The Greatest Love Story Never Told follows Latina icon Jennifer Lopez as she embarks on her most daring and personal project – the creation of a new album and an original cinematic piece titled “This Is Me…Now.” The narrative takes the audience through her twenty-year career, exploring the highs and lows, triumphs, and challenges she faced. Unveiling her journey towards self-love, the film is a testament to Lopez’s determination to reclaim her narrative.

“The Greatest Love Story Never Told” grants unflinching access to Jennifer Lopez’s most personal moments. Through intimate interviews with her inner circle, including producing partners and longtime collaborators, the documentary paints a vulnerable portrait of an icon who puts it all on the line. Candid home moments showcase the real Jennifer Lopez, allowing audiences to witness her authenticity and resilience.

Directed by Jason Bergh and produced by team including Courtney Baxter, Gillian Brown, Lindsay Utz, and Stephan Bielecki, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told” is an Artists Equity production. Executive producers are Dani Bernfield and Jason Bergh, along with co-producers Caitlin Alba-Rothstein and Eliza Comer.

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Amazon MGM Studios will release the cinematic original

Watch the Official Trailer:

This Is Me…Now: A Love Story will stream globally on Prime Video on February 16th. This is the same day the new album This is Me…Now will be released, which is currently available for pre-order at https://jenniferlopez.lnk.to/ThisIsMeNowPR 

Directed by: Dave Meyers

Written by: Jennifer Lopez, Matt Walton 

Story by: Jennifer Lopez, Dave Meyers, Chris Shafer

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Fat Joe, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara, Jenifer Lewis, Jay Shetty, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sadhguru, Tony Bellissimo, Derek Hough, Trevor Jackson, Paul Raci, Bella Gagliano, Brandon Delsid, Ashley Versher, Malcolm Kelner, Alix Angelis, Danielle Larracuente, Matthew Law and Ben Affleck

Runtime: 65 Minutes

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Based on the celebrated novel by famed mystery writer Patricia Highsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley“), Deep Water takes you inside picture-perfect the marriage of Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas) Van Allen to discover the dangerous mind games they play and what happens to the people that get caught up in them.

De Armas was born in Cuba where she started her career as an actress. One of her first movies in the U.S. were  Knock Knock in 2015. She began getting more attention when she played Edgar Ramirez’s wife when he played Roberto Duran in the sports bio-pic of  Hands of Stone (2016) . However it was her role as a “holographic AI” in Blade Runner 2049 that really launched her career internationally. She was was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical for her role in Knives Out. She recently played Bond girl Paloma in No Time to Die and is set to portray Marilyn Monroe in the Netflix biographical drama Blonde (2022).

Deep Water is directed by Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal) from a screenplay by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. The cast also included Tracy Letts, Lil Rel Howery, Dash Mihok, Finn Wittrock, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Rachel Blanchard, Jade Fernandez, and Michael Braun.

The film is produced by Arnon Milchan, Guymon Casady, Benjamin Forkner and Anthony Katagas.

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Week of March 2 – 8th, 2020

Award Winning, Actress, Producer, Director Yeniffer Behrens seen here at the premiere of The Way Back in which she plays the character of Sofia.

The Way Back had its premiere this week and released theatrically Friday, March 6th, 2020. Behrens co-stars alongside Ben Affleck, who portrays Jack Cunningham a once high school basketball phenom who walked away from the game, forfeiting his future. Years later, when he reluctantly accepts a coaching job at his alma mater, he gets one last shot at redemption.

Behrens’ list of credits include Netflix’s Gracie & Frankie, ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder, and the films The Specialist, In Plain Sight, and The Contractor.  Imdb.com.

Behrens is an award-winning actress, producer and director. She hails from Caracas, Venezuela and her grandfather, a diplomate, moved the family to Washington D.C. when she was just 4 years old.

Growing up bilingual, she trained in dance, modeling, acting and participated in beauty pageants in 1989, was crowned Miss Teen Miami, after graduating from high school. Her high school mentor, Ms. Sciolino, encouraged her to apply to conservatory drama schools.

