How ‘Flamin’ Hot’ Screenwriter Linda Yvette Chávez Wrote from a Place of Heart and Humor

Flamin' Hot is the inspiring true story of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the Frito Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn the iconic Flamin’ Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global pop culture phenomenon.

There is something quite satisfying that happens while watching Flamin' Hot. It could be the array of emotions you go through while digesting Richard's story, watching the family dynamics, the direction, the camerawork, the pace of the edit to the music directoiin, the nostalgia, the humor...the heart. Really, it's all of the above and then some. 

And one can tell that great care was taken into consideration and carried through all the way to post-production, when telling Richard's story. This is all thanks to Eva Longoria's clear vision of how she wanted to tell this story and the universal story of her community and heritage. She keenly cultivated a team around her to carry that vision through. But as any great director (and filmmaker for that matter) she knows it all starts on the page and with the writer. Cue Gentefied scribe Linda Yvette Chávez's attachment to the project, who was more than equipped to tell this story.

Linda recently spoke with Script about how she initially became attached to the project, her creative collaboration with Eva Longoria, to tapping into her own voice to tell her communities story about three-dimensional characters that are loved, who are flawed, and vulnerable. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did you initially become attached to the project, and what was the collaboration process like with Eva Longoria, in shaping this narrative and tackling Richard's story with a lot of heart and humor?

Linda Yvette Chávez: Well, it's actually it's been a while…because with all projects, it takes a minute for things to come to fruition. It’s so fun to go back in time - almost four years ago that this came into my world. And we were at the tail end of post-production on my show Gentefied. And I was trying to squeeze in some time for a surgery that I needed to do. And right before I went into surgery, my reps reached out and they were like, ‘Eva Longoria wants to meet with you on a project about the creator of Flaming Hot Cheetos. And they want you to come in and pitch too!’ And I was like, ‘I'm having an organ removed!’ [laughs] I don't think I can do it. And of course, Eva is incredible. She's a veteran. She really wanted me because she had read a draft of a script called, I'm Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter that I had adapted from a book. That's another movie that I'm working on that America Ferrera who is going to direct. She had read that script, and I think after reading that script, and her work with MACRO, she felt that voice was the voice she wanted for this script. And obviously, now I know why.

She pushed the studio. She was like, ‘No, I'm gonna wait for Linda.’ And I was like, ‘Dang, OK, I'm so honored!’ [laughs] And she was a fan of Gentefied too, so obviously that voice she knew. And then they brought me in, I chatted with her. She sent me her deck and her deck was incredible - her directing deck that she pitched with she was like, ‘I want you to see what my vision is.’ And I was just like, wow, this person has a different type of vision for our stories, the stories of our people, how we want to tell them and it was the type of vision that I was excited about; comedic, like a lot of Scorsese influences, Adam McKay influences - I was like, ‘Hell yeah, let's do this. This is the direction I want to go in with my work as well.’

And I think the beautiful thing about Eva is, she knows who to choose for the things that fulfill her vision. Our sense of humor is very similar. It was very shorthand with her the minute she brought me in, I felt like I was working with my prima. I came in and I was like, ‘Dang, girl, you're very down to earth like my older cousin.’ And we didn't have to explain anything to each other when it came to Richard's story. We understood it because it was in our DNA.

One of the first things we did was we went to go visit Richard…and of course, a very Mexican way of doing things, we arrived and his whole family was there - it was beautiful. The other family members were able to chime in, in terms of their part of the story and their journey and life. And I think for Richard and Judy having me come in, it was a nice turning point to know that there was someone who understood their journey coming in to tell their story and to fulfill Eva's vision of what that story would be.

Sadie: Right, and as you’re doing that deep dive in person, was there a certain point where you knew when you had to stop going down the rabbit hole of research?

