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- What's up? What's up? - Hey.
What's up, fellas?
My name's Danny Trejo,
some of you might have seen me once in a while on TV.
I, uh, I'm kind of at a loss for words
'cause I, uh..
First of all, I, I love doing this,
you know, this is one of the things
that has kept me out of prison since 1969.
My number was B-948.
I remember this director once said,
"Danny, kick in this door and intimidate."
I kick in the door...
"Cut!" He said, "Where did you study?"
Dale's Market, the Far East Market, Vonz.
Alright, fellas, let's do this.
They make movies and stories about guys like Danny,
and actors are portraying those people.
Danny is that guy.
He's been in trouble since he was a kid.
It just got worse and worse as he grew older.
I'm always astonished by how he lived that life
and survived.
A lot of times you cannot make an amends for that,
you can't clean that up.
I feel Danny has paid his debt to society.
I don't think Danny feels he has.
Falling down is one thing.
What do you do when you get back up?
That's Danny's life.
And it all comes back to where he started.
My dad grew up in Pacoima, California.
He actually grew up in this house
that we're, that we're in right now.
Back when there was a dairy farm over there,
dirt roads, dirt allies,
just poor Mexican neighborhood.
This was life without seat belts,
life without cell phones,
life without some houses having telephones.
From the time you were four, you just went out the door
and hopefully you came home at dark.
Pacoima and San Fernando
was just transitioning from farm land.
When I moved out there in the mid '50s,
it was orange groves, we moved right into an orange grove.
We turned on the faucets and mud would come out.
Pacoima and Sylmar and all those communities
were really just starting to grow up.
There used to be this old man that walked around
with this pony.
I don't know what he charged, but I remember
my mom seen the pony, I got on it,
and they put this little scarf on me,
I took a picture with that pony.
It was this kind of sense of ownership
that all the kids had. We were creating this.
Chevys, low riders,
big Buicks.
Back in the days in San Fernando, Pacoima,
they did a lot of cruising, everybody
was really into their cars.
Particularly with the Mexican community,
the Chicano community, it wasn't to get the fast car,
the vroom, the race car, the thoroughbred
that could make it across lifers.
They were show horses, they did slow,
so they paraded around with their little slow moves.
It wasn't like, "Look at me be fast."
It was, "Look at me be slow,
to admire the power."
I remember cruising around when I was 13 years old
in the backseat with a,
a... a cord of Miller Highlight. Yeah.
I couldn't wait till I could get, you know, a... a car,
a convertible, a sun low or something.
How you doing? Alright!
Machete cruises!
Right now we're in a '60...
I'm sorry, a '56 Chevy Bel Air.
350 Chevy engine. And this is a monster.
Now this is Branford, this is the street that I lived on.
It was really a good neighborhood.
You know what I mean?
Oh...
I can actually beat that guy, isn't it?
Oops. Foot took over.
I love that.
Neighborhoods were neighborhoods.
When the lights went down, you know, the sun went down,
things changed.
The kids didn't have anything to do
and there was no money and there was no employment for them
or nothing, your parents were gone,
working probably, so they got into mischief.
The atmosphere of Pacoima
was that of a lot of tension.
Pacoima was like the murder capital of Los Angeles
at the time.
Pacoima, San Fernando, North Hollywood, Van Nuys,
all the Latin communities used to, like, just be at war.
There were no automatic weapons,
there was none of this people driving down
and shooting everybody to get one person.
There was no head of the Mafia
because the Mafia hadn't even been formed yet.
It was a lot more civilized, but it was still there.
That's my old junior high school right there,
Pacoima Junior High. We were, like, crazy there.
This is Pacoima Middle School.
It used to be Pacoima Junior High School,
and then they changed it.
Everybody calls it Ritchie Valens Middle School
'cause he went here.
Me, Mike Cerno, Malcolm Armaderas,
Julian Valdez, Eddy Valenzuela,
they were like my dogs, man.
I got here in 1957, I think,
when I moved into Pacoima.
I got kicked out of here, went to San Fernando,
but I never got in, I got in a fight on the steps.
None of those buildings were there.
There, there used to be an alley that went all the way
like that way, there was old houses,
and we used to steal wine out of Dale's Market
and go drink in that alley.
Hi, how are you? What's up?
It's a weird trip, boy.
We first got our television, I was about ten.
And I missed about 15 days of school.
Growing up, he's always loved Westerns,
and if you love Westerns, you loved John Wayne.
When I was 12 years old,
I found out John Wayne was an actor,
and that was a real shock to me
because we thought
that The Duke was a historical figure.
When my kids were little
and John Wayne came on the screen,
I'd say, "Stand up, it's John Wayne,"
and they would actually, like, stand up
and we would all salute John Wayne.
He's like, "That's The Duke,
you have to salute The Duke."
He always had these great sayings.
"Life is really tough. It's even tougher if you're stupid."
I like that.
He was a hero.
He didn't have to wear tights, he didn't have a cape,
you know, he didn't fly, he just kicked ass.
Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez,
he worked with John Wayne!
He was actually one of the first Latins.
When you saw him, you knew
that your limit just increased.
Wait till I show you what is in this package.
In my neighborhood, you could either be a laborer
or a criminal.
I mean, you just didn't see a lot of lawyer Mexicans
and a lot of doctors.
...she could have climbed down.
When I saw Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez...
you had another, wow, you could do that.
And here's where I grew up was, I was about
13 years old right here.
I used to come home drunk,
and on this big old wide street,
I'd try to make a U-turn and still crash into the curb.
My dad left my real mom.
I was three, and I moved in with my grandma.
I lived with a lot of girl cousins.
Yeah, it was like a real happy time in my life.
Grandma was cool.
That's why I started dancing,
"American BandStand" and all that, so I could always dance.
Nine women.
And all of a sudden I move in with my grandfather,
and my dad and my dad's six brothers.
So shit really changed.
Kind of like going, like, from Shirley Temple to John Wayne.
You find out real quick little boys don't do pee-pee
sittin' down.
My dad was my first role model, but...
It wasn't very, uh...
huggy,
I... I-love-you kind of guy.
Not too much good happened between me and my dad.
He would tell me that
"Man, I wasn't really that good at working."
"And every time my, my dad will see me,
he'll get pissed off and he'll say,
'Man, go inside and go wash dishes,
go and help your mom wash dishes!'"
We come from the same neighborhood,
His father was mean, my father was mean, you know?
A big old smack in the head.
"My job is to support this family.
Don't ask for anything else."
I know that sounds harsh and it sounds like he was mean,
but that's just the way it was.
In this neighborhood, success is like a, a house,
a car and a camper.
And I... I think my dad was just kind of saying,
"Is that all there is? You know, is that all there is?"
You know, and then kind of disappointed at the end,
you know what I mean, the "Wow, is that all there is?" You know?
He was real strict with him.
His mom, Alice, would come to the rescue.
Alice was not his birth mother,
but was his mother.
When Danny moved back to live with his father,
he was already married to Alice,
and Alice never had children of her own,
but Danny was her son.
That's his mom, that's the person
that was there for him.
Alice was there, always, for him.
She'd been with me since I was three.
She would always say something to throw water
on whatever was happening with me and my dad.
One of her dreams was to have a restaurant.
So we'd talk about a restaurant.
"Hey, mom, yeah, and we can do this
and you can make your tacos."
And my dad would always, like,
"Ahem. Hey, we got a kitchen right there..."
He was like the, the Mexican Archie Bunker.
My dad, I think he hated his younger brother
'cause I worshipped him.
My dad knew what Gilbert was doing,
and they, they couldn't keep me away from him.
I remember when I graduated from junior high school,
graduated on a Friday.
My dad found me passed out in Gilbert's front yard
on Wednesday.
To know Danny is you must know of Gilbert.
My uncle was doing robberies and shooting dope.
God, man, it was like, always had a car, always had money
and never had a sweat ring.
When my Uncle Gilbert was on the run,
he used to sneak in to that window.
That was before we had bars,
before my mom lived alone, and so that was my room.
He didn't fit in real well with his older brothers.
I didn't fit in with anybody, you know,
so me and him just really like,
became inseparable.
When he talks about Gilbert, he talks about
the clothes he wore and pulling up in the new Cadillac
and the money he was throwing around.
That was amazing to see as an eight-year-old,
nine-year-old boy, just like, "Wow, he's got the girls,
the car, the money. I want that."
All my friends' older brothers
and sisters...
respected Gilbert.
So when I was with him,
I automatically got that "Wow."
Everybody knew.
Gilbert goes by, let Gilbert go by.
You know, that's how it was.
He was a real gangster.
Great sense of humor,
and if you pissed him off, he'd kill you.
He turned me on to grass, I was about eight,
and my mom and dad did everything to try
to keep me away from him, but you know,
things kind of had already lost control.
Scary when you see a certain type of kid
vibrate towards that direction so radically, so quickly.
Danny was in a high-stakes world from a very young age.
My dad was always a fighter, that was his thing.
This is a, a picture of him at 18 getting pulled away
from a fight at the park, right here.
She looks just pissed.
Well, Uncle Gilbert taught him how to box,
started him boxing.
He became very good at it.
He was a welterweight champion
in his paratrooper unit, 101st.
He was in the golden gloves,
and I was his sparring partner.
I was really his punching bag,
but so I had to learn how to fight,
or get my, get my head beat in.
You know, he's got this aura about him.
He's gonna really do something, you know?
Drugs got him.
Danny noticed the change,
and that's when they had started using heroin.
I can remember the day
that I wanted to be just like him.
My grandfather was like a tyrant.
And I'll never forget, he was mad at me and Gilbert,
he was standing in front of us and he was screaming
and I knew he was gonna hit me,
and I'm kind of like wincing
so I won't shit and he won't hit me,
and then I look over at my uncle
and he's going...
He's falling asleep!
We're staring in the face of death, he goes...
And he walked into his room,
and Gilbert goes...
"Did he hit us?" You know?
I just, I prayed to God, "Let me be like that."
Danny realized at that young age,
he has a secret escape-hatch mechanism
that he can access...
to get away from the violence in the household,
and whatever that is, I want it.
'Cause I was scared of my grandfather,
I was scared of my dad, uh,
I wasn't scared of Gilbert.
When he was 12,
he took his first shot of heroin.
Two weeks later,
he was no longer like this cool Gilbert,
he was like crazy.
He is going through withdrawals, he's sick.
I seen him. Oh, he's like this...
And he had my grandfather's syringe.
My grandfather was a diabetic.
He says, "Get outta here." I said, "No, give me some!"
"Give me some or I'm gonna tell." That's how young he was.
"Give me some or I'm gonna tell."
He's like, "Wait a minute,"
so he says, "Hold this."
So I'm holding this belt for him like this.
It's a glass syringe, so when the needle registered,
it does this little atomic-bomb thing. Tsshh.
And then, bam, he hits, he says
"Let it go," and I let it go.
And when I let it go, I seen
this whole change come over him.
From this crazy,
to this huh,
he's back to that guy that could go to sleep
in front of the, the dragon.
He gave me a fix,
a couple of drops of his cotton,
and the next thing I remember I was soaking wet
sitting outside in my grandmother's yard just,
I'd overdosed.
You're not thinking, "Oh, well,
now I don't have to worry about school,
I don't have to worry about errands,
I don't have to worry about this."
Nothing! It's just gone.
I just decided "This is what I'm gonna do
because this is all there is."
And then all I remember is hearing the ice-cream truck
and getting some ice cream.
Fuck, man, the thing is,
is it's only blissful the first time.
Every time after that it just becomes a chase.
The thing about drugs and alcohol is
you're trying to survive something that in a way
your psyche can't match at that point,
and so you, you get these things
that are like a blanket, you know, and they help
until the day you realize,
"Oh, that, that blanket's strangling me now."
That began the life of learning how to sustain that,
so they taught him how to rob liquor stores
and convenience stores,
and the crimes just escalated from there.
His dad started calling this side of the family to say
"I don't know what to do with him, help."
When I realized Gilbert was doing robberies,
I, I thought it was kind of heroic.
You know, I didn't think it was bad.
His Uncle Gilbert
and a friend of his, his crime partner,
they showed up on the front lawn here.
Each of them
handed my dad $10.
I knew they did a robbery, they told me.
So I had $20 in $1 bills.
I remember holding it, I remember looking at these guys,
I remember seeing their cars,
everything that I ever wanted in life at like,
nine years old, that's what I want to do.
First robbery was the Far East Market.
Had a gun.
A revolver that didn't stay up.
It would fall, you had to hold it like this.
We went in the store, I'm holding the door,
Richard's saying, "Give me the money," to the lady, you know,
"Give me the money," so she gave him the, the $8
that were in the cash register,
but then said, "No, no, in the box!"
And he pointed to the box, that's when the gun opened.
I started laughing, she started screaming,
Richard grabbed the $8.
We ran, we ran down Lankersham.
We didn't use that gun anymore.
Shotgun is probably the best deterrent
for heroes there is.
You know, a shotgun will make people
think twice of becoming GI Joe.
So was that your go-to gun?
Yeah. Sawed-off shotgun. That's what my uncle gave me.
Right...
That there, up there, upstairs,
that used to be a, a, like a little hall,
and they had a poker game up there. We took that down.
Now the guard was over here where the steps were
and we just did a walk by and stuck a gun in his mouth
and just kind of, uh, tied him up
and then went up, kicked in the door.
What spurred a robbery for me
was not seeing anybody in the liquor store...
or watching somebody come out of the bank.
If you're gonna be a criminal, be a criminal 24 hours a day.
We did a gang of them in '65,
and I was only out a 100 days.
Hamburger joints, delis, convenience stores.
Most of the liquor stores in San Fernando Valley.
Ralves, Dale's Market, White Front.
They used to rob White Front stores,
like the Best Buys of their day, that was an appliance store,
they had washing machines, televisions.
I remember those when I was a little kid.
My dad used to take us there to go shopping.
Burglaries, and they liked to steal cars.
You'd go into a liquor store,
pull the pin out over the counter and say,
"Give me everything or I'm dropping it."
It started out as a, a rouse.
We walked in and pulled out this grenade,
and the guy got so scared, said, we said, uh,
"It's a robbery," and emptied out his cash box.
Even to this day I'm like, "Who does that?"
It's like the wild west.
Totally unfathomable for me.
To me it's mind boggling that you would
rob a place called Patties or Bob's Big Boy,
two, like, legendary places right next to Warner Brothers,
like where everybody and their mother went.
But he robbed that place. Still it blows my mind.
He had to be high. You know, like, it was crazy.
It was hard to reconcile what I knew intellectually
with what I knew, like, intimately about my dad,
and it was almost like hard to believe
that he had been that person.
If you're dedicated to that life,
I... I think guilt isn't a, an emotion or a feeling
that you really deal with
simply because, otherwise, you know,
hell, you, you rob a guy and tell him you're sorry
and give him back his money, you know? So...
Drugs take care of a lot of things,
any kind of feeling you got.
It's almost like, you ever seen one of those little squirrels
in a cage running around?
Well, that's the kind of way this thing is.
It's something that you just can't walk away from
because it's your way of life.
Me and about 10-15 guys, a whole car load,
we're, like, cruising down Van Nuys Boulevard,
and we saw this old house with a bunch of cars,
you know, parked in front of us.
Something's going on in there, you know?
Three bottles of wine, half pint of whiskey,
I was already loaded on pills, and a 38 snub nose,
and kicked in the door,
and the first thing we saw was a big sign that said
"We care."
They walk into a, a 12-step meeting.
He said, "And I told all my friends
they need to stay together,
and they're all in little groups with these guys,
and they're hugging them!"
All these people just, "Hi, welcome! Come on in!" You know?
Somebody ac... ac... actually asked me to join them, they said
"Why don't you join us?" you know...
And this guy actually told me "If you leave the program,
you will die, go insane or go to jail."
It really turned out to be true.
When that started happening to me,
I never forgot what that old geezer had said.
I hate to say old guy, 'cause he was like, 40.
I got the shit kicked out of me
by the cops, regularly.
Nine times out of ten when the cops
kicked the shit out of us, we had it coming.
In and out of Youth Authority, non-stop.
I mean, he'd get out, go right back,
get out, go right back.
I mean, that's where he grew up.
When I got to Juvenile Hall,
there were so many Mexicans there,
I thought Mexicans were supposed to go.
It's almost like school.
When I went to county jail,
I learned how to steal, how to manipulate,
how to get the best jobs.
You learn what you learn in there.
Danny reminded me of me when I was younger.
He was so hip, the balls of his feet
would tickle him when he walked.
He'd come up to me and he'd smile at me,
just look, that look he has, and he said...
"What are you gonna teach me, old man?"
And I said, uh, "Nothing,
I'm gonna give you some previews of coming attractions, punk."
And he turned on his heel and went away.
The next time I saw him, uh,
he looked at me and, you know, "What do you think now?"
And I said, "Danny, the only thing
that's gonna beat you to San Quentin
is the headlights on the bus."
When I went to prison,
I sold four ounces of sugar to a Federal agent,
bunko sales, no drugs at all.
He didn't have nothing,
so he filled up these bags full of sugar,
came back, sold it to the under cover,
and the under cover's telling him, "Is it pure?"
Danny's like, "Yeah, it's pure."
