Benjamin Bratt might be able to be everyone’s best friend. This guy is just so sweet, so outgoing, and he is handsome. He has been in a lot of other movies. Lets just say he is good in everything that he does but his performance in Disney•Pixar’s COCO was amazing! While in LA last week, I had the opportunity to interview this talented man!
Our Benjamin Bratt Interview was so fun and so informative to learn about him and his family!
Photo taken by MamaLatinaTips.com
Benjamin Bratt plays the voice of Ernesto De La Cruz. Ernesto is a former Mexican musician who also happens to be Miguel (the main character’s) idol! Miguel believes that Ernesto holds the key to his family’s musical background. Ernesto has a huge mausoleum and so you immediately know that he holds a huge part of Mexico’s history. His mausoleum has his famous guitar skull in it as well. His tagline for his life is “Seize the moment!”
Our interview started about us talking about how fun the premiere was the night before. Benjamin explained, “I’ve been around the block a little bit and that was probably the most spectacular, most heartwarming, most fun premiere I’ve ever been to.”
He hadn’t seen the film all they way through until the night of the premiere and he said, “I was rocked afterwards!” To be honest I think everyone felt that way. I was sitting next to another actress and her husband was just in total awe going on and on after the film. How Benjamin felt is how everyone felt about this movie! His words, “I was most struck by the beauty of the artistry. It’s such a beautiful film to look at. And then when you add like that technical expertise to the emotional depth of the film and what it delivers at the end, there’s no other word for it, and powerful. It was a really powerful result.”
Photo taken by MamaLatinaTips.com
Many of the actors and actresses are from Mexico who starred in this movie. We learned that Benjamin Bratt’s family is from Peru. When asking him about celebrating this day he said, “My family doesn’t necessarily celebrate Day of the Dead. It’s not unique to Mexican culture but Dia de los Muertos is principally a Mexican-American celebration that has its roots in indigenous culture. My mother’s from Peru. So, that’s not a traditional celebration in Peru or necessarily in other Latin American countries.”
With my family being from Italy, I myself related to some of the cultural things that Benjamin stated that he related to when asking him. His response was, “Well, the funny thing is, I think the general population takes the mistake of seeing Latino culture as monolithic and we’re not. That said, there is connective tissue there that really makes us understand one another, whether Mexicano, or Peruano or Colombiano. Part of that is the language of course. Part of that is the religion. Very much a part of that is the history of colonization that took place where you mix the indigenous blood with Spanish blood creating a Mestizos race. But a lot of it is easier to identify and relate to. And that’s this notion of family and the importance of staying connected and family first and the little dichos (means “sayings”) that are shared in the kitchen and the importance of food.”
He talked a lot about the culture in the film and mentioned, “people think Hispanic culture is monolithic…and it is not.” Our interview was deep, we talked about paving the path of our future with our culture and we asked him how he wanted to be remembered. These are all very deep conversations that us as adults pull out of this film and how kids are going to see not as deep of a version of entertainment as we did from watching the film.
Disney•Pixar’s COCO opens in U.S. theaters on Nov. 22, 2017.
This movie is about family, tradition, love, and remembrance! It is an amazing movie you won’t want to miss and you will want to take your family to see it this Thanksgiving!
Find a special 20 minute short prior to COCO called “Olaf’s Frozen Adventures.” Exclusively playing prior to COCO in theaters everywhere!
Get your family some reserved seats at the closest theater for this Thanksgiving. Use our affiliate links below to help save money and possibly earn us a little bit too. Purchase discounted tickets by using Dealflicks.com! Feel free to save an additional 20% by using the code RFGGTRFLUF at checkout or reserve your seats at Fandango.com.