Yeniffer has also worked in English and Spanish commercials, films, national and international primetime and daytime shows, and has produced independent films in Mexico and the United States. She is co-owner & CEO of True Form Films with husband Mauricio Mendoza. Behrens is repped by LB Talent Agency and AKA Talent Agency, and Jasmin Espada (Publicist). You can follow her on social media @yenifferbehrens (Twitter).

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Hollywood has a long and notorious history of casting white actors to play non-white roles. It goes as far back to D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), in which white actors, in blackface, played African Americans.

That tradition has played out in the Latino community far too often as well. Too frequently, high-profile Latino characters in major motion pictures are played by non-Latino actors. The list is long, but here is a small sampling.

Wallace Beery – The Huggable Pancho

Wallace Beery in Viva Villa! (1934). As a kid, I loved Beery as Pancho Villa.  Beery portrayed the infamous bandit and revolutionary as a lovable, tender-hearted, man-child, bigamist and murderous rebel hero all wrapped up in one big Gringo Panda Bear.

That was the Wallace Beery persona, but nowhere near the real, historical Pancho Villa who was a hero of the Mexican Revolution who at one point was the Governor of Chihuahua (1913-1914). During that time he sent his men to help harvest crops, ordered the repair of railways and telegraph lines, and imposed a ruthless code of law and order.  U.S. Army General John J. Pershing was sent to capture Villa, but never caught him because of Villa’s guerrilla warfare tactics that are still taught at West Point.

However flawed, inaccurate and tone-deaf Berry’s Pancho Villa is today, it’s certainly easier to endure than Yul Brenner’s Pancho Villa in Villa Rides (1968). Really, a bald Villa (with a hairpiece) with a Russian accent?  Nyet!

The Inappropriate “Touch of Evil“

But even more offensive and off-key than the King of Siam (Brenner also played him in The King and I) was Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) playing Mexican American cop, Mike Vargas in Touch of Evil. Heston came across as authentic as a knock-off pair of Levi’s from Bangladesh.

Was Gilbert Roland not available?

Not only was Roland a real Latino. He had a real mustache. Heston’s mustache looked like it had been painted on with shoe polish by Groucho Marx. And, more importantly, Roland had acting chops.  He was nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award, for his roles in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

The Elsa Cárdenas Paradox

Then there’s the curious case of Elsa Cárdenas. The Tijuana-born, Mexican beauty was cast as Juana in the epic movie, Giant. Cárdenas was as Mexican as a Sunday morning, spicy bowl of “menudo” for a Saturday night, multiple beer and tequila shot induced hangover. But she was light-skinned. The producers felt her skin tone didn’t contrast enough with her white pale-faced co-stars

They solved the problem by using dark make-up on Señorita Cárdenas to make her look more Mexican. Thus, Elsa Cárdenas unwittingly became the first Latina to play a Mexican in brown face.

Turnabout is Fair Play

But on the other hand, we had Ricardo Montalban playing a Japanese kabuki performer with a Mexican accent in Sayonara (1957).  His accent also served him well for the title role in Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  In neither of those films did his accent come into question. Ajua! 

Anthony Quinn has portrayed every conceivable ethnic character; Greek, French, Mongol, Italian, to name a few. Who knew Zorba the Greek sounded like a Chicano from Boyle Heights!  This Chicano took home the 1952 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Emiliano Zapata’s brother, Eufemio in Viva Zapata.  Four years later he took the Oscar in the same category for his role as Paul Gaugin in Lust for Life in 1956.  Did someone say “talented Chicano”?

Latino Military Heroes are MIA in Film

 Latinos, especially Mexican Americans, have heroically fought in America’s military since the Civil War, receiving more Congressional Medal of Honors, the highest military honor, than any other ethnic group per capita. Shamefully, not one Hollywood war movie has ever had a Latino war hero as the main character.

Force of Arms (1951) which starred William Holden chronicles the hard-fought, battlefield exploits of the 36^th Infantry division from South Texas in the Italian campaign which was made up primarily of Mexicans, and Mexican Americans, yet in the film, not one character has a Spanish surname. In Hollywood war movies, all the GI’s are named either Jim, Mac or Smitty. Javier, Rogelio, and Manuel are nowhere to be found.

