“His First Question To Us Was, ‘What Are Your Astrological Signs?'”: Cristina Costantini, Kareem Tabsch and Alex Fumero on Mucho Mucho Amor

Premiering at Sundance back in the pre-pandemic festival days (uh, January) Mucho Mucho Amor is a much-needed uplift in these trying times. Co-directed and produced by Cristina Costantini (Science Fair) and Kareem Tabsch (The Last Resort), and produced by Alex Fumero (I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson), the doc, which hits Netflix today, is a fascinating odyssey into the beautifully eccentric world of Walter Mercado. Combining the fashion sense of Liberace with the relentless positivity of Tammy Faye Bakker, the Puerto Rican astrologer, psychic and defiantly nonbinary pioneer spent decades spreading his mantra of “mucho mucho amor” to an audience of millions — 120 to be exact — of Latinx viewers across the globe. (That would include Lin-Manuel Miranda, who touchingly transforms into a starstruck schoolkid upon being granted an audience with the icon.) Until one day the bundle of energy just up and vanished from the TV.

Exhaustively thorough, the film mixes archival images with contemporary interviews with Mercado’s relatives, friends and former business partners, and even the hiding-in-plain-sight Mercado himself. Yet the doc goes further than just stitching together the mystery of what happened to this once ubiquitous ambassador for happiness. Indeed, Mucho Mucho Amor even reaches out to make a convincing case for why this relic from another era, an octogenarian at the time of production, matters today. For Mercado’s adamant refusal to discuss his gender or sexuality — while making it clear through his in-your-face appearance that he would never be confined to category nor closet — put him way ahead of his time. (Historically, LGBTQ folks went directly from being shamed into secrecy, to being shamed if they didn’t come out. Of course, being expected to proudly announce one’s identity is a burden that straight cisgender people have never been asked to bear.) And this unconventional spirit, who at one point declares to the camera that every morning he wakes up is the first day of his life, had no interest in living life on others’ terms.

So to learn more about Mucho Mucho Amor and its uncompromising star (though Mercado notes, “I used to be a star and now I’m a constellation”) Filmmaker reached out to the trio that rediscovered the legend and so much more.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.