Peru Comes to the Vatican . . . and Hollywood

Understandably, there’s been much press coverage of Leo XIV, the newly anointed first American-born pope. Though a native of Chicago, Leo (born Robert Francis Prevost) has close link with the nation of Peru, where—after years of missionary work—he took on Peruvian citizenship. His strong emotional ties to that picturesque South American nation reminded me of Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel laureate who died this past April at age 89.   

 Vargas Llosa was a man of letters who in 1990 nearly became Peru’s president. (He was defeated in a landslide by Alberto Fujimori, who quickly claimed dictatorial powers and was run out of the country 10 years later.) A prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, Vargas Llosa began his literary career circa 1960. Though I’ve read his charming early work, known in English as Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, I by no means pretend to be an expert on his entire oeuvre. Still, for a time I worked closely with his younger cousin, Luis Llosa Urquidi, familiarly known as Lucho.

 When I was Roger Corman’s story editor at Concorde-New Horizons in the late 1980s, we shot many low-budget features in Argentina, taking advantage of the exotic locales and cheap labor costs that the current U.S. regime is striving to combat with tariff threats. At one point Roger was flying to Buenos Aires to check on a troubled production, but bad weather forced the plane to land in Lima, Peru. Screenwriter Fred Bailey told me what happened next: Roger “got off the plane, took a taxi into town, opened up the yellow pages, and got somebody to find motion picture production listings. Made a few calls asking who was the best filmmaker in Lima . . . they all said, ‘Luis Llosa.’ Called him up, made a deal, and was back on the airplane to Argentina within a couple of hours.”

 Through Lucho, Roger discovered a wealth of Peruvian locations: crumbling colonial cities, towering mountain ranges, a long seacoast, lots of jungle. There we shot everything from ecological thrillers (Fire on the Amazon) to a submarine drama (Full Fathom Five) to a rather fascinating Bonnie-and-Clyde-in-the Future project (Crime Zone). More than once we used the jungles of Peru to stand in for Vietnam in would-be war epics. What made shooting in Peru particularly exciting was the fact that this was the era of the Shining Path, an armed guerrilla group aiming to launch a People’s War against established government entities. One Corman production was actually briefly put on hold when the Shining Path took over a location. I’m certainly not complaining about the fact that I, as story editor, remained safe in my office in Brentwood, California.

 Of course Lucho, despite his thriving cinematic career in Peru, aspired to make American movies with prospects beyond those of the low-budget Corman world. His biggest success was a 1997 creature-feature called Anaconda, shot in South America with a big-name cast that included Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voigt, and Owen Wilson. This snake-infested horror movie grossed $136.8 million worldwide and quickly became a popular franchise. It earned money but not respect, ending up nominated for six Razzie Awards (including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Actor, and Worst Screenplay), all of which it lost to Kevin Costner’s The Postman. Still, today it’s considered a cult classic.   

Another successful member of the Llosa clan is writer/director Claudia Llosa Bueno, niece of both Mario and Lucho.  Her second feature, The Milk of Sorrow, explores the folk beliefs of indigenous Peruvians. In 2010 it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar.