Inside Los Frikis, New Movie from Peanut Butter Falcon Duo

It’s fitting that Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz’s Los Frikis is about the punk-rock spirit. It’s truly the most punk-rock choice they could’ve made following The Peanut Butter Falcon, their critically acclaimed 2019 indie that starred Dakota Johnson, Shia LaBeouf and Zack Gottsagen.

After Peanut Butter Falcon’s profitable theatrical run and awards season contention, Nilson and Schwartz were tempted with all the usual offers from the major studios, but their hearts kept gravitating toward a uniquely challenging story about the Cuban experience in the 1990s. Needless to say, their admirable decision to remain in the independent space was met with a lot of blank stares and head-scratching. 

“We took a meeting with a studio head who was like, ‘Alright, I’ve got a movie with two movie stars. You’ll get on a plane tonight, and we’ll go shoot it.’ And we were like, ‘Holy shit, that’s amazing, but we’re working on this Spanish-language Cuban movie about HIV and punk rockers,’” Schwartz recalls to The Hollywood Reporter. “And, at the time, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he respects how steadfast we are in our creative vision.’ But, looking back, I think he was looking at us like we were idiots, and he might not be wrong. We chose a tough path.”

Nilson and Schwartz’s unconventional move to delay the safety of a studio project for a Spanish-language Cuban story about punk rockers who self-infected themselves with HIV was so controversial that it cost them their representatives at the time. Their now-former reps were right by their side when Peanut Butter Falcon struggled at first to gain festival traction and distribution, until its eventual world premiere at 2019’s South by Southwest landed an audience award and a theatrical release through Roadside Attractions. Thus, the duo were encouraged to take the path of least resistance for their sophomore effort, but despite knowing the pitfalls ahead of them, Nilson and Schwartz couldn’t shake their storytelling instincts. 

“It was not smart what we did. We understand that,” Schwartz and Nilson admit. “And [our former reps] were right: Los Frikis has been difficult. They saw that down the runway … and said, ‘We don’t want you to have to experience that again.’ And out of naivete or hubris or the undying quest for art, we decided to do Los Frikis anyway.”

The co-writers and directors are certainly not averse to major studio projects or franchises. In fact, they’re currently developing a new take on Treasure Island for Disney. If Peanut Butter Falcon was a modern riff on Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, then the duo have another intriguing approach in mind for Robert Louis Stevenson’s own classic novel.

“It’s an Australian surfer version of Treasure Island, and if they [Disney] ever make it, it would be so fun. It has the vibes that we do, and there’s found family, brotherhood, drama and outsider energy,” says Schwartz, with Nilson adding, “It has the patina of the 1970s surf world.”

As for the well-received Los Frikis, the 1991-set drama chronicles two Cuban brothers, Gustavo (Eros de la Puente) and Paco (Héctor Medina), as Paco is the frontman for an underground punk band, exemplifying the “Los Frikis” movement that emerged out of Fidel Castro’s decades-long ban on rock music. On top of law enforcement breathing down their necks, the two brothers can barely feed themselves in a time of economic crisis and great scarcity. So they arrive at a dangerous fork in the road: either they take their chances at sea en route to America, or they inject themselves with HIV in order to live in relative comfort at a beachside sanatorium. Gustavo and Paco choose the latter in their own distinct ways, but they’re equally naive to the severity of the virus and how soon a cure would be available.

Nilson and Schwartz strived to make the film as authentically as possible, and so they sought the producorial help of Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Lord Miller), given that the former is Cuban American. Lord did not take the opportunity lightly, and so Nilson and Schwartz pledged to leave no stone unturned when it came to representing his maternal family’s Cuban community.

“Phil Lord really liked Peanut Butter Falcon, and we were able to get a meeting with him and Chris [Miller],” Schwartz shares. “And Phil explained, ‘This is very high stakes for me. This is my community. If we do a nice job, that’s great, but if we mess it up, that’s on me. So if we come on to do this, I’m going to need the commitment to pay attention to every single one of the details.’”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR in support of Los Frikis‘ theatrical expansion on Christmas day, Nilson and Schwartz also discuss the key assists they received from Dave Grohl, David Fincher, Barry Manilow and Adria Arjona.

