The Parsing Haus is pleased to present this HausGuest guest post by Marco Cerritos, fellow member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Here, Marco interviews Eugenio Derbez, star of the gender-swapping remake of “Overboard.” Enjoy!
Mexican superstar Eugenio Derbez is continuing his Hollywood splash with the new film “Overboard,” a remake of the 1987 original starring Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. In that version, a blue-collar worker tricks an heiress with amnesia into thinking they’re husband and wife. Comedy is supposed to ensue, but that logline hasn’t aged well at all.
The new version is very smart from the start by swapping gender roles and escaping PC criticism. This time around, spoiled playboy Leonardo (Derbez) is the one who wakes up with amnesia and gets tricked into a fake marriage by a lowly worker he’s taken advantage of. She’s played by Anna Faris, and their chemistry together is what really sells “Overboard.”
Derbez recently traveled to San Francisco to promote his version of the film. Although he’s not a household name in the United States yet, he definitely is one in his native Mexico. He cut his teeth on Mexican game shows and variety programming. After that success, he tried his hand at making movies for an American audience. His first attempt was the surprise hit “Instructions Not Included” followed by last year’s “How to Be A Latin Lover.” All three of his major U.S. productions (including “Overboard”) have scenes in which he speaks both in English and Spanish; according to Derbez, that could be the secret sauce that helps him cross over to a larger audience.He also landed smaller roles in big Hollywood productions like “Geostorm” and “Jack and Jill” as a gun for hire. Movies like “Overboard” are the ones where he is hands-on and ready to shine. The following is a transcript of my conversation with Derbez in two parts. The first part contains questions asked and answered in English, followed by a few more completely in Spanish and then translated. Derbez is still fine-tuning his English, so the Spanish questions are definitely more substantial. Enjoy both sides of that conversation!
Q: What made you decide on remaking “Overboard” as your next movie after the success of “How to Be A Latin Lover”?
Eugenio Derbez: The studios and I have been looking to see how we can bond the American and Latin markets. For many years the studios have been trying to reach the Latin market, and either they’ve tried making movies that appeal to Latinos and not the general market or vice versa. Bringing both audiences to the same type of movie has been hard for them. Comedy doesn’t travel that much; it’s so local and it depends on your age, your demographic, everything. I’ve been trying to find things that work for both markets, and I feel that I have more or less found that. I’ve done that with my last movie “How to be A Latin Lover” and my other movie “Instructions Not Included.” Both movies had me speaking Spanish. American audiences seem to love “Overboard” even more than Latino audiences, and the few scenes that are entirely in Spanish are very real and believable.
Q: When you decided to make this movie, who decided on swapping genders for the lead roles?
Derbez: That was our idea–between the writers, my business partner and myself. We wanted to make a different movie but not so different that you couldn’t recognize the original. It’s tricky because sometimes, when you remake a movie, you can go too far and make a completely different movie than the original. But here we thought that switching genders would be smart to avoid comparison and also because I wanted to break stereotypes. I was tired of playing the poor guy, the gardener, the drug lord or the cook. So I decided it would be fun to make the Mexican the billionaire and the American girl the one who is cleaning the place.
Q: The writing team for this movie also did “Wedding Crashers”; what was it about their writing style that attracted you to them?
Derbez: We were trying to find writers who were edgy and different. When we decided to switch genders, the studio didn’t want us to go that far, but our writers did an amazing first draft that the studio loved, too. They said this is the first time we haven’t given a note to the first draft of a script.
Q: Are cultural stereotypes in the movies easier to break down in 2018?
Derbez: I think they are, but not as much as you might think. Part of switching genders was to show the world that we have all types of Latinos. We have construction workers who are hard-working people, but we also have lawyers, architects and doctors, too.
Q: What is the one question you keep getting from journalists that you wish would go away?
Derbez: The comparison between this version of “Overboard” and the original. People ask if I feel this one is better than the other one. We’re not competing; this is an homage to the original. I love the original so much that, to me, it’s an honor to be remaking it.
(The following questions were asked and answered in Spanish and then translated into English.)
Q: The incorporation of Mexican soap operas into this movie gave me a big laugh, since you seemed to stay true to the exaggeration of those stories.
Derbez: You know what? Those are actual Mexican soap operas. The scenes we show in the movie seem ridiculous and exaggerated, but those are actual soap operas. We couldn’t exaggerate our version any more than the real thing, so we just licensed it and used it in our movie.
Q: You were talking before about not wanting to play any more Latin stereotypes like gardeners and drug lords. How was your experience working as a gardener in “Jack and Jill”? On one hand, you’re in a big Hollywood movie, but on the other you’re playing another gardener.
Derbez: In that particular case I wanted to work with Adam Sandler, and I knew that was the price I had to pay. It didn’t bother me to play a gardener, because gardeners all over the U.S. are wonderful people.
Q: It’s honest work.
Derbez: Absolutely. What bothered me wasn’t that I was playing a gardener, but that Hollywood seems to think we can only play gardeners and other stereotypes. Their scope of us seems to be that we’re cleaning something, or as gardeners . . . .
Q: Or in jail . . . .
Derbez: Exactly, or in jail. So when Adam Sandler invited me to be a part of his film, I was dying to work with him and be in a big Hollywood movie, no matter what the role turned out to be.
Q: Was there a part of you that thought to yourself, “Fuck this! I can’t believe they want me to play another gardener!”?
Derbez: (laughs) Not really, because now that I have more opportunities to change things, I can obviously choose more roles that can break stereotypes. That doesn’t mean that I’ll never play another gardener or drug lord, but I will try to avoid it as much as possible.
Q: You got to play an astronaut in “Geostorm.” The movie as a whole wasn’t great, but people could see a Latino actor in a different kind of role.
Derbez: Absolutely. Things like that can inspire people to think that it’s possible.
Q: “Geostorm” had a lot of reshoots and behind-the-scenes drama; how do you handle that as an actor?
Derbez: As an actor, you’re rolling the dice with each project, hoping for the best possible outcome. You’re renting yourself out to the Hollywood machine. I remember reading the script and speaking to the director about certain things that seemed off to me. But, as an actor, that’s all you can really do.
Q: I’m guessing as long as the check clears, that can soften the blow, right?
Derbez: (laughs) It definitely doesn’t hurt.
Overboard opened Friday, May 4.
Thanks to SFFCC Member Marco Cerritos for this HausGuest post!
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