Interview with Eduardo Castrillo

The idea for Worth, now available on Amazon Prime, came to writer, actor, producer and director Eduardo Castrillo via experiences he and (MMA fighter) Jose Palacios had on the circuit.

Where did the idea for the story come from, sir? 
The idea from the story came from a lot from personal experiences from me and also my friend Jose Palacios, who is a professional muay thai fighter. I used to ask him all kinds of questions to try and understand the life of a fighter, especially in muay thai. It’s completely different than boxing and MMA, so it was a fun world to write about and hopefully introduce to a new audience.   

How much of the film was in the script and how much of it simply came together on the set?
I would say about seventy five percent of what’s on screen is the script and the rest came out of natural energy between the actors. The biggest change was the ending. My character was only supposed to fight one opponent in the film but when the original fighter didn’t show up to our second film day, we had to find a replacement actor which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He did an amazing job and I was able to use footage from both shoots to add more action into the film.

Where do you think your strengths lie as a writer? 
I tend to gear myself more towards humor even when i’m not trying to. I’ll forget about a line or a quip that I had found funny when originally writing and be surprised when the audience laughs at it. If you can keep the audience chuckling every once in a while, you’ll keep them in engaged.

Did you always intend to direct the movie or was there a stage you considered pitching the script to studios?
I always intended to keep this movie in house. The previous film I worked on, I had signed away the rights to a producer, because he brought a budget and some names to it but in the end it wasn't the right thing to do. With Worth I knew it would be very personal so I had to do it my way and with my team. Even in distributing the film, I decided to self distribute it and retain my rights to the project. Succeed or fail, it still belongs to us.

How difficult a film was it to make? Can you talk about some of the challenges?
Because the film was self funded, we had to shoot not as frequent as I would like. I would work for a few months and save, and then we would shoot for a weekend. It took about a year to get all the footage we needed to tell the story. And I was playing a fighter so during that time I had to continuously train and diet and that was a challenge in itself.

Did most of the cast know martial arts?
Yeah there was actually a few fighters in the movie, like Jose Palacios and Mauricio Alonso. Even my opponent, Manny Perez, was a fighter. It was important to have them in there and have their voice as I shot the film.

Where can we find the movie?
You can find Worth on platforms such as Tubi.tv, Comcast Xfinity,Vudu, Itunes, and Amazon Prime Video. Dvds and Blu Ray also available on Amazon as well.