Once Upon A Cactus : WAMG Talks To Michael Cera and Filmmaker Sebastian Silva About CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGIC CACTUS AND 2012

CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGIC CACTUS AND 2012, which won this year’s Sundance Festival Directing award, was premiered on June 15^th at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Before the films premiere, I had the chance to sit down with filmmaker Sebastian Silva and star Michael Cera in a roundtable discussion about filming this entertaining drug-fueled adventure. The film was almost entirely improvised and shot in 12 days in Chile while Silva was waiting for production to start on another movie.

Jamie (Cera) is a boorish, insensitive American Twenty-something traveling in Chile, who somehow manages to create chaos at every turn. He and his friends are planning on taking a road trip north to experience a legendary shamanistic hallucinogen called the San Pedro cactus. In a fit of drunkenness at a wild party, Jamie invites an eccentric woman—a radical spirit named Crystal Fairy (Hoffmann)—to come along. What is meant to be a devil-may-care journey becomes a battle of wills as Jamie finds himself locking horns with his new traveling companion. But on a remote, pristine beach at the edge of the desert, the magic brew is finally imbibed, and the true adventure begins. Preconceived notions and judgments fall away, and the ragtag group breaks through an authentic moment of truth.

It was very exciting to learn that Chilean cocaine is not great cocaine. [laughs]

CERA: Now you don’t have to try it.

Thank you very much for enlightening – 

SILVA: [joking] I can hook you up with good cocaine. [laughs]

How did this project come to you Michael? This is out of the realm of what we’d normally expect to see from you. 

CERA: I guess I kind of sought Sebastian out, actually, after seeing THE MAID. We met out here. We kept in touch over the next year or two. We were going to do this other project together, which I had gone down to Santiago for. We were just waiting around for funding for that to come in. After a little while it, kind of, felt like we were not going to be able to make it – we might not get the money for it. So, I went home, and a few months later Sebastian called me and said “Hey come back and we’ll go make this thing in two weeks, with like no crew, and no script. We’ll just make a movie so that we can work together on something.”

In the desert, on the beach… sun shining…

CERA: Yeah. He told me the whole story and it just sounded like a great adventure.

In what way has this experience expanded your understanding of the Hispanic world?

CERA: Well, I learned Spanish while preparing for this other movie. I only really learned about Chilean culture. My Spanish vocabulary is totally useless in any other country. [laughs] Almost, even in Chile. My vocabulary is so specific to his (Silva’s) family.

SILVA: Yeah. People from the next block over would not understand you. [laughs]

CERA: It’s really limiting.

Sebastian, where did this story come from? It’s so fascinating – and then you cast your brothers. You direct your brothers. 

SILVA: It’s based on a true story. Twelve years ago I went with my best friend to – we were planning on going to the desert to take mescaline – to that specific national park that they end up going to (in the film). I was at this concert – The Wailers – and I bumped into Crystal Fairy, this woman from San Francisco with hairy armpits and – went by the name Crystal Fairy. We became instant friends, and we were really high [laughs] and then, yeah, I invited her to join us to this trip to the desert, and then I, sort of, regret that I had invited her so we took off without her. Then she was waiting for us, in that square. She got robbed by a gypsy, and then we had to adopt a fairy. [laughs] We went down with her to this national park, and took the San Pedro, and we went to the little town… everything is based on a true story. The only fictional part, I guess, is the confrontational aspects of the relationship. I was actually a fairy myself, so we got along just right – with Crystal. We were never fighting, or never really judging her as much as Jamie does in the movie. But, yeah. Its based on a true story.

How it came to happen is we were waiting to make MAGIC MAGIC, a bigger, more planned out movie, and finance fell through. We just had to wait more. Michael was there, staying with my family, and I had this story that was on my computer desktop for ages. Since it happened, I thought it was a good story of, like, the birth of compassion. I feel like that’s the core of this story, for me, is what happens to Jamie and how he comes to terms with accepting, and being compassionate towards Crystal Fairy. I thought that that story was beautiful, and worth sharing.

Does the real Crystal Fairy know that there’s a movie about her? 

SILVA: I hope she does. She’s in San Francisco. We went to the San Francisco Film Festival, and we put a shout out – “Crystal Fairy, where are you? Fly to us!”.

You’d think with social media today you’d be able to find her… 

SILVA: I mean, not really. If you Google “Crystal Fairy” [laughs] fairies made out of crystal pop up. It’s not her.

CERA: It’s a dead end. Don’t Google “Crystal Fairy”. [laughs]

You talked about not really having a script for dialogue with this. How did you approach your scenes?

CERA: Well, everything was really broken down. All of the beats, all of the dynamics in every scene, and what we were talking about were all in the outline that Sebastian made. Basically, it was never just inventing something on the spot, or like “What do we talk about?”. It was more “How do we express these ideas?”, which is pretty natural, I think. If it wasn’t totally comfortable conversationally, that was ok because we were all in such a strange circumstance, and there’s this incompatibility happening. That fed into it actually.