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Coming out of The Peanut Butter Falcon, did you do the water bottle tour and listen to all sorts of possibilities? 

TYLER NILSON The water bottle tour, that’s funny. 

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ Yeah, there were some cool keeper water bottles. 

NILSON There were sweatshirts, too. Yeah, we did the tour, and we certainly had some opportunities presented. But we felt like Los Frikis was really speaking to us, creatively and spiritually. It felt like the right thing to do. But I’m going to use “water bottle tour” from now on.  

I’ve talked to some directors who were a bit self-conscious about the fact that they made the jump from an acclaimed indie to a franchise. It’s just become a common trajectory these days. Were you guys ever tempted with a version of that opportunity?

SCHWARTZ Yeah, and we still want to do that. Certain stories are a little bit too edgy for studios, and Los Frikis is one of them. But we can still be creatively fulfilled by certain stories at a larger level. We’re working on Treasure Island for Disney. It’s an Australian surfer version of Treasure Island, and if they ever make it, it would be so fun. It has the vibes that we do, and there’s found family, brotherhood, drama and outsider energy.

NILSON It has the patina of the 1970s surf world. It’s all there. 

SCHWARTZ So we’re not against doing that, and while we did have some conversations about going to studio movies with really big budgets and really famous people, we just couldn’t stop thinking about Los Frikis. We took a meeting with a studio head who was like, “Alright, I’ve got a movie with two movie stars. You’ll get on a plane tonight, and we’ll go shoot it.” And we were like, “Holy shit, that’s amazing, but we’re working on this Spanish-language Cuban movie about HIV and punk rockers.” And he was like, “Cool, who are you doing that with?” And we were like, “It’s just us.” And, at the time, I thought, “Oh my God, he respects how steadfast we are in our creative vision.” But, looking back, I think he was looking at us like we were idiots, and he might not be wrong. (Laughs) We chose a tough path.

When you told your reps that you instead wanted to focus on another highly specific story, one that’s in a foreign language, did they start loosening their ties?

NILSON These are good questions that we’re going to talk about in very roundabout ways, but we’re not with those reps anymore. And they’re good reps, too.

SCHWARTZ It was not smart what we did. We understand that, and when people are looking out for your best interests, they recommend the things that are going to help you be successful, especially if they’ve understood the struggle. Peanut Butter Falcon didn’t get into the first ten film festivals that it was submitted to. It didn’t get distribution [for a while], and they saw how heartbreaking that was for us and the whole team. And so they were looking out for us, thinking, “We don’t want that to happen to you again. If you have a bigger movie with a movie star and a studio, you get to make the work and focus on the work being good until it comes out.” And they were right: Los Frikis has been difficult. They saw that down the runway. They saw how difficult this one was going to be and said, “We don’t want you to have to experience that again.” And out of naivete or hubris or the undying quest for art, we decided to do Los Frikis anyway.

When your two choices in life are to either take your chances on a makeshift raft at sea, or inject yourself with HIV in order to guarantee three meals a day, that’s as harrowing as it gets. How did you come across the basis for this Cuban experience in the ‘90s? 

SCHWARTZ Tyler and I are really drawn to super specific stories of outsiders, resilience and joy in the face of really difficult circumstances. We have friends from Cuba, and while spending a couple months there, we heard this [‘90s] story, among many others, about the Cuban people. So there was a sensibility there that really resonated with us. They describe it as gallows humor. Things have been very difficult in Cuba for decades now, but there’s a gravity toward art and humor even in the most difficult circumstances. So Tyler and I were like, “What stories do we want to put out into the world?” And this was one that we wanted to put out into the world.

