50 Fun Facts About Blood in Blood Out

Who directed Blood In Blood Out?

Taylor Hackford. The producer of La Bamba and director of An Officer and a Gentleman took the job himself after the actor first lined up to direct walked away.

Under what alternate title was Blood In Blood Out released to cinemas in 1993?

Bound by Honor. The studio dropped the original title after a fight broke out at a test screening, fearing the words alone might incite violence in cinemas.

Blood In Blood Out draws on the prison years of which poet, who co-wrote its screenplay?

Jimmy Santiago Baca. He learned to read and write behind bars and came out a published poet, and he appears on screen as one of the inmates.

By what title is Blood In Blood Out known to Spanish-speaking audiences?

Sangre por Sangre, 'blood for blood'. The film flopped in cinemas in 1993, then was reclaimed by Latino audiences as a classic.

What does the phrase 'blood in, blood out' refer to?

Kill to join, die to leave. It is the motto of La Onda, which is why Miklo cannot be admitted until he has killed an inmate from a rival gang.

Miklo Velka leaves which city for East Los Angeles after a fight with his abusive father?

Las Vegas. He had spent 18 months there with his Anglo father, and comes home to a barrio that keeps asking whether a blue-eyed kid can really be Chicano.

In Blood In Blood Out, what is the name of the cousins' East Los Angeles street gang?

Vatos Locos. Miklo earns his way in by walking up to a rival gang's car alone and smashing its window.

In Blood In Blood Out, Miklo kills the leader of which rival gang?

Tres Puntos. Their leader, Spider, shoots first and wounds Miklo, whose return fire kills him; the getaway ends in a crash and both cousins are arrested.

Miklo says of which landmark that it 'is East Los to me'?

El Pino. The film made the giant bunya tree famous, and when a false rumour in 2020 said it would be felled, people signed a petition to save it and gathered at the tree.

In Blood In Blood Out, Paco avoids prison by enlisting in which branch of the military?

Marine Corps. It was that or jail, and the hot-tempered boxer comes home a changed man who joins the LAPD.

Cruz's heroin addiction leads to the accidental overdose of which relative?

His younger brother Juanito. The boy finds Cruz passed out and copies him with one of his needles; at the funeral the family tells Cruz he is dead to them.

Out on parole, Miklo joins a robbery of what?

An armored truck. He takes the job to clear a debt Cruz owes, after telling his cousin he had been making more money inside prison than out.

Who leads the Black Guerrilla Army in Blood In Blood Out?

Bonafide. He agrees a truce with Montana in the prison yard to stop a Black–Chicano war, only to be killed when Miklo's men turn on their allies.

What is the name of the Aryan Vanguard's leader in Blood In Blood Out?

Red Ryder. His gang backs a breakaway La Onda dealer, a move Montana reads as a plot to start a war between the Black and Chicano inmates.

Whom does Miklo kill in the prison kitchen to earn his place in La Onda?

Big Al. Miklo wins the Aryan Vanguard associate's trust and a kitchen job before stabbing him, and La Onda takes over the dead man's gambling book.

What finally wins Miklo parole after nine years?

Earning his GED. Turned down once, he tells the parole board he learned to read and write in prison, and Montana is the one who pushed him to study.

What happens to Miklo after Paco shoots him during the robbery?

He loses the leg and returns to prison. Paco had begged him to give himself up; years later Miklo tells him the shot is what forced him into his place at the head of La Onda.

Which drug floods the prison in the second half of Blood In Blood Out?

Cocaine. Rival supplies from the BGA and a La Onda dealer split the council, and Montana argues that La Onda exists to protect its people, not to push dope.

Which La Onda council member breaks away to work with the Aryan Vanguard in the drug trade?

Carlos. He has his brother bomb the BGA's drug house on the outside and the BGA kills him in revenge, the very spiral Montana had warned the council about.

Montana is stabbed to death just before a visit from whom?

His daughter. He was on his way to other prisons to broker a truce, and the man who stabbed him had been sent a forged order.

Who is later revealed to have sent the forged orders for Montana's killing, at Miklo's behest?

Magic. He forged the order in the BGA leader's name, and swears his life to Miklo as his jefe while the evidence is destroyed.

What does Miklo do when La Onda's council is scattered to prisons in other states?

Expands the gang across the Southwest. He tells each departing member to start a chapter in his new prison, so the transfers meant to break La Onda are what spread it.

Which word ends Miklo's line, 'When you expect nothing and you get everything, that's …'?

Destiny. He says it on hearing that the BGA wants an alliance, the opening he will use to wipe out one rival gang and then betray the other.

Who plays Miklo Velka?

Damian Chapa. He knew the part from life: his father was of Mexican descent and his mother of Irish heritage, the mirror image of Miklo's parents.

Which actor plays Paco Aguilar?

Benjamin Bratt. His Paco starts as a Golden Gloves boxer running with the gang and ends as the detective hunting his own cousin.

Who plays the artist Cruz Candelaria?

Jesse Borrego. A veteran of TV's Fame, he plays a painter who sells out his first gallery show and still loses a decade to heroin.

Which actor plays Montana Segura?

Enrique Castillo. His Montana is a gang boss who ends up publishing an essay on prison reform and dies trying to make peace between the gangs.

Danny Trejo, who plays Geronimo, had actually served time in which prison?

San Quentin. A man who had seen him box there recognised him years later on a film set, and he was hired to coach Eric Roberts: his way into the movies.

Which actor was once set to both direct and star in Blood In Blood Out?

Edward James Olmos. He left after a dispute over creative control and made his own barrio prison drama, which reached cinemas a year before this one.

Which future Oscar winner plays Lightning, one of the Aryan Vanguard?

Billy Bob Thornton. It is a small part, far down the cast list; three years later Sling Blade, which he wrote, directed and starred in, won him the Oscar for adapted screenplay.

Which actor plays the leader of the Black Guerrilla Army?

Delroy Lindo. A year after playing the Harlem crime boss West Indian Archie in Malcolm X, he plays a gang leader who tries to keep the peace and is betrayed for it.

La Onda was loosely based on which real prison gang?

The Mexican Mafia. Miklo's story follows that of Joe Morgan, the real gang's first non-Latino member, though the script names neither him nor the gang.

Which artist created all of Cruz's paintings seen in Blood In Blood Out?

Adan Hernandez. The San Antonio painter also appears on screen as a drug dealer called Gilbert, and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art had bought two of his works before the film came out.

What does the young painter Cruz win shortly before a rival gang's beating changes his life?

An art school scholarship. He collects it on stage at an art contest, then drives his girlfriend to a hilltop lookout to celebrate, which is where the rival gang finds him.

The rival gang's beating leaves Cruz with what lasting injury?

A damaged back. The pain never leaves him, and the drugs he takes for it are the start of the addiction that costs him his family.

Paco's police partner, Rollie, is played by the actor behind which Back to the Future character?

Biff Tannen. Thomas F. Wilson, billed here as Tom Wilson, trades the school bully for a plain-clothes LAPD detective.

What real incident injured a Blood In Blood Out caterer in El Sereno?

A drive-by shooting. The caterer, 27, was seriously wounded, even though the production had hired former gang members as consultants partly for its own security.

Which real prison official plays himself in an extended cameo in Blood In Blood Out?

The warden. Danny Vasquez opened his working prison to the production, and hundreds of his inmates were screened for parts as extras.

Which Pulp Fiction star plays Ivan, the prison lieutenant who works the case with Paco?

Ving Rhames. A year before he played the crime boss Marsellus in Pulp Fiction he is on the other side of the law, an officer sent down from the prison to help Paco.

Reviewers kept measuring the three-hour Blood In Blood Out against which gangster saga?

The Godfather. Entertainment Weekly called Miklo the film's pulp version of Michael Corleone, a man driven to violence by his need to prove he belongs to the family.

Miklo times the joint attack on the Aryan Vanguard for which holiday?

Day of the Dead. La Onda and the BGA shake on a six-month truce and agree to celebrate 'a big Mexican holiday' together, then use the day to kill the Aryan leaders.

After flopping in cinemas, where did Blood In Blood Out find its audience?

On home video. The tapes also carried the director's original title, which the studio had dropped for cinemas, and word of mouth did the rest.

What do the other Chicanos mockingly call the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Miklo?

Milkweed. The taunt is what he spends the film trying to live down, starting with the gang tattoo his cousins say a white boy could never earn.

Why was Blood In Blood Out's Los Angeles opening delayed?

The Rodney King verdict. The studio announced the delay two days before the federal civil rights verdicts, then kept the film out of Los Angeles for more than a month after they had passed.

In the opening scene, Miklo tells a cab driver that East L.A. is 'a whole different' what?

Country. His first stop is a taquería, for the food he says he has been dreaming about through 18 months away.

Which nickname belongs to Paco, the family's hot-tempered boxer?

El Gallo Negro, 'the Black Rooster'. By the end the detective refuses the name, telling Cruz that the baddest man in the barrio 'ain't me, not any more'.

Roger Ebert's review compared Blood In Blood Out unfavorably with which film from a year earlier?

American Me. The two films were shot on the same East L.A. streets in the same summer of 1991, and even shared a screenwriter at different stages.

How is the forged order to kill Montana smuggled to his killer?

Inside a hair comb. It is a counterfeit of the BGA leader's own wooden comb, so the killer never doubts who sent it.

Blood In Blood Out was made by a label belonging to which studio?

Disney. Its Hollywood Pictures label made the film and Buena Vista released it, while chief executive Michael Eisner worried about the company's name on a violent gang epic.

Which future Breaking Bad villain plays the homeboy Chuey?

Raymond Cruz. Long before he played the meth dealer Tuco Salamanca, he was cast close to home: he grew up in East Los Angeles, surrounded by the gang life the film depicts.