Benicio Del Toro for FLAUNT Magazine

8/3/2019 Benicio Del Toro for FLAUNT Magazine

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ENICIO

DELTORO

the feral nature of

and the impossibility of man P h o T o G r A P h y : K U r T I s w A r I E N K o

A T I s w A r I E N K o . c

o M . s

T y L I s T : B E c K s w E L c h F o r T h E w A L L G r o U P . c o M . G

r o o M E r : G

A I L r y A N F o r c r I T E r I o N - G r o U P . c o M .

written by Gregg LaGambina photographed by Kurt Iswarienko

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puerto rican man with a hangdog look

rubs at his tired eyes. A blosso of hard

silver—a lion’s head worn on his left ring

nger—stares bac out at the room, up-

side down. Rain whips at the windows,

sounding lie handfuls of small marbles

thrown by hoodlums in search of a dumb

ght. A patio table hops and upends, its

umbrella snapped open by a gust, drag-

ging the entire contraption out into the street. An old lady draped in

clear plastic, a yellow cane hooed around her thin left wrist, peers

into the storefront, agape. A

quic glimpse of messy teeth

disappears behind the cloud of

her exhale.“She was looing at

you!” exclaims the Puerto Ri -

can man, startled, as the wom-

an bacs into the storm and

continues along her path.

The city is not itself.

Brentwood, the wealthy west-

ern enclae of Los Angeles, is

a mess of ooded storm drains

and deep puddles thrown into

the air in foamy explosions by

passing sedans. The agitated

wetness everywhere sounds

lie tin foil being unspooled in

giant sheets, the metallic rattle

maing eerything and eery-

one nervous.

The Puerto Rican

man holding court at a corner

table inside this Spanish res-taurant is Benicio Del Toro.

The melancholic mumbler

that made him well nown in

The Usual Suspects years ago

is long gone. The eyes oft de-

scribed as drooped, sad, slow,

are in fact darting around the

room now, settling on nothing,

seeing out cues to propel his

stories. The tal is quic and

clear. And in harmony with the

preailing mood (right before

that mad woman tapped at the

glass with a dry dirty nger -

nail), Del Toro was describing lagoons and hunchbacs and the jit-

tery light that icered through his childhood home.

“The rst moies I remember seeing as a id actually

weren’t the moies,” he says. “They were these super-8 moies.

They would play for three minutes. They were edited from horror

ovies. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Dracula. Frankenstein,The Mummy, The Hunchback of Notre Dame —that’s the only hoe

entertainment I can recall as a id. We’d put all this monster stuff

together and project it on the wall with an old projector.”

Del Toro’s childhood was brief. Uprooted from his birth -

place in San Juan, Puerto Rico at age nine, after the death of his

mother, Del Toro found himself in rural Pennsylania, enrolled in

boarding school, and enduring a brand of military-style parenting

necessarily improised by his father in the wae of fresh circum-

stance. In ushering along the recent remae of The Wolfman, Del

Toro might just be aiming to recapture those moments in the dar,

hidden fro the deands of adulthood when his faily was still in-

tact, at home, where he belonged.

“What, now I’m taling to a psychiatrist?” laughs Del Toro, put-

ting on a puffed-up tough-guy demeanor to moc any notion of a

tormented childhood. “Fuc off! They told me to wear a suit and tie!

Fuc all of you! They told me to wash my hands before dinner. Go

fuc yourself! I’m different!’”

He adits that after the labor-intensive shoot for Steven

Soderbergh’s Che, he was desperate to hae fun again and The

Wolfman afforded him the op-

portunity to channel some of the

fantasies he’s carried with him

eer since he glared at those ric -ety projections of monsters in his

youth. The tepid response—both

critically and commercially—

to the four-hour plus biopic of

Cuban (by way of Argentina)

reolutionary Che Gueara was

a disappointment. During press

for the lm, he was consistently

put on the defensie by questions

concerning Gueara’s legacy of

iolence. He famously waled

out of one interiew. The lm

opped in the States.