Linda: Absolutely, because Richard is a public speaker, a motivational speaker, he's got stories for days. I'm pretty good at interviewing folks just because I've done in different capacities in the past, so it was like gold mining. I had read the old draft. And I was like, there's a deeper story here. And I know that they haven't shared some of the deeper things that they've gone through and are experiencing. And so, I went in with like a chisel and hammer. I found so much information like there's Clarence in the film [he] wasn't there before. And I found him just talking to Richard and discovering that this character was really in his life. His middle name really was Charisma. He really was a guy who mentored Richard and helped him through everything. And he had never mentioned it. It just came up in conversation.

And then Judy, I always say Judy is for real a Chola. When I would talk to her separately, she'd be like, ‘So listen, this is what you got to know. Richard would never tell you this.’ But in her heart, she's like, this is what they did. And then Richard is very much like, ‘Judy probably wouldn't want me to tell you this,’ and you see some of those lines in the film because of this beautiful, loving dynamic towards each other - they've been through so much.

And then obviously with Eva, knowing what her vision is, and checking in with her and her being like, ‘I want this and I want that, ‘and then taking the marching orders and be like, ‘OK, let me go find that. Let me figure that out.’ And then that draft went out made its rounds. The pandemic hit. And it was at the end of shooting season two of my show, I was doing Flamin' Hot, crazy, crazy thing to do. [laughs] But when the pandemic hit, I still had to deliver the script. This new revision that I need to do and this next draft I just felt like this next draft needed to land in a way that would get us to that green light. And it was hard because as creatives when there's so much anxiety and stress and we're all fearing for our lives, it's hard to be creative. 

And so, to get inside of myself to be creative was hard but for me, writing is such a spiritual experience. I see it as like channeling story from another source and I felt, especially right after I met Richard I'll never forget leaving their house, my heart was wide open. I felt electrified driving home. It felt like the skies were partying. I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this story needs to be told.’ And I know it's crazy because you hear Hot Cheetos and you're like, ‘Oh, OK, Hot Cheetos…’ right? But then you meet the man and the family and the wife behind it. And you're like, ‘This is not a movie about the Cheeto. There's a movie about a man and the American Dream; the struggle of immigrant families and low-income families; and working-class families - all things that I completely relate to.

I knew I wanted the story to really reach people in a way that I knew it could and especially men; my number one goal is to make men cry with this. And so far, I've been doing a great job. [laughs] A lot of guys come up to me and go, ‘Oh, my God, I never cry, but man, I cried during this.’ I'm like, ‘Yes! I got you right in the heart.’ So, for me, that was my goal, just for them to see themselves. This has a very mass audience. Huge. Hot Cheetos is global, it's gonna reach the world. For me as a writer, my target was the men in my community, make the men in my community feel like they've just seen a superhero that looks like them, then I've done my job.

And for me, that's how I structured the film. When I went to revamp it, it was like this a superhero movie. I didn't tell anybody. But there were a lot of superhero references. And I just saw Richard as this man who goes from not having anything to discovering his superpowers, his culture, and then using that to become this great hero in his community. That's what I wanted - the men and the women in my community to walk away really feeling like this man, if he looks like me, he sounds like me, he came from that thing - I can do it too. And that's what I want them to feel.

And so that draft was a labor of love during the pandemic. Eva was so wonderful protecting my time and just letting me know, ‘Take your time. I know everyone's pressuring you to get a draft…I trust you.’ And that was one thing that I just love so much about Eva, she knew who she had chosen to do the work that needed to be done, and that she trusted that. And she allowed that creativity to grow. And because of that, that draft, that was the one that as far as what they've told me is the thing that got us to the next finish line to go into production and everyone at Searchlight was in love with it. And for me, this is the story that's coming through me. And this is the story that I know, is gonna affect people in the world.

The heart of the story was there, and we went through all the changes that need to happen for a whole year after that before they went to production. So, it's a journey. It's wild. I think, when you work with real people, I think initially, they want everything to be exactly like how their story is, right? Yes, we're gonna capture the essence of your story. In fact, there's gonna be moments that are exactly how it went in your life. But we're also going to tell a great film. And so, I kind of had to let go of little things that maybe they might not have been happy with initially. And trusting the process and being like, ‘You'll see once you get to the end, you're gonna love it.’ And to this day, I get texts from Richard like, ‘Oh, my god, I love this.’ And there's little things like, ‘Well, that's not what quite happened.’ It's like, well, this is movie magic. [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] It's a movie. But I love that story. And there are so many aspects to it from fulfilling that need for yourself as a storyteller and in telling this story. And then working with Eva and being true to her vision, and then also true to Richard’s story. There are just so many layers.