NILSON There’s so many movies and stories being told that I’ve already seen before, and it’s not that there’s anything wrong with remakes. That’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking more about something like the classic rom-com [formula] that we’ve seen before. But I had never heard a story that had as powerful an engine as this one, so it just seemed like a no-brainer to try it.

I presume you fictionalized a lot of these character stories within this real-life premise, but did you ever find an account where someone faked their way into an HIV-positive sanatorium?

NILSON We did not find an account where someone faked their way into a sanitarium, but, yes, Los Frikis is based on true events. It’s like a World War II film. World War II happened, but Saving Private Ryan did not. That’s our analogy for it. So these types of things happened, and we read and researched for years. Cuban people injected themselves with HIV to get into these sanatoriums, and we did our best to crack a story that could happen within that space. There’s definitely the spirit of certain people or the archetype of a caretaker, but we tried to be as respectful as we could. We weren’t telling a specific life story; we were telling the story of all these people in the sanatorium. We’d see photos of guys playing baseball, and one guy would be wearing a wig while throwing a baseball and smoking a cigarette. So we’d be like, “That guy’s got style. Let’s make sure he’s represented in our film in the best way possible.”

SCHWARTZ We put a lot of thought into this question of whether we were going to do a biopic about specific people or not. And as we started the outlining and writing process, we realized that, even after years of research, we were never going to know their secrets, their love lives or what they said in conversations. And filling in character arcs to make the movie work might be forcing things that were not true onto specific people. So we were like, “Let’s pay tribute to the people that lived this in the best way possible,” and that was to make the characters archetypes.

As a kid, I’d complain about having to wait an hour for my favorite song to play on MTV or KROQ. But these young Cubans, at the risk of imprisonment, had to illegally rig an antenna in the perfect spot so they could then tape-record Nirvana over the radio. That really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? 

SCHWARTZ Yeah, growing up, my mom might get mad at me for listening to something she didn’t want me listening to, but in Cuba, you could actually go to jail for it. And there wasn’t a specific law written about it. You could go to jail for listening to rock music or playing it. You could also go to jail for being gay. But there were no specific laws banning rock and roll. It was just Fidel Castro saying, “It’s the music of the enemy.” So the legal system and laws were a little bit more gray in Cuba, but the danger really was there.

I really connected to this movie because, like Gustavo’s band, the first song that I ever learned to play with a friend was Nirvana’s “Come As You Are.”

SCHWARTZ Oh, that’s great! 

Is it relatively easy to clear Nirvana songs these days? I remember a time when you couldn’t do it until Six Feet Under opened the floodgates in 2005.

SCHWARTZ It should have been harder than it was for Nirvana. We started by going to the company that controls the rights to The Rolling Stones, and they asked for a million dollars [for “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”], which would’ve been most of this movie’s budget. So we were just like, “No, we can’t do that.” But our really great music supervisor [Kier Lehman] knew the people for Nirvana and their management, and he said, “Can you actually just read these pages?” So I think Dave Grohl received the scene where it says, “Gustavo and Nestor play the worst cover in the history of rock music.” And that’s when they’re in the barn playing “Come As You Are.” And [Dave Grohl] was like, “That’s pretty cool, man. Yeah, we’ll do it, and we’ll do it for the minimum.” So he had to get permission from Krist Novoselic and Courtney Love, I think, and they all came back and said, “Yeah, let’s do it. This sounds cool.” We then went back to The Rolling Stones’ licensing company and said, “Can you match the deal that Nirvana gave us?” And they did.

Brilliant maneuvering. 

SCHWARTZ Barry Manilow was actually the hardest one to clear. His manager was just like, “You’re making fun of him the whole movie.”

Until you don’t. 

SCHWARTZ Yeah, we were like, “No, until we don’t. Watch the movie.” Barry Manilow has his own arc, and so it took us months and months to get Barry Manilow’s manager to watch the movie. When he finally did, he wrote back, saying, “It’s a beautiful movie. Of course, you can use the song [“Copacabana (At the Copa)”], just as long as you don’t cut the line: ‘Barry fucking Manilow.’”

