Exclusive Interview: The Ministers Star John Leguizamo on Co-Star Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and the Allure of Maniacs (Part 2)

Share on Facebook posted 10-27-09 by John Freeman Gill

The bloody crime thriller The Ministers, which stars John Leguizamo as identical twin brothers from the South Bronx, is a tale of murderous vigilantes who leave fire-and-brimstone Christian pamphlets on the bodies of their victims. But for all Leguizamo’s attention to the religious intensity of his characters, his work on the film left him with an enduring reverence for a grittier, more earthly triumvirate than the father, the son, and the holy ghost.

“You know, I’m done,” the actor said the other day, as he prepared for the film’s opening on Friday. “I’ve worked with the Holy Acting Trinity of Pacino, De Niro, and now Keitel.”

In The Ministers, Harvey Keitel, who made his bones as an actor in the violent Martin Scorsese New York of the early 1970s, plays a gruffly avuncular veteran cop who may or may not be all he appears to be. His appearance in the film helps anchor its back story in the mean streets of that earlier city, where the identical twins played by Leguizamo saw their parents burned to death in an arsonist’s blaze.

In Part 2 of our exclusive interview, Leguizamo tells 30 Ninjas Editor John Freeman Gill about Keitel’s surprising approach to his role, the historical baggage of playing a Latino with a gun, and how a local maniac in Leguizamo’s 1970s Queens neighborhood helped the actor portray a vivid killer.

If You Go for the Check, Will Keitel Gun You Down?

30 NINJAS: Did you have any scenes with Harvey Keitel in this movie?

JOHN LEGUIZAMO: No, unfortunately I didn’t have any scenes with Keitel. But I spent a lot of time with him off the set.

30 NINJAS: Tell me about the most colorful encounter you had with Keitel on this film. I guess it wasn’t on the set.

JL: Oh, man. We went to dinner, and he let me pay for it. (laughs)

30 NINJAS: Did you reach for the check and he let you do it?

JL: (laughs) Yeah, I was like, “You know I want to, man.” I mean, he’s one of the acting gods. De Niro’s worked with him, and what was incredible was to watch him work, you know, because I had to watch him, and he was so enthusiastic and so eager, and I love that: You know, here he is, this true and tried veteran and he’s still working it, and trying to understand it, and willing to play around and not set in his ways. I love that.

30 NINJAS: That’s really cool. Give me a specific of a scene where he was doing that.

JL: Well, there’s the scene where he’s explaining his story to the lead girl in the movie, and he just did it in so many different ways, and he was really thinking about it, and the consequences of it. And then we’d all go to lunch, and he’d talk about the scene, and what he wanted to do with it, what he was going after. I loved that he obsessed about stuff. I love actors. I’m the same way: I obsess about everything. Those are the kinds of people I wanna work with. I wanted to be around to see him, because I didn’t have any scenes with him. I really wanted to soak him in.

30 NINJAS: He’s a complex guy as an actor, as a performer. He’s got the ability to project both a real integrity, a real inner strength, and also a skeeziness. And you know, sometimes he can do those two things simultaneously. What elements of Keitelness do you think Keitel was bringing to this role?

JL: He does bring incredible integrity, and I think that’s what he brought to this thing, even though he always the most likable character at times, as you find things out in the movie. He really brought that integrity. I think that really helped.

You’ve Gotta Be One of the Guys

30 NINJAS: I haven’t seen the movie yet, but he’s complex enough that he could help preserve a mystery.

JL: Yeah, he definitely could. And he also serves as a bit of a red herring in terms of, he’s so likable, so trustworthy, that you believe everything he does, and then you find out in the movie that he might not be all those things.

30 NINJAS: Was there anything that surprised you about Keitel on this film?

JL: Yeah, the fact that the dude, here he is this great actor, and he still enjoys exploring stuff. You know, a lot of older actors who are somebody, they don’t really want to talk about things or really share the process. They just want to get going, and dictate the situation. And he was not like that. He was very collaborative, very democratic about the whole thing. I found it incredibly refreshing.

30 NINJAS: What I think I hear you saying is that he’s not just a movie star; he’s an actor.

JL: Exactly, exactly. He’s willing to do the work and be one of the guys to get it done, because that’s what it takes; you have to be one of the guys to get it done. You can’t just be, you know, a celebrity.

30 NINJAS: Can you compare for me how he works with the way De Niro worked when you were working with him [on last year's Righteous Kill]?

JL: You know, the thing about De Niro is that he’s incredibly detail-oriented, more than any other actor I’ve worked with. He lives in the details, details of research, all the little details. That’s how he comes to life. I have a little of that, too. I love finding out about other people, and what they’re like, and how they behave, and then I try to marry that with my own personality.

Maniacs in the ’Hood: Crazy White Guys, Crazy Latin Guys, Crazy Black Guys

30 NINJAS: You’ve said that Franc Reyes drew on his own childhood for this film, and this movie has, obviously, a lot of violence in it. And your characters, or at least one of them, is at the center of that. In this regard, were there elements of your own childhood — your own neighborhood, or people you knew — that you were able to draw on for these roles?

JL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I grew up in New York City back in the day. It wasn’t this Disneyland that it is now.

30 NINJAS: Yes, I grew up in New York around the same time you did.

JL: So you know how it was. It was a much more hectic, crazy, violent place than it is now, especially if you grew up in an impoverished neighborhood. So we all knew about “landlord lightning” and all that stuff, how they were burning buildings down to get the tenants out because they wanted to collect the insurance, and people got hurt. So all that stuff is what fuels Franc, and I knew all about it too, so I connected to it. I mean, he was in the South Bronx, so that was different over there. It wasn’t so rampant in Queens, where I grew up, but I knew about it.

30 NINJAS: But were there people you knew in the neighborhood, who were violent types, that you could draw on, just to inform the way you played these characters?

JL: Yeah, there were a lot of crazy guys around my neighborhood, crazy white guys, crazy Latin guys, crazy black guys. There were plenty of guys to draw from.

30 NINJAS: Tell me about one of them that you were able to draw from.

JL: I can’t remember his name right now, but he was a maniac. He was actually kind of fun up to a certain point, but he went too far, and wanted to do things that were too aggressive and much more violent than the rest of us wanted to really partake in. He’d try to talk us into it. I mean, it was outrageous stuff, and it was like, Oh, dude, that sounds fun, but I don’t wanna do that.

30 NINJAS: So actually that would help you see the allure of a maniac.

JL: Maniacs have incredible allure, man. They have such energy, they’re so charismatic, plus their ideas are so far-fetched. Because everything they do or imagine seems so incredibly electric, but then they’re irrational, and that’s why we’re not them, because we always see the consequences. They never see the consequences.

30 NINJAS: And you were drawing on this fellow in playing the more damaged brother?

JL: Yeah, I was drawing on him and a couple other guys that I met, who were a little more depressed.

Gunning for a Fully Drawn Latin Character

30 NINJAS: Have you ever fired a real gun?

JL: I’ve fired tons of real guns, but only as soon as I became an actor. Before that I just held one, but I’d never fired one. But oh my God, being a Latin actor, I’ve always held a gun my entire career.

30 NINJAS: I wanted to ask you about that. You go back to the time when Latin actors were only getting offered jobs as muggers.

JL: Right, my Miami Vice days.

30 NINJAS: How does this movie feel to you in terms of the range of different kinds of Latin roles there are in it?

JL: Well, the difference here is that it’s a lead. It’s not a part that’s servicing somebody else. I’m not just servicing a plot or becoming a statistic. This is a full, developed character, and he may have a gun, but you understand why, and that’s a whole different kind of empowerment.

30 NINJAS: He’s a fully drawn human being.

JL: Yes, instead of servicing the plot as a villain or some punk they have to chase to get at a bigger punk.

30 NINJAS: And also, there’s a range of Latin characters in this film, aren’t there?

JL: Yeah, there’s cops, there’s bad cops, good cops, there’s women in power, running things, Latin women, like [Supreme Court Justice Sonia] Sotomayor.

In Part 1 of our exclusive interview, Leguizamo talks about the double jeopardy of playing twins, how director Franc Reyes created the illusion of two brothers with one actor, and how Jeremy Irons’ double duty in the freaky 1991 twins movie Dead Ringers provided inspiration: Read it Now!