You know, it's pure sugar, right?
He said they kicked his ass when they caught him.
He said they kicked his ass all the way to the station.
A brand-new 1965 Buick.
I'll never guess I was on the floor of the back seat,
this guy's punching the shit out of me, right,
and beating me all the way from North Hollywood
to the Federal building downtown.
"Where's my money? Give me my money?"
"What do you got to say?" And my face is on the ground.
"What do you got to say?" I said, "Is this a new car?"
I'm like, 'cause it smelled, it had that smell.
And I said, "I'm bleeding all over your new car."
I had to plead guilty to a bunko sales
which carries six to ten years.
When I left the joint, I had a, a sawed-off shotgun,
two pistols, uh, about $8000
and a... hand grenade.
And, uh, I... I buried 'em.
This was my stash place.
I had a 4x4 hole right here
with a lid and grass on top.
My mom and dad were talking about putting sprinklers
in the backyard, and I told my mom,
"Be real careful around,
around the waterfall."
He ended up in San Quentin.
I don't know how it is now,
but when you're on a CDC bus,
it's the only bus on the freeway.
Everybody knows you're a criminal.
Seeing people pass by, people working in the street,
you know you screwed up.
I've known people that have hung themselves
in the county jail
because they were so afraid they were going to prison.
Unless you've grown up in that system...
you're scared to death of it.
How long were you in San Quentin for?
Which time?
I've been arrested 78 times.
I got five felony convictions.
I was a resident vacationing at San Quentin.
I was actually in when they were shooting
"Blood In Blood Out" in the '90s.
I seen a few, few things in there
that I, I wanted my mommy, you know what I mean,
I wanted, I wanted to come home.
When you're driving up that wall in Quentin,
you see that gun tower right in front,
you know that once you go in there,
you're not coming out.
This is the big house.
The gas chamber's here.
The minute the bus stops,
the tension starts.
As soon as you get off that bus,
you gotta get butt-naked, and it's freezing.
People are screaming and yelling behind the gates,
you know, it's like everything that you've seen.
You hear this engine...
And all it is is everybody talking.
If you've ever been next to someone that's insanely angry,
just so fucking angry, just crazy rage,
if you can imagine
4000 guys that angry,
that kind of rage,
that's the tension in San Quentin.
They might be laughing and joking,
but one little spark or something,
oh, everybody's back to being the Incredible Hulk
without being green. Madness.
You have to be able to control that
and make it caution
because when you start getting paranoid,
people get paranoid of you.
It could be...
somebody didn't get a letter.
Somebody forgot a birthday.
It could be somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Anything can get you killed in prison.
Size, strength means nothing!
Everybody knows four inches of steel,
thirty-five pounds of pressure, bang, you're done.
You see this guy, ah, get stabbed in the back.
He's walking around the upper yard.
Reaching for this knife, coughing up blood,
reaching for this... Ah!
And everybody started laughing!
What a fucked-up place.
You're either alpha or you're not.
Someone's either gonna say, "What size shoes do you got on?"
And if you don't crack 'em in their head that first second,
you're soft.
They know they can get over on you.
I know I'm an alpha guy, you know?
Danny's for sure an alpha guy.
One of the things that Gilbert did was teach me
that in... in prison there's only predators and prey,
that's it.
If my enemy is down the tier in a cell
and I hear him sharpening a knife,
well, I'd better stab that guy first thing,
as quick as I can.
I can't wait for him to attack me.
Two guys that I'd, I'd robbed, literally,
in, in Youth Authority, Tyrone, says,
"Hey, this guy's here," you just get a magazine,
just put a magazine here and a magazine in the back.
I walked out of the cell and I went to the, the corner,
I turned around, bam, this guy hit me with this shank.
Whoa, urgh, kind of knocked the breath out of me.
Tyrone was right behind me, just came around,
whomp, whomp, whomp, hit him.
I was like, "Ah! Oh, yeah, magazine!"
It happened so quick, I forgot I had the magazine.
And this guy ran down, bleeding, you know?
Tyrone threw a knife, came down real slow, you know?
"Well, what happened?" "I don't know."
If you were on fire I wouldn't piss on you.
I had no, I had no...
You know, no feeling.
The conflict is I know it's wrong to do this,
but I do it anyhow.
You go into a shell
and you protect that shell at all cost.
Even if you decide that you're a predator,
that doesn't mean that the dude you're coming up against
hasn't decided he's a predator, too.
That's a level of stress that the human body was not,
was not built to deal with.
Back then, you know, San Quentin
was a level-four prison.
It was a gladiator school. I mean, it was rough.
San Quentin and Folsom were both on the same level.
Both straight killer prisons.
In the 60s, there's drama everywhere
with the racial tension.
The Aryan Brotherhood formed,
Mexican Mafia formed, you know, protection.
We had some stone killers.
One of my best friends, he was, you know,
one of the top dogs in the, in the Mexican Mafia,
so I was left to my own hustle.
I had pretty good backing, you know,
I had pretty good guys, crime partners,
that were with me. Tyrone, double murder, you know?
Cookie, double murder. Frog, double murder.
You know, we had this little protection ring going.
If you think somebody's after you, then you tell us,
we'll take care of it, but you're gonna pay us.
Sometimes they want to be, you know, big dog,
"Nah, I can take care of myself,"
but this is a completely different element.
The guards can only control
so much of what happens on the yard.
And then you fall under that wing of those guys
and in a sense they become property.
Keep my cell clean, you know, my shoes were shiny,
make sure my laundry got done, that kind of stuff.
And then other people had parents to send money to my mom.
How shiny were your walls in your...
I had waxed walls.
I've met guys that did time with him
that still look at him like, not 'cause he's a movie star.
They just remember who he was.
His name rang through every prison.
They knew he was coming, they always knew he was coming.
The boxing probably didn't hurt either.
Back then, uh, it sounds cliche,
but people used to fight with their fists.
He became very good at it.
He was a 1966, '67 and '68 San Quentin Champion.
I remember Eddie Bunker telling me
that he was badass.
People just knew that I could fight,
so I got to the joint, I'm just like, automatic,
hey, come on, I'll fight the champ.
Some people get in the library to do time,
some people, you know, do crossword puzzles,
some people play chess. I trained.
That's what kept me sane.
Soledad, same thing, I won titles.
As you can imagine in San Quentin,
the boxing rules may not be exactly,
you know, what they are on the street.
I got great elbows.
God, first thing I did was hit somebody with an elbow.
The, the ref might have been a friend of yours,
so if you elbowed somebody, he didn't see it.
People were betting on him,
so when he won fights, made him more popular.
Mexicans don't know what exhibition means.
No, we got money on you, you know?
That prison boxing program
probably kept him alive, a lot of that, that time.
At that time, the powers that be
in the prison system were like, "Whoa, man,
the Mexicans are starting to get really organized here,
we got to start shuffling them around."
That's why Danny and those guys moved so much.
Because at the time they were just so confused
about the leadership.
Over the decade that he spent doing it,
he ended up in all of them.
Every one in the state.
Soledad, San Quentin, Vacaville, Susanville,
Sierra, Tracy, Folsom and Chino.
Wow.
He was a travelling man.
And so they would move him out,
like even with the story of his tattoo.
The big-ass tattoo on his chest, well...
comes from Excellent Tamale wrapper.
Guy named Harry "Superjew" Ross,
everybody was getting Mexican flags or Aztec wares
and, see, I got a beautiful lady, we put the outline
and then I got kicked out of Quentin,
I had to go to Folsom.
He was on the Sallyport
and I was being transferred, I was on the bus,
and he was screaming, "Don't let anybody touch it!"
"That's my first tattoo, I want to finish it!"
"I'll be in Folsom to meet you!"
"Okay!"
We could have kissed, it'd have been a love story.
He started having them all over his body,
that was extreme for those days.
This one is...
We did this in Soledad.
It's a peacock, but, but if you, but if you look at this,
the other side is a monster.
The story was in everything beautiful,
there's that other side.
Who notices this real quick?
If I have a shirt like this,
kids'll go, "Look, mommy, a monster!"
Prison tattoos end up with a lot more meaning
than just a, a whim, an "Oh, let's get a tattoo,"
you know, on the streets.
This is like a... a block of time in your life.
It's funny 'cause you're ruining state property.
That loss of time is something that's always a regret.
And as many years later as it's been, I still, like,
"Man, I lost time in the middle of the '90s."
Danny lost the '50s and '60s.
You know what I mean? Like, those were great times.
At times you...
you kind of realize what you're becoming.
Playing dominoes, a lot of people around us
and it's a big game, lot of money game,
and I'm killing, I set the spinner,
it's double five, you know, I was like,
"I got you, you guys are mine."