“Moies come at you. They

don’t care what you thin,” he

says, pondering the potential leg-

acy of Che. “I thin it taes time.

Things can get better as time goes

by. The same thing can happen

with a boo, a painting. And also, probably with nature. You might

see a tree that you’e been loo -

ing at all your life and then one

day it just clics and one day you

go, ‘That’s a beautiful tree.’ Not

eerything is lie that. Not eery-

thing you do can be lie that. But

hopefully Che has that. I hope so.

That was the hardest ovie ever.”

After a similar reaction t o Terry

Gilliam’s adaptation of Hunter S.

Thompson’s Fear and Loathing

in Las Vegas in 1998, it was re-

ported that Del Toro was so disap -

pointed by the lm’s reception, he too time off until appearing in

Guy Ritchie’s Snatch two years later. It was speculated that after his

full inestment in the character of Dr. Gono—the weight gain, the

self-inicted cigarette burns, the near perpetual dementia—his con-

dence was shaen, particularly after his performance was singled out

for being unnecessarily oer the top. Whether or not there’s any truthin these claims, the lm has been redeemed by exactly the ind of

slow boil he anticipates for Che. And oer a decade after the fact, it’s

clear that if he eer did gie a shit, he doesn’t gie a shit anymore.

“Hunter saw the moie and he lied it. He really lied it.

I now I can spea for Johnny [Depp], too. That is the best com -

pliment we got. And Fear and Loathing eventually found its own

audience.”

A waiter scurries away to nd more coffee. Someone is out-

A

102 FLAUNTMAGAZINE



side gathering the scattered umbrellas and plastic chairs strewn

across the wet lawn. The notes of sirens off in the distance distort

and bend on the wind. The whole day is gray except for a lone traf -

c light that seems superimposed on the sy, dangling from a wire

aboe an intersection and bleeding bright colors onto the blea

scene lie something articially coloried and dropped into an old

blac and white moie. Del Toro ddles with his lion ring. There’s

a lull.

“Are you a Leo?”

“No.”

“Any signicance to

that ring there?”

“No, not really.”

The town car Del

Toro arrived in waits outsidelooing lie a recently bathed

blac animal. The engine is

on, exhaust billowing out in

white tufts lie it’s taing

deep breaths after a sprint. The

drier inside is eeping warm

on what is considered a cold

day for Southern California.

Del Toro tosses an American

Express gold card into a blac

plastic tray, but maes no ges -

ture to get up. It is probably

for this reason (and a thousand

others) that he’s a good actor.

The silence doesn’t mae him

the least bit uncomfortable.

He’s too comfortable, actually.

He’s said alost nothing about

hiself. He’s revealed little.

The driver will have to wait.“Do you have any

idea what a man is supposed to

be lie?”

It’s a half-court Hail

Mary heae; a Barbara Walters-

styled bullshit question. But

what the fuc. There’s more coffee. The weather is bad. That woman

might still be out there with her goddamned cane and that loo in her

eyes. You’re sitting at a table with Benicio Del Toro. Why the fuc not

as him, “What is a man?” Is it really any better or worse than asing

him how long it too eery morning to mae him loo lie a fucing

werewolf? Thought so. Go mae your own coffee. Come bac. We’ll

be right here.

“I’ll tell you one thing I don’t lie. I don’t lie it when

people lie. I can understand if someone is on a mission. But when

people at out lie to your face, and you catch them in that lie, and

then they lie again. That shit I don’t lie. You now what I mean?”

This is Benicio Del Toro. This is coming from some-

where. Notions of manhood? Boredom? The rain?

“I lost my mom when I was ery young,” he continues, pursuing the thought. “For a while it was just me and my brother

and my dad. And my dad was ROTC. He was ery strict. ‘Gotta get

up! Gotta mae the bed! Shine your shoes on Sunday!’ What maes

a fucing man? I don’t now. What maes anyone? I don’t thin a

man has to be macho. I thought that when I was 16. Sometimes I still

feel lie I’m 12. But I realie I can’t jump as high. I can’t deal with a

hangoer as easy as I could bac in the day. But that’s just life, man.

