MATCHO LIBER

The ultimate underdog tale, Cassandro tells the story of the real-life Mexican wrestler who both dominated the ring and changed attitudes towards homosexuality. Total Film meets director Roger Ross Williams and star Gael García Bernal to pay homage to one of the Spanish-speaking world’s most iconic athletes.

Sometimes , a filmmaker just knows when a subject is right. For Roger Ross Williams it was the day he first encountered the Mexican wrestler Saúl Armendáriz, better known by his ring name, Cassandro. ‘I fell in love with Cassandro the minute I met him,’ recalls Williams, when Total Film hooks up with him over video chat.

At the time, Williams was filming footage for The Man Without a Mask, a 2016 non-fiction short for The New Yorker, inspired by William Finnegan’s portrait of Cassandro that appeared in the magazine two years earlier. ‘Actually, the first day shooting with Cassandro… I went out that night with my crew, we were at a tequila bar. I remember that moment. And I said, “This is going to be my first scripted film.”’

In the unique, colourful but very macho world of lucha libre wrestling, Cassandro was a revolution. In the ring, the openly gay Armendáriz was a self-styled exótico – abreed of wrestler known for their extravagant, outlandish style. In the late 1980s, Cassandro’s popularity helped the LGBTQ+ community become more widely accepted in Mexico.

If anything brought home Cassandro’s status to Williams, it was walking with him around the streets of Juárez, the notoriously violent, drug cartel-run town on the US-Mexico border where his family hail from. ‘People are coming up and hugging him and he’s kissing babies,’ Williams recalls. ‘We get to the arena, and we go backstage and [in] this world of very macho wrestlers, these men are embracing him. And they’re treating him like one of the guys. And I was like, “Wait a minute, how is this happening?” I was just confused by it all.’

That confusion was amplified when Cassandro changed into his outfit – in full drag and make-up, with his trademark blonde pompadour – and walked out into the arena to his theme song, Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. Thousands started singing the lyrics. There was more hugging, more kissing, more babies being handed to him – like he was a politician out canvassing for votes. ‘I was like, “This is powerful stuff,”’ says Williams. ‘This is a macho culture embracing queer culture in a way that I had never expected or seen in Mexico. I just started to weep. And I was like, “I can’t wait to make this movie.”’

A documentarian by trade – his short Music by Prudence won him an Oscar back in 2010 – Williams immediately knew that Cassandro’s story was biopic gold dust. He even knew who should play him: Gael García Bernal, the Mexican star of Y tu mamá también and The Motorcycle Diaries. Like so many of his peers, the actor was reared on lucha libre wrestling. ‘As Mexicans and in the Spanish-speaking world, when we were kids, we all played different wrestlers… it was part of our growing up,’ Bernal says. ‘It’s a very noble sport.’

Those who weren’t raised in Mexico probably associate this particular style of grappling with Jack Black’s titular character in the comedy spoof Nacho Libre, but according to Bernal, these wrestlers were quasi-mythological. ‘They are like our superheroes,’ he says. ‘We didn’t read many comics of superheroes. We liked wrestling!’ Ironically, in Mexican cinema of the 1950s and 1970s wrestlers were the favoured protagonists in so-called Luchador films, cast as superhero-like characters and pitted against everything from vampires to Martians.

‘As a Mexican, I realised, “OK, I have to do a lucha libre film one day, because it’s such an integral part of our culture,’” says Bernal. It may have been a secret fantasy of his, but the way Williams tells it, after he and co-writer David Teague scripted the feature – simply titled Cassandro – it took a while to get Bernal’s attention. ‘I stalked Gael!’ he laughs. That included at the 2018 Oscars, when Bernal was going to sing Remember Me from Coco. ‘I went up to him, I said, “Hi, I have this film.” I’m trying to pitch him as we’re rehearsing for the Oscars. He didn’t really respond!’

With Williams on the Academy’s Board of Governors, representing the documentary branch, he kept bumping into Bernal at various shindigs. ‘I even approached him in a restaurant,’ he says. ‘This was the day before the Oscars. I went up to the table and I said, “I’m the guy who keeps approaching you about this film!” He was nice about it. But he’s having dinner with his friends, so I slunk away again.’ Finally, Williams’ agent set up a meeting with the actor in New York. ‘And once I sat him down and pitched him the story, he was like, “Oh, my God, this is an incredible story. Absolutely. Yes!”’