Adria Arjona told me about Los Frikis two-and-a-half years ago, and since then, she’s made quite a leap in her career. Has her involvement made a difference at every stage? 

SCHWARTZ Yeah, it’s everything. In addition to being the female lead, she’s a producer on the movie, and we involved her in the discussions at every point, creatively. When you’re trying to finance a small movie, having a movie star on board is really helpful, so she was the movie star who allowed the financing to go. That also allowed us to cast the rest of the cast with Cubans and lesser known Cuban actors. So we’re super indebted to her. She was with us every step of the way, for years, as we were preparing. And through Covid, it was a big conversation of, “Can we shoot this in Cuba? Can we shoot this in Mexico? Should we look at Puerto Rico or The Dominican Republic?” And, ultimately, we chose The Dominican Republic. So she was not only the best actress and coolest producer, but she’s also just the coolest person in real life.

Perhaps directing duos all keep an eye on each other, but I couldn’t find any obvious connections between you guys and Lord Miller. Maybe there’s a law firm in common. 

NILSON & SCHWARTZ (Laugh)

Did Phil and Chris catch an early screening and insist on signing on as producers? 

SCHWARTZ No, similar to Adria, they were also on this from the very beginning. You want to be sure that you’re going to be able to do a movie like this in the right way, and for the first couple years, we were not convinced that we were going to be able to do it in the right way. Even when we were writing it, we thought that it just might be a really cool writing sample. If we couldn’t get a Cuban producer, a Cuban cast and the right people, then we weren’t going to make it. So Phil Lord, who’s Cuban American, really liked Peanut Butter Falcon, and we were able to get a meeting with him and Chris [Miller]. We said, “We have this Cuban movie for you, and we’d love for you guys to come on as producers.” And there was some resistance at first since they’ve made mostly big studio movies. They really haven’t made a ton of independent movies. And Phil explained, “This is very high stakes for me. This is my community. If we do a nice job, that’s great, but if we mess it up, that’s on me. So if we come on to do this, I’m going to need the commitment to pay attention to every single one of the details, to hire all the right people, to cast the right people, to engage with me and be thoughtful at every turn.” And we said, “Of course.” So Phil then connected us with Héctor Medina, who plays Paco in the movie.

Amazing performance.

SCHWARTZ Yes, and Héctor, for the first six months, was just a script consultant. He helped us make sure that we got all the Cuban details right. During the pandemic, we’d get on Zoom once every two weeks, and he’d explain, “This is how we’d say this,” or, “These are the fruits we’d talk about.” So he was just so polite and quiet. At the end of six months, we locked the script, and he said, “I want to be in the movie.” And we were like, “Okay, cool. We’ll find you a spot and we’ll give you a line. We appreciate all your work on this.” But then he said, “I want to be Paco.” And we were like, “Okay, we’ll see.” We then had him self-tape the last scene on the beach where there’s three or four layers of things going on all at once, and he just did it perfectly against a blue wall. It was the way it is in the movie. So Tyler and I said, “I guess we found our Paco.” He proceeded to become this wolf. We kept saying, “Wolf energy,” because he had the heart from the beginning. So he developed Paco’s wolf energy over a series of months as he learned to sing and play guitar. He lost like 30 pounds by just walking 20 miles a day and limiting his diet. He became the leader of the group, and he did such a good job. So his casting came from Phil Lord and his cousin, who’d made a movie with Héctor, and just being open to the people that are best for the job.

I’ve always admired the support that filmmakers offer each other, and that’s a perfect example. The thank-you section of any film also includes a list of all the directors who offered notes on a cut or script, so was David Fincher actually a part of your note network?

NILSON He was not a part of our note network, but he deserves a thank you. When we were shooting in The Dominican Republic, he was shooting The Killer with Michael Fassbender. He was doing a giant car chase on this road that we were looking directly into, and we were like, “Our shots are ruined. There’s car screeches and chaos.”

SCHWARTZ His whole base camp was in our shot.

