LETTER FROM LOS ANGELES
by Linda Sandoval
( In which Linda, after twenty years since its creation, watches “Walker” with a man who worked as an actor on the film in Nicaragua in 1987. “Walker” was filmed during the Contra War and the accompanying American embargo. It was an account of the American adventurer William Walker who declared himself President of Nicaragua in the mid 19th century and was filmed with the help and cooperation of the Sandinista government. It was directed by Alex Cox.)
A room in West Hollywood, 2007…
“ So, not many people saw the film, I guess. Lots of press. No audience. It’s better than you might think though. Especially after all this time. It was like history repeating itself back then but since then it’s repeated itself a hell of a lot more. And when I watch it I fall right back into that muggy fucking heat. Back then everyone in Hollywood was talking about this film. The director was hot, the cast was hot, the subject matter was cooking. I leaned on my agent to set me up. It was a small part, a soldier in the Colonel’s army of renegade half-wits. But it was spread out over weeks and I wanted it. Big time. It was sexy then, Nicaragua. And I admit I was curious about the revolution. It was in fashion. I’d read a few books. I spoke a little high school Spanish. I wanted to see it all for myself and get a decent credit at the same time. Glorified extra or not, adventure called and it was sure as hell one big fucking adventure. And here it starts. Battle and death right off, – that’s me lying wounded next to the horse- and then, BAM, cut to the Colonel and this big serving of off-camera narration, in the third person, because that’s the way the original Colonel, crazy motherfucker, wrote all his diaries or something…he this and he that. And no doubt about whether it’s a comedy or not because here comes this wild, spooky rumba music; like an American invasion belongs in some kind of Lambada Club and the soldiers and the blood go flying and the salsa rhythms kick up. And then the beginning is at the end because this first courtroom scene was shot on the very last day where the Colonel talks about how America must always go ahead and bring peace and security to other countries, looking a hell of a lot like George Walker Bush, come to think of it, with all of his pompous conviction and being the grey eyed man of destiny crap. The money was gone by then and we actors all volunteered to stay around and work for free, posing like big shit revolutionaries but really we just wanted to get in front of the camera one more time because this one was supposed to hit it big with the Christmas releases or something. Hah. That’s me waving the little flag. The guy standing next to me had dysentery. At some point every one of us came down with a version of Sandino’s Revenge. I had typhoid and then hepatitis because I was jerk enough to let them take me to the hospital for the typhoid. I can tell you my thighs got like iron squatting over toilets that were already full of someone else’s shit and with typhoid you squat a lot. The doctor at the hospital said I could thank the American embargo for the hepatitis because they couldn’t get new IV tubes, but I told him it was the communism thing that wasn’t working. It has been proven before all over the world, and like it or not its just history. So let’s dance the Embargo Lambada. Hell yes. Here I am getting shot. It was so hot they had to stop the cameras because the actors were puking and writhing around with these kidney pains. I guess I was a pretty sorry looking mess all laced up with squibs and lying in the sewer take after take because this old Nica woman took pity on me and invited me into her house. She gave me a banana leaf stacked up with papaya. She lived in one room painted blue. It was empty except for a magazine picture of a blonde Clairol Girl plastered on the wall and a wicker rocking chair. You can see the bullets never touch the Colonel though. Just us lowly suckers. The stunt guy must have rolled in his own guts at least forty times. That’s the director right there in the corner doing his Alfred Hitchcock-I’m-in–the-scene-if–you-can–find-me number, but who could ever find him because he cuts so fast to the Colonel. And bla bla bla yadda yadda yadda fast forward… Ah, yes. San Juan del Sur. Pacific coast. Amazing fucking beaches. We used it for Mexico too in that first scene and for those juicy bare breasted maidens. Somebody told me that a Nica kid was killed there. The make-up truck started up and spooked his pony and he was thrown and then the truck backed over him. No one said anything about the kid after that so I’m not sure if it was really true. There was a lot of gossip on the set. Political stuff. CIA trying to plant disinformation. Maybe. And fast forward and here’s the Cultural Palace in Granada but we used it for the costume shop and also for our mess hall. Beautiful city, Granada. The Paris of the Americas they called it. How it got there in the middle of that country no one could ever explain. The original Colonel burned it down but the Nicaraguans built it right back more beautiful than ever. I guess it's a big retirement draw for Americans these days. Now that Costa Rica is all used up. This couple I know, just got married and bought lake front property there. Three hundred thousand for a house on Lake Granada. That’s hard for me to imagine. I told them not go swimming in the lake. It has sharks. I don’t think they believed me. The sewing girls looked down on us from the balcony of the Cultural Palace while we ate. Another rumor was that the film cornered most of the meat in Nicaragua. I guess the Sandinistas thought it was worth it for the publicity or the employment or whatever and the same went for plywood. I do know there was one guy, a Nica extra, who set up a kind of black market with plywood he pilfered from the San Francisco Wharf set. Who can blame him? As far as I could tell we were the only ones with meat, milk or coffee or a lot of other stuff. Plus we had privileges at the Dollar Store. This was a diplomat’s only store in Managua that actually sold stuff. Evian water, Goodyear tires, Timex watches, cans of Hunts Tomato Sauce. Cuban doctors, Russian engineers, the old Nicaraguan power players who were still calling shots in spite of the revolution and us actors, we all had passes to the Dollar Store. No cordobas, dollars only and so off limits to regular Nicaraguans. So, who can say if it was worth it for them? None of us can. We just waded through our own shit. But, the difference is I got to go back to my cat and my apartment in LA and they got a room full of fucked up costumes circa 1860. I know this one guy, married and all back in the states, and he tips his hat when this funeral passes by. A baby’s funeral. And he’s all respectful like he cares. He tips his costume hat for fuck sakes. Women are crying and walking through the town with this tiny paper casket and a poor drag assed tuba player, but that very afternoon this same son of a bitch is in the Dollar Store in Managua treating a whore to bars of Hershey’s Chocolate. And here comes our lovely leading lady enticing the Colonel to have oral sex. Everyone said what a great sport she was in that one. And forward, forward, zip zip. That man being executed in the chair was jailed as a spy. This according to a dude from second unit. Jailed by the Sandinistas. He was murdered few years later by the Mexican police, or so I heard. But see, when he gets shot, those are plastic flowers on purpose to remind the audience of our own day and age. Anachronisms. They pop up a lot in the film. Newsweek magazine, helicopters, coke bottles. Those flowers look real enough to me. That woman crossing herself over his body is a sandalista, Ingrid. Sandalista is what the Nicaraguans called the do-gooder leftists who came down from the states to hang with the revolution. They were usually dressed in some kind of hippy garb and wore sandals. This Ingrid told me she had written a book about erogenous zones that had been translated into five languages. She was down in Nicaragua to teach the Sandinistas about lobster traps. She was from Maine. What an asshole. Always organizing the extras to ask for more money, carping about her costume. A lot of sandalistas worked as extras on the film and they were a bunch of fucking bores. This is the part where everyone gets cholera and the Colonel elects himself president. The CIA was all over the place by then. They might also be extras or posing as press or whatever. That guy, right there, in the purple tunic, he’s one. The director knew it too. Keep the enemy close I guess was his idea so he hires him to be in the scene and in this next shot he yells, TELL THE CIA GUY TO MOVE CAMERA RIGHT! And look, the bozo does it. See? Some cover. And irony upon irony we were supposed to be presenting a kind of frontier version of Julius Cesar. Ergo the togas. We could tell who was CIA because they were always pumping the stunt guy. He was ex-Marine and had re-enlisted twice in Vietnam and had a chest covered with shrapnel scars to prove it. Guess the CIA felt he might be sympathetic but he didn’t like to talk to anyone about any kind of war. He would just move off and say he had to go find some horses that could stand up. And here comes the opportunistic sellout slavery pitch and bullshit, bullshit and yeah we shouldn’t engage in protracted wars with guerillas cause it will exhaust American troops and where have we heard that recently and on and on with the foreshadowing and the irony and the mirrors up to nature and that’s me right there. I’m all of those different guys running back and forth in front of the camera. I just keep changing my hat, trying to make a crowd. We all pitched in like that. You’d