What were your takeaways from the experience on a production level? What did you learn, or walk away with? Also, from the experience of being in Chile, and getting a sense of that culture? 

CERA: Well, I mean, doing a movie this way is, really, unlike anything. We shot in two weeks, and we were all sleeping on top of each other in bunk beds, and eating bread and cheese – for two weeks. It was fun, from a production standpoint. Also, you’re living the work. We’re traveling around, and shooting, and thinking about it, and having fun. It’s totally immersive, which is a nice way to work unless you have a problem with that, which nobody, I think, did. I was very excited by that.

Just being an alien is really humbling – being somewhere where you are completely out of your comfort zone, and speaking a new language where you are not fully in control of how you are projecting yourself. You’re just really basic. You try to convey humor, but you’re really not in control, and you, kind of, are a child. That’s a nice experience to have, I think.

What’s the craziest thing you guys saw, or did while you were in Chile? 

SILVA: Shooting?

CERA: I got mugged.

SILVA: The lady we stole the cactus from. She lived in that house, and –

CERA: – that is her life –

SILVA: Yeah. That is her life. How she holds a teddy bear… that’s how she lives, and that’s how she speaks.

… and you got mugged?

CERA: I got mugged. Not when we were working, but when I was in Santiago, I got mugged.

How did that go down? 

CERA: There had been a big soccer game that Chile had won, so there was pandemonium in the streets, and hooligans, you know? It was about 1 am, and I was walking in Providencia. I guess you’re not really suppose to walk home alone in Providencia at one in the morning. I had never had a problem with it. I was told that afterwards, when I told people the story. They were like “Why were you there?”. I was taking pictures of dogs in the street with a disposable camera [laughs] which I had started a collection of, because there were a lot of dogs on the streets. Millions of dogs…

SILVA: … stray dogs…

CERA: … on the streets. So, I had a major target sign on me, and I’m wearing a coat with deep pockets with my iPod, and, like, my birth certificate. [laughs] There was this group of seven people – I don’t even think they were thieves. I think they were just out drunk, and like “Why not mug this guy?” They were with a woman, a young woman, and I guess she was “a distraction”. She came up and was in my face, dancing, and going “Chi-Chi-Chi-Le-Le-Le” [laughs]. It’s, like, a soccer chant. The next thing I knew, before I even registered that, there was this circle of guys around me. They were reaching into my pockets, and I was like “I’m really about to get hurt by these people.”. I really thought “There’s nothing I can do. There’s nobody around. I’m such a victim.” [laughing] I just reacted, and went “No! No! No!” and swatted them away. They all turned away, and got really nervous about that, and one guy went “Tranquilo. Chill out.” [laughs], and I was like “Yeah, cool.” and I walked away. He started walking with me and talking very casually, like “Why are you in Santiago?” like it didn’t happen. Like, “Hey, what’s up?”. My defense mechanism was to just meet him on his level. I was just like “Yeah, I’m just here for a while, and just hanging out.”. Then, he goes “You got the time?”, and I took out my cell phone, which was Sebastian’s mothers old phone – from 10 years ago. I took it out, and go “1:15” and, really exaggerated, he grabs the phone, and that was it. It was a very fortunate mugging. There was not even a threat of violence.

SILVA: It was not even your phone.

CERA: … not even my phone… Although, I did feel really angry afterwards. Just the schoolyard aspect of it… like I could have just gone and told on him, or something. It’s just not fair.

So Michael, did you do all of your own cactus splintering and peeling? 

CERA: No. I did not get a feel for it. It’s tricky business. [laughs]

How much research did you do to the drug-trip side of this story?

CERA: I went on this website I actually have a friend – I think everybody has a friend that we grew up with that gets pretty heavily into drugs, and is very academic about it. [laughs] It’s their thing. It’s their – It’s almost like trading cards. They just do them so they can have a collection of experiences. So, I kinda knew that guy. And, there’s this website, Erowid, (www.erowid.org). It’s like a forum where people go on and talk about their experiences with every single drug. I just did a lot of reading on there, just to get the terminology and stuff. Like “the onset is 120 minutes”. That’s how people talk on there.

SILVA: … instead of two hours, it’s 120 minutes.

CERA: … just because. You could say two hours. [laughs]

You’ve been trying on a lot of different creative hats, like you said you sought out him (Silva) for this film, and you worked in the writers room on “Arrested Development” – what has that experience been like, stretching outside of the acting job and trying on these different roles? 

CERA: It’s just various opportunities. I think it was really lucky to meet, and work with Sebastian, and get to go into new worlds with him. With the writing on “Arrested”, that was just a nice opportunity – to be invited to do that. You know, right time… at the… right place. [laughs] A spin on how to say that.

CRYSTAL FAIRY & THE MAGIC CACTUS AND 2012 will be released in theaters on July 11