Prepare to be inspired by the true redemption story of Inmate #1
Danny Trejo talks to Gemma Dunn about how he swapped crime and prison for a life in Hollywood
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 first-hand account of his larger-thanlife 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 documentary certainly packs a lot in, from Trejo’s childhood growing up in the “murder-obsessed 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 infamous 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.”
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.
On the side of Hollywood, Trejo – who landed his first break as an extra and boxing coach on Edward Bunker’s 1985 action thriller, Runaway Train – has made a name for himself as the go-to-guy for movie hardmen.
Titles include Con Air, Deperado, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn and, of course crime hit Heat, in which he starred alongside veteran Robert De Niro – the man he affectionately now refers to as ‘Bob’.
He recounts his death scene in which he’s shot by De Niro, stating: “That’s the way everybody thought I was going to end up. I’d been shot at a couple of times and by the grace of God, he kept me around.
“It’s funny because when I did that scene with Robert De Niro, I asked him, ‘Hey, Bob, how do you want to play this?’ And he said, ‘Danny, I think you already did. I think you just have enough breath to tell me to kill you’.
“It was the best death scene of the decade,” he cries. “And after that, he did Machete for me and when I ran into him, he went, ‘You, number one,’ because we always talked about number one on the call sheet. I said, ‘Can I get you some coffee, Mr De Niro?’”
As for recent work, Trejo has shot a movie called From a Son, an intense family drama directed by his own filmmaker son, Gilbert.
“It was the most emotional thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Trejo confesses, the premise focused on a father who embarks on an urgent search for his drug-addicted son. “God, he got me to just like sob and then I couldn’t stop.”
Did making Inmate #1 have a similar impact?
“I lived it so there’s no surprises there – but I was really happy with the way they did it,” he says.
“Because making a movie there’s a lot of steps that can make it or break it; there’s lighting, there’s editing, which is probably the most important thing in a film, and the way they edited it, it was just really beautiful.
“I’m really proud of what they did.”
“It was the most emotional thing I’ve ever done in my life”
● Inmate #1: The Rise of Danny Trejo is available on digital download now.