never know if I didn’t point it out. The Colonel still can’t be killed though. Walks right through the fire and into the Cathedral. We used the one in Managua that had been destroyed by the earthquake back in ’72. The Nicas kept the clock inside that was stopped at the moment the quake hit. I think the Nicaraguans don’t like to forget stuff. They keep reminders. Like the Palacio de los Vampiros where Somoza drained citizens of their blood to sell to international blood banks. That place was kept as a museum. And this clock was kept. It was like a big eye looking down on us. Yeah. Well. We burned the Cathedral for three nights to get the shots. Fucking spectacular. I hung around the set just for something to do and also to get a free meal. We were eating about 3:00AM in the parking lot and the beggar kids came up and waited as polite as anything until we were finished and then they scraped the leftovers into plastic bags. This sandalista jerk from Topanga Canyon said I shouldn’t give them any food. That to encourage begging was to go against the revolution. What an asshole. I told him that he could shut the fuck up because the revolution was in big trouble without any help at all from me. Anyone could see that. For one thing the signs never meant anything. If a sign said MASTER CARD WELCOME you could forget it because there wasn’t any use at all for a MASTER CARD. When I tried to pay for a hammock at the market in Masaya with my card they just kept turning it over and laughing. At the hotel restaurant a big wooden sign clearly said, PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED, but they left me standing there because they didn’t care what it said or because they enjoyed seeing me wait there like a fool. Or it said HAM SANDWICH on the menu but the waiter said no hay jamón. Or on Tuesdays it was supposed to be NOCHE DE HAMBURGESA, but the waiter said no hay hamburgesa. Everyday it was no hay something. The phones only worked during certain hours and those hours were always different than the ones posted. They turned the water off all the time. One weekend the beer was poisoned and no one knew if it was the contras or just a fuck-up; it was even money on both. But, for a solid week bottles of orange soda said CERVEZA. There was a huge sign flashing SUPER MERCADO but there was nothing in the whole damn place but one shelf of vinegar and people stood in line for that. I saw this waiter at the hotel fill a big tub with pool water that about fifty kids had pissed in and the tub said KITCHEN WATER. Then there was this McDonald’s. The sign said McDONALD’S and it had arches and the whole nine yards, but it was really a pimp hangout where the average guy could get a whore. The point being, if they leave the sign up when it no longer has any meaning they must figure sometime there will be a use for it again and all the crap that went with it and it will all be put back in place so forget any brave new world horseshit. And, after all that press back then, I mean day after day on the front page of every fucking paper, no one thinks about Nicaragua today. The Sandinistas are in and out and now back in all right but controlled by who the hell knows. Venezuela? The Catholic Church? Liberation theology but not for women who need an abortion. Illegal now for everyone even to save the mother’s life. Daniel Ortega looks a little worse for wear these days and he dyes his hair but he’s president again after twenty years. Funny how this time the American government doesn’t seem bothered by it at all. Go fucking figure. I wish him well. Right here. This is where the Colonel finally eats it. Executed in 1860 by a Honduran firing squad; tried one invasion too many. He told me how he made it look so real. First, they shoot him and he falls forward into the sand so it doesn’t hurt. Then he just stays relaxed while the waves drag him back and forth. He trusts the camera to stop before he drowns. I got to really respect the Colonel. We all did. You have to appreciate a man that goes for it no matter what. And the Colonel liked Nicaragua too. He always said that Nicaragua was the only place he ever lived where he wasn’t afraid of the police. Safer than Los Angeles anytime he used to say. And, in spite of all the other bullshit, I like to say that too. Because they did do some things right back then, the Sandinistas. It’s just the follow-up that’s a bitch. And don’t it go that way for everyone. People ask me what it was like down there and that’s what I tell them. To be honest, I’d like to say more but who really gives a shit? I’ve noticed that listening is just an accidental kind of thing. Unless it’s presented as screwing or murder people just don’t want to bother and probably most of what we think comes from talking to ourselves. Anyway, it was true. There were fourteen-year-old soldier kids with copies of THE GREAT POETS in their knapsacks.”