Entertainment
Jesse Garcia and his epic, winding hero's journey to Hollywood
Beneath the fluorescent lighting of his hotel room in Pylos, Greece, Jesse Garcia combs through his greasy strands of hair after a daylong shoot for “The Odyssey” — Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie adaptation of the Greek epic.
“I got set hair,” says Garcia on our video call, somewhat apologetically. Despite a demanding schedule, he has relished his time shooting in Morocco and Greece, along with Hollywood A-listers like Matt Damon and Zendaya. As he looks back on his trajectory, Garcia’s own hero’s journey through Hollywood seems to mirror that of the Greek character Odysseus: a man faced with great challenges that at times feel insurmountable yet formative.
“It’s like nothing else I’ve done before,” says Garcia of the big-budget film, which is set for release in 2026.
The actor, 42, has just wrapped up a different kind of odyssey — he also stars in a new Latino road trip comedy on Disney+, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.” Released on March 28, the family film sees Garcia as the loving patriarch of the fictional Garcia family, played by an all-star cast made up of Eva Longoria, Paulina Chávez, Thom Nemer, Rose Portillo and Cheech Marin.
“Road Trip” follows the 2014 film “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” which was based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 children’s book. Garcia appeared in the first movie as an animal wrangler; in the new film, he plays a chef. “Maybe I was an animal wrangler so I could put myself through chef school,” he says.
Directed by Marvin Lemus, the new flick depicts a topsy-turvy experience that Garcia is familiar with. “My parents used to take us to [Durango] to see my dad’s family every year,” says Garcia. “So we [did] that road trip a lot when we were little kids.”
Unlike many of his colleagues in Hollywood, who came from affluent families and studied in prestigious schools, Garcia was born into a Mexican American family in Rawlins, Wyo., a small mining town with few resources for aspiring actors. “I auditioned for a play in high school,” says Garcia. “Of course I didn’t get it, because I didn’t know what I was doing!”
Garcia, an athlete, would devote himself to cheer routines and stunts in high school — he was later awarded a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied exercise science. This skill set later helped him choreograph a scene in the 2007 sports parody “The Comebacks,” which featured former NFL tight-end Tony Gonzalez.
“If I’d known better back in the day, I would’ve done cool classes [in college],” Garcia says with a chuckle.
At the behest of a friend, he moved to Atlanta to find his direction. This led him to take acting classes at WHAT Films, an innovative theater class where he learned to write, direct, act and produce original materials under actor-director Judson Vaughn. “It was a very unique format — that was the foundation of how I work,” says Garcia.
In 2003, with only $2,000 in his pocket and a roommate he found on Craigslist, Garcia made L.A. his home. The city’s strong Chicano presence overwhelmed him at first, but he eased into the community. “I didn’t grow up with a strong Latino community in Wyoming,” he explains. “When I got to L.A., I worked in this movie called ‘Walkout’ with Edward James Olmos [and] started learning about the history of Latinos in L.A.”
Garcia landed his breakout role in the 2006 film “Quinceañera,” a coming-of-age film directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. In it, Garcia played Carlos, a gay teen estranged from his Mexican family, along with his pregnant cousin and protagonist Magdalena (played by Emily Rios). The film gained traction at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. The film was later acquired and distributed by Sony Pictures.
“I [think] I got like a thousand dollars to do that movie,” says Garcia of his indie flick, which was a nonunion production. “[But] it started my career.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Garcia followed this momentum with small roles in procedurals like “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “ER.” Although he asked his agents to opt out of stereotypical Latino roles, usually limited to gardeners and gangsters, he relented for a role in the movie “Days of Wrath,” an “action gangster flick,” as he puts it. Directed by Celia Fox, it featured a stellar roster of Black and Latino actors: Laurence Fishburne, Lupe Ontiveros, Taye Diggs and Wilmer Valderrama.
But the film, which was slated for release in 2008, would never see the light of day — though he’s still looking to get the rights to it. “Celia, call me,” he says to the camera.
“I was just a broke actor, then 2008 happened,” says Garcia, whose happy-go-lucky demeanor instantly seems to wash away.
In the aftermath of the 2007-08 writers’ strike, roles for the blooming actor became harder to come by — a situation that was made more dire by the nation’s crushing financial crisis. Nearly 20 years later, creatives continue to fight for their artistry amid growing concerns about AI and streaming revenue, all while production has slowed down in L.A.
Jesse Garcia in “Flamin’ Hot,” his first lead role in a major studio film.
(Emily Aragones / Searchlight Pictures )
His first lead role in a major studio film would not come until 2023, when he was cast as Richard Montañez in “Flamin’ Hot,” the story of a janitor turned self-proclaimed “godfather of Latino marketing,” who claimed to have invented the finger-licking snack Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
“When I first got the audition for ‘Flamin’ Hot,’ I read it and went, ‘This is mine. … They wrote this for me,’” says Garcia. “I just have to jump through hoops and prove that it’s mine.”
First-time director and friend Eva Longoria tells De Los that Garcia, whom she considers her “cosmic soulmate,” was “meant to be Richard Montañez.”
“He didn’t have one day off, so he had this intense approach to it,” says Longoria. “He wanted to do well — not just for me but for our community. … We could not fail on ‘Flamin’ Hot.’”
The pressures of the role weighed on Garcia — not because he carried the Latino community on his shoulders, which is an obligation he vehemently shrugs off, but because he was present for all 36 days of shooting.
“Nobody knew [it], but I could have had a mental breakdown every day,” he says.
“There was one day that [co-star] Annie Gonzalez put her hand on my chest just to say hello and check in with me, and I was like, ‘Oh s—, why am I so emotional right now?’” says Garcia.
Gonzalez, who played Montañez’s wife Judy in “Flamin’ Hot,” remembers this moment during filming. “Jesse does mask a lot of things with play,” she says. “I put my hand on his chest and gave him my energy, ’cause I can only imagine carrying this film.”
Although the veracity of this marketing success story was contested in a 2021 L.A. Times investigation, which the real-life Montañez cites in his 2024 defamation suit against the popular chip company, Garcia says he resonates with his character’s go-getter spirit. (And, for the record, he also stands behind Montañez’s account of events: “I believe him, he has receipts.”)
“I [too] have felt like the underdog,” says Garcia. “I’ve felt like I’ve wanted to quit.”
He says that when thinking back on those stormy moments in 2008, he asks himself: “Would the 21-year-old version of myself be stoked to meet the current version?”
To that, he says: “Yeah, I would be proud of that guy.”
Movie Reviews
Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror
I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.
Let’s get into the review.
Synopsis
When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it. The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.
Roll on 18 Wheleer
Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.
I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

In The End
In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.
The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.
Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026
Entertainment
Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater
The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.
Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.
Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.
Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.
The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”
As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)
As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.
Movie Reviews
‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel
It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.”
Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?
I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.
The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic.
FINAL STATEMENT
You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.
-
World4 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts4 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Denver, CO4 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Louisiana7 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT