Interview: Riding the Rails With Acclaimed New Director Cary Fukunaga

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CHICAGO – “Sin Nombre” is not only one of the few great films released so far this year, it heralds the arrival of a confident, stunning new voice on the filmmaking scene in Cary Fukunaga.

Fukunaga has already won awards (including Best Director and Best Cinematography at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival) and been signed to a development deal by one of the best studios making movies today in Focus Features and his first film just came out. He sat down with us a few weeks ago to discuss the technical challenges of shooting on a train, finding his cast, and his advice for young filmmakers.

“Sin Nombre” tells the interweaving stories of a gang member in Tapachulas, Chiapas, Mexico and a Honduran girl trying to make it from her country to the United States by riding the rails for weeks at a time. The gangster, Casper (Edgar Flores), is a brother in the Mara Salvatrucha gang, a group so hardcore that they kill their enemies and feed them to their dogs.

Sin Nombre
Photo credit: Focus Features

After the brutal death of someone close to him, Casper makes a split-second decision that will forever change the lives of everyone around him. The choice links him to Sayra (Paula Gaitan), a girl working her way all the way to New Jersey from Honduras by riding the rails with her uncle and her father. Casper and Sayra begin a harrowing journey that you won’t soon forget.

“Sin Nombre” is shocking well-directed and written, made even more authentic by Fukunaga’s months of research spent in Mexican gangs and in the same rail yards he would eventually shoot his film, but the casting was an essential part of the process. Without a believe Casper and Sayra, “Sin Nombre” would fall apart.

Sin Nombre Photo credit: Focus Features

Knowing this, Fukunaga spent weeks in Honduras trying to find the right leads. He saw over 500 girls for Sayra and found Flores while looking for his heroine. He used Edgar to read with his auditioning actresses and realized the talent he had there, but he was having trouble with his lead.

“I kept finding people who had the right look but not enough talent or enough talent but the camera didn’t like them. There was one girl who was raw and had the talent and had a very interesting look and I was close to casting her and Edgar. I found him down there and used him the entire week to read with the girls and flex his acting skills. I had him play all these different roles. I showed the Quicktimes to the studio to get their thoughts - “What about this kid? Do you think he has what it takes? The chops?” And they were like, “He definitely does.” The question was can we do both of them? In a six-week shoot with untrained actors? I don’t think we could. So, I ended up casting Edgar and then casting a more experienced actress for Sayra.”

But Fukunaga couldn’t forget Paula. He wanted to cast her as Casper’s girlfriend Marta, but Paula wanted the bigger role and (mistakenly in Cary’s and my opinion) thought of Marta as a “slut”. But Gaitan is not Honduran. Fukunaga gave the talented young future star a tape of a girl with a Honduran accent and told her to practice. She came back and nailed it, convincing everyone that two unexperienced actors could take the two leads.

Sin Nombre Photo credit: Focus Features

As the shoot began, Fukunaga faced a series of location problems, most of the amplified by having to shoot on an actual train. As he noted, “you would figure that [after] 110, 115 years of cinema there would be like…someone by now should have written a book on all the challenges that one could face during a production, as a sort of encyclopedia of problem-solving solutions. And yet, it feels like every shoot is starting again from the basics of how to make a film. Someone should really make that book. Enough people have shot on trains that I could have probably learned a lot about it beforehand. You look up “Train”. You look up “Airplane”. And it would tell you all the things that could possibly happen during the shoot.”

The shoot allowed for five days shooting on a real train and four days on what is called a process train, wagons on flatbed trailers. “The real train had real train wheels and was extremely dangerous,” Fukunaga says. “And the problem was that you couldn’t go that fast because of low-hanging wires and branches. I had this idea that we’d get the camera off a little more with a jib arm, which worked for one day and then we realized that it was more shaky than anything else. That’s the only time we ever get shots of them a little off the train. Which is great…to mix it up.

“We were only able to get away from the train on one road on the side of the tracks. Other than that, we were pretty much on the train, handheld, 150 extras, 100 crew, equipment, a caboose in the back with some outhouses. The four days on the process train were actually harder because you can’t back up a process train. We could only move forward. And it was an hour-and-a-half to turn around.”

Sin Nombre
Photo credit: Focus Features

“Sin Nombre” has reminded several critics already of other films, including “El Norte” and “City of God,” but Fukunaga was avoiding the style-over-substance approach of Fernando Mereilles’ acclaimed examination of gang youth. Cary says, “I liked the film but it was not what I wanted in the sense that that film is SO stylized. Because there’s so many storylines in that film, you don’t really grab on to anyone. I wanted this film to be a much more patient treatment. Less frenetic camera movements, highly treated imagery, fast-paced cutting. I just wanted this to be a little more meditative. In fact, it’s a little bit faster than I wanted. My first cut was about six minutes longer. Shots just last longer. There were more moments.”

Somewhat surprisingly, although not really after you’ve seen the landscapes in “Sin Nombre,” Terence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and “Badlands” were bigger influences on Fukunaga, as was the work of Shohei Imamura.

As for the wisdom that Fukunaga could impart to young filmmakers, it’s simple and yet so important - “Number one, I’ve met a lot of people who tend to write scripts based on what they think Hollywood wants. That’s the number one mistake. Writing from that perspective, there’s no passion. It feels trite. There’s nothing unique about what the writer is trying to say. Second, which is related, “do you”. Find a story that you can put yourself in. There’s something unique about everyone.”

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com