Movie Interviews
9:01 am
Thu April 12, 2012














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This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The movie "Chico & Rita" is an animated musical that was nominated for an Oscar this year. It's a love story set in Cuba, New York, Hollywood and Paris, and takes place mostly in the late '40s and early '50s. It features great jazz and Cuban music and dazzling animation.

My guest is Spanish director Fernando Trueba, who co-directed "Chico & Rita" with animator Javier Mariscal. Trueba won an Oscar for his film "Belle Epoque." "Chico & Rita" is his second film, focused on Latin music. He directed the music documentary "Calle 54." One of the musicians featured in that film is pianist and composer Bebo Valdes, who became the inspiration for the character of Chico, composed the score for "Chico and Rita," and played some of the piano parts in the film.

The story in "Chico & Rita" is similar to several of the stories told in the documentary "The Buena Vista Social Club." Chico is a Cuban jazz pianist and arranger whose music is played after the revolution. Before the revolution he falls in love with Rita, a beautiful singer. This is the song she sings when he first sees her.





FERNANDO TRUEBA: Thank you. Thank you.


TRUEBA: Well, I love Cuban music but, you know, what I love most of anything in music is jazz. I'm always listening to jazz music - American jazz most of the time. I arrived to Cuban music through jazz. And then when we started talking about the idea of making that movie in Cuba and music, so I say to Mariscal, I say well, let's do a story that the characters are musicians, because I love this ambiance and all that. And because I had worked so much with Bebo and Bebo was at the time with the movie he was 90 and I had previous records with him and we thought why don't we do the character a pianist so we can have Bebo playing in the movie? So that was the strong idea and then the rest of the things came naturally after that, no? The idea that every time Chico was playing the piano, the Chico's character we had Bebo, who is the greatest Cuban musician alive today in the world.

GROSS: He's really amazing and it's so wonderful to hear his music in the context of the movie. And, as you say, he's in his 90s now.



TRUEBA: Yeah. Yeah. At the time of the movie he had already stopped doing concerts because - and he love playing, he's always playing but he realized that his memory and his health that he shouldn't. He told to me I'm not going to play anymore in public but I will keep playing at home because I need to play. So he had already take that decision and his health was very delicate at the time but he could make it and he could do all the job in the movie, so it's his last work. And that's why the movie is dedicated to him because - not only because of the music but because I'm sure that if it was not for my friendship with him, I would never have written and make a movie like this one. It's not Bebo's biography, it's not his life, but he was the main inspiration of that ambience, that period, this kind of person of characters, so Bebo is for me, he's everywhere in the movie.

GROSS: And Bebo Valdes left shortly after the revolution in Cuba and has lived...

TRUEBA: Yeah. That's completely different from Chico.

GROSS: ...out of the country ever since. So his story is really different. But the character of the Cuban pianist, Chico, his face seems to be modeled on Bebo Valdes' face. Is that right?

TRUEBA: Yeah. Not only the old Bebo in the movie, but also the young one because Bebo was really handsome...


GROSS: Mm-hmm.

TRUEBA: ...young man in the '40s in Cuba. And so Mariscal take Bebo as a model for physically for playing Chico.



GROSS: What did you tell Bebo Valdes you wanted from this song and did he write it for the movie or was it a pre-existing song of his?

TRUEBA: No. No. That was an existing song that was included in one of the records of Bebo that I produced. And it's a song he composed for one of his daughters who is a singer in Cuba, Mayra Caridad Valdes. And the original title of the song is "A Mayra." "To Mayra," dedicated to his daughter. But I wanted - I love the music, the melody of that song and I thought it was very cinematic and it was perfect for the movie because "Chico and Rita," is when we started writing it Mariscal was telling me I want this movie to be very romantic, to be like a "Bolero." And so we give the movie the structure of a "Bolero" while always very dramatic love story is very kind of a bit exaggerated, very Latin, desperate love songs. So we did a lot of different versions in the movie, sang and orchestrated in everything. We did a lot of different readings of the theme.


TRUEBA: Yeah. It's very curious because the Nat King Cole records in Espanol - in Spanish were recorded in Cuba and Bebo was the pianist in the band.


TRUEBA: Yeah. Who was...


TRUEBA: ...number one best-selling in Nat King Cole's career. And Bebo was, he was an admirer of Nat King Cole the pianist because Nat King Cole became very famous as a singer. But not only Bebo, Bill Evans, every time someone asked him who was his favorite pianist he would say Nat Cole because he was really a master pianist. And he had an enormous influence in some great musicians like Bebo, Bill Evans and many, many others. And Bebo told me that at the time of that recording Nat King Cole didn't speak one word of Spanish. And Bebo not only had to play piano on the record but was his coach for Spanish, so he has to teach him to pronounce correctly the words of the song. And Bebo says he did pretty well, only the T's and the O's he didn't master them very well. That's why he say a cachero(ph) cachero instead of saying catcheto(ph). And there is a beautiful photograph of Bebo with Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole in Tropicana at that time in Havana.