Flash forward to the 2012 Oscar-nominated film Argo based on the life of CIA agent Tony Mendez.  In 1980 Mendez orchestrated a dangerous clandestine operation that resulted in the rescue of six American diplomats from Tehran, during the height of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  Ben Affleck who produced the film cast himself in the role.

Mendez’s legendary covert exploits, as a CIA agent, make Jack Ryan look like a file clerk in an insurance office. 

Affleck, whose acting credits have produced more turkeys than Sanderson Farms and Butterball combined (Gigli, Daredevil, Pearl Harbor), plays a real life Mexican American hero. As a result, a survey of audience members who saw Argo, had no idea Mendez was a Latino. Wonder why?

But Seriously Folks

It’s time for Hollywood to realize letting Latinos play Latinos in prominent lead roles, with or without an accent, is not only the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do, from a profit point of view.

Latino are the #1 filmgoing audience, attending films at an average of 4.5 times annually as opposed to Caucasians who attend an average of 3.2 times.

But that doesn’t mean Latinos can’t also play non-Latino characters, and that is happening a bit more. Jennifer Lopez, Oscar Issac, and Zoe Saldana have all made that “crossover”. However, it is not the norm.

Until then I offer creative casting possibilities. Danny Trejo would have brought a welcome edginess and menace to the role of Mr. Rogers in It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

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Zorro Returns to TV as a Woman Caped Crusader

A female-centric Zorro TV series is being developed for NBC as part of a first look deal between CBS Television Studios and Propagate, a production company led by Ben Silverman and Howard Owens. Zorro is being developed by Alfredo Barrios Jr. (Magnum P.I. showrunner) as a modern retelling of the black-clad masked caped crusader of old California. Barrios Jr. will write the pilot as well as executive produce the series with a female sword-wielding Zorro as the lead protagonist. (Featured photo from The Legend of Zorro 2005)

First created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley in his serialized story “The Curse of Capistrano,” the fictional aristocratic Californio Don Diego de La Vega and his alter ego Zorro has been immortalized in films, television, comic books and novels. The most recent big screen outing was The Legend of Zorro in 2005 starring Antonio Banderas and on the small screen, New World’s Zorro starring Duncan Regher, Henry Darrow and the late Patrice Martinez Camhi. A female Zorro will be a welcome new twist to the character especially in this era of inclusion, gender bending and the me too movement. Since the project is in development no casting or projected airdate has been set.   

Under the same deal, Propagate is developing Home, also for NBC, written and executive produced by Jorge Reyes (Queen of the South showrunner) about a wealthy Puerto Rican family who oversees an intricate set of powerful alliances in industrial Buffalo, New York is in series development.

Ben Affleck to join Robert Rodriquez’s upcoming action film Hypnotic.

Ben Affleck joins Robert Rodriquez‘s  Hypnotic, an upcoming action movie written and directed by RR. The Oscar-winning actor is cast as a detective in a mystery thriller that involves him on a hunt for his missing daughter that leads to uncovering a secret covert government operation tied to a string of near-impossible criminal heists. This is the first on-screen collaboration between actor Affleck and the auteur director.

Rodriquez is trying to accommodate the films’ schedule to the busy actor’s commitments with a planned April 2020 start of production.   Affleck begins production this month on a New Regency Film Deep Water, co-starring Ana de Armas, followed by a Ridley Scott period drama The Last Duel that also stars Matt Damon and Adam Driver. 

Rodriquez’s latest hit film Alita: Battle Angel starred Rosa Salazar and is now out on Blu-Ray- Digital and DVD as well as available on streaming services. 

Affleck was seen earlier this year starring with Oscar Isaac and Charlie Hunnam in the South American set drug cartel heist action-adventure feature Triple Frontier for Netflix.

Hypnotic is the first project between Jeff Robinov’s Studio 8 and Mark Gill’s Solstice studios. Rodriguez and Robinov will produce together with Studio 8’s Guy Danella and John Graham 

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