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Interview with Guillermo Diaz
by Joel Dossi,
February 28, 2005
When
actor Guillermo Diaz was in the eighth grade, one of his school’s
most popular students called him over. “He
gave me a handshake, and I remember thinking, ‘wow, he said hello to me!’”
Diaz recalls. But when the thrilled kid walked down the hall, blood ran
from his hand. The popular student had put a tack between his fingers, to
poke fun of Diaz, literally. “How pathetic. I was such a nerd in high school,”
Diaz says during a recent interview at BLVD, one of the trendiest “retro”
nightclubs in New York’s Little Italy.
The former
resident of the Washington Heights “hood” in Manhattan doesn’t have to
worry about being nerdy anymore. The openly gay Diaz stars in many of
last decade’s most successful independent features, both gay and straight:
Stonewall, I Think I Do, Just One Time and Boys
Life 3. His straight filmography includes I'm Not Rappaport,
200 Cigarettes and the film version of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding.
Soon, movie
buffs will be able to see him in a slew of features, including Husk,
Dirty Love, Shooting Vegetarians and The Virgin of Juarez,
which is still in production.
AfterElton.com:
You’ve started to crossing over into big-budget feature films, like Tom
Hanks’ The Terminal. Which do you like best?
Guillermo Diaz: I’d prefer the independent film. I feel closer
to those films because they all were a labor of love. I love the process.
You know, not really having a lot of money, but having this great idea
and this passion for a project. Seeing it through and finally seeing it
up on the screen. There was a time during the production of each of those
independent films, when we questioned if we were ever going to be able
to finish the film. Is it going to get picked up? Are we going to get
a distributor? It becomes like a little baby. You see it grow and turn
into this film that everybody sees.
AE: You’ve
also started working on television, most notably Chappelle's Show.
Do you find a big difference?
GD: The process in film is a lot slower. It takes a couple of months
to shoot a film. In television, it goes much quicker when you’re on set,
you take a couple of takes and they see what they like. Then you move
on. The time is the biggest difference between film and television.
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