Danny Trejo Reveals What Being On The Con Air Set Was Really Like

Danny Trejo reveals what being on the Con Air set was really like, recalling how he and his male co-stars were vary competitive between takes.

Keeping in line with the very nature of the film, Danny Trejo has revealed what being on the Con Air set was really like. The 1997 action blockbuster starred Nicolas Cage as an honorably discharged U.S. Army Ranger who is nearing the end of his 10-year prison sentence after accidentally killing a man in self-defense during a group assault on him and his wife. Matters become complicated for Cage’s Cameron Poe when his flight aboard a prison transport plane is hijacked by the inmates on board, leading to a tense showdown between him, the inmates’ leader, Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom, and U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin, the latter two played by John Malkovich and John Cusack.

While speaking with GQ to reflect on his iconic characters, Danny Trejo opened up about the production on the action cult classic, Con Air. The actor recalled the sheer testosterone flowing through the set of the film, including he and his co-stars engaging in various competitions between takes to prove who had “the biggest huevos.” See what Trejo shared below and at the 3-minute mark in the video:

Con Air is funny, because they want to put all the wannabe tough guys in a plane in Hollywood. Lunch turned into a big “Who’s got the biggest huevos?” If somebody spit, somebody else would, it was a spitting contest, if you did a push-up, everybody tried to do more push-ups, it became a big contest. They tried to bait you into things.

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How Con Air Was Peak ’90s Macho Action

Con Air came in the midst of the big-budget action boom of the ’90s, much of which was heralded by producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who frequently partnered with Michael Bay for multiple box office hits, including The Rock, which also starred Cage, and Armageddon. Unlike The Rock and another Cage-starrer, Face/Off, the 1997 thriller is often considered to be the peak of ’90s machismo action, with the cast composed nearly exclusively of men, all of whom were doing their best to chew up the scenery with whatever screen time they were given. Additionally, as Trejo mentions above, the Con Air cast clearly leaned into many of their tough guy personas, eager to one up each other in frat-like competitions to prove who was the toughest of them all.

Paired with this was the action itself in Con Air, which featured some of the most grandiose practical explosions of the time, outside of a Michael Bay movie. Additionally, much like Speed before it, director Simon West, whom Cage would later reunite with for 2012’s Stolen, and writer Scott Rosenberg found a way to keep audiences on the edge of their seats on a vehicle with no clear end destination, only with far fewer and safer means of escape than the Keanu Reeves-led thriller. Though earning about $100 million less than The Rock, Con Air‘s action would prove to be a smash hit with audiences as the film became a cult favorite and went on to earn two Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Best Original Song for Diane Warren’s “How Do I Live.”

What Trejo Has Done Since Con Air

In addition to being peak ’90s macho action, Con Air came in the early stages of Trejo’s rise in popularity, with the actor fresh off the heels of Michael Mann’s Heat and his first Robert Rodriguez collaboration, Desperado. The years since have seen Trejo lend his talents to a dozen more Rodriguez films, including the Spy Kids and Machete franchises, as well as King of the Hill, Breaking Bad, Rick and Morty and more recently, Minions: The Rise of Gru. Audiences can revisit Trejo and his cast’s macho turns with Con Air available to stream on AMC+ now.

Next: Danny Trejo’s Forgotten Breaking Bad Villain ExplainedSource: GQ