‘I was supposed to go t Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo
proves redemption is po most unlikely journeys. Gemma Dunn finds out more from th
YEARS in the making, Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo outshines any Hollywood fiction.
The feature documentary - directed by filmmaker, Brett Harvey - offers up a raw portrait of unlikely action star Trejo, who left behind a life of drugs, armed robbery and hard prison time for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood.
And with the 76-year-old giving viewers a firsthand account of his larger-than-life journey supported by a cast of family, friends and bigname talent - it’s little wonder it’s being hailed one of the greatest transformations of human character ever put on screen.
It’s certainly pleased Trejo, who today has joined us on Zoom.
His mindset, he says, was to provide something that would be “great for high school students”.
“Something for kids who might be going a little [off the rails] - nothing glamorous!” he insists, before adding: “This is all glamorous now, now that we’ve stopped all that. But when I go to high schools, I say, ‘It’s easy to be a big fish in a little pond, but be a big fish out here. That’s the trick’.
“The kids listen to me, they like to hear it, and that’s due to the movies; that’s the platform that the good Lord has given me.”
The probing portrayal certainly packs a lot in, from Trejo’s childhood growing up in the “murderobsessed
capital of Los Angeles” to his teenage years spent as a heroin addict to stick-up artist, prison inmate, champion boxer, drug counsellor and, eventually, actor.
In total he spent 11 years flitting in and out of jail for various armed robberies and drug offences before, in the late ‘60s, changing his ways once and for all.
Decades later and the father of three has been sober for close to 52 years, and to this day continues to counsel recovering addicts and speak at state prisons.
He believes it’s an honour that’s been bestowed on him - to pay forward.
“In 1968 me and Ray Pacheco went to the hole [solitary confinement] for an insider riot,” Trejo recalls of his time spent at California’s infamously violent San Quentin State Prison.
“Some people were badly hurt, and they were going to send us to the gas chamber, so I made a deal with God. I didn’t say, ‘Let me go’, because I didn’t think we had a chance. I said, ‘Let me die with dignity; I’ll say your name every day and do whatever I can for my fellow men’.
“I was trying to play a trick on him because I thought maybe it would be three years and then he’d kill me,” he admits, laughing. “But he kinda just said, ‘OK’. And the DA rejected the case and basically I got out.”
“So now I don’t condemn anybody who doesn’t want to help or anybody who doesn’t want to feed the homeless or give anything,” he follows. “Because they don’t owe; I owe my life. I asked God a couple of days ago, ‘How am I doing, man?’ And he goes, ‘You’re almost out of hell, keep it up’.”
He doesn’t feel he paid his dues serving time behind bars?
“No, I still owe. I was supposed to go to prison, I honestly believe that,” Trejo confides.
“Probably only 10 per cent of the people that are in prison belong in prison and I was one of those 10 per cent, and I got out. When the parole board let me go, they said, ‘Hey, bring us back a life sentence would you?’ And I been back.”
Other than to talk to inma course - an act which can trigg emotion.
“It’s the same smell, same same hopelessness,” he says of to his old stomping ground. “P hopeless pit of tension and the you walk into it, you taste it, a around and you know.
“You’re with a whole bunch who actually feel deep down th been thrown away, they’re of n continues. “So for me to just to and help them do one day is a I’m going to walk out.
“I say, ‘If you get anything bless you, I’m glad. If you don’ least I hope you’ll do this one d cheer because they understand you want to do in prison is just with.”
On the side of Hollywood, his first break as an extra and Edward Bunker’s 1985 action Train - has made a name for h guy for movie hardmen.
Titles include Con Air, Dep From Dusk Till Dawn and, of c Heat, in which he starred alon Robert De Niro - the man he a refers to as ‘Bob’.
He recounts his death scen by De Niro, stating: “That’s th thought I was going to end up. couple of times and by the gra me around.
“It’s funny because when I Robert De Niro, I asked him, ‘ you want to play this?’ And he think you already did. I think enough breath to tell me to kil
“It was the best death scen