Original “La Bamba ”filmmaker explains why he joined the remake after saying one was not needed
"I'm willing to see where we go with this."
La Bamba director Luis Valdez never felt his biopic of the Chicano rock & roll icon Ritchie Valens needed to be remade. But after 37 years a remake is at last on its way, and Valdez has jumped on board as an executive producer to help steer the ship.
"The fact is that I didn't initiate this project," he told Entertainment Weekly after the remake was announced. "I've been perfectly satisfied with the presence of La Bamba on video and on the net and everything." When Sony Pictures asked Valdez "to come aboard as executive producer to help develop" a remake, however, "it seemed to me that's a positive thing."
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Luis Valdez in 1987Valdez cited several reasons for his change of heart, including "a couple of books out now about Ritchie that didn't exist before" that could deepen a new look at the trailblazing singer's short life, and even shorter career. There's also the fact that "40 years ago, there was no internet," and now "you're hearing directly from the public... over the years we've had constant responses and memes that come out, people recreating scenes on TikTok or on X on Twitter." La Bamba has become an integral "part of the legacy of Chicano culture," and Valdez feels the younger generation deserves to learn Valens' story anew.
The director also feels that Hollywood is currently "afraid to take risks," as with "the whole Marvel franchise" may have led producers to look at "La Bamba and [say], well, this has worked once before. Maybe it can work again." He's aware that "there's going to be automatic comparison whether we like it or not" to the original, but says "that's a creative risk that these filmmakers are taking. I don't feel that it detracts from the original at all in any way."
La Bamba tells the story of Valens' brief and prodigious life, from his ascent to fame at just 17 with hits "La Bamba" and Donna," to his relationship to troubled half-brother Bob (Esai Morales), and eventual death in a plane crash in Feb. 1959 alongside Buddy Holly and J.P. "The Big Bopper," dubbed the Day the Music Died.
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Beyond the Latino community, Valdez also notes the impact of the film on the Filipino community because of the casting and ultimate star turn of Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays Valens. "Everybody, it doesn't matter what their background is, has taken to the movie and absorbed it," he said.
Valdez told EW in 2021 that he couldn't understand "why they would want to remake" La Bamba, saying "it's fresh as it is." The 84-year-old creative dynamo is often called the father of Chicano film and theater, having written the 1979 play Zoot Suit and founded the influential Mexican American theater troupe El Teatro Campesino with Cesar Chavez in 1965.
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The film's powerful portrait of Chicano youth and brotherhood shifted the culture and changed lives, becoming Valdez's, Phillips', and Morales's most beloved work to date. When asked if the remake, which has tapped José Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries) as its screenwriter and Javier Chapa (The Long Game) as a producer, will draw on the extensive research Valdez performed in the 1980s, he responded, "that remains to be seen."
"My role," he explains, "is executive producer. I'm helping to get this film made. I know the process of filmmaking. I know the process of developing scripts... this has been my career. So I think I can be very helpful in terms of developing a story that... stands on its own feet."
Reporting by Yolanda Machado
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