NILSON So our first AD [James Grayford] walked over and talked to Fincher’s guy. Fincher then came out, and our first AD was like, “Hey, we’re this little independent film. You’re this much bigger thing than us.” And they were like, “Yeah, we’ll move. We’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

SCHWARTZ They sacrificed a day of shooting so that we could get our shot. It’s five minutes into the movie where the brothers are saying, “With Rock and roll, you can feel it.” They’re talking about The Rolling Stones and Kurt Cobain. But, in the background, if Fincher hadn’t moved his base camp, you would’ve seen honeywagons and catering trucks and all that stuff.

There isn’t a great deal of information about you guys. How’d you link up? 

NILSON We lived in the same building, and I had vibes with Mike right away. He was working as an assistant editor, doing commercials. I was doing a little bit of commercial acting and trying to write, so we were just two young guys in L.A. who we were trying to figure it out. At nighttime, we’d all hang out at my house and talk about movies. So we built a friendship first, and we didn’t even think about working together for another six or seven years. I worked on a short film with another guy, and I couldn’t figure it out. Mike then came in and really helped as an editor. We did some reshoots, and it was like we had always been working together. So we’ve been working together ever since.

SCHWARTZ I never really wanted to be a director. I don’t think Tyler did either. I was an editor, and I helped Tyler get this short film across the finish line. We then volunteered at a camp for people with and without disabilities in Venice Beach, and we met Zack Gottsagen, who later became the star of The Peanut Butter Falcon. He was the one who really turned us into directors. He was having a conversation about wanting to be a movie star, and we candidly said, “Zack, there’s not a lot of people writing movies for you or making movies for you. You have Down syndrome. It’s hard for everybody, but it’s extra hard for you.” He’d seen our short film [The Moped Diaries], and he said, “Well, you guys are filmmakers. You should just make me a feature.” And it seemed like a really good idea, so Tyler and I decided to write it. We checked out books from the library to learn how to write movies, and Peanut Butter Falcon was the first script we ever wrote. We were originally going to try and make it with just the three of us. Our friend Dave was going to run the camera, I was going to edit and Tyler was going to play the Shia LaBeouf role. But we couldn’t figure out how to make it or come up with the $30,000 it was going to take to do it really small. So we basically shot a trailer for it, and we showed it to people. We ended up getting Oscar-nominated producers, Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson and Thomas Haden Church, so it became bigger. But it was fun. Our approach to directing is to hire people who are smarter than us and trust them. We’ll coach or give little nudges if need be, and while I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, we’re not “visionary” directors. We don’t come to set knowing what the movie is going to be already. We come in, and we vibe on collaboration. If the DP comes up with a shot idea or an actor pitches a mood or something different, we’re there to catch all of those moments and then cut them together. So we really fell in love with directing while making The Peanut Butter Falcon, and we just want to keep going.

As you mentioned earlier, Treasure Island could potentially be next, but is your reimagining of Riders of Justice still an iron in the fire?

SCHWARTZ Yeah, very much so. We’ve learned that you’ve got to have five or six things going at once in order to give yourself the best chance of working every couple years. If we just focused on one thing, then the actors’ schedules might change, or the studios and financiers might change. So we’ve written three or four things that we’re really excited about, and we’re open to whatever comes first. But all the things we’ve written, or are attached to maybe do, have a similar outsider spirit with found family and a feel-good quality, even within the drama. My experience with hardship — and my experience with other people that have experienced hardship, be they Cuban or Bosnian — often includes humor and resilience within that existence. And a lot of heavy dramas feel unrealistic in how much they stay in the pain or the conflict. So Tyler and I — and this is also true for Lord Miller — were interested in finding a more realistic balance of tones that’s lighter or more enjoyable than people might expect from a story like Los Frikis. So we’ll see what’s next. I just know we’ll be excited about whatever we get to do. It’s a gift any time you’re allowed to make something.

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Los Frikis expands in select theaters nationwide on Christmas Day.