Bernal undertook six months of physical prep, including dance lessons and an intensive six-week course learning how to fight like a lucha libre wrestler. ‘That was tough. That was really tough,’ he admits. ‘I underestimated, maybe, how difficult it was… everything was hurting. Every part of the body all the time. But it was so much fun… because it’s playing like kids and getting away with it.’ Thankfully, he was in good hands, with real-life wrestlers Chessman and El Texano Jr. tutoring him. ‘They would treat us like we were just normal people trying to become wrestlers, and that was great.’

Williams was impressed by Bernal’s dedication. ‘He did most of his own stunts because he got so good,’ he says. ‘And he’s normally an athletic, physical person. So he really embraced that part of it in a big, big way.’ For the actor, it was a chance to show the sport of lucha libre in a different light. ‘There recently has been a lot of portrayals of lucha libre as something really gritty and sad,’ Bernal says. ‘And the life that the wrestlers live is actually an athletic life. They’re athletes. There’s so much joy in what they do and so much glory. It’s a gladiator’s life. And there’s a code – astrong fraternity, a strong kind of bond. They take care of each other.’

In the ring, Bernal replicates Cassandro’s graceful, cheeky, playful style. The agile tumbles, rolls and leaps were planned. ‘But at the same time,’ he adds, ‘it was, “Now, let’s do this shot. Let’s improvise a grappling moment.” So we just came up and improvised it, but through the training and everything, we already had a big know-how, in a way.’ He even worked with real-life wrestler El Hijo del Santo, who plays himself in the film. ‘Being there and listening to the audience, and hearing them getting excited and shouting the name of Cassandro – that was incredible. As was fighting El Hijo del Santo, who is a legend.’

While trainer Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez) is the person who truly helps Cassandro develop his fighting style – the Mickey to Cassandro’s Rocky – the film is far more than just a sports biopic. One key scene sees a young fan admit he came out to his family because of Cassandro. ‘There are many stories like that – many young gay kids that he inspired,’ says Williams. ‘This is how amazing Cassandro is: Homeland Security invited him to come on gay pride month to speak to the Homeland Security officers about queer representation. And I was like, “Wow, he’s really someone who’s really inspired a lot of people.”’

"EVERYTHING WAS HURTING.EVERY PART OF THE BODY ALL THE TIME. BUT IT WAS SO MUCH FUN..."

Gael Garcia Bernal

Two days before production started, the real Cassandro suffered a debilitating stroke. The exótico lost his ability to speak and movement in half of his body. A fortnight earlier, Williams had been at Cassandro’s last fight, in his native El Paso, along with several key crew members, including production designer Jc Molina (Honey Boy) and cinematographer Matías Penachino (Opus Zero) to figure out how to recreate the fights on screen. ‘Cassandro gets pretty injured in the match and is limping off the stage, and it’s very dramatic,’ Williams says. ‘And maybe it was two weeks later, he had the stroke. So when we went back to El Paso to film, we wheeled Cassandro to set. Imagine how emotional that was.’

Bernal, who spent time with Cassandro before his stroke, is simply relieved that the wrestler is making a slow-butsteady recovery. ‘He’s doing well now, fortunately,’ he says. ‘And he’s recuperating properly.’ In fact, Cassandro attended the Sundance Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere earlier this year, and was seen hugging Bernal, looking resplendent in a midnight-blue gown-like outfit. The actor remains impressed by Cassandro’s spirit. ‘It’s always been [about the search for] identity – his journey or his motor in life – to put himself out there, to change things, move things and shake up things.’

When Cassandro first saw the film – in a theatre in El Paso, before Sundance – he practically exploded, reports Williams. ‘Even though Cassandro can’t speak, he can scream and yell and make sounds and cheer. He was mimicking the action on the screen. So when Cassandro [on screen] is standing about to do the stage dive, he stood up and raised his arms. He lived every emotional moment of that film in such a powerful way. I was in tears for most of the screening. It was like watching it come to life. It was an incredible experience.’

Every time Perla de la Rosa, who plays Cassandro’s mother, appeared, the real-life wrestler was leaping to his feet. ‘He was screaming, “Mama!”, almost trying to embrace the screen. It was beautiful,’ adds Williams.

Now the world outside of Mexico has a chance to embrace Cassandro and his incredible story. ‘It’s been an emotional journey for him,’ says the director. ‘It’s a tribute to who he is and what he stands for. The film will always be that for him… and for all of us.’