Voom-voom-voom, boom, this guy falls on the,
on the table and he's just bleeding,
somebody just hit him bad.
Everybody started getting away and I'm screaming,
"No, wait, wait, hold on, hold on!"
I'm screaming, "I got a fives, I got five!"
I remember I was in my cell and I,
I, I still had my dominoes,
and the thought, "What the fuck am I becoming?"
You know, this guy dying, you know, he had a mom, a dad,
a brother, a sister, maybe kids,
and I'm screaming about my fives!
He knew that day that, that he was, he was changed.
He wasn't, you know, Danny anymore, he was,
he was, he was just inmate.
For a split second,
I felt so bad about myself,
and then the other part jumped in,
"Fuck that dude, man, he fucked up my game."
People talk about correctional facilities
as if they are correctional facilities. No.
It's a place to remind you that you're shit.
So when you get back out there, you act like shit.
And you'll always be shit.
May 5, 1968,
Cinco de Mayo.
They had a baseball game, they used to let free people
come in and play baseball with the convicts.
Me, Ray Pacheco and Henry Quijada,
we were like, drunk and loaded,
and Ray had come down from Atascadero,
so medications and shock treatments
and everything were wearing off.
It was a third baseman chewing gum,
and I just joking, I just kept saying,
"Don't, don't mess with that guy, he knows karate."
All of a sudden Ray just jumped up and just grabbed that guy.
Pulled out his lip, trying to get the gum
and big old riot started.
When something like that happens, it's just like, boom!
Wow, like everybody starts throwing rocks
and throwing shit, and Ray's pounding on this guy,
Henry kicks him cold.
It was alleged that I, that I grab, I threw a rock
and Lieutenant Gibbons, bang, got hit in the head.
Slow motion, like he watched it go,
and he watched it, and he watched it hit the sergeant.
And it was just like, "No!"
Captain Rogers was going like this, he was pointing.
What this means,
it's for the gun tower to shoot where he's pointing.
So I, I followed his finger,
and it was at me and Ray.
Crack, we fell, and I fell on top of him, and Ray said,
"Danny, don't let him hurt me, don't let him hurt me."
And I said, "Oh, I think they're done hurting us."
At the time it would be attempted murder on a guard...
which would get you the death penalty.
We went to the hole.
I'm looking at the wall,
and in my cell somebody had gotten feces,
and it says, "God sucks... God sucks."
The thought hit me...
ever since like, grammar school,
I've always had these teachers that said "Great potential,"
and it all just felt like shit.
No matter how popular I was in school,
no matter how cool I was,
no matter how everybody liked me, it was done.
I know what's gonna happen, they're gonna kill me.
It just doesn't go any further.
Solitary confinement makes you
think about your family,
who your friends really are,
who really loves you.
Recreate days of your life in your mind
when you're a little kid when everything was okay.
You do plays in your head, you re-watch movies in your mind.
You try not to lose it.
But you just keep from going crazy
by making yourself crazy.
I was in the hole and I was running around the cell,
and I would act out "The Wizard Of Oz."
"Give me those shoes, Dorothy."
All this whole crazy movie
just to keep my brain going.
"The lollipop guild," all that shit.
Guards would walk by my cell and say, "Shut up, Trejo!"
"You killed my sister," and, and they'd keep walking.
You have to cope in whatever way that you can.
For him it was "The Wizard Of Oz."
The hole's usually, like, quiet during the day.
At night you go crazy, you know?
I mean, just go berserk.
Sometimes he said the guard would listen to a radio.
The Beatles song came out, the first time we heard,
that, uh...
♪ Judy Judy ♪
The hole went like completely quiet!
♪ Hey Jude ♪
♪ Don't make it... ♪
Slowly but surely,
they all start going to the bars.
And everybody was trying to hear it, it came out
of the speakers, everybody was trying to hear, trying to hear.
♪ Judy Judy Judy Judy Judy ♪
They just went brr! It just blew up.
♪ Judy Judy Judy Judy Judy Judy ♪
There's different songs that stick with you,
songs that remind you of your wife, your kids, you know,
songs that, that take you all the way back to high school.
♪ Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude ♪
♪ Ah ah ah ah ♪♪♪
I remember asking God...
to just let me die with dignity.
"Don't let me scream, yell
and call for my mom and shit my pants."
"Just let it get back to my guys
that, yeah, he went out like a champ."
"And if you do, Lord,
I will say your name every day,
and I will do whatever I can for my fellow prisoner...
from now on."
We all say those little prayers
at the moment of like, impending doom,
but I think that was one
that he kind of couldn't take back.
The guard that had been hit with a rock
couldn't identify who had thrown the rock.
If he had said,
"Danny Trejo threw that rock..."
that's it.
One word, you know,
and that's, that's a pretty crazy way
to like, cheat death.
Danny had his life back.
I started trying to do good.
I didn't think of it as reforming,
I thought about keeping a promise.
In keeping that promise, I became a better person.
I remember the day before I got out,
I was laying on my bunk, I'd given away all my stuff.
And I remember when this guy named Johnny Harrison
that I met at the end of 1962 in prison,
he said, "Why don't you give yourself a break and join us?"
And I made a promise to myself
that I was gonna go to an AA meeting
before I did anything else.
I ended up getting out August 23, 1969.
I remember when I first got out of the joint,
the first thing I saw in the bus depot was,
wow, a puppy!
Wow! A doggie! Mwah!
Look how pretty.
I called this guy, Frank Russo, Frank Russo, Frank Russo.
And I always say that 'cause he told me
never to mention his name.
He pulls up, I got in his car, and he says, "What's up?"
And I said, "You know what, I wanna go to my mom's."
He came back here to this, to this house.
He walked up to the metal gate
and he said my grandmother opened the door,
but she didn't unlock the screen door
when she saw him.
I said, "Mom, can I stay a couple of days?"
"My parole plans fell through."
And my mom turned to my dad
who was sitting right there, and said,
"Dan, Danny wants to know if he can stay a couple of days."
And, uh, my dad said, "Yeah, tell him yes,"
without looking up from the TV.
Walked into my bedroom and I'm sitting in my bedroom
and I'm rocking and I'm thinking
"This is the same bedroom I was in
when I was 13 years old."
You know, tough-ass convict, 26 years old,
armed robber, and you're at mommy's,
and your dad didn't even say hello,
he doesn't really want you here.
I was hating myself, I started hating myself.
My dad hated tattoos,
and I wanted to get back at him.
I got up and I went and I sat front on the ottoman
in front of his television set.
I had taken off my shirt, I had a big tattoo on my chest,
and I was just getting ready to say, "Hey,
what's up with you?" You know and...
My mom comes out, perfect timing,
"Mijo, you want some cookies and milk?"
All of that bad-ass just, like,
totally fell off of him.
We have this idea of how things are supposed to be
and how they're gonna be,
but we forget all the hurt and disaster
and riots that we've caused.
I forget all that stuff, you know, and, uh...
So he called Frank and, and ended up
going to a meeting with him that night.
Best thing I ever could have done in my life
that welcomed me, because people in AA and NA don't say,
"Oh, you've been in prison." It's almost an asset.
When he made the decision
that he wasn't going back and that
he was gonna be different,
he had to completely break that down.
I remember going to talk to one of my sponsors,
a guy named Sam Hardy.
He always had that shit in his mouth
like a hillbilly, you know?
And he says "Danny, everything about you...
is meant to intimidate, everything."
"The way you talk, the way you walk,
the way you look at people."
"Your survival meant striking first."
"Your survival meant...
killing somebody if you had to."
"You have got to do things for other people
and not expect any kind of reward."
He learned how to help other people.
He used to take the trash cans out
for the next-door neighbor.
Mowing somebody's lawn
just to help somebody.
It just kept going and kept going.
He started giving out his number,
and people would just call him up.
When I got a car, I'd give people a ride to meetings,
you know, and, uh, I'd listen to their shit.
I started working for Carleasy Auto Wrecking.
Gilbert had been out of the joint probably two weeks
or a week and a half, and he pulls up in a new Lincoln,
and he asked me, "What the fuck are you doing?"
And I said, "Shut up, Gilbert, I'm working."
"I know, but this is embarrassing. Oh, shit."
You know, "We playing in dirt all day,"
and, and he goes "Here."
And he gave me two quarters of heroin and he gave me a $1000.
He put a $1000 here, and he says,
"You know what, look, get yourself together, get out..."
"Start, you know, going to work for me."
"I got the bag. I'm doing real well," and...
This is my John Wayne, right? This is the guy.
"Gilbert, fuck you. I can't, man."
And that's the first time I ever walked away from him.
I grabbed the 1000 bucks.
But I went to the back and I'm just sitting there thinking,
"God, man."
Frank came out, and he says,
"Danny, I... I know how you feel."
