The Big Picture

Luis Guzmán’s role in Story Ave is unlike anything he’s done before, with reflections on art, life, and loss. Guzmán drew from his own personal experiences, including his time as a social worker, to inform his role in the film. The organic chemistry and understanding between Guzmán and his co-star, Asante Blackk, brought a depth and authenticity to their scenes together.

Luis Guzmán has done just about it all. He’s been in everything from Boogie Nights to Wednesday, but he’s never done anything quite like Story Ave. The feature debut of writer-director Aristotle Torres, it sees Guzmán playing an MTA worker who becomes a mentor to the young Kadir Grayson (Asante Blackk) after the kid tried to hold him up one night. As the two begin to open up to each other, reflections on art, life, and loss abound. The film previously premiered back at SXSW and is now getting an expanding release in theaters. We sat down with Guzmán to talk about his performance, how it fits it with the rest of his long career, and drawing from his own personal experience.

COLLIDER: I just talked with your co-star and with your director, but I absolutely wanted to talk with you because they both spoke so highly of you and what you brought to this project and I wanted to start out there of, this feels like something that you were born to play as much as that can be said. There’s such a grace that you bring to the role. What was it that you first thought of when you were building this character?

LUIS GUZMÁN: Very good question. You know, coming in I understood some things. I understood loss and the grief. I understood mentoring. I’ve lived some of this situation that you see in this movie. I was a social worker back in the day; I understood what it was to help people to help themselves, to hear people, and I just put all those things together. For me, it pretty much all worked out.

I’d heard you talk with other people about your past as being a social worker before you were an actor, but storytelling and listening and being with people, there’s a shared empathy in both of those professions of you having to understand someone. Was this process kind of drawing from that for you, from that past work?

Yeah, because when this young man confronts me on a train platform, he doesn’t know where I’m going. But I went through my own stuff right there in that moment, you know? And when I got confronted with this young man, and I just see him, and he’s pointing this weapon at me, it’s like, “I’ve seen this before.” I’ve seen this before. And the rule of the street that I grew up with is that if you pull a gun on somebody, you gotta use it. If you don’t use it, well, there’s consequences to that. In this young man’s case, the consequence was that I befriended him. I don’t know if the word is used, but he helped me to fill my void of losing my son. You see, as the story evolves, I’m cooking this kid dinners and feeding him and kind of trying to instill all this stuff about, “Yo, so what are you gonna do with that money I gave you? Buy stocks? You gonna buy a house?” It’s not that much money to do all that stuff, but you could see that this character is already instilling stuff into this young man. And he gives me an opportunity. I’m not looking for redemption, you know? I’m just looking for an opportunity to do something for someone that I wish I could do for my own kid that I lost.

Where it’s almost a second chance in some ways.

In some ways.

Image via Kino Lorber

But then it’s also, there’s a real tragedy to it that you’re getting this moment to try and be a mentor to someone else, but every single thing is going to remind you of the things that failed in the past. With that kind of emotion, how do you find that balance? There are a lot of joyous moments of connection and empathy, but there’s also that pain underneath it. How do you kind of find that?

Man, you know, I’ve lived this. I’ve lived this with growing up as a kid in my family. I’ve lived this with friends of mine when I saw what they were going through with their dad, and their dads and my dad being alcoholics and dealing with that and the pain that comes out of that. Dealing with somebody when they’re sober and how loving they are, and then after they finish drinking a bottle, all the demons come out. The demons are not necessarily demons, but the demons are pain – pain of their shortcomings, of they’re not achieving the things that they wanna achieve. And like I said, I just use all those things because you can’t make this up, man. You can’t make this up. This is not that life. This is not, like, “Okay, so I’m gonna act like a drunk.” I know what it is to be a drunk, you know? I lived it. I lived it with my dad, and like I said, my friends and stuff. It’s like you grew up with souls that are tormented, and for me, my character, Luis, he was tormented, man. He was tormented by the loss of his son. He was tormented because he lost the love of his life, and the only thing that he knew was medicating himself with alcohol. But also, when this kid comes into his life this way, it’s like, “Oh wow, this is my chance to do good, to show that I could still do good,” and it just happened in such a beautiful human type of way.

That’s really, for me, what I loved about the script. It humanized the whole aspect of family to someone that lost family, it humanized the aspect of grief, it showed how two people could grow. But also, like I said, what happens is that, unfortunately, that grief becomes this terrible anger for them and breaks them up. I’m speechless right now.

Yeah, I think there are sometimes things that are kind of hard to define. I think of, especially, some of the scenes toward the end where there’s this unspoken understanding between your two characters that was just really incredible. What were the conversations you were having with Asante Blackk about some of those last scenes, in particular?

You know, it’s interesting because we didn’t talk about stuff.

He said you just talked about just everyday stuff, too.

Yeah, we just talked about everyday stuff. But when it came to our characters, I think what unfolded, what you saw, was just totally organic, and I think that’s the beauty of it because you can’t rehearse this stuff. You can’t go over and over and over it. You just understand it for what it is. I understood it for what it is because, like I said, I lived it. I’ve seen it, I felt it, I tasted it, I smelled it, and I just put all that on the table. Listen, I took this heart, and I just put it out there. And when it comes to these things, that’s how organic this movie was for me, you know what I mean? I can’t think about how a drunk acts, I’ve seen it. I lived it. So you go through it, and you know what? Sometimes, you have to stop for a moment because it is rather painful. It is rather painful. You saw how people acted out in your life, and here you are doing it. Not that you’re mimicking it, but you’re kind of paraphrasing that whole emotion that you understood.

Image via Kino Lorber

Is it then cathartic for you as an actor to be able to kind of reflect back on these things through your art, through your acting?

Well, you know, many, many, many, many years ago, over 30 years ago, this incredible assistant director, he said one thing to me, and it stayed with me until this day, until this moment and beyond; he said to me, “Your life is your reference.” And you know, that was so poignant to me. That was so true that that’s what I use. My life is my reference, man. It’s like you can’t always make things up. In this situation, like I said, I just had the opportunity to dive into a character that I knew, that I understood. But I also discovered a lot about myself, a lot about Kadir, Asante’s character. It’s love, it’s understanding, its commitment, it’s the challenges that are presented, it’s the importance of healing, of wanting to be healed or wanting to help somebody. All those elements come into play in this story.

Listen man, I couldn’t tell you how proud I am of the work that Asante put in, of Aristotle writing and directing, of the producing team that we put together, of the crew. Man, this is, oh my god… I’ve worked on so many projects in my career, you know, and this is one of those projects that I’ve been– I’ve said it, and I’ll say it to you, it’s like, if this is the last movie I ever did, if this was my last movie ever, I would feel pretty complete because, man, I touched on everything. I touched on every emotion, from fear to non-fear, the caring, the mentoring, my cooking skills, the music. I mean, I just thought this is like a whole Renaissance thing that happened to me in this movie. It’s like a capitulation of a life that I have lived, that I’ve seen, that I have come to understand, and I’m so grateful to it. I really am. And I’ve done a lot of good work in my career, and this is a beautiful—and that sounds cliché—but it’s a beautiful cherry to put on top.

Story Ave is now showing in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles.