Before he answered, Demián Bichir asked for a moment to say he doesn’t get conversations like this very often, and the question that earned it goes back to Mexico City in October 1968.
It starts with a Disney story that sounds made up and isn’t. Told he could only audition for one role in the Spanish-language Little Mermaid, Demián went in for Prince Eric under his own name, then for Chef Louis under his second name and second last name, and got both. From there the conversation turns to Tito, the man Salma’s character has come to kill, and why he says Tito was never trying to escape that table. He talks about knowing Salma for decades and watching her keep getting better, and calls this performance the high point of her work so far. Music comes up more than once, from the kind of project he still hasn’t made to the song his mother first sang on the radio as a girl, which became the theme of Un cuento de circo & a Love Song, the film he wrote and directed. Then the conversation reaches the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, which happened when he was five years old (he later acted in Rojo Amanecer, the 1989 film about that day), and his answer about whether any of it made its way into Tito. He closes on the three-year-old who said yes to his first play, and whether he is still saying yes.
A conversation for anyone who believes forgiveness has to be asked for before it can be given.