"Please just wait. Just wait a couple of months."
"You know what's gonna happen."
And, you know, two-three months later,
Gilbert shot it out with the police somewhere,
you know, went back to the joint.
It's a way of life for some people
that they can't escape.
My Uncle Gilbert couldn't escape it.
You know, my little brother couldn't escape it.
When he died, he had two ounces of heroin on him,
a couple of thousand dollars and some cocaine.
He overdosed and died. My cousin found him.
That was like his big brother.
Even though Danny had veered from that path,
you know, his, he just loved Gilbert to death,
you know, he just, that was his everything.
When Gilbert's son was little,
Danny took him as his own to raise him,
but, you know, that,
he was already on another path, too.
After we had him for a while, he was doing good
and his mom wanted him back, so...
She immediately lost control
and he just started hanging out at the park again.
At the age of 17,
went to the pen, uh, second-degree murder,
him and about three guys, and, uh,
shot out of a car and killed somebody, and, uh...
He was just a kid, he was 17 years old.
He was caught up in the game.
You know, drugs and everything else.
How long has Gilbert been, uh, incarcerated?
Thirty-eight years.
I've still not seen anybody
make it as a drug addict
or as a full-fledged alcoholic.
They die, they go insane or they go to jail.
I became a drug counselor.
It wasn't as much money, but it was really rewarding.
It's a place that he could, he could speak true from.
Let me make the mistakes of my youth
so you don't have to make them for yourselves.
Danny was very infamous in AA, NA, CA.
People flew him around the United States to speak.
He had an opportunity to be a drug counselor.
That opportunity led him to an opportunity
to help somebody one night,
to guide him into his first movie.
He'd been out of prison for almost 20 years.
One of the kids that he was helping called him.
Danny was watching "Johnny Carson."
He said, "Hey, man, there's a lot of blow down here."
"Hey, whoa, whoa, hold on. hey, I'll be there right now."
And he ended up going to this warehouse.
He walked inside the warehouse and it was a movie set,
the movie set of "Runaway Train."
There were a bunch of guys all dressed in their blues
like they had been in prison.
I'm watching all these guys
in these prison uniforms going
"Mother, eh, watch out, punk, eh. Does this look tough?"
I go, "Yeah, be somebody's wife in prison."
This guy came up to him and said, "You want to be an extra?"
Danny's like, "Extra what?"
He goes, "Can you play a convict?"
He goes, "I'll give it a shot."
"We'll pay you 50 bucks a day." And he goes, "Shit, okay!"
"You guys don't know, but those blues on me,
they just hang just right."
So as he's taking his shirt off,
Eddie Bunker, screenwriter, saw the tattoo
and goes, "Oh, my God, I know you, you're Danny Trejo."
"You're the boxing champion, you know, amongst other things."
And he said, "We need somebody to train
one of the actors how to box."
And I said, "What's it pay?"
And he said, "320 a day."
I said, "How bad do you want this guy beat up?"
"No, no, you gotta be careful, this actor's
really high-strung, man, he, he might sock you,"
I said, "For 320 bucks, give him a stick. Are you crazy?"
"I've been beat up for free, homes!"
By this time, the director who is a, is a Russian aristocrat
came by and started doing these...
And Danny's going, "What gang sign is that?"
And he's looking at the tattoo,
he said, "You, you be in movie, you be in my movie."
I remember he said, "And you be my friend."
If you've been in prison, you don't like people saying,
"You be my friend."
Andre then kissed me, he, like, kissed me on one cheek,
kissed me on the other cheek and walked away, right?
And I remember telling Eddie,
"Look, if I'm gonna be kissing that old man,
I want more money."
And he goes, "No, no, he's European."
I didn't know Europeans kissed!
That was his introduction
was "Runaway Train."
And that's a funny part of his story.
It was like going from Pacoima to Mars.
He'd never been to Hollywood...
...in East Hollywood.
One day he got paid
and he thought he got paid too much.
The first check was more than what I had added up
on 320s. I mean what?
And I, I remember sticking that check in my pocket,
phew, I'm splitting, I'm going to the bank
to cash it, because they blew it,
they gave me a lot more money than I'd added up.
"No, no, no, that's what you get paid."
"You get paid that every week. It's okay."
He just couldn't believe it.
You're not only going from
a class shift in perspective,
you're also going from a cultural shift in perspective.
Eddie was Danny's guide
on how to be successful in Hollywood.
Eddie had an incredible high IQ.
He had served time, longer than Danny did.
He had been on the streets since he was eight.
He would diagram robberies and he'd sell them.
Eddie actually knew my Uncle Gilbert.
My Uncle Gilbert had bought robberies from Eddie.
He brought Danny into the business
and really taught him the ins and outs of another gang,
as you might wanna call it,
you know, 'cause Hollywood is like that.
If you don't know your way around,
you can get in trouble.
They used to pay extras every day,
about 300 extras on "Runaway Train."
They would bring Eric his per diem,
they would bring John Voight his per diem.
I remember sitting in the parking lot
smoking a cigarette, and I watched this guy
pull up, right, and I see him with a big briefcase,
and he's walking by, right?
Damn, you know,
and I know it's nothing but cash in that briefcase.
And I remember Eddie Bunker coming by, "The fuck you doing?"
I say, "Sit in the car, watch this, check this out."
Eddie goes, he's in there,
"That's it? Oh." And I go, "Yeah, that's it."
Six, seven, eight-thousand dollars in that thing.
And Eddie says "That's chump change,
that's what you're talking about,
that's just chump change."
He says, "Danny, the way you look,
and the way you act...
you stick with this program, that'll be chump change."
"You'll carry that around in your pocket."
"Hollywood wants people that can act tough."
"They don't want tough guys."
"You have to disarm people immediately."
I go, "What do you mean, Eddie?" He says, "You know what?"
"People are afraid of you, Danny."
"We're on a movie set and people are afraid of you."
"Because we have this look that says I will kill you,
I will kill the people that dry clean your clothes."
My career took off immediately.
It was almost like doing porn, every time I walked on to a set
the first thing the director said,
"Uh, take off your shirt,"
'cause they wanted to see that tattoo.
This girl was interviewing me, and she said,
"Aren't you afraid of being typecast?"
I said, "What are you talking about?"
"Well Danny, you're always playing
the mean Chicano dude with tattoos."
I thought about it, I said,
"I am the mean Chicano dude with tattoos,
so it's like, somebody finally got it right."
You never went to acting school...
Well, I, actually, I trained in at San Quentin Drama Arts.
Yeah.
The good thing is I got to learn kind of on... on the job
because the first five years of my career,
I just played Inmate Number One.
Prisoner Number One, Number Ten.
- Cholo Number One. - Ese Number One.
Gangster Number One, Gangster Number Two.
- Inmate with tattoos. - Man Yelling.
You know, I'll be the bad guy, I'll be the good guy,
I'll be the guy that sells flowers,
you know, I'll be the dry cleaner, it doesn't matter.
I'm acting, and what am I getting paid?
The year I was born was the year
he had his first character with a name.
"Death Wish 4."
With Charles Bronson.
Art Sanella.
He grabs Charles Bronson by the arm and says,
"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"
Hey, don't I know you from some place?
I don't think so.
Charles Bronson throws water in his face and blows him up,
because it's a "Death Wish" movie.
We were on that movie set and we're having a blast
and Perry Lopez is this old guy.
This kid got shitty with him.
I thought that they knew each other.
Then the kid comes out again and says, "I went to Julliard"
or whatever, "There's only one director."
So finally I said "Wait a minute, bitch,
I know who the piss you think you are,
but I just nominate him director."
"You do whatever the fuck he says or I'll beat you to death."
I, but I'm trying to stay in character.
I said, "Well, your character is about to get his ass beat, okay,
so now just lighten up, and I think you owe him an apology."
And he goes, "Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Lopez."
And then I turn around,
and the director, standing right there.
The last thing you want in the world
is for a director to hear
you're gonna beat one of his actors to death.
And I remember him looking at me and saying...
"We've had a little problem with him."
"I, I don't think he'll be a problem anymore."
And he walked away.
Charles Bronson is right there.
I turn around, he's looking at me and he goes...
"You're some kind of drug counselor, aren't you?"
And I'm, "Yes."
This Charles Bronson, man, I'm a bitch, okay?
And he goes...
"I like the way you counsel people."
And walked away.
I think that's one of the best advice that he ever gave me.
The whole world can think you're a movie star,
but you can't.
I love that one.
I would think somebody like Danny would automatically
be like, "I would kill a motherfucker like you
ten years ago."
And just brush it off.
This is a guy who's seen blood, he's seen death,
just to get to age 15-16 years old.
Hollywood, that's what this is. It's, it's eh.
"Blood In Blood Out" called my agency.
