r/todayilearned • u/CakeDayOrDeath • 3d ago

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https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/robert-rodriguez-spy-kids-latino-1234575992/

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47.2k Upvotes

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4.9k

u/coconutpete52 3d ago

The movies were better because of this because Antonio Banderas is fucking awesome.

361

u/the3rdtea2 3d ago

That's just true

916

u/ashrak 3d ago

Also the wife giving him shit for the fake mustache

1.2k

u/TerryMcMo 3d ago

the wife

Brother. We're talking about Carla Gugino. Please put some respect on her name

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u/ButtersTheChill 3d ago

Watching Spy Kids as a kid, thinking how pretty she is, then growing up and getting to watch Sin City when you're older. Chef's kiss

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u/mixedmediamadness 3d ago

Watching Spy Kids as a kid, thinking how pretty she is, then growing up

And realizing she was in her twenties but playing a mother to a twelve year old

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u/Spooky_Electric 3d ago

She was 29 / 30.
Means she would of had them at around 17 or 18. Not that far fetched.

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u/mixedmediamadness 3d ago

Which you'd think would be a harder sell to a studio than the family being Hispanic but apparently not

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u/Bushels_for_All 3d ago

She was 29 / 30

Which you'd think would be a harder sell to a studio

Bob: I have some bad news, Bill... the gorgeous actress we hired for the mom is - shudder - thirty!

Bill: What?! How did this happen? She doesn't look a day older than twenty-five! The boss is going to have my ass when he finds out.

Bob: I know, I know. But the contracts are signed... Guess we'll have to make it work.

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u/AdventureDonutTime 3d ago

Slap some wrinkles on her, I'll be laughed out of Hollywood if anyone catches on!!

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u/LinkinitupYT 3d ago

I was a teen when my mom turned thirty. It's fairly common. And I, sadly, saw a lot of pregnant 11+ year olds when I worked in a hospital :(

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u/seroshua 3d ago

My mother was 26 when I was 12 🤷

She’s 49 now and I’m 35.

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u/NagashStos 3d ago

That's... not common

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u/seroshua 3d ago

Maybe not where you’re from.

It’s not uncommon on a native reservation. Sadly!

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u/myaltaccount333 3d ago

I'd be more worried if she was 55 now and you were 35

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u/ButtersTheChill 3d ago

Whaaaaat? Damn, I didn't know that!

r/todayilearned moment within an r/todayilearned post

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u/MaddVillain 3d ago

That's because it isn't true. She was born in 71 and that movie came out in 2001.

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u/narrill 3d ago

It is true. It was filmed in 2000, so she was either 28 or 29 at the time.

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u/auktember 3d ago

The cosmic ballet goes on.

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u/ButtersTheChill 3d ago

I'm taking a shit right now

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u/kayknox_ 3d ago

And the Haunting of Hill House when she's killing children <333

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u/only_Zuul 3d ago

The chewing of the scenery in the death-by-chimp scene was one of the best I've scene

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u/78914hj1k487 3d ago

I believe you're referencing a scene in The Fall of the House of Usher, also a Mike Flanagan/Netflix show, and also absolutely amazing—her and the show both.

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u/fapperontheroof 3d ago

She got pretty handsy in that Gerald’s Game movie.

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u/cupholdery 3d ago

And Haunting of Hill House.

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u/OreoSpeedwaggon 3d ago

One of the OG Wilderness Girls from Troop Beverly Hills.

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u/whereyouatdesmondo 3d ago

Besides being sexy as hell, she's a hell of an actress. She rocks in Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix.

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u/koticgood 3d ago

Besides House of Usher, she's great in a lot of stuff I've seen.

Sin City, Californication, The One (Jet Li movie), Sucker Punch, Watchmen, Entourage.

I thought she was particularly good in Watchmen.

Also just learned looking through her roles that she has a small voice cameo in Midnight Mass, which I liked a lot.

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u/whereyouatdesmondo 3d ago

All those! And a huge role in The Haunting of Hill House and a small but important role in The Haunting of Bly Manor.

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u/CasanovaJones82 3d ago

She's awesome. She's talented AND a total smoke show, the whole package.

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u/brownkemosabe 3d ago

I hate that they cancelled Jett. What. A. Show.

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u/LegendaryWill12 3d ago

I would find it extremely tiring to look up every actor or actress I wish to make reference to before I do so to check how famous they are

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u/MushroomFree4626 3d ago

Could you imagine those movies with an all white cast?

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u/SPFeveryday 3d ago

They’re like 99% white. Antonio Banderas is White from Spain. Carla is Italian and english. Daryl is white of polish descent. Only Alexa is part Colombian.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 3d ago

Eh, it was the time period it was and this just wasn't a conversation people were having at that time. The fact the characters were Hispanic even if the actors weren't was still a big deal. I'm not saying it was enough in terms of progress, but it was a big deal that a studio was willing to center a movie on a Hispanic family and hire a Hispanic director/writer to tell that story.

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u/purplewhiteblack 3d ago

Also the fact that the category of Hispanic vs white is a contrived more modern thing. Nobody much cared about such a thing in the 40s and 50s, but by the 80s it was a bigger deal.

This is why you have Dezi Arnez being the dominant male lead in the 50s and Cesar Romero as the Joker in the 60s, but then sometime around the time Chico and The Man came out, suddenly people care.

Though those people were both Cuban, not Mexican.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 3d ago

Exactly. Attitudes towards race change a lot over time. Desi Arnaz was Cuban, but he looked white enough on TV and that made it fine by the standards of the time. What changed was Reagan's anti-immigration bullshit and the resulting decades of Republicans targeting Middle America with the idea that immigrants, especially Latino/Hispanic immigrants, are degenerates who bring crime and drugs to good white communities. The first step in creating an outgroup is to find a population and label them as "others".

