25 Tequila shot tequila movie making preparation

Oliver Stone and Benicio del Toro drank 25 shots of tequila each in one sitting to prepare for the movie 'Savages'.

6 July 2012
The director and his star met with Mexican drug lords to research the new film - which tells the tale of two young marijuana growers whose shared girlfriend gets kidnapped by a Mexican cartel - but they had to prove themselves by drinking the shots.

He told Red Bulletin magazine: "One person said to us, 'There is this guy in Tijuana who works with the cartel.' A fascinating guy. We met with him and he introduced us to other people. We had to go more than once in order to pass.

"The first time was all formality. The second time, Benicio and I had 25 shots of tequila for lunch. It was this guy's private collection of tequila. Later in the day he took us to one of his offices where he was making the tequila based on a formula devised by a Chinaman who was about 103 years old.

"That's where I saw what I had been drinking, it was disgusting: tarantulas, scorpions, rattlesnakes, a cobra, bulls' penises. But it all comes together in this great tasty tequila."

Despite the experience with the drug dealers, Oliver insists he wasn't worried.

He said: "We were not going in deep like journalists who would put information out. That would be dangerous. We were making a fiction movie with people coming from a novel and we were trying to get a broad concept of the atmosphere."

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