GROSS: Sarah Vaughan.




GROSS: That's OK.





TRUEBA: Estrella.

GROSS: Estrella.


GROSS: Why don't you describe how this version of the song is used in "Chico and Rita."

TRUEBA: Yeah. I wanted - after all this sad story that they had through the years, Chico and Rita, and all the separation and the (unintelligible) and everything, I - it's not that I wanted to have a happy ending. In some ways I wanted a happy end for the movie but also I thought it was fair. I remember my own story with Bebo. Bebo was completely forgotten, playing for 55 years in the piano in the lobby of a hotel in Stockholm in Sweden, completely forgotten. Many people even thought he was dead. And after "Calle 54" I produced some records with him and one of them, "Lagrimas Negras," was an incredible hit in - over the world, and Bebo became an instant star in Spain and he was 80-something at the time. So you couldn't walk even the street, he was like a big, big star. And so I wanted Chico to have this kind of third act so that at the end he's rediscovered and he has success and he can use his success to find finally Rita. So I think it was not just a happy end, you know, it was very realistic that for the end of "Chico and Rita."



ESTRELLA MORENTE: (Sung in a foreign language)

GROSS: That's music from the soundtrack of the animated film "Chico and Rita." My guest is the co-director and co-writer of the film, Fernando Trueba. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.


GROSS: My guest is Spanish director Fernando Trueba. He co-directed the animated movie musical "Chico & Rita" with animator Javier Mariscal. It's a love story about a pianist named Chico and a singer named Rita who meet and fall in love in Cuba before the revolution.

One of the things you did for "Chico & Rita" was to get access to a Cuban photo archive of streets from 1949. And this was an archive of photos that were used for street repairs? Do I have that right?

TRUEBA: Yeah, that's right. That's right. That was a great discovery when we were doing research in Cuba for the movie and we were watching documentaries and photographs and things. And when we discovered this man who had kept all these photographs of Havana streets at the time of the big wars, and it was a treasure, especially for Mariscal, who was drawing all these streets and backgrounds for the movie.

GROSS: So what are some of the things you saw in those photos that you thought, this has to be in the film? We have to animate this corner or draw this shop or this - yeah.

TRUEBA: Yeah. That was more Mariscal's decision. I always use the term Picassian, you know. And when you see his paintings, they're always very open, very free. But working on "Chico and Rita," he wanted it to be very realistic in terms of the drawing of the cities, of Havana and New York, and all this. So he - when there is the scene in the chase after the Tropicana scene and the...

GROSS: And the car disintegrates?

TRUEBA: ...he's taking the motorbike - yeah - and all this, every street is, one after another, is a real way that you can do in Havana, even today. So in some things, we stayed realistic.





TRUEBA: Biopics. Yeah. Biopics.

GROSS: ...usually of famous people. And, yes, as you say, the information is usually all wrong, and you don't believe it.


I'm watching the great Anthony Hopkins pretending to be Picasso. But when you do an animation and you draw Charlie Parker, it is Charlie Parker. You know, I can't explain it, but for me, at least, it's like that.









TRUEBA: Yeah. And...

GROSS: ...not pertinent anymore. Yeah.


GROSS: Therefore counter-revolutionary.


GROSS: The music publishing company.


GROSS: So he couldn't collect royalties anymore.




GROSS: They boycott his concert?



GROSS: Mm-hmm.


GROSS: My guest is the co-director and co-writer of the animated movie musical "Chico and Rita," Fernando Trueba. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.


GROSS: My guest is Fernando Trueba, co-director of the animated movie musical "Chico and Rita," which is largely set in Cuba. He also directed the 2000 documentary "Calle 54" about Latin musicians, including Bebo Valdes, the inspiration for "Chico and Rita."



GROSS: ...and was pretty popular there.






I remember that he told me once, Chucho was playing in Carnegie Hall in New York many years ago, and he hadn't seen him for 17 years. So it was a night that McCoy Tyler was playing and Bill Evans was playing and Chucho was playing with his group Irakere. So Bebo take a plane from Stockholm to New York just to see Chucho, you know, in America. And - but there was - he was never alone. There was a guy from government always with them. You know, because...

GROSS: From the Cuban government.


GROSS: Defect.


GROSS: Defect.



TRUEBA: Yeah. It's incredible because I pick up the print when it was finished, and I went to Malaga and I rent the theater, and I screen the movie just for him and for Estrella Morente, the flamenco singer who - she lives also in Malaga. So it was an incredible experience. I was watching Bebo's face all the time, and he was so moved. And at the end of the movie, he was crying his eyes out with tears. And he gives me - it was an incredible moment. I will never forget that moment - very, very emotional and touching for both of us.


TRUEBA: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Fernando Trueba co-wrote and co-directed the animated film "Chico and Rita." He spoke to us from Miami, where he attended the opening of his film. "Chico & Rita" is playing in several theaters around the country, including in New York and Washington, D.C., and will open soon in Chicago and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. I'm Terry Gross. We'll close with Bebo and Chucho Valdes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.