There's this really great line that I love from Richard in the film, he says "When the world treats you like a criminal, you become one." And it resonates on so many levels from the culture, to the livelihood of very specific demographics. But there's also something that resonates on a more universal level with audiences and that’s how they resonate with underdogs. As a storyteller, how do you take advantage of their disadvantages, to a certain degree, for story and character development?

Linda: I think for all of us it’s our vulnerabilities, the way we connect to each other, and we all share similar forms of shame, fear, guilt. I know for me, the biggest inspiration I draw is when I go and read about others or see other writers talk about all the challenges and obstacles. Show me all your successes. Awesome, inspiring. But I want to hear about the time that you went through a deep depression, couldn't get through a draft. And then I'm like, ‘Oh, OK you're human like me!’ And when I see that it, hear that, I don't see a person who's not worthy. I see a person who succeeded, and despite the adversity, and that's what I need to inspire and motivate me. And so, for me, I think an underdog story does exactly that. Mind you this film I don't think touches the surface of everything that Richard really went through. ‘You went through all of that to make a Cheeto spicy?! [laughs] And you still persevered!’

I think initially, it was hard for Richard and Judy. And Eva speaks to this a lot to their past with something they didn't want people to know about. They’re very religious people. And so, they were like, ‘That's the past. That's our old version of us. We don't want people to see that.’ That was some of the qualms they kind of had with the film initially. And it took some work to let them know, like, ‘No, and that's what created you. That's what gave you the courage, the bravery, the ganas, the motivation, right, to do something better with your life, because you wanted more,’ and those were things that were thrust upon you that so many people face in different ways. These are not choices, you didn't choose to be that person. It was what you were trying to make the most of with what you had. And that's all of us. We all sometimes come across things that we can't help. I'm going through things right now that I'm like, I just have to surrender because it's not my choice that these things are coming into my life. And now how do I navigate that to become the best person that I can be? And I think that's what Richard and Judy did.

In a way, that's so inspiring, because so many of us could just sit back and stay in a really sad, depressed space about things or we can choose to make a change in our lives. Whether that change is medication, or like whatever it is that we do better. And I think when we see someone do that, it essentially gives us the inspiration to do the same in our own lives. And that, for me, Richard and Judy, that's the piece of the story that's the most important part, we can leave that up, people need to see where you came from. Because that's the inspiration that you were able to persevere and also to give humanity to people.

For me personally, people that I've grown up with, people who are like Richard and Judy, often are criminalized or stereotyped and seen in just one dynamic. And the reality is they are three-dimensional humans who have gone through so much to be where they are. I grew up with a lot of friends and family who were in gangs and things like that. And because I was so intimately close to them, I got to see sides of them that I knew didn't reflect the life that they were living. So many were kind, loving people who were afraid. 

And so, you'll often see in my work, me kind of giving that dimensionality, that love to those characters. And one of the things when I came into pitch on this was, we talked about the gangsters and the story, and Richard and I was like, the men that I grew up with, yeah, they did some crazy things. But I also knew that they were broken in so many ways. And they love their mamas. And they love their Prima Linda, and they lived beautiful lives, and they knew that they wish they could do something different with them. And so every time I have the opportunity to color them in a different light, I take that opportunity.

This one in particular is so real because you literally see a man who was a gangster and a woman, but you don't often see like a Chola [laughs] come out of being wild like Judy was and it just scratches the surface of who she was, as a Chola, coming out of that to become these incredible people who were able to go to the top of their dreams and achieve so much and have this big, beautiful family and be able to provide for them in such beautiful abundant ways. Like that's something that I want to see - something that I want to invest in.

Sadie: I love that aspect of your storytelling from this and what you did on Gentefied. Being from LA, I grew up with those families. I see them in this movie.

Linda: Oh, when you said you grew up in Highland Park and Eagle Rock…I knew you knew…[laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] I’ve seen some things, that’s for sure. But this community is so beautiful and vibrant and seeing that on screen is so important. And again, that’s what I love about your writing, your storytelling, you're telling very specific stories about your community and showing this culture, and family dynamics. I feel like this type of storytelling, especially about the Latin community is still very new in the mainstream, even though these stories have been here for generations.

Linda: Yeah, I mean, I think it's hard because what I always do is like one, not judge our characters, which I think is true of any character, whether they're Latina, or anything else. We don't judge them or we try not to, and let them be who they are, and tell us who they are. And I think that for our stories in particular, I always talk about the reason why it's so important to have people of color behind their own stories as writers and creators, it's because we will be approaching characters with so much love because we were raised with them. 

Often in mainstream media the people writing have only had interactions with these people as their maids, their gardeners, you know, all that. So, they can only write so far, they see a gangster, they feel fear. And that's where they're gonna write from. That's the stereotypes that we've seen for decades. But when you put someone like me behind the writing, suddenly you have someone who not only saw that side of the person, they saw every other layer of them. They saw them when they were five years old, and playing in the swimming pool together, they saw them when their father got upset with them and they dealt with an abusive household, they saw them before all of the armor got put on. Right now, what the world sees is the armor. What I saw was, ‘Hey, that's my brother. I love that man. He's so sweet and funny.’ And he's had it hard and all of us have in different ways.

I'm like really in love with my community. I'm really in love with my people. I see them and I'm just like, ‘Wow, y'all are beautiful.’ And I want to be able to capture that beauty. Including the flaws. I think that the letting us also be flawed is another thing that when you don't have a person who understands the community, it's harder for them. Sometimes you get people who are like, ‘Oh, I don't want to make them look bad, because I'm not Latino,’ so you don't give them room to be human, which is like humans are also flawed. And so, you see a lot of our characters or my characters in the show, and also in Flamin' Hot, they get to be three dimensional. They get to be these beautiful humans, and they also get to do fucked up things that you're like, ‘OK, that was fucked up.’ Like, Richard's dad is not a perfect man. He's a drunk who suddenly he finds religion and he thinks he's holier than thou. But he has to contend with the fact that he was an abusive father when Richard was younger, and Richard's not letting him get away with that, right? But you can still love this man and see his pain when he tells Richard, ‘I wish I wasn't the man who made you the man that you are today.’ Like that's painful. 

You didn't get to this point in your life until it was too late, and kind of recover that and I think that way of allowing people to be flawed and loved is for me, the pathway to telling the stories and telling these characters and it's a hard thing to ask someone does not have a community to do the same thing because it's hard. I'm not saying that people can't do it. But I think that it's like, how do you include those voices, those storytellers and whatever, whether you're the creator of a show and you have these characters, like how can you include people who are going to be writing from that experience in that place of love?

I think that's how, for me, crafting these stories, to crafting these characters, that's how it works. It's how do we love them? How do we love them the way that we love our families, when they're fucking up? And we had to call out our moms because like, ‘Hey, boundaries, not OK, but also, I frickin’ love you and come and hug me.’ And like, ‘I know you're in pain because of your childhood.’ We have to love our characters in those worlds in the same way. We have to call them out. And we have to love them through all of their flaws and their insecurities and everything that makes them them - it's very universal.

It's not very different from writing from what all writers do. I forget who it was who said this, how do you write women? It's like, you write them like every other character, you just write them like a human, right? I think it's the same with Latino people. It's like, you just write them like a human and understand your own biases that are gonna be coming into the picture when you're writing them.

Sadie: Right, and if you think it's a stereotype, then maybe don't write that. I keep thinking of that scene where Richard calls up his dad for to help to tie his tie. I can see that hitting a lot of the male audience.

Linda: I've gotten so many guys be like, ‘You nailed my father relationship.’ [laughs] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So many of you have gone through this. We're all healing. [laughs]

Sadie: What inspired you to get into this crazy world of storytelling and in this medium?

Linda: Yeah, well, I grew up writing stories. I was always obsessed with writing, but I would write about witches and things like that. Fun things. I love like Star Trek - was a big nerd. I love witches and fantasy things and all that. And also, cute rom-com type of things. I would write poetry, but I never saw myself as a writer. But my parents, both who were immigrants from Mexico were like, ‘Mija, I think you're a writer.’ And I was like, ‘That's why we are the way that we are. I'm not trying to be a broke writer,’ is what I had in my head. [laughs] I don't know why I knew that writers were broke. But I was like, ‘I'm not trying to be broke!’ [laughs] I gotta be a lawyer, a doctor.

So, I went to college with the intention of ‘I'm going to be a lawyer.’ I went to Stanford for undergrad. It was a culture shock for me to go to this predominantly white institution. And not only that institution of people who grew up with so much money, even the people of color grew up with money, their fathers were ambassadors or I went to school with Nelson Mandela's grandson. And I'm from a working class, community in Norwalk, and I'm like, ‘Oh, this is different.’ And it was very shocking. And I think I got very depressed that first year. 

And then I ended up taking a course called Social Protest Theater. It's like a two-week course before your sophomore year, and I read the breakdown. And it was all people color playwrights. The professor was a Black professor. I had never really thought about it, but something about a called to me. And then I took that course. And it really changed my whole life because he introduced me to people like Luis Valdez and Cherrie Moraga, Spike Lee, and all these people of color, and he taught me about how art can be social protest, but also can be cathartic and healing. And he introduced me to Cherrie Moraga who I found out taught at that school and I took all her classes. Her play was the first I ever saw my own community on the page. And I was like, ‘Oh, wow, you can write about your community?’ I didn't know that you could do that. I was writing about witches. [laughs] And that was really the inception of like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna be a broke writer,’ not a broke writer anymore. We'll see after this strike. [laughs]

But I was like, ‘I want to tell our stories.’ I was so in love with our community even then my poetry was about them. I just really was working through a lot of my own stuff and that was kind of the seed this activist type of energy to the work, to the art was something that carried me through and then I ended up going to USC for film school for screenwriting, which was really beautiful. But then I got to see the commercial side of things, the side of things where it's like, ‘Oh, your art is a commodity and you are a commodity.’ And that was very different from the very cathartic healing experience I had with the artists at Stanford, where art was about healing. And here with art was about how much can you sell for? So that was a stark awakening. 

But I took both and bounced around the industry for a long time doing a lot of different things, because I think I was afraid of my own, I'll say it, my own power in terms of my writing. I kind of ran from it for a while, but I did all kinds of stuff all over the industry. And then eventually, with some friends - my friend started a company - we helped her and it was like a female-driven, comedy boutique company during the time where it was the wild west of digital. And all these big companies are coming to us like, ‘Hey, how do you do this digital thing? How does the Internet work?’ [laughs] ‘Pay us money and will teach you.’ So we worked with Nickelodeon and Univision and all these places. And at some point, I just got tired of doing parodies of things. And I was like, I need to get back to what I came here to do, which is film and TV in long form. And so, I left that.

And then I went on a whole spiritual journey after that, I won't get into all that. But eventually, I got into the Film Independent Lab. And this was like eight-nine years ago. And through that lab, I met Marvin [Lemus], they introduced me to him. And they were like, ‘He's looking for someone to write this project with him.’ And I was like, ‘Does it pay?’ And they're like, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘Alright, what is it?’ And it was the seed of Gentefied. And I was like, ‘Oh, wait a second. This is different.’ And MACRO at the time, they were brand new, their first in-house production. And they were like, ‘Do your thing. Tell the story you want to tell.’ And I had never had anyone say that to me. And to have his support, Marvin and I were like, ‘OK, let's tell our stories the way we want to tell them.’ And that led to the whole series, the thing that launched my career essentially. It's been a journey, but I think I've always been a writer since I was a kid. It was just gonna get knocked around a little bit before I got here.

Flamin' Hot is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.