Tag Archives: Roger Ross Williams

The Late Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes & Her TLC Mates to be Focus of A&E Network’s “Biography” Documentary

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Lisa ‘Left Eye‘ Lopes is getting the biography treatment…

The late part-Mexican American singer, music producer and dancer and her fellow TLC members will be the focus of a two-hour Biography documentary special for A&E Network in 2021. TLC is one of the top-selling girl groups of all time.

TLC

The network greenlit the feature film that tells the story of the group’s meteoric rise to fame in T-Boz and Chilli‘s own words. Oscar– and Emmy-winning director Roger Ross Williams and his One Story Up production company, with Emmy-winning producer Geoff Martz, will executive produce, with Matt Kay as director.

“As someone who has long been in awe of TLC and their musical and cultural impact, I am thrilled to be a part of bringing the story of their music, their journey, and their continuing reverence to the screen,” Williams said in a press statement. “I am grateful for the opportunity to work with A&E, as well as filmmaker Matthew Kay, to bring this film to life. We hope this film illuminates a side of this incredible group and Tionne ‘T-Boz‘ Watkins, Lopes, and Rozonda ‘Chilli‘ Thomas that longtime fans and viewers alike have not seen before.”

The ’90s R&B trio has four No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, four multi-platinum albums and four Grammy awards to their name. Their sophomore album CrazySexyCool made them the first girl group to earn a diamond-certified album by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

“The Biography banner has always focused on telling the stories of remarkable people who have had a major impact on our collective culture,” said Elaine Frontain Bryant, evp and head of programming at A&E Network, in a statement. “As a revolutionary group that broke boundaries and influenced an entire generation, TLC falls directly into that category and we are honored to tell their incredible story as it has never been told before.”

On April 25, 2002, Lopes was killed in a car crash while organizing charity work in Honduras. She swerved off the road to avoid hitting another vehicle, and was thrown from her car. She was working on a documentary at the time of her death, which was released as The Last Days of Left Eye and aired on VH1 in May 2007.

Gael Garcia Bernal to Star as Saul Armendariz, aka the Liberace of Lucha Libre, in the Biopic “Cassandro”

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Gael García Bernal is hitting the ring to play a Lucha Libre legend.

The 41-year-old Mexican actor/filmmaker will star in Cassandro, an independent feature from Oscar winning and two-time Emmy nominee filmmaker Roger Ross Williams.

Gael García Bernal

Cassandro tells the true story of Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso who rises to international stardom after he creates the “exotico” character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre,” and in the process upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.

Armendáriz at the age of 15 quit school and began training for Lucha Libre, beginning his professional wrestling career in 1988 under the mask as Mister Romano. Ultimately he would abandon the character and take on the exotico character of Baby Sharon. Exoticos are male wrestlers who dress in drag.

Ultimately, Armendáriz would take the new ring name of Cassandro, from a Tijuana brothel keeper Cassandra whom he appreciated.

In January 1991, after bad press that he was going to wrestle El Hijo del Santo in the UWA World Welterweight Championship, Armendáriz reportedly attempted suicide by cutting his wrists with a razor blade, but was saved.

The title match occurred a week later and Armendáriz credits it as the match that earned him the lucha libre community’s acceptance.

While Cassandro failed to win the UWA World Welterweight Championship from El Hijo del Santo, he managed to win his first title, the UWA World Lightweight Championship in October 1992, by defeating Lasser, becoming the first exótico in history to hold a championship in UWA.

Bernal, who will star in M. Night Shyamalan’s new secret movie from Universal, will shoot that movie first before stepping into the ring for Cassandro, which is eyeing a November start in Mexico.

Cassandro will rep the feature narrative directorial debut for Williams, who took home the Oscar for his short docu Music by Prudence in 2010, and recently was nominated at the Emmys a second time, this time in Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Special category for the HBO doc The Apollo. That movie, which made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, follows the historic and famed Harlem NYC venue and its legacy.

“As a filmmaker, my own life experience has inspired my passion to tell inspirational stories about outsiders and uplift the voices of people we don’t normally see on screen. The true story of Cassandro, Saúl Armendáriz, was one I knew I wanted to tell from the moment I met him. I look forward to being able to bring Saúl’s story to a wide audience,” said Williams.

Williams wrote Cassandro with Emmy-winner David Teague and Julián Herbert (Satelite).

Bernal is a two-time Golden Globe nominee and winner for the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. He was part of the SAG ensemble nominated cast of Paramount’s Babel, and a BAFTA nominee for Focus Features’ 2004 The Motorcycle Diaries. 

The filmmakers are reportedly in talks with Amazon to acquire Cassandro once complete, but that deal is contingent on several factors before it’s a negative pick-up.