RATHER BE A SUCKER THAN AN ASSHOLE                                                                  

He owns a face you could strike a match on and speaks in a deep but raspy tenor that makes him sound as if he sprinkles broken glass on his cereal. Though not exactly a household name character actor Danny Trejo, has, over the last thirty years, left an unmistakable impression on modern movies. A new documentary from director Joe Eckardt retraces the incredible yet little known origins of the Latino performer, who, despite having survived the mean streets of East L.A. and brutal stints in prison, has managed to trade in one life as hardened criminal for another as Hollywood’s first choice hombre.

Extreme details create outrageous cinematic biographies. Champion at once charts a story of savagery and ultimate salvation. Eckardt remembers first meeting Trejo in 2000 on the set of The Salton Sea, a movie in which he was employed as an assistant to its star Val Kilmer. “One day I’m just sitting in Val’s trailer and all of a sudden the door just explodes open and this angry Mexican comes storming through yelling, ‘where’s Val?’” Eckardt recalls. “Hell, he was scary. I immediately point to the back and give up Val without hesitation.” Eckardt adds, “Soon Danny starts laughing and Val comes out laughing. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Like most moviegoers Eckardt first noticed Trejo when he came to prominence during the mid-‘90s in a string of hits notably Desperado, Heat and From Dusk Till Dawn. Despite having made his name playing criminal types like hired killers, drug dealers and prisoners, Trejo isn’t just familiar with the lives of such characters; in some cases he has actually already lived them. A violent upbringing in a tough neighbourhood saw Trejo committing burglaries before he was 12. By then he was using hard drugs like heroin. Not soon after he ran with a gang whose members comprised mostly outcasts from other gangs. He eventually graduated to armed robberies. Instead of firearms Trejo, however, chose to hold up liquor stores with a hand grenade.

After several stretches in the toughest prisons of the California penal system Trejo caught a break as consultant on the cult prison break drama Runaway Train. The opportunity, as fate would have it, came about thanks to former cohort and lifelong friend, the acclaimed ex-con crime writer Eddie Bunker. It was a turning point – one that Trejo embraced to the point of denying a wild heritage he’d prefer to forget.

 When it came to providing testimony for the documentary Eckardt says that Trejo was understandably hesitant to divulge much of what he had done including how many times he had been in prison. “He didn’t think I needed to know. But it’s like saying Barry Bonds is a home run champion and not knowing how many home runs he has hit,” says Eckardt. “His main concern was that kids might go, ‘well if Danny did 11 years in jail and still became a movie star then I can do the same thing.’”

A sequence of the film is shot inside the notorious San Quentin gaol in which Trejo had become, many decades prior, a lightweight boxing champion. On the day of filming Eckardt’s skeletal camera crew had been surrounded, quite suddenly, by security staff. He maintains that it is one of the scariest experiences of his life.

“The warden points out members of every group – white, black, Mexican – had congregated in the one area, something that never happens,” he recalls. “Usually when a black guest comes into the facility only the blacks go over to him. The same applies with the Mexicans and so on. But on this day all the nationalities crossed-over.” According to Eckardt there was a simple reason: “They all love Danny.”

After completing a 12 step program Trejo made a commitment to helping others with addictions to drugs and alcohol. He currently owns three dozen Detox clinics in Los Angeles and spends countless hours talking to kids at juvenile correctional facilities and reform schools. It’s apparently his way of making amends for the past. Eckardt believes this impulse on the part of Trejo is one way of compensating with his own wasted youth.  “Danny considers this all free time. He didn’t expect to be alive this long,” he says. “He thinks he should have been dead in 1958.”

Champion takes its titles from a suggestion made by the late Dennis Hopper, one of several Hollywood celebrities who were happy to provide testimonials in the documentary. Others include director Robert Rodriguez, a distant cousin with whom Trejo has made several feature films, Steve Buscemi, Val Kilmer and Antonio Banderas. Despite such a prominent rollcall Eckardt’s fondest memory is of interviewing Eddie Bunker, whose own incredible life story served as the basis for the underappreciated Dustin Hoffman movie Straight Time. Eckardt says Bunker passed on wisdom he values to this day. Every morning, according to Eckardt, Trejo and Bunker would get breakfast at the Pantry, an old diner in Los Angeles. Outside a group of homeless guys would congregate to often bum change. Eddie and Danny had no problem parting with a dollar. One day, as the story goes, there was a new homeless guy alongside the others spinning a yarn about needing an operation.

“It was total baloney what he was saying,” begins Eckardt. “But Eddie still pulls out a twenty and gives it to the guy. Danny’s like ‘why did you give him twenty? That guys full of shit.’ Eddie says, ‘Danny, I’d rather be a sucker than an asshole.’ Until this day, whenever I’m in a tough situation I think of him.”