Interview with Joshua Marston, the Writer/Director of "Maria Full of Grace"

Joshua Marston makes his feature film directorial debut with the hard-hitting drama, "Maria Full of Grace". The film follows Maria (Catalina Sandino), a bright young Colombian woman who takes the drastic step of becoming a 'drug mule' in order to improve her lot in life. Assured the job is an easy one and that the rewards will be well-worth her efforts, Maria finds herself immersed in the dangerous and deadly world of narcotics and smuggling, where the life of a mule isn't worth much and the cost of getting caught could mean imprisonment or death.

Have you screened this movie in Colombia?
Yeah, we premiered the movie in Colombia at the Cartagena Film Festival. And then about a month afterwards, we opened it theatrically on 30 screens. It still continues to play theatrically and it has been there going on three months now.

How does it play in front of that audience?
It plays very well. The interesting thing is that obviously Columbians know a little bit more going in about drug smuggling. You assume that they do. You come in with assumptions and yet, time and time again I've been waylaid by Colombians afterwards saying, "Oh my God, that was interesting," because it's something that was very eye-opening for them. All they ever get are headlines about this person or that person who was caught travelling at the border with drugs. But they never get the actual details of what it's like to travel as a drug mule. We are very gratified on our part that we are able to bring something new to this, even to Colombians.

It's been very warmly embraced by the First Lady of Colombia who has had two screenings at the Presidential Palace. The United Nations office there has requested to purchase a print for educational purposes. We even heard the story of someone who was 17 years-old who was supposed to go as a drug mule and saw the film two days before he was supposed to leave, and pulled out. He told us this whole story about how he considered the film to have changed his life.

When you hear a story like the kid who decided against smuggling drugs, that's got to make you feel incredibly proud of your film.
For all of us who worked on the film, it makes us feel really proud and just sort of grateful that the film was able to do that. It's very gratifying to know that film has this kind of power and is able to reach people on an emotional level and sort of open their eyes.

Did you encounter any resentment in Colombia since you are an America telling a very Colombian story?
No. It's really funny. When I was preparing the film I lived in fear of that moment, of being accused of being a gringo coming in. And yet, by the time I was done with the film and brought it down to Colombia, it had sort of receded to the back of my mind. I was in Colombia doing all this press for the release of the film there and it wasn't until we had been there for a couple of days that someone pointed out that the only question I was getting was how did an American come to be interested in Colombia. The subtext was that they were flattered that I would take an interest. No one has ever said anything about me being a foreigner, an outsider, commenting on Colombian society. It's a sign that the collaboration worked in order to make the representation of Colombia feel authentic, even to Colombians.

Your film has won awards at film festivals and audiences really react positively to this story. As a first-time film director, doesn't that set the bar high for your next feature? How do you live up to that?
This film was four-going-on-five years in the making. And what it says to me is that in order to do a really good film and have it really feel right and authentic and true, there is a certain amount of time you need to take in order to allow it to gestate and to grow. My hope is to not get caught up in rushing to the next project.

Was there a time during the four or five year process when you weren't sure it was going to get made?
Oh yeah, all the time. I mean, when we were looking for financing, people would regularly read the script and respond positively and say they thought it was a really gripping and page-turning script. And then they would follow up with, "Gee, it's a shame it's in Spanish. Don't you think you could do it in English?" To the point where someone actually said, "Well, what if Maria had a governess who had taught the family English?" They all wanted the project to be in English. But it was absurd. There were definitely a lot of moments where we just thought we weren't going to be able to do it the way we wanted. And fortunately HBO stepped up to the plate.

During your research for this movie, what fact or statistic surprised you the most?
I heard so many stories that proved that truth is stranger than fiction. And there's so many stories that didn't make it into the film because, ultimately, I had to stay true to what Maria's experience was. I talked to one guy who was in prison in Pennsylvania who told me in detail his whole story and part of it was that when he got to the United States, beyond getting paid his sort of salary, he was handed a bale of cash, 5s, 10s, 50s, and 100s that he was expected to take back. He had to stuff the cash into little rubber pellets and swallow the cash and carry it back in his stomach in order to smuggle the cash back to Colombia. It's phenomenal the number of bizarre details that didn't get into the film.

Did you ever become so immersed in the research you needed to take time off and walk away for a while?

No, because those were the moments that were actually the most inspiring to me. There was so much story there and it was so compelling. I think the thing that might have caused me to have doubt was whether or not I would actually ever get fully into the head of a 17 year-old Colombian girl. It was all a process of going to small towns and meeting them. I don't think I was ever confident I was going to get Maria right until I actually met Catalina Sandino and that was when I felt like, "Okay, she's going to be able to bring everything else to it that I wouldn't be able to fully understand myself, personally."

After doing all the research, you wound up allowing your actors to have a lot of say regarding their characters. Why did you give them so much freedom?
Because I'm not a Colombian and because I'm not a native Spanish-speaker. And because they, all the actors, have a whole set of knowledge and experience that is relevant to their characters that I could never have. It would be presumptuous of me to dictate and close off what the script was.

I think the script benefited from all the nuances and details they were able to bring to it as actors. So it was really important to me to open it back up and have a series of improvisations, see what they discovered as far as moments in each scenes, and also change the dialogue in subtle ways so that it really was not just Colombian Spanish, but a Spanish specific to the region within Colombia where the characters were supposedly from. We were rewriting together and it became a much more collaborative process. They all walked away with a real sense of ownership of their own characters, which not only benefited the script, but benefited the performances.

Your leading actress had not done a film before, and you hadn't directed a feature before. Were there any special challenges?
The biggest challenge was just finding her. It was this long, long search. There was this whole long period of looking at actors. You're looking for this sort of subtle find that allows you to convince yourself that this is the right person. But in the end, you are just hoping an actress is going to walk through the door and inhabit the character. It's hard to say to the producer and the financier, "No, we have to keep looking. No, we can't shoot yet." And when you are pushing the shoot and a lot of people are already on the payroll, you're spending money by the day just to be on hold in a holding pattern. It's really hard. But fortunately I had people who understood the importance of getting Maria right. After seeing 800 girls, Catalina Sandino walked in the door and she was it.

Are you basically a writer who directs or a director who writes?
Hmm, I've never really broken it up that way. I just consider myself to be a filmmaker who writes and directs and creates film.

You modeled one of your characters after a real person, and that man, Orlando Tobon, actually ended up playing the role in the film. Can you talk about that aspect of "Maria Full of Grace"

I had already been working on the script for about two years. I was trying to get financing and I was sitting across the table from someone who said, "Well, have you talked to the Mayor of Little Colombia?" And I hadn't even heard of this person. The Little Colombia they are referring to is a section of Jackson Heights, Queens, where the Colombian community is the strongest. They said, "Well, you know, he's also known as the undertaker for the mules." So I tracked this guy down. I called him up and told him I wanted to meet him about this project.

The interesting thing from his point of view is that he's repatriated hundreds of bodies of people who have died coming to the USA as drug mules. What he does in the movie, he's done hundreds of times in real life. When I told him about the project, he was very supportive. He allowed me to sit in his office, he has a tiny travel agency in Queens that is constantly full of people out the door. When I say tiny, I'm talking like 10'by 14'. It's really small. He's like the fixer in the community, whether it's papers for work or to help people get an apartment. I just sort of watched him working in the community and realized that if I wanted to represent the community, he was an important component of it. So I went back and rewrote the script and developed a character inspired by him. And then when it came time to do the casting, it was such a specific character because it was an actual human being that I met, he was the best person for the role. He just played himself.

Has the film made it more difficult or less difficult for him to do what he does?
He just a couple of days ago got a call from someone who said her sister died in a hotel room. He's, as we speak, trying to raise some money to have the body buried. So he's still doing it and people are still turning to him. I think it's helped him because it's raised his profile maybe a little bit outside of the community. Not that he needed it, but it's further established him as doing good work within the community.

Is he ever hassled by law enforcement?
He was hassled by law enforcement years ago. I think the DEA and the FBI were very suspicious of him as to why he was having these interactions. Now, after many years, it's come to a point where they call him after the find a body.

He had a story he told me once where there was this guy who heard about what he was doing and came to his office and gave him money to have a body sent back to Colombia. And then on a regular basis, would stop out of nowhere and give him money. It just seemed he was this kind-hearted man who wanted to help Orlando with these situations. Then all of a sudden, an FBI agent showed up at his office and said, "Can we talk to you?" They led him out to a car where they showed him a photograph and said, "Do you know this man?"And it was the guy. It turned out he was a drug trafficker and was sort of cleaning his conscious by sort of closing the circle by giving Orlando the money to take care of the mules who weren''t surviving.

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