Inspiration for, director of ‘A Million Miles Away’ talk Prime movie
For a film about a man dreaming of traveling into space, “A Million Miles Away” has its feet planted firmly on the ground.
Available on Amazon’s Prime Video platform, it is a dramatization of the several-years-long, rejection-filled journey from migrant farm worker to NASA flight engineer of the determined José Hernández, who eventually worked aboard the International Space Station.
It is “inspired” by his 2012 book, “Reaching for the Stars: The Inspiring Story of a Migrant Farmworker Turned Astronaut.”
“We all know what that means,” says a laughing Hernández, during a recent video interview prior to the film’s streaming debut.
He says he worked closely with the film’s writers, starting with Bettina Gilois, then with Hernán Jiménez and lastly with director Alejandra Marquez Abella to help craft a faithful version of his tale.
“A Million Miles Away” puts his family and Mexican heritage front and center, Hernández lauding the movie for its portrayal of “normal circumstances,” as he puts it.
“All too often, Hollywood basically stereotypes us into certain roles or certain images of what a Hispanic person’s like — or (their) family — but they got it right,” he says. “They’re basically showing what 80, 90 percent of Hispanic families across America are like — very loving, very united families that help each other.
“(The movie) clearly demonstrates that this was not a journey of one man chasing his dream to become an astronaut but it was a journey of a family, of a community.”
Among the real people and moments from his life incorporated into his life included; a teacher who saw his potential as a boy and encouraged his family to work to improve their circumstances; and when, upon being hired as an engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, he was mistaken for a janitor.
“There were two of us that started in that building the same day,” he says. “One was José Hernández, and another one was a ‘Steve Smith,’ for lack of a better name. And, of course, they knew one was a janitor and one was an engineer, so they assumed José Hernández must be the janitor.”
(He acknowledges that when his character — portrayed by Michael Peña— is given the janitor’s massive set of keys, which plays into a key subsequent scene, that’s a bit of dramatic embellishment, as you suspect when you watch the clever sequence.)
Also real: The question his wife asks him — what the men and women who’ve made it have that he does not — after he has received six rejection letters after annual applications into the United States’ space program.
“I hadn’t bothered to ask myself (that),” he says. “Once that became clear, I said, ‘I have a lot more work to do: I have to become a pilot; I have to get scuba dive-certified; and I have to learn another language.’”
“The training sequences were hard,” says a laughing Marquez Abella, during a separate video interview, referring to a couple of sequences that feel a bit like the montages from a boxing movie.
Perhaps the most obvious comparison when “A Million Miles Away,” though, is 2016’s “Hidden Figures,” about three African-American women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the early 1960s. However, while Marquez Abella says she was impressed by that film, she followed no movie’s based-on-a-true-story blueprint.
“I wanted to discover our own universe and use our own ideas and elements,” she says.
Hernández says he enjoyed working with Peña, who is unable to help promote due to the Hollywood actors’ strike.
“When he accepted the role, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, so we got to know each other via Zoom. And he got an opportunity to see my personality, my sense of humor, and I’ll tell you what: He got it right,” Hernández says. “He did a masterful job of portraying me.”
Marquez Abella — whose credits include directorial efforts “Semana Santa,” “The Good Girls” and “Northern Skies” and TV writing on series including “Narcos: Mexico” — says the actor’s dedication to his craft was astonishing.
“Michel was such a hard-working actor nerd,” she says affectionately, noting that he brought different touches to José during different phases of life. “I used to make fun of him because he’s … such a focused and hard-working man.”
Asked if there’s another actor in the cast she’d like to single out she barely lets the question conclude.
“Rosa Salazar, without a doubt,” she says, referring to the actress portraying José’s aforementioned wife, Adela. “She’s such a clever woman, funny woman, and the perfect light-full element that this film needed.
“(José) could achieve everything because (Adela) was there.”
A Mexican filmmaker making her first English-language feature, Marquez Abella also doesn’t pause when asked if she had an overriding goal with “A Million Miles Away.”
“I wanted to make a love letter to the farmer migrants who put food on everyone’s table,” she says.
Spend even a few seconds speaking with Hernández — now a governor-appointed University of California Regent and the president and CEO at Tierra Luna Engineering LLC, an aerospace consulting company — and you assume, correctly, he’s done his share of motivational addresses.
That he’s the subject of a biopic is “surreal, but I take it as an opportunity to be able to tell my story and hopefully empower many people into believing that anything is possible if they’re willing to (follow) my father’s five-ingredient recipe, which is brilliantly sprinkled throughout the movie, and add perseverance,” he said.
Thrilled that the film was to be available to so many people around the world via Prime Video, Hernández later shares the message of his motivational talks
“You’ve got to shoot big,” he says. “Whatever it is that you want to do, shoot for the stars — but make sure you enjoy the journey along the way.
“I don’t like rejection but I consoled myself by saying, what’s the worst that could happen if I never get selected?” he adds. “Wanting to be an astronaut motivated me to go to college, graduate school, work in a world-(class) research facility, become a pilot, (became) scuba-dive rated, learn a third language.
“Not a bad consolation prize, so I was at peace with myself.”