What an emotional screening. Mitchell and I were wrecks. As we walked back to the hotel, he said, “We just made spectacles of ourselves.” We reached out and held hands during the breathtaking first closeup of Jennifer Lopez, when Selena – getting on the tour bus – catches a glimpse of a couple making out nearby. She stares. There’s something on her face. We don’t know the character yet. We don’t know all of the factors leading up to that longing glance … but Lopez pulls us in to her experience. That’s a star. (Mitchell whispered to me, “Star quality cannot be taught.”)
I saw Selena in its first release, but seeing it huge – with Gregory Nava’s own personal print, shipped in at the last minute because the one Warner Brothers sent was subpar – was overwhelming. Jennifer Lopez is overwhelming.
Here is Roger Ebert’s review.
In the QA following the film, headed up by Monica Castillo and Claudia Puig, Nava was so forthcoming. So impassioned, and he answered all of our questions before we had even asked them. He shared one anecdote about the pressures on Jennifer Lopez during the filming of the scene in the Houston Astrodome. The place seats 30,000, and 30,000 people showed up – for free – to be in that audience. Selena fans, all, many of whom had been there for that original triumphant concert! So imagine the pressure on Jennifer Lopez: to not only have to re-create that concert, but to do so in front of 30,000 still-grieving passionate Selena fans. And it was a total triumph. Afterwards, Nava and Lopez stood together in her dressing room, hugging, and crying. The moment was pure triumph, tribute, validation.
Nava also spoke of the expectation of studio execs that he would shoot a scene in the motel room, the moment where Selena was murdered by her fan-club president. Nava never wanted to shoot that scene. (Mitchell said to me later: “The abruptness of the ending is almost exactly what it felt like when Selena died. It was almost unreal, like, ‘Wait, what just happened?'”) Nava’s whole purpose in making the film was to help contextualize and celebrate this gigantic star. He worked closely with the family on the script, interviewing all of them, using what he discovered in his screenplay. He felt very strongly about not showing the murder in all its detail. He said, “I refused to shed Selena’s blood for the studio.”
Mitchell said to me later, “I have been watching Selena on the small screen for years. I’ll watch it any time it comes on cable. But seeing it in a theatre is a totally different experience. Seeing closeups of Jennifer Lopez three-stories high is a totally different experience.”
You really get the scope of the tragedy.
