The movie adaptation of Benjamin Alire Sáenz' popular 2012 novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe made its highly-anticipated world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival on September 9th.
Aitch Alberto wrote and directed the coming-of-age drama which stars Max Pelayo and Reese Gonzales as Aristotle “Ari” Mendoza and Dante Quintana, respectively. Equipped with a dedicated fanbase and a heartwarming story, the tale dives into the budding relationship between the two teenage Mexican-American boys and takes place in Texas during the late eighties, a troubling time of social unrest and AIDs activism. Game Rant met with the trio the morning after their world premiere, nearly a year after they wrapped shooting.
Alberto, Pelayo, and Gonzales were bursting with energy and a comforting aura that would make any outsider feel warm and cozy (it's as if they knew just how good their premiere went). The festival wasn’t their first time reuniting since they finished production. The tight crew reminisced on their last visits: Alberto visited Gonzales in March for his birthday and the three all reunited last December to see Licorice Pizza (which they collectively deemed “a fun movie"). After cracking a joke about how this interview was supposed to be separate, one with Alberto and the next with Pelayo and Gonzales, the group puts their heads together and teases that they’ll make this chat a “tell all.”
Reese Gonzales plays Dante Quintana
This movie has been a long-time coming, Alberto began workshopping it in 2014 and Gonzales first got involved in 2018 when he portrayed Dante in a reading. “I didn't audition for the reading. The casting director reached out to me and said, ‘I looked at your headshot and knew you’re the one.”
Alberto jumps in, clarifying that that’s the “wrong story.” “I'll set the facts straight,” says the director lightheartedly. “I was the one who said that about your headshot.”
Gonzales continues, “The casting director reached out to me and asked if I would do this reading. I said 'sure' and went out to buy the book. I thought, ‘This seems fun,’ but then I read it and I was bawling my eyes out.” (An experience known all too well by fans.) He immediately knew the story was “something special” and felt like he needed to be part of it. “I met Aitch the day before we did the reading and it was an instant click. I love her so much.”
But Gonzales didn’t always feel like he was bound to play the open-hearted and wise Dante. “I always say that when I first played Dante, I felt like Ari. I was 16 years old and I was still in high school. I had no idea who I was. But over the next three and a half years, I grew into someone who’s more like Dante. By the time my audition [for the movie] actually came through, it was so perfect. I got an audition for Ari, but I met with my agent and I was like, ‘I need Dante.’”
While portraying Dante felt natural to Gonzales, he still had to work on unpacking some of his character’s quirks. “I related a lot to Dante in so many weird, specific ways, like I love being barefoot. The challenge came from the lack of Dante's point of view because the book is written from Ari’s perspective.”
He says, “Dante is a mystery and I had to figure a lot of that out for myself. What I found is that Dante relates to Ari in more ways than Ari could have ever realized. There's a real reason why he connects with him so much, and being able to discover that for myself, I feel so lucky to have been able to do that, because it just felt so much more personal.” The director nods in agreement and adds, "It’s the distinction of their families, right?”
Alberto continues, “Dante’s parents accept who he is and give him the room to be who he is. He doesn't know a world that's limited and he's not a victim of perceived generational trauma. That’s why Dante is living the way he lives and says kooky things. Sam and Soledad don't question his oddities and his perspective on the world because they know that by giving him the space to do that, he'll discover what that means for him.”
Max Peyalo plays Aristotle "Ari" Mendoza
That contrast brings us to Peyalo, who steps into the role of the quiet and angry (but secretly a sweetheart) Aristotle. Like Gonzales, he read the novel after booking his audition. He tackled the first half in the one-day turnaround before having to get his audition on tape, but Peyalo “immediately fell in love with it." The actor was able to read the full book in three days and after booking his role, he felt determined to “get it right.”
Peyalo says, “I would spend countless hours a day analyzing the script because I knew that this story was widely loved and speaks to a lot of people. I didn't want to have anything artificial. I needed it to be as real as possible.”
He adds, “It was a treat as an actor. It was a challenge but I feel accomplished.”
Staying true to the fans
Helming the movie, Alberto felt a lot of that pressure as well. When it came to striking a balance between the source material and her own vision, she says, "I'm not changing the world because that's what we love about it. But you have to realize that books and movies are really different. How does that evolve?”
Despite creating drafts and bearing witness to many scenes ending up on the cutting room floor (including one where Dante bathes Aristotle after he injures his leg), Alberto is assured that she made the movie she set out to make. She shares that the cuts were a compromise, on her part, to not lean into stereotypes.
Alberto has since tweeted, "fact: the original cut of the film with everything in it, the entirety of my screenplay was 2 hrs 47 mins - yes a lot of scarifies were made. deleted scenes or directors cut one day."
Here's hoping!
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is seeking distribution.