You go through it. I don’t now if I’m eer gonna gure it out.

“Maybe the thing I lie the most when I meet someone—

an or a woan—is their ability to see that everyone is d

The ability to see that you can be smart in different way

when they try to pigeonhole eeryone. Eerything you do h

this or that.”

Someone across the room gets up from his table an

goodbye. Benicio smiles and waes bac. A couple embra

holding the door open for the other. The place is almost

There’s an entire section with c

on tables. The rain has stopped.

er is erasing words from a chal

“Are you where you

be at this point in your life?”

Now that’s just an

fumble. But he graciously gra

and if he doesn’t run with it, hea noble jog. A good sport, Del

“After Trafc, I was y

class. Before Trafc, I was yin

Between The Usual Suspects a

c, I was ying in the bulhead

the cocpit now. I’e earned it.

gae it to me. I’e earned it and

doing it. So far, I do. You no

been doing ovies now for a lo

I lie to pretend I’m still 21,

been doing moies for 22 years

a long time. I started young. I di

ish college. I had no idea about

Nothing about moies. But I n

seen life. I new I had a lot mo

that age because of my upbring

happened. It came at me in som

I new I had things I could draw

found myself experiencing som

didn’t now I was going to expI was 19. I was so young.”

He sighs and smiles

ing to arvel at all that tie. H

down at the table.

“Are you going to

midlife crisis? Right here, righ

“No. Fuc no! My crisis was six years ago. Da

been a long road I’e been waling through. The reali ty h

we’re all gonna die.’ There was a whole year where I wa

‘Oh fuc, oh fuc, oh fuc.’ But then you’re lie, ‘What

do?’ Nothing. There’s things I enjoy now that I neer e

before.”

Let’s pretend here at precisely this moment that

breas through the clouds after its daylong determination t

Illumination pours through the window of a Spanish resta

reeal two men seated with two coffees at a corner table. O

gets up, shaes hands with the other and politely depart

outside, the departing man bends slightly, grabs at his c

enters into a waiting blac town car. The car dries off.

The other man, still inside the restaurant, waits a mand reaches to turn off his tape recorder. He has an idea.

from his chair now. He’s outside. He’s moing brisly d

damp sidewal. And when he nds that old woman with

low cane and the mortal stare and the plastic coat, he’s goin

her right there in the street, “Do you hae any idea what a

is supposed to be lie?”

What else would you do on a rainy day in Bre

after the actor Benicio Del Toro has told you oer a cup o

that we’re all going to die?

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“MAYBE THE THINGI LIkE THE mOST

WHEN I MEET

SOmEONE—mANOR A WOMAN—ISTHEIR ABILITY TO

SEE THATEvERYONE IS

DIFFERENT. THEABILITY TO SEE

THAT YOU CAN BESmART INDIFFERENT WAYS. IHATE WHEN THEY

TRY TO PIGEOHOLEEvERYONE.

EvERYTHING YOU

DO HAS TO BE THISOR THAT.”JAcKETBy adamKimmeL, BUTToN-

DowN shIrTByrrL, 501JEANs By

Levi’s, ANDBooTs BymetroPoLitan

view.

GrooMINGNoTEs: LAvENDEr hAIr

crèMEBy KusCo-murPhy. wATEr

wAx By redKen.

sTyLIsT: BEcKs wELch

GrooMEr: GAILryAN



“WHAT MAkES AFUCkING MAN? IDON’T kNOW. WHATMAkES ANYONE? I

DON’T THINk AmAN HAS TO BEMACHO. I THOUGHTTHAT WHEN I WAS16. SOMETIMES ISTILL FEEL LIkE I’M12. BUT I REALIzEI CAN’T JUMP ASHIGH. I CAN’T DEALWITH A HANGOvER AS EASY AS I COULDBACk INTHE DAY. BUTTHAT’S JUST LIFE,MAN. YOU GOTHROUGH IT. IDON’T kNOW IF I’M

EvER GONNAFIGURE IT OUT.”

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Benicio Del Toro for FLAUNT Magazine

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