebels' downfall, he had to show the context of what brought him there: his victory alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba.

An unorthodox "biopic" to say the least, there is no traditional cradle-to-grave arcs to the story. In fact, the film is more a guerilla warefare procedural than it is a lionizing hagiography of one immense and divisive historical figure. But through the challenges Che and his rebels faced and the choices they make, we learn who Che Guevara was, warts and all.

"I'm a big believer into paying attention to what people do as opposed to what they say," the director said of his action speak louder than words approach to the tale.

Part One: "The Argentine" drops you off a few months after Fidel Castro landed in Cuba in the fall of 1956 to start the revolutionary campaign to overthrow the corrupt dictatorial government. Part Two: "Guerilla" chronicles the fated 11-month campaign that attempt to bring a similar revolution to the South American country of Bolivia. Both are shot in unsentimentalized modes that are near documentarian in manner.

In fact, Soderbergh resisted the urge to do a more typical biopic citing "Lawrence of Arabia" and its mostly warfare-laden story as an influence.

"['Arabia'] is only interested in the period of his life where he became a combatant. Similarly, I felt these two periods were Che at a moment in which all of his beliefs are being enacted at the same time. He was an ideologue and he also knew how to use a gun. I wanted to see him with all of those colors flying at the same time."

Amazingly enough, the two films shot in five different countries in a blisteringly short two and a half months (by comparison, "Apocalypse Now," the long version of which still shy of fours hours filmed for over 16 months). The ambitious work was a labor of love. "Nobody got paid so its all on the screen," Soderbergh chuckled.

To lead actor Benicio Del Toro taking on such an iconic and important role and to portray it in such a hyper concentrated amount of time was daunting. But much like the abbreviated and some say, subjective story the film tells, the actor worried about what was onscreen and let the rest, including the mental and political baggage go.

"So there's only so much an actor can play, there's only so much I can play," Del Toro told MTV. "You just play the moment, that's all you can do. I think that whatever the polarizing things are about it, they're hinted in the movie, but you could do never cover it all."

Received with protests when it screened in Miami, the filmmakers realize Guevara is a character beloved by some but reviled by others. Del Toro is all too aware, but the actor insists one has to understand the context of the radical times before one leaps to judgment.

"On CNN, they called the Obama election a 'silent revolution' of some sort, and it's interesting to see how the times have changed and are different now. The 1960s were volatile, it was a decade that made the '90s look like popcorn. The 60s were really intense: Vietnam, JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba [the first elected Prime Minister of the Congo in Africa in 1961] all these people killed, Malcolm X." We could make a list, but... But understanding who Che was in that time... he was a warrior, a product of the '60s, those were different times. The idea of having a black president in the United States was impossible."

"Che" release plan is a unique one. Starting December 12th, the two films played in New York and L.A. for one week as one four-hour-long film with an intermission. With that run concluded, "Che" will re-open on January 9th in New York and Los Angeles as two separate admissions titled "Che Part 1: The Argentine" and "Che Part 2: Guerilla."

The national rollout for 25 markets will begin January 16 and 22 and will expand further following those dates. For those that would rather absorb its panoramic girth all at home, IFC will make the films available OnDemand on January 21, making it available to 50 million homes nationwide on all major cable and satellite providers in both standard and high definition versions.

Personally, we say the experience is well worth it.

[w/o horse]

A local theater kicked My Name's Bruce out of the second week of its two week engagement to bring in Che.  Very good news for me.

Only, I'm so sick right now that last night's viewing was like a tropic fever dream.  I even FELL ASLEEP a COUPLE TIMES.  Also, no shit, there was a Tourette's guy sitting right behind me.  Why was there a Tourette's guy at the theater?  It doesn't seem like an appropriate place.  You try and lose yourself in a movie with the guy behind you hiccuping and burping during quiet dramatic scenes and waging full war against his disease in loud action scenes.  Which is to say that at first I thought he was just an annoying movie watcher who said "Holy shit, holy shit" whenever guns were on screen and liked to cry victoriously, or whatever, and what I'm saying here is that he would save up all his yells for the loud moments, which sometimes meant that a short burst of noise would be followed by a longer, louder burst of Tourette's from directly behind me.  For the first movie, and then I moved across the theater for the second one, only to find the whole theater was in the problem together.

