The movie's arc follows Maria's life, but what audiences will remember, and what may become a cinematic icon, is the tense scene of Maria swallowing 62 big drug pellets and sweating her way to America on the plane.
The film's director and its star (Josh Marston and Catalina Sandino Moreno) looked weary on a strangely humid July afternoon in Denver, Colorado. They've been touring the country to promote their movie, the first film for both of them. Marston spent five years researching, while Moreno showed up after the last minute (the shoot was delayed while Josh sought the perfect Maria).
Marty Mapes: Five years in the making. I'm surprised it's a 90-minute movie and not a book. Is there a book in you somewhere?
Josh Marston: It's not my medium. I like writing and I write, I would love to write a novel at some point, and I wouldn't mind writing nonfiction, but somehow it just wasn't the medium that felt right for this for me.
MM: There's a lot of stuff that you can't fit into 90 minutes.
JM: True, but there's also an emotional weight and drama that you can give to something by fictionalizing it that you can't by either making a documentary film or writing a nonfiction piece of work.
MM: Catalina, I've read that the casting was a surprise to you, and that you wanted to go see what this strange white guy was doing. It turns out you got picked over 800 other Marias? What do you attribute that to?
CSM: Luck? Talent? I don't know. I think the circumstances were so crazy because I was refusing to go to any castings. When the casting came, it was thanks to my mom that I went. She was like "You have to go, you have to go, go and see who this guy is, just go and see him." And when I went, I saw him, and we've been working since. It was destiny. It was luck. It was, I don't know, compilations of a lot of things, all together.
MM: It's set in Colombia, but it was shot in Ecuador. How come?
JM: Because at the time we were getting ready to shoot -- it was just before the presidential elections there -- things were heating up, there were a few bombs placed, and we couldn't get production insurance. So we had to move everything to Ecuador, which was probably the most difficult and harrowing moment of the whole film.
MM: Not getting insurance or having to move?
JM: Having to move, because it was one thing to be an American and going to Colombia to tell a Colombian story -- who am I to do that? But to take it a step further and be an American going to Ecuador and fabricating a country that's not my own was very daunting because I knew I wanted to get it right. I wanted it to feel authentic. And ultimately our way to do it right was to collaborate with a lot of Colombians.
MM: Is Colombia really that unsafe? Catalina, you've got family there? Do you think of Colombia as a dangerous place?
CSM: I lived in Colombia -- I lived in Bogota for 21 years -- and nobody ever robbed me.....None of my friends were involved with drugs. None of them have been robbed. So it's pretty crazy. In a lot of places in Colombia of course you find violence, but the rest of Colombia is not like that. Like in Bogota I feel safe.
MM: I was surprised at the low tech approach -- the drug traffickers used latex gloves to form the pellets, then they used this machine, and I'm not sure what it was.
JM: It would normally be used to make homemade vitamins.
MM: I was wondering if the drug trade developed this low tech solution, and then developed this high tech machine.
JM: No. All of it is based on stories that I was told. In a way, I actually think latex fingers are higher tech than condoms, and I personally never understood condoms, I could never wrap my head around it. Everything about it just seemed wrong.
MM: People used that for swallowing drugs?
JM: That's sort of the urban legend. That was the only thing I had heard about when all of this started, was the idea of swallowing drugs in condoms and transporting them. And in a way that first story that I heard -- the fact that it was latex gloves, it was so specific -- that was one of those levels of detail that sucked me in to wanting to tell this story.
MM: On that scene -- it's really hard to watch. Was it hard to perform? Did you ever actually swallow something?
CSM: Yeah, I swallowed 8 pellets through the whole movie. And it was as scary as it looks. The fear that I have in that scene, it was a real fear. I didn't act. It was good because it was my first time that I saw how a pill was made. It was my first time that I put a pellet in my mouth. I didn't practice.
MM: Josh, you've done a lot of research into some dangerous people. Did you ever get so close that you were in fear of your life?
JM: No. No, not at all. I think making a film about a drug mill is about as threatening to the higher-ups of the drug trade as making a film about a drug pusher on the corner of the South Bronx would be to the same people. It's a low-level person, of whom there are thousands, and doing something that's fairly commonplace and common knowledge in Colombia.
MM: Catalina, do you think that's true? Do you think this is common knowledge?
CSM: Yeah. Of course I learn a lot (from the movie) but it's not a secret and we know that there are mules. And we know they are caught and they are in jail and that's good. That's the only thing we know. The other part that I really learned from this movie is that behind every mule is a plot and you have to respect that. It's so easy to judge people. You just have to quit judging and just try to put yourself in their shoes, try to think, why do they risk their life for a couple of dollars?
MM: How did you react when you saw your whole performance all at once?
CSM: Of course at first I was very disappointed. You're criticizing yourself. The first I'm like, "That's a horrible performance. I did a horrible job. I don't know why I'm there." [To JM:] Remember, I'm like "Josh why did you pick me, I'm not your right Maria."
JM: [to CSM]: but did you expect the film to have the power that it did?
CSM: Of course not. I never ever thought that it was gonna be so powerful. I know that I was pleasing you, and I know that I trusted you as a director, but I never thought I was doing a great job, that everybody [would] like me. It's very weird to see the critics [rave].