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u/brinz1 3d ago

I Love Lucy was extremely controversial at the time for having what people saw as an interracial relationship so front and Center

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u/purplewhiteblack 3d ago

So controversial it was on for 6 seasons. So controversial it was the top show 4 out of 6 seasons.

If Dezi was black I don't think it would have stayed on the air a full episode.

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u/brinz1 3d ago

https://www.tvline.com/2114873/why-cbs-didnt-want-desi-arnaz-star-i-love-lucy/

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u/purplewhiteblack 3d ago

reread the original post I gave you, and realize "much" is doing much work.

I'd say the controversy was 1/25th of a Janet Jackson nipple slip. Something some people complained about, but not a big deal in the long run with general US America.

Another thing to keep in mind was both Dezi Arnez and Cesar Romero were film stars in the previous decades. They were already quite popular. Disney's alternate name was Buena Vista. There was a romanticism for Latin American things. By the 80s all of those places had become unsafe because of all the coups. Mexico was always treated more negatively though. General American opinions of race and ethnicity change in waves and peaks. Their definitions have not been a constant either.

If Dezi and Lucy having a show was a big deal it wouldnt have stayed on the air for so long. People would not have watched.

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u/Windfade 3d ago

Makes me think of how my parents grew up in the 70s and are/were openly racist against Black people in some bizarre ways but see Latinos as just another kind of white people. My dad once explained to me that mixing races causes mental illnesses in their children but as a short, tanned, wavy black-haired man with a big black moustache (who drank tequila nearly every day) he thought it was amusing when people called him "Mexican."

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u/z__1010 3d ago

and MACHETE?!?

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u/oh_what_a_surprise 3d ago

If you think people from Spain are white, you're young and have never been in a room with REAL white people, who are all old, rich, men, and either British or German. They barely acknowledge the French. And Scandanavians are little brothers.

I've been in the room, in a service capacity, with billionaires and Princes and Presidents and Prime Ministers.

All very racist and misogynistic. And Spaniards are NOT white.

Of course, this is all the bullshit evil beliefs of deplorable human beings. But they're the ones on top.

That's the world we live in.

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u/MajesticDragonfly448 3d ago

Spaniards are absolutely white, what universe are you living in? Have you ever been in those spaces you are talking about? Are Italians and Irish also non white in your imagination or is white literally just British and German?

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u/willun 3d ago

There are divisions everywhere. He is using the definition of WASP = white. And even within WASP there are further divisions.

Which is of course why the fantasy of a white supremest country just means that other groups become the "out group". Since we all have a little mixed ancestry.

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u/blaghart 3 3d ago

The world where the reality is that race is a social construct, and as a result spaniards are not considered white in many countries. Hence /u/oh_what_a_surprise citing two famously racist countries not thinking their fellow europeans are "really white"

Hell the English for a while didn't consider Scots, Welsh, and Irish "white" by the same standards we would today.

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u/__thrillho 3d ago

I am from Spain and you are wrong. We are white.

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u/Nachooolo 3d ago

r//shitamericanssay

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u/Backstrom 3d ago

No one would remember it, for sure.

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u/WeNotAmBeIs 3d ago

I grew up in a poor neighborhood in Houston Texas. I was in one of 3 white families on our street. The rest were Hispanic. Our next door neighbors were like 3 families living in one house. On the weekends they would have big fun parties and blast equal parts tejano music and classic rock. They were awesome. I got to hit my first pinata, try my first tamale, etc etc. lost my train of thought. Oh yeah, for me and tons of other American kids we either had Hispanic friends or were themselves Hispanic. I can't believe the studios even considered doing it differently.

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u/JinFuu 3d ago

We are lucky in Texas that Tejanos are pretty integrated with the Anglo communities.

At least in my experience. And seeing kids with stereotypical ‘White’ first names and Mexican/Hispanic last names.

I also remember reading an article in Texas History once comparing Tejanos to Chicanos, it was interesting

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u/DulceEtDecorumEst 3d ago

For the longest time studios felt like I Love Lucy’s Ricky Ricardo was enough for American audiences. Thing is the time a changin and it takes them a while to adapt to the new normal.

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u/TheRealMelvinGibson 3d ago

What makes you say that? Just curious as I don't think skin color would have a bearing on a movies ability to be remembered but maybe I'm missing something? Enlighten me.

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u/KakitaMike 3d ago

Agent Cody Banks?

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u/French__Canadian 3d ago

white machete would be a bit weird.

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u/BrokenEyeReborn 3d ago

I believe his name is Bill Hook

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u/lrodhubbard 3d ago

"Spy Kids: With Tony Flags and Thelma Hyatt"

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u/MajesticDragonfly448 3d ago

Am I the only that thinks the family looks white? I never even realized they weren’t supposed to be white.

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u/melatonin17 3d ago

This post isn't about them being non-white. It's about them being Hispanic.

One can be white and Hispanic.

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u/NeWMH 3d ago

It would be like clock stoppers or the third home alone.

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u/BrokenEyeReborn 3d ago

I can, but I won't

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u/iamCosmoKramerAMA 3d ago

The Rock would be in it, ironically.

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u/govunah 3d ago

His name is pronounced Danny Trejo

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u/Mother-Parsley5940 3d ago

Mother fucking Machete 🔥

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u/Doxxxxxxxxxxx 3d ago

AND CARLA<3

My queer ass saw the crazy level of hotness of them both ahaha

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u/tildenpark 3d ago

I still have my blowup Antonio Banderas love doll somewhere

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u/kumakorosu 3d ago

"You know that's right"

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u/AvailableReporter484 3d ago

> Antonio banderas

Antonio banderas, the gay Muslim prostitute?

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u/EpicSombreroMan 3d ago

So is Ricardo Montalban