There is one moment when we were interviewing him and he
was getting all dolled up and just more
and more jewelry added on.
And he turned to us and he said-
I'm so Hollywood in 1980s.
Yeah, we spent two and a half years with Walter
and so we were filming nonstop with him.
And he is an adorable person.
Everything that comes out of his mouth is cute or funny
or flirtatious or ridiculous.
I'm just like, "don't be praying my patience is growing old
but I'm growing young."
We really do love, like there's a, three or four months,
we really really do love it, and we kick ourselves, but
it's, I mean, I guess I think that's filmmaking, right?
Making the tough decisions of what's good
to move the narrative forward and tell the story.
We asked him who would play him in a movie,
and we suggested Gael García Bernal, and he said,
"Uhh, too old, too old."
And then I said, "Well who, who would you have play you?"
And he said, "Mm, who is that boy
by, in Call Me By Your Name?"
We were like, "Timothée Chalamet?"
And he was like, "Yes.
This would be a good opportunity for him."
Walter is 88 years old.
It's like, it's totally ludicrous.
We want to share the good news.
- (speaks in Spanish)
What’s the name of that actor from Call Me By Your Name?
The young man? Timothée Chalamet.
- Chamalet.
- [Kareem] Chalamet.
Maybe he wants the opportunity.
- That's a good idea, Timothée Chalamet
from Call Me By Your Name.
There's a great moment he also us tells about
when he was learning English,
trying to learn how to properly pronounce words.
So, "focus" was really difficult for him
and it turn into "fuckus."
"Fuckus."
So it's "fuckus."
"Fuck us?"
"Fuckus."
Which we still
- laugh about, yeah. - Laughing so hard.
I took three months to polish my accent.
Because sometimes, think that I'm a Romanian.
And for me it was very sad when they said,
"Are you Romanian?
Are you Russian?
Because your English,
your accent is so strong and so out of this world."
Something like that.
And they laugh a lot, because I'm doing my best
in English, I can do.
And I'm reading all the books in English,
the, all the movies in English, all the television in English.
Plus when I
with other persons I began to look in my mind
because of the verbs.
Sometimes, I was talking in present
and you have to talk of the past.
I have to be very careful with my verbs.
My favorite thing, Walter has
a really magnificent relationship with his dog.
He loves his dog so much and they're very close.
And there was one time when we were filming,
where he started pre-chewing the food for Runo,
his dog, and feeding it to him.
And it was just, it's so crazy.
It doesn't, we call it the Baby Birding scene.
It doesn't fit anywhere in the movie
but it like makes me laugh so hard that he...
it was hilarious.
Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.
It was really hard to get these things
in a narrative, you know?
Like where do you get the "fuckus" story,
like, three minute interlude about "fuckus" or Baby Birding?
It was just like so, it was so hard.
But we talk about it almost everyday.
Scenes that we miss.
A lot of stuff we shot, like with every film,
you shoot and doesn't make it in,
and we followed Walter back to his hometown.
Like where he grew up as a little boy in Ponce
and revisited the school that he went,
his elementary school.
And it was really interesting just
to see young elementary school children interact
with Walter.
Because he is such a larger than life personality.
And they were like, "What is this?"
But then there's a lot of really fabulous 12-year-old boys
who kind of had that moment of recognition,
and that was really sweet.
Yeah, it was incredible.
I think our longest version of this film
was maybe like, two hours and 20 minutes.
And we were like, "It's definitely not gonna be a two hour
and 20 minute film."
Even when we got closer to our goal
of like a 90ish minute film,
it changed so drastically, and the story really kind
of found itself.
And Walter's journey through our filmmaking changed.
We like to say that we were building the runway
as the plane was taking off.
'Cause we were still shooting while we were editing.
(upbeat house music)
So we started filming with Walter about two
and a half years ago and we started editing in June.
We submitted the film on November first.
We submitted the film Sunday and Saturdays.
You know it was a real rush to get the movie done.
We wanted to finish it.
We wanted him to see it.
We wanted him to be alive when it came out
and people fell back in love with Walter.
He was huge.
120 million people a day watched Walter at his peak,
for 30 years, and so it was a long filming process
but a very intense and short edit for a documentary.
It was really difficult because Walter had,
as an astrologer, a 50 year career.
But before that he was a dancer, theater actor,
telenovela star.
And there was so many components to his life.
And I think that every time we talked about it,
you know, we looked at, "How important is this
to his ultimate story that we're telling
as this kind of unlikely rise from boy
in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico
to megastar?"
And that really lead each decision.
"Is this reinforcing the narrative?
Is this something that is interesting?"
And a lot of it did play into it, you know?
His past and his starting out as a dancer
and starting out as an actor really
did influence the way he shared horoscopes.
So, we made editing decisions
that really helped tell the larger story
of this unlikely rise to fame
and what happened when he suddenly disappeared.
For us we really wanted to focus on Walter's message
which is love and peace and accepting people
that are not like you and loving everybody.
So we also wanted to capture that.
I think that was a big part of the film,
was explaining that, showing what that looks like,
and you know, we also follow him
in real time during this journey that he's taking
for his final comeback.
It was his swan song.
We know, we thought maybe it was a comeback
but it turned out to be his last public appearance.
It was his first public appearance in over a decade.
It was a great privilege to be able to be there with him
and to document it and to be apart of it.
Please check out Mucho Mucho Amor on Netflix.