I talked to Taylor Hackford and I really liked it.
I think that was one of the first times that my dad
went back to prison after getting out of prison.
People were yelling our name, you know,
"Perry, hey, what's up!" You know?
"Trejo! Hey, come to my cell!"
I first saw him, I believe it was "Desperado."
I was like, "Who's that dude? He looks creepy as fuck!"
"Like, damn, what the hell?"
I sent Danny into an audition.
There really wasn't sides.
I needed a silent assassin who had these knives,
and so I told the casting director,
"Find me somebody who just looks really menacing
because he's not gonna have any dialogue."
And then he walked in, and it was like, "Holy shit."
And he looked at me and said,
"You look like the bad guys in my high school."
And I said, "I am the bad guys in your high school."
I had never seen Danny in my life
before he showed up on the set.
No matter how early you got up, he was up
standing outside your door, really, he...
Literally, it was, "Hey, Dan." "Hey, you wanna go for a walk?"
He was an interesting character right from the beginning.
I met Salma Hayek,
and she's like just go-to-hell gorgeous.
I just walked up to her, I just told her,
"Look, go, go pick two banks,
I'll rob 'em for you."
Salma's so funny, she goes, "Just two?"
When I saw him for the first time, he saw me,
and he runs over to me and ripped his shirt off.
And he said, "I knew you before I knew you!"
"I dreamt you before I knew you!"
And, and sure enough, there was a, a picture of a woman
that looks exactly like me.
And I showed her my tattoo, I said,
"That's a picture of you, honey."
She goes "Wow, I'm really flattered."
Robert Rodriguez, you know, is related.
They didn't find out until they were actually on set
and filming that they were cousins through marriage.
We found out we were second cousins down the line.
That's cool, uh, make my part bigger, homes.
"Put me in, coach, put me in, coach, give me a line, give..."
I said, "No, I'm not gonna give you a line."
"If I give you a line, it'll blow the whole mystique."
Danny doesn't have any lines in the whole movie,
which is interesting because you always remember
his character, the guy with the knives.
But he didn't say one thing in the whole movie.
"Hey, give me a line, homes, I'm your cousin."
You know what I mean? "No, Danny, no, hold on."
And then he'd have me in these scenes, it's,
"Well, just give him a look, give..."
"Robert, give me a line, man."
And somebody asked me,
"Uh, Danny, you... you know, you didn't speak a word
and yet your character was so strong."
"Was that an actor's choice?" I said, "Absolutely!"
I think Robert gave me the finger, I'm not sure.
Going to prison and having to be that scary
without saying anything?
When he was on screen, like, took over.
That really drove him forward.
He always talks about "Heat."
He said, "Sis, if I get this role,
that takes me to another level."
I think it represented a turning point in my life.
Robert De Niro. Come on, man. "Taxi?"
Al Pacino? You know, John Voight.
I'll be your Huckleberry, shit.
This is it, the top of the line,
and I got to work with him, I got to talk to him,
I got to eat lunch with him.
You're no longer like just a bad guy.
You're like a actor.
On "Heat" he served as a consultant.
He and Eddie Bunker, they, they were the criminals.
"So how would we do this?" "Well..."
No, you do it this way, no, you gotta do it this way.
John Voight's character was based on Eddie.
John Voight went into the makeup trailer,
stuck a picture up there
and said, "That's what I wanna look like."
People who didn't know Eddie would say,
"Wow, is that it?" No, John Voight.
Michael Mann did a movie called the "Jericho Mile."
He won't cop to it, but the reality is
he did Folsom Prison.
In order to get the Mexicans to work...
y... you gotta kind of talk to the un... union...
Union leaders, the guys that are kinda in control.
My dad's Uncle Gilbert, he was still in prison.
We ended up talking to my Uncle Gilbert Trejo,
and a couple of the other shot callers,
and, and so when I showed up on "Heat,"
he came to me and he said,
"Danny? Do you care if we call you Gilbert Trejo?"
And I, I mean, I wanted a homage to my uncle, you know?
I said "No, man, thank you."
If you watch "Heat," my name is Gilbert Trejo in that movie.
It was actually like one of the few movies
that he's been in that I was kind of traumatized by.
We were sitting there and just like...
Like watching the screen, looking over,
making sure he's still there, watching the screen,
looking over, making sure he's still there.
It was a very real death to me.
Why'd you do it?
Knowing my dad's history,
it was too real for me.
They made me.
Robert asked me, he said,
"How do you wanna play this, Danny?"
And I said, "I don't know, Bob. What do you think?"
Notice I said Bob. "I don't know, Bob. What do you think?"
And he says, "Well, you know, Danny, I think you're dead,
I think you're already dead, I think you just got
enough breath to beg me to kill you."
Don't leave me like this.
I know for Danny that was the heaviest moment
of his film career was his death in "Heat."
For this boy from Pacoima who'd been through
all of these institutions,
Danny's death in "Heat" was the most beautiful
and almost the hardest one to watch.
It's where his life could have gone.
When you find really good people, working
with them on one movie is almost a crime.
You're using one facet of their personality and talent.
And now, for your viewing pleasure.
I thought, my God, I gotta put him in, in a, in a kid's film.
So that's when I got Danny and put him in "Spy Kids."
You wouldn't just cast him in a role like that
'cause you never would have seen it.
I saw it, you know, day to day.
That's... that's just who he was.
And I thought it was a fascinating juxtaposition
of personality and what you would think
that person's personality is just by looking at him,
by profiling him.
What are you working on?
World's smallest camera.
Then he was Uncle Machete.
I don't see it.
Kids started recognizing him,
and the parents are kind of like
"Why does my kid know who this dude is?"
And no one knows what you do for a living.
I think we all have uncles like that.
He got a whole other audience,
kids would flock to him when they would see him,
so that opened up a whole other world.
That was when you knew he was really gonna make it
was when they would let him live.
It was like, "Oh, we're not just
killing him off in the first 15?"
That was when you knew, oh, he's gonna be a star.
If you ever see a movie called "Sherrybaby,"
there's no violence, he's not a tough guy,
it's just straight, dramatic acting.
He's amazing. Never had an acting lesson.
My name's Dean, I'm an alcoholic and an addict.
Hi, Dean.
I was the nice guy, I was the guy that helped her,
everybody else was, like, ripping her off,
and she had just gotten out of prison,
so everybody was kind of like
abusing her, taking advantage of her.
It ended up a really great movie.
He first started getting jobs,
we'd be on the way to school,
and he would say, "Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on,"
and just pull into this, like, whole different world,
this, you know, these movie sets
and then we just wouldn't go to school that day.
Within a span of a few years, he shot "Desperado," "Heat,"
"From Dusk Till Dawn" and "Con Air."
If it wasn't for Benny Urquidez,
five-time world kickboxing champion,
I probably would have killed somebody on that set.
What they did, they got all the wannabe tough guys
in Hollywood.
Everything was a contest
on this, you understand?
If you spit...
somebody else would immediately spit further.
They're all talking about all their badass stories,
and, you know, everybody's done
some amazingly wonderful violent things and how tough they are,
and Danny's just sitting back there, sitting like this.
Nick gets up, Cage, Nick gets up, and he goes,
"Well, I don't know about all of you,
but the only person here I'm afraid of is Danny."
And I wanted to say, "Why me?"
I'd be scared of me in an alley, too.
By the time "Con Air" came out, we were like,
"Whoa, your arm got cut off!"
Left his arm hanging, and the tattoos, you know?
I was like, "Damn, look at that shit!"
Some of the celebrities that have killed me,
I've been killed by some bad ones.
Mickey Rourke killed me in a movie a long time ago.
50 Cent killed me. You know that's...
Now wait a minute, that's, that's like, cool.
There have been quite a few...
Shot, stabbed, needles in the neck,
head chopped off, hung, blown up.
The first one that I remember watching
was "Dusk Till Dawn."
I took my daughter and my son. Danielle was six.
He like, melts into the pool table
and his eyes go into the pool sockets,
and I distinctly remember jumping out of my seat like,
"That was the coolest thing.."
"Oh, that was so cool!"
"Your eyes went into the pool pockets!"
All, all the people looked at me like, "Whoa!"
He jumps on an elevator to chase a hero
and he's on the roof of the elevator and he shoots it up,
but then the hero hits the up button,
and it squishes him and like, blood comes through the holes
and I remember seeing that as a kid, you know,
I was just like, damn.
TV in "Halloween..."
smashed over his head by Mikey.
There's a badger or something that
is at crotch level in a cage or something, you know?
Basically, his genitalia is eaten off by a crazy badger.
Dang.
You see the one where his head is on a turtle?
I remember when Gloria called me into the office
and said, "Hey, Dan, you wanna do a Hollywood's first?"
'Cause we love doing a Hollywood's first.
"You're gonna cross the desert on a tortoise."
And I'm thinking it must be like a... a cartoon
'cause it's gotta be a pretty big tortoise.
I was, "Well, I'll ride a tortoise."
"Well, you don't exactly ride it,
your head is."
"Oh, so they're decapitating me?" "Yeah."
"And, and how much are they paying me?"
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Hey, we saw you get killed."
"Yeah, what, did you see me go to the bank?"
Kill me, kill me, kill me!
As the movies started coming out,
the crowds started getting bigger.
There was this character that Robert had come up with,
Machete, the wrong Mexican.
When I went to do "Grindhouse,"
Quentin and I were coming up with a bunch of fake trailers,
and I said, "I got a fake trailer, it's 'Machete.'"
There's Blaxploitation films from the '70s,
but there was no Mexploitation movies. Huh, why not?
Let's go back in time and pretend
there were Mexploitation movies,
and it'll be a Mexploitation film called "Machete."
You're flying, you know, in the air with
this motorcycle that's got a machine gun on it,
you don't have to see where you land, you cut out of it.
It got such a huge reaction in the theater,
but we thought that was it.
We didn't think we were gonna make a film.
By 2010, I'd gotten so much comments
from people saying, "When's that movie coming out?"
They thought it was a real movie,
they were excited to see it.
Danny was like "The white people have Superman
"and the black people have Hancock
and the Mexicans need Machete!"
I was like, "Oh, my God."
"This is freaking insane. Seriously?"
"I'm in."
Danny Trejo's going to be the leag, lead,
and he gets the girl? Girls? Ah, I'm in for that.
You ain't gotta tell me twice, I played a fucking dude
in a movie, like, I don't care.
I like the crazier the better.
And then Robert called me and said
"I want you to come in and play a priest
and you're his brother." So, okay, cool.
Oh, crucifixion. Yeah, that's a novel twist.
And the cast just kept growing.
De Niro signed on and Jessica Alba signed on,
you know, I guess it's not a $5 million movie anymore.
We had some bad dudes in that thing, we had...
Don Johnson. You know what I mean?
Like, come on, "Miami Vice."
De Niro shows up, he's there, and Danny's like,
"Oh, Robert De Niro's here." He goes like, "How are you, sir?"
We're between the two trailers and I'm like this and we walked
and, oh, he goes like,
"You, hey, you. Huh. You."
"Number one on the call sheet."
That means you're lead, "You're number one, huh, you."
And all I could think of saying was,
"Can I get you some coffee, Mr. De Niro?"
How can you say you're the lead with Robert De Niro
in the movie? You know what I mean? It's like, he's the man.
At the time it was a, it was a big deal.
- It was a big deal for Danny. - He was a fuckin' doll.
The coolest dude, the, the sweetest man.
It's that kid spirit that keeps him like, rawr.
I kill Steven Seagal.
I was the first one to ever kill him.
The first ten minutes of "Machete,"
I've never laughed so hard and wanted to throw up
at the same time.
It was an exploitation film,
so it needed to be really over the top.
I mean, the ideas had to be really crazy,
everything, all the kills had to be really crazy.
Uh, he's in the hospital and he needs to go down a floor
and he just heard a doctor say that the human intestine
is 60 feet long.
He's gonna cut the guy open,
use his intestine to repel down.
And the most famous line he has,
I think Stephen King called it the line of the year
that year in "Entertainment Weekly"
came from Danny, 'cause Danny calls me
all the time, he's always calling me.
I say, "Danny, you call me all the time. Just text me."
"It's easier 'cause then I can look at the text
and I can just answer back."
He said, "Machete don't text."
And I said, "Oh, shit, I'm gonna put that in the movie."
You could have at least texted me!
Machete don't text.
It was great to take somebody who's
a character actor, who's worked in that many movies
and give a role that he defined.
It changed the paradigm of who could be a leading man,
who can be the... the star of this movie.
Who at the time was 69,
69-year-old badass.
Can't make this stuff up, it's weirder than the movies.
That would never have happened in Hollywood before.
"Machete" represented freedom
for Danny,
liberation from...
the old stereotype of the prisoner.
You're done with that. You're a hero now.
You're gonna be Machete.
He made it to that last step...
Everybody from here to Mexico
knows who Machete is.
I had no idea, I never did
until, until people started passing my house,
screaming, "Machete!"
And now it's like everywhere I go,
it's Machete still.
Former President Barack Obama sees Danny,
"Machete!"
Hey, what's up?
Uncle Machete says do good in school!
He's got a machete in his pool.
This Mexican became a big actor all of a sudden.
He was so in the zeitgeist,
there was even like a Snickers commercial.
Shut up! I've got to teach Peter a lesson.
- Marsha, eat a Snickers. - Why?
You get a little hostile when you're hungry. Better?
Better.
He's become this brand.
Trejo's Tacos. Unbelievable, La Brea, n... near Olympic...
Yeah, they're really, really healthy.
Action figures to memes,
to people getting the Machete face
with the thing out and tattooed on their backs.
This guy comes up and said, "Will you sign my back?"
And I say, "What?" And he says, "Yeah."
And he turns around and he has this,
the big picture of Machete.
I signed his back, and he, you know, tattooed my name,
and I told him, "We're still not taking a shower together,
I don't care."
"Don't try to snuggle."
It's insane the amount of films that he does.
He might do two or three films a month.
I'll crush you
like the rest of you!
Once in a while I have a script there,
and I go, "What's the name of this movie?"
He goes, "I don't know, I just know my part."
Just tell us where we are and what we're doing.
- Okay. Uh, Mikey, where are we? - Outlaw Studios.
We're at, right now we're at Outlaw Studios
and we're getting to do, getting ready to do
a cartoon called "Country Club."
"Hey, Robert, I'm in, I'm in Dallas, Texas,
filming a movie with Mickey Rourke."
"Oh, that's great man. What's it called?"
"Man, I work!"
He didn't know what it was called,
he doesn't know where he is.
2002, you appeared in nine films.
True or false.
Oh, false.
I think I ap... appeared in 11.
IMDB has me at 360 or something.
I have no idea, I don't count.
No shit! Fucker.
But a lot of those are porno movies, right, you know?
Eddie's widow texted us recently,
and she texted us that my dad had reached
over 300 movies,
and that John Wayne had only done,
I think, it was like 200?
She was like, so, you know,
it's time to stop saluting John Wayne.
De Niro told him,
"Take everything they offer you because they forget quick."
"I'm on the cover of 'Prison Life!'"
I don't know if that was a joke or not or if there
really is something called "Prison Life."
"Robert, I'm on the cover of 'Prison Life!'"
It was like he made it.
I have to look up and see if there really is a "Prison Life"
or if that was a joke, sometimes I can't tell.
When Danny's mom died...
I get a call, it was his agent Gloria.
She calls me, she goes, "Craig, I have some bad news."
"Danny's mom passed away."
I say, "Danny, I have to tell you something." He goes "What?"
I said, "Your mom passed away."
I could actually feel myself shut down,
boom, boom, boom, just like at all levels.
He looks at me and he goes,
"I... is this real? Am I awake?"
This is somebody who had their mother for 70 years.
It had a big, big impact on his life.
I think more so than his father.
When Alice died, it was really heavy.
He was in London doing the Muppet movie.
He was standing pretty strong.
He had convinced himself that he was gonna
push himself through this.
I was just fine
until that little... green frog
came up to me, and I'll never forget it,
the guy's like this, and he goes,
"Danny, I'm, I'm really sorry about your mommy."
I go, "Fuck!" I just baw...
And I ran to the bathroom.
My mom had something to do with me
because when my dad died, nothing,
I showed nothing
'cause I had to take care of my mom,
and I couldn't take care of her
feeling my dad's death.
And she says, I'll never forget it,
"Well, you better not do that when I die."
I said, "Shut up, mom, you're not gonna die."
So I think when, when,
when I, like, locked up,
I could see her going, "No, no, no, you're not going to,
I'll send the frog."
When I flew back, they had...
they had put together the most beautifulest funeral
that my mom could have.
I think he really has seen,
especially in the last probably eight to ten years,
the value of life, and the value of his,
and... and morbidity, and as you get older
and his friends have passed, and you really see
how precious life is, and he has.
A lot of Danny's friends are gone, you know?
But he has us.
Tonight you'll be speaking
to about 500 people of all walks.
One of the reasons I'm here today
is that I'm gonna be speaking to a, a lot of, uh, students
that are going into the, I would say, service, you know,
like, helping addicts and helping alcoholics,
and then I'm speaking with at-risk youth tonight.
I wanna invite anybody and everybody
that wants to come tonight, tell 'em you know me,
you can get in.
Thank you.
