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At the Manhattan Inn—a Brooklyn piano bar—Demián Bichir is playing the hell out of "Silent Night." His version resounds. It’s got trills on trills. It's got flourishes on flourishes. And he learned it for his part as “Bob the Mexican” in Quentin Tarantino's new blockbuster chamber piece, The Hateful Eight. Actually, he over-learned it.
"Quentin wrote it so that Bob only played with one finger, thinking any actor could figure it out," Bichir says. "He wanted to make it easy. I thought it was a good idea to just learn properly. That’s pretty much the only way you can play with something, if you learn it perfectly well."
Bichir, it turns out, is a relentless study. He wants to learn everything. "I’m a certified scuba diver because of another film that I did. I didn’t have to be an expert on that, but I became as good as I could. I learned how to horseback-ride. They pay me to know more about life," he says, all wistful.
Learning an instrument was new for Bichir. When he was a child in Mexico City, he says, his parents gave him guitar lessons, but he skipped them to go play soccer. The Bichir family is an acting family, and this Bichir has been acting professionally for nearly forty years. In 2013, he received an Academy Award nomination for A Better Life, a role he got after auditioning for Chris Weitz to play an Italian vampire in the Twilight series. He's also had memorable turns in two television roles about Mexican-American border relations—as a fast-talking mayor of Tijuana in Weeds and a razor-edged detective in The Bridge.
As he guides me through the chords of "Silent Night" (both hands), he proudly explains how he taught himself piano. After he acquired the role of Bob the Mexican, he asked his assistant in L.A. to rent him a piano to practice, and discovered she was a skilled pianist herself. She recorded videos of chords; Bichir watched them over and over, mastered a chord, went on to the next, and finally has moved on to Beethoven, Chopin, and Debussy. Just some casual Debussy to prepare for Quentin’s instruction of a one-fingered rendition of “Silent Night.”
The Hateful Eight is an intimate (and violent, obviously) ensemble piece that puts Bichir among some of the most acclaimed actors around. "I usually forget about the names," he says of his peers, "because I want to be able to function properly. If you really think about their careers and their greatness..." He trails off, but picks up quickly. "I always think about it like a soccer team; we are all equally important on the field. It doesn’t matter if you’re Messi and you have been the best player in the world for years in a row: Everyone is equally important. You need generous actors to help you achieve that. If these big names were not generous, it would be lost easily."
Skipping guitar lessons has really paid off for him.
