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Can Danny Trejo Remember His Film Locations? (Anaconda, Spy Kids & More)

‘Seven Cemeteries’ star Danny Trejo joins Condé Nast Traveler to test his movie location knowledge. From Spy Kids to Anaconda, can Trejo remember locations from some of his most famous movies? SEVEN CEMETERIES is now available on demand and on digital.

Released on 11/05/2024

Transcript

I'm Danny Trejo and I've filmed in a lot of places.

[air whooshes] [bright jazz music]

All right, let's go.

This is a Catholic cathedral in Austin, Texas.

This one is from Machete.

Here's where Cheech Marin gets tortured.

And I come in with Jessica Alba

and it's so funny,

my favorite line is when people say,

God, I thought you were taller.

Well, I was taller enough to kiss Jessica Alba.

They shut up real quick.

So anyway, this movie, I really enjoyed this movie,

Machete Don't Text, came out then.

[Sartana] You could have at least texted me.

Machete don't text.

That saying came from me and Robert Rodriguez.

When we were at the San Diego Comic-Con, I jacked him up.

Hey, I keep calling you, man, answer your damn phone.

He says, Every time you call me Danny,

I'm in a meeting or I'm discussing something, text me.

And I just said, Machete, don't text.

So he put that in the movie.

All right, okay, and here's the next one.

I see a boat on a river.

This here is from Anaconda.

This is my boat.

And my character gets attacked by a giant anaconda.

You see the floorboards going up

and there's kind of a iconic scene

where the nails that are in the floor,

they come jumping up

and you see me, kind of great acting that I did.

[Danny chuckles]

Still waiting for the Oscar on that one.

This was filmed in Brazil, on the Amazon River.

I had a fourth grade teacher named Mrs. Finley

who was crazy about the Amazon River.

Now I'm sitting in East Los Angeles

and this crazy lady talking about the Amazon, who cares.

You know what I mean?

It's like, Hey lady, we got a river, the LA River.

And so it was just like crazy to me.

50 years later, I'm on the damn Amazon River

and Ice Cube and J-Lo and Eric Stoltz, Jon,

they're all asking questions,

so I was answering them.

He said, Where did you learn all that?

I thought you were a gangster.

You gangsters don't know about that.

And you can't tell Ice Cube,

I learned it in the fourth grade.

So I said, Well, when I was in the joint, I read a lot.

I swear to God, Mrs. Finley

used to always talk about

the stars on the Amazon River.

The stars are overwhelming.

And I thought, You ain't never been,

she had never been there.

So my scene was shot twilight.

So I'm sitting at the front of the ship

and I have nobody with me,

but the captain and the deck hands.

I'm looking, I look up, I see all these stars

and I screamed it.

Hey Mrs. Finley, the stars are overwhelming!

All the crew came running out, thinking I was nuts.

[Danny chuckles]

I said, The stars.

There it is, all right.

What I see in this picture is a little plane.

This is actually from Spy Kids.

This is the plane that the two kids,

Darrell and Alexa, them two.

I showed 'em this plane.

I go to sleep and they steal it from me

and go off to where the parents are being held.

Now what's that Spanish guy's name?

He's, that real, oh, Antonio Banderas.

He's like their dad and I'm his brother.

It's funny 'cause Alexa and Darryl

cost everybody a lot of money,

'cause they're some sharp kids.

They had a cuss jar

and every time somebody cussed,

you had to put a dollar in the thing,

but you didn't want to be bugged.

So everybody just put a 10 or a 20.

Just leave me alone.

Them kids were making 250, $300 every day.

You know, sharp kids.

All right, next stop.

I see a robbery taking place.

Big green truck was,

well, we knocked over the armored car with

yeah, that's the movie Heat.

I was one of the armed robbers in the De Niro gang.

This was shot in Los Angeles, downtown LA.

I can't remember the exact location,

but it was in between the two freeways.

Michael Mann was the director

and he accidentally called me Gilbert Trejo

because he knew my uncle in Folsom.

Michael Mann did a movie called The Jericho Mile

in Folsom with my uncle.

And they actually became friends.

And so when he called me Gilbert, I said,

No, I'm Danny.

And we started talking and Gilbert had passed away.

So finally he just came and said,

Hey, can I call you Gilbert?

'Cause every time I look at you, I think Gilbert.

Yeah, so in that movie,

it's Danny Trejo playing Gilbert Trejo.

So that was kind of a homage to my uncle.

All right, next one.

Okay, this picture is you're going into a bar

called the Tarasco.

This picture is, I know this, okay,

this is actually from Desperado.

This was filmed in Acuna Mexico.

Funny story about that.

I didn't say a word in this movie.

And I kept telling Robert,

Hey Robert, come on, what, gimme a line.

And he goes, No, no, no, no.

Kept arguing with him.

So after the movie aired

and all the bigwigs were screening it, they asked me,

you know, Q&A, Danny, you didn't say a word,

yet that character was so powerful.

Was that an actor's decision?

I went, Absolutely.

I think Robert gave me the finger, I don't know.

This was one of Antonio Banderas' first movies.

So nobody really knew him.

And I'm walking around in a vest with no shirt.

So everybody's asking me for autographs and pictures.

Robert says, Hey, they think you're the star of the movie.

And I says, You mean I'm not?

I thought I was too.

[Danny chuckles]

All right, what I see is this picture is, whoa.

I think this is also Machete.

No, hey, we stumped the stars.

I have no idea what these picture is

[Interviewer] This is Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

[Danny] Once Upon a Time in Mexico,

that was a lot of fun.

Oh, this was the big fight in the courtyard

where we were shooting and killing everybody.

And Antonio blast me and we hear all these watermelons

and I'm searching myself, make sure I didn't get hit.

We actually filmed it where the Mexican revolution started,

which was San Miguel De Allende.

El Grito, The Yell that was there.

And Fideo Ame he goes.

One of the things about this movie

was the way that when Selma would walk somewhere,

it's funny to watch like a sea of heads just turning,

everybody, you couldn't help it.

I see a ocean and a cave,

and this is from Six Days, Seven Nights

with Harrison Ford and Ann Hesh.

Kinda got about five weeks in Hawaii.

It was a tough shoot

'cause we're doing a lot of running, attacking,

a lot of swimming.

And Harrison Ford is cool.

He's one of 'em guys that just stands there and looks cool.

We had a lot of fun.

Everybody's got along really, really well.

Wow, this is me in Gone with the Wind.

That's what it looks like.

You know that last scene where, I'll return to Tara.

I see a tree with a beautiful kind of bronze sunset.

A cemetery, I have no idea.

[Interviewer] This is from Seven Cemeteries.

Well, I did it, I haven't seen it yet.

[Danny laughs]

Right after the Bruja, the witch has revived me

and I'm going around to different cemeteries

and reviving my old gang.

There's seven of 'em.

So everything about it, it's just a fun, fun movie.

We used this house, old abandoned house,

that I swear to God had these beautiful spiders,

but they were that big, you know?

And when you got near their nest,

they would start like moving.

[Danny chuckles]

This was filmed outside of Oklahoma City.

In fact, I went into one of the casinos there

and they wanted me to put Trejo's Tacos there.

So I might be going back there to do that.

Hey, this is Danny Trejo.

I did pretty good.

The only reason I didn't get Seven Cemeteries

is 'cause I just did it.

[rock music]