Danny still speaks at prisons and schools
in whatever city we're at.
It's very strange.
He feels like the day he stops doing that
is when he's, he's dead, he's gone.
- How you doing? Good. - I'm okay.
I'm Danny Trejo.
Can I see your program for a second?
This is the flier I was telling you about.
- Have you seen it? - Oh, that's me.
Go straight ahead, we're like 30 seconds away.
Straight ahead.
Boy.
- Hey! - Hi.
Um, you all know who Danny Trejo is,
so I'm gonna let him tell you his story now.
Danny Trejo.
I sure hope you don't mind, but...
I fall off of chairs like that.
My name's Danny Trejo and I'm an addict and an alcoholic.
Hey, Danny.
Newcomers to being clean and sober,
we talk about expecting a miracle,
and people wait for a miracle.
If you're an addict, or an alcoholic,
if you wake up clean and sober,
you're already in the miracle,
and so the miracle starts the minute I wake up.
Hey, what's up, boys? What's up? How you doing?
He's been through a lot of shit.
That's a guy who understands like hell, you know?
He knows what it looks like, what it smells like,
what it tastes like.
They found a ten-centimeter tumor on my liver.
I don't care who you are, you get cancer,
start feeling sorry for yourself, you're like, Why me?"
And then all of a sudden the thought hit me,
"Man, imagine if I had this in prison."
"Thank God I didn't get this while I was in prison."
I beat it, I'm cancer-free.
Wow, what a journey. What an unbelievable journey.
That means open the gate.
Wow.
What does the psychological effect
of being in prison, how does it affect you later in life?
We're gonna get you through the scanner.
- I'm Danny Trejo. - Any metal.
Uh, watch, belts.
In your head you're brought right back
to everything you went through.
No one in their right mind wants to do that.
No one.
I don't, I wouldn't want to, but Danny does it.
- Alright, sir, thank you. - Thank you.
This is a hot, hot place.
Not a lot of weight lifting right now.
- Thank you, ma'am. - Mm-hmm.
What's up? What's up?
- Hey. - Hey, Machete.
What's up, fellas?
I think that everybody
has a turning point in life.
My name's Danny Trejo.
A marker that says either I'm gonna grow
or I'm gonna stay this way forever.
I love to catch them movie stars
coming out of their trailer like this.
"Hey, did you do coke?"
"Oh, fuck! Fuck you!"
Oh, hey, hey!
Hey, how good, how good is it?
Really? Hey, come on, man!
Oh, fuck 'em. You know what I mean? Don't do drugs around me.
'Cause they don't have the problem.
Me, I use drugs, alcohol, I break out penitentiaries.
Them fuckers go home.
Everything good that's happened to me has happened
as a direct result of helping someone else.
Remember that. Everything.
The little guys in whatever neighborhood you're from
are looking up at you
because their picture of the penitentiary
is not the real deal.
These guys are in juvenile hall saying,
"Gee, when I get to the band home,
"I'll be running shit, yeah,
like my Uncle Choo Choo, I'll be running shit."
You know, and with you guys, no, no, no,
you gotta shower with 50 fuckers, do you understand?
Try not to brush up against anybody.
And then you gotta shower trying not to look.
If you don't...
you tarnish that image of where you've been.
One day, that's all I got, all I got is one day.
Do you understand? Now how do I wanna live today?
That's it. Just what do I wanna do today?
Man, if, if you're doing time going,
"Fuck, I got five years, fuck, I got.."
"Oh, fuck, now I got four years, 366 days,
364 days, 360, oh, my..."
You... you're not gonna make it home.
So I say you gotta take one day at a time, you know?
Just one day at a time,
let me see what I can accomplish in one day.
And life's gonna get better and better and better.
That's a promise, you stay clean and sober,
your life will get progressively better.
I really wanna thank you guys. I mean that.
This was a pleasure for me and a...
Thanks, guys.
I would rather shoot for the moon and miss
than aim for the gutter and make it.
A lot of these guys, they shot for the gutter. They made it.
For me to come out and to say, "Wait a minute,
there's a better way," people listen.
Not so much Danny Trejo, but the guy from "Spy Kids,"
the guy from "Heat," the guy from "Desperado."
If they're Mexican, the guy from "Blood In Blood Out."
When they hear somebody that's been through it say,
"Help somebody every day," it sticks to their mind.
I know that I gave these guys just, just a day, you know,
they got to do another day, it was just break the monotony.
If that's all it was for 'em, good, I did my job, you know,
I mean, I gave 'em a day.
They're letting us pick up Gilbert Trejo right here.
They wouldn't let us pick him up at the front gate.
That's shitty.
Thirty-eight years! Damn!
What were you doing in 1979?
To be able to stay alive that long in prison?
That's a miracle.
♪ Having broke down ♪
♪ Having left out ♪
♪ Then I looked down ♪
♪ Walk out of here ♪
♪ As I walk out... ♪
What up, homie?
♪ I walked out ♪
♪ As I walk out... ♪
- How you doing? - How you doing? I'm Mario.
Alright, Mario.
I told 'em, "You know what, fuck that,
I'm leaving everything."
Thank you.
♪ I looked out ♪
- How's that? - It's perfect.
I still owe a lot, you know, and,
and I don't think I'll ever be paid up,
but it sure is fun getting there.
He still lives in Pacoima.
He didn't move out, he didn't go somewhere else.
He came back here.
He still supports the neighborhood,
the mechanics in the neighborhood,
the stores in the neighborhood.
This is basically every Latin's dream.
- Oh, get down, get down. - Oh, yeah. Really.
To have a '64 Chevy in Pacoima is like the dream come true.
Christmas, he goes downtown,
he buys a bunch of toys and he literally drives around
stopping people on the street and giving them toys.
Right now in the trunk of his car
there's stacks of thermal underwear
and socks and you can, sometimes you're like,
"Ah, I can't even fit my stuff in there."
Whether it's dogs being neutered...
I've been locked up about three months.
That's 15 days human time.
Or teenagers, he'll show up.
...is that you're not listening to them, they'll come up...
What does the community of Pacoima mean to you?
Everything, everything, like family... Hi, Benz!
That's Chubby's wife, she's awesome.
Wow, nobody was grateful to have Danny around,
nobody was happy to have Danny around at one time,
and now they're thrilled.
I remember a time that they wouldn't let me
in their house, you know, and the cops,
they'd stop me all the time and up against the wall,
"We know you got something, search the car..."
And nine times out of ten, I did. You know what I mean?
And usually they'd stop me with guns drawn.
Now it's like a completely different thing, it's like,
you know, some of them are like actually friends of mine.
They started work on this giant mural of him
right here, right up the street.
And I go, "You see, homie,
in Hollywood they give you stars."
"In Pacoima they give you murals, man."
And he was like, "Yay!" You know what I mean?
I think he probably tagged that wall at one time,
and they covered it with his mural.
The town that he terrorized in his youth
now has a mural of him because of all the good that he did
that outweighed everything.
We're talking about the guy who's mom
didn't unlock the screen door when he, when he got out.
I don't think he ever, he ever thought
that he'd have something like that. Not here.
Even though he comes from that lifestyle,
he went all the way around the block,
and this is him now and this is who he represents.
So that mural on the wall don't only represent him,
it represents a lot of Latinos,
a lot of people that changed their lives.
It's hope, it's the idea
that I don't have to be a product
of everything that I am at the moment.
I can evolve.
I can change.
I can dream now, and it's okay.
And that's what anybody who makes it out of the ghetto
into the spotlight of public life
is doing for their people.
And now I think he knows who he is completely.
Pound that. Boom.
Wow, I love it, I love seeing families, man.
Yeah?
See what we were talking about
about parents having time?
There, those parents are making time,
and that's what's the most important thing
in the kid's lives is their time.
I'm not supposed to be living this life of mine
and neither is he.
If we don't take this to pass it on to somebody else
so they can pass it on to somebody else...
what good is it?
How easy would it have been
to just completely write off that guy
who hit a rock over a guard's head
in 1968?
Addicted to heroin since he was 12.
More robberies under his belt than stories we could tell.
How easy would it have been to write that guy off?
That's what Danny represents.
He represents what happens if you let your heart open
and decide to let love conquer hate.
It's that chess piece that starts off as a pawn
and makes it all the way to the other side
of the chess board, and now you get to choose
between all of these parts that you wanna be.
My grandfather, Dionisio Trejo,
right now is saying "He finally made it."
He's my idol, you know? I mean, I look up to him.
I want to be like him when I grow up.
People will make their judgments
about famous people however they want.
My dad is someone I'm proud to call my dad.
You're either gonna stay, come what may,
and have a better life, or die, go insane, go to jail.
It's that simple.
Today I choose a better life,
and my life is a dream.
Well...