Kind of a cursed viewing.  I'm 80% sure Soderbergh did an amazing fucking job.  He's endlessly talented when he allows himself free reign over the style of the film (when he isn't mimicking a style) and Che is him at full force.

I want to see it again really bad.

[modage]

http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/steven_soderbergh

[MacGuffin]

'Che' motors to extended run at IFC
Soderbergh biopic to be released in two parts
Source: Variety

Based on early box office returns, IFC Films will continue to play Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic "Che" in its entirety, versus releasing the two films -- "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" -- separately.

The original plan was to keep the films paired only for a one-week awards run in December in Los Angeles and New York. The returns were good enough, however, for IFC to change its mind.

On Jan. 16, "Che" will play in nine additional markets: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

"A lot of people told me I was crazy to push for a roadshow presentation of 'Che,' because American moviegoers aren't adventurous enough. Fortunately, the results in New York and Los Angeles prove otherwise," Soderbergh said.

IFC is distributing the Spanish-language film, toplining Benicio Del Toro, on behalf of sister subsid Magnolia. So far, "Che" is only planned for Landmark Theaters, another sister division.

"Che" scored the best weekly grosses of 2008 at Landmark's Nuart Theater in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York. Total gross to date is $244,857.

On Jan. 21, "Che" will be available on cable via IFC In Theaters' on-demand pay service.

[hedwig]

i missed my (only?) opportunity to see this in NYC a week ago

but i did see Doubt, Milk, and Waltz with Bashir.

oh the goddamn regret..  THE GODDAMN REGRET.

[cinemanarchist]

'Che' motors to extended run at IFC
Soderbergh biopic to be released in two parts
Source: Variety

Based on early box office returns, IFC Films will continue to play Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic "Che" in its entirety, versus releasing the two films -- "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla" -- separately.

The original plan was to keep the films paired only for a one-week awards run in December in Los Angeles and New York. The returns were good enough, however, for IFC to change its mind.

On Jan. 16, "Che" will play in nine additional markets: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

"A lot of people told me I was crazy to push for a roadshow presentation of 'Che,' because American moviegoers aren't adventurous enough. Fortunately, the results in New York and Los Angeles prove otherwise," Soderbergh said.

IFC is distributing the Spanish-language film, toplining Benicio Del Toro, on behalf of sister subsid Magnolia. So far, "Che" is only planned for Landmark Theaters, another sister division.

"Che" scored the best weekly grosses of 2008 at Landmark's Nuart Theater in Los Angeles and the IFC Center in New York. Total gross to date is $244,857.

On Jan. 21, "Che" will be available on cable via IFC In Theaters' on-demand pay service.

For all my Dallas friends....The Roadshow is opening at The Magnolia THIS Friday for one week only! After the one week engagement the film will be split up for the rest of its run. The times for the Roadshow are 1:30pm ($15) and 7:30pm ($18)...you also get a souvenir program included in that price, which I haven't seen yet to say whether or not it's worth a damn.

*UPDATE* We had a really great turnout this past week and The Roadshow has been extended for one more week.... And the souvenir program is surprisingly high quality.

[abuck1220]

directv has this on PPV (in HD to boot), but each part costs $7.99. i want to see it, but i have a hard time justifying dropping $16 to watch any movie on tv.

[modage]

[cinemanarchist]

boner. 

[Pwaybloe]

Fall?  That's at least another 3 months.  What a strange release schedule for this movie. 

[Pwaybloe]

I guess everybody knows by now this is available exclusively through Blockbuster (2 separate DVD's).  Es fantástico.

Tons of nudity and sex, surprisingly.  Some excessive S&M, but not any more than really required.