Backstage With… Eva Longoria on her feature film directorial debut Flamin’ Hot
Have you ever wanted to watch a film based on crisps? Well, that’s exactly the basis of Eva Longoria’s feature directorial debut.
Flamin’ Hot tells the story of Richard Montañez, a janitor at Frito-Lay who helps establish the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos brand and climbs his way up the ladder to become an executive at the company.
The screenplay is based on Montañez’s memoir – A Boy, A Burrito And A Cookie – and stars Jesse Garcia as the potato chip pioneer, Annie Gonzalez as his wife Judy, Dennis Haysbert as Frito-Lay production manager Clarence C Baker and four-time Emmy Award winner Tony Shalhoub as PepsiCo chief executive Roger Enrico.
DeVon Franklin, Jesse Garcia, and Eva Longoria on the set of Flamin’ Hot. Pic: Searchlight Pictures.
Pic: Searchlight Pictures
Filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2021, Eva Longoria says she “went in and fought for the job” after reading the script and became “obsessed” with becoming the person to tell the story.
“It’s a pretty powerful story,” she tells Sky News’ Backstage podcast. “I read it. I was blown away by Richard Montañez’s life, and I was like, ‘How do I not know this story?’ He’s Mexican-American, he’s from my community, I’m Mexican-American – everybody needs to know this story.”
Longoria has spent the past 10 years directing TV, an experience that she says prepared her for the film’s quick eight-week schedule.
Pic: Searchlight Pictures
The production employed around 204 New Mexican crew members, 44 New Mexican principal cast members and 875 extras of New Mexican background.
Longoria says she saw Flamin’ Hot as a chance to straighten out misconceptions about the Hispanic community and the way Mexican-Americans live.
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“I think there’s obviously stereotypes that have been about our community for so long, but also because we don’t get many movies like this,” she says, adding that “Hollywood gets to define what a hero is”.
“I had the opportunity to create a hero and I wanted him to look like Richard Montañez. I wanted him to be brown. I wanted him to sound like my dad. And I want our community specifically to be able to look up onscreen and go, ‘Wow, that guy did all that’.”
Montañez and his contested version of events
Richard Montañez was born in an east Los Angeles barrio community to Mexican-American parents in the late 1950s.
Pic: Searchlight Pictures
He worked as a janitor at a California Frito-Lay factory when he says he conceived “his life-changing idea” to create and market a snack targeted to the Mexican-American community.
Just before filming for Longoria’s Flamin’ Hot began, the LA Times published an article seemingly refuting Montañez’s claims that he invented the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto.
Pic: Searchlight Pictures.
Frito-Lay told the paper that “none of our records show that Richard was involved in any capacity in the Flamin’ Hot test market”, adding: “We have interviewed multiple personnel who were involved in the test market, and all of them indicate that Richard was not involved in any capacity in the test market.”
When asked if it had an impact on her directorial decisions, Longoria says: “No, it had zero impact on the movie.
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‘This is his truth and this movie is true’
“I never wanted to do the documentary of The Flaming Hot Cheeto and how it was invented. I’ve always wanted to tell the true story of Richard Montañez, and his story is fascinating. His life is fascinating.”
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Longoria says he “just happened to have a hand in creating the number one snack in the world, which is a multibillion-dollar product”.
Pic: Searchlight Pictures
Pic: Searchlight Pictures
The script for the Disney+ film was rewritten to be from the perspective of Montañez and to include fantasy sequences, allowing the viewer to see “what was happening and what he felt happened”.
Longoria says it allowed them to have more creative freedom to tell the story and Montañez’s version of events.
“This is his truth, and this movie is true. So, yeah, that never really affected the script. The script was always what it was. It was always Richard’s story,” she says.
Richard Montañez has since retired from his executive position at Frito-Lay and has become an author and motivational speaker.
Flamin’ Hot is available to stream now on Disney+
Entertainment
‘People want you to stay in your lane’: Reese Witherspoon on her ‘deeply personal’ decision to write a novel
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
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When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
Kim Kardashian has revealed that she has been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.
- Footage from the latest season of The Kardashians shows the reality TV star going for an imaging scan.
The 45-year-old appears to suggest her small aneurysm may have stemmed from stress.
Brain aneurysms are relatively common, with data suggesting they affect about one in every 50 people.
In many cases, patients may be unaware that they have one – as they tend to cause few symptoms when unruptured.
Brain aneurysms are common but often go undiagnosed. iStock file pic
Should an unruptured aneurysm grow to a larger size, it can cause headaches, balance problems and speech issues.
Those that burst are extremely dangerous and can prove fatal in some circumstances.
While aneurysms can emerge throughout the body, they are most typically found in the aorta, which carries blood out of the heart.
Research suggests brain aneurysms are most common in adults between the ages of 30 and 60 – with women disproportionately affected.
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Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.
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