Thanks, Danny Trejo
Sad? Just remember:
action star Danny Trejo
exists in this world.
Angry? Well, don’t be.
Trejo wrecks the claw machine;
kids get all the toys.
Lonely? Write a film;
Danny Trejo may show up
and help create art.
When you’re in despair,
watch “Machete” or “Bad Ass.”
Trejo will inspire.
Thanks, Danny Trejo.
How would this revolving rock
survive without you?
Trejo was born in Los Angeles and did time in a juvenile offenders' camp and 6 state prisons between 1959 (when he was 15) and 1969 but joined a 12-step program to overcome his drug addiction. At San Quentin, California's oldest prison and the site of the state's only death row for male inmates, he became a champion boxer in that facility's lightweight and welterweight divisions. Edward Bunker, who at 18 had been the prison's youngest-ever prisoner and ended his 18-years of incarceration in variuos institutions when he was paroled in 1975, turned to writing and acting (perhaps most memorably in 1992 as Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's 1st film, "Reservoir Dogs"). In 1985, while on the set of "Runaway Train," which he co-wrote and appeared in, Bunker recognized Trejo from their time together at Folsom State Prison and arranged for him to train Eric Roberts to box for a scene, and director Andrei Konchalovsky then cast him to play Boxer in the film. Trejo, a youth drug counselor, was on the set to assist with a cocaine problem. He became the godfather to Bunker's son. Trejo became a busy actor after that,
ReplyDeleteappearing in 5 or more movies a year as well as TV roles. In 1995 he appeared as Navajas in "Desperado" and found out he was the cousin of its director Robert Rodriguez, and as "Trejo" in Michael Mann's "Heat," a film in which Jon Voight (who had been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in "Runaway Train") played "Nate," modeled after Bunker. Rodriguez, who claimed that "When I met Danny, I said, 'This guy should be like the Mexican Jean-Claude Van Damme or Charles Bronson, putting out a movie every year and his name should be Machete,'" continued to feature him in a number of projects. In 2001 he developed the "Spy Kids" series of adventure comedy films in which Machete made his debut. The character then starred in his own series of movies, beginning with "Machete" in 2010, and then Trejo began a 2nd series, "Bad Ass" (2012), which he produced.