The same weekend Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey broke records across North America, American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez opened quietly at Film Forum in Manhattan. The documentary, directed and written by David Alvarado, began its national theatrical run on July 17.
It arrives with significant credentials. At Sundance, the film won both the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary and the Festival Favorite Award. Earlier this year, the Library of Congress awarded it the Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Edward James Olmos narrates in character as El Pachuco, the role he originated in Valdez's landmark 1978 stage production of Zoot Suit.
Luis Valdez, 85 and still writing, was born in 1940 to Mexican immigrant farmworkers in California. He founded El Teatro Campesino in Delano in the mid-1960s during César Chávez's farm labor movement. Zoot Suit played to packed Los Angeles audiences for nearly a year before transferring to Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre, where opening night drew Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol. New York critics were dismissive; audiences were not. A film version followed in 1981. In 1987, Valdez directed La Bamba, the Ritchie Valens biopic starring Lou Diamond Phillips, selected from more than 600 auditioners. The film grossed $54 million against a $6.5 million budget and has been described as "the most successful Latino movie of all time," according to The Hollywood Reporter.
American Pachuco, produced by Lauren DeFilippo, Everett Katigbak, and Amanda Pollak, features contributions from Dolores Huerta, Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Taylor Hackford, and Linda Ronstadt. The Hollywood Reporter calls it "informative and generous" with archival depth that serves as a "welcome corrective" to public understanding of Latino contributions to American cinema. After New York, the film expands to Los Angeles, then San Francisco from July 31, before moving through Dallas, Austin, Houston, Chicago, and Tucson.
