The talented Spanish director was summoned by the journalist Rose Montero, from the newspaper El País, for an extensive talk about his cinema and life.
The interview, reproduced by Página 12, reveals a very personal author and a very funny person who talks about the change that his last work means in his career, The Oxford crimes, police drama based on the novel by the Argentine writer Guillermo Martinez.
Alex De La Iglesia reviews all his films, explains how he uses humor (and how it is possible to make people think from it), his first steps in the cinema, his relationship with Almodovar in Acción Mutante, his troubled family past and his present, with his two daughters.
Then part of the interview:
- You say that you feel freer when working with the material of another. Is that why you have been able to make a film that is not a comedy for the first time? That is, if you talk about topics that are more your own, do you need to pretend to laugh at them?
-Yes, totally. To talk about yourself you need to look for mechanisms that make it bearable.
- He usually says that humor is an escape. For example, he said: "My films are fundamentally cowardly, about a guy who doesn't dare to face reality directly and uses comedy or jokes like the buffoons of the Middle Ages."
- The truth, I do not see it that way. On the contrary, I think that humor allows us to delve into things. Well, yes, at least you run away attacking. And also the humor ends with the arrogant. Look, in The Oxford Murders what happens to the characters is that they are punished for their arrogance. The interesting thing about the film is that it makes you see that things are the way they are because you somehow provoke them, you are also part of the game, and you cannot blame the pain of Humanity on the system or on History. Actually, you are also working every day so that that pain exists. With your own joy, for example. Because joy supposes a certain unconsciousness.
-You are very funny, your films are hilarious, but in the background there is always a terrible substrate ...
- Yes, and also what happens is that the knowledge of pain generates a much greater capacity to enjoy fun. Anyone who has been to a funeral certainly knows what a party is. In that sense, the humor that interests is the prohibited…. Laugh at what you can't laugh at, that's the funniest thing in the world. I remember once I was at mass as a child with a friend, in the front row. And something was wrong with the priest, and my friend and I began to laugh out loud. And at first it was something just funny, but when we realized that the priest was watching us but could not say anything because he was in the sermon, then the laugh became something huge, uncontrollable, something almost painful. That is the key, to laugh at what you cannot laugh at.
–The works reveal the artist, but not everyone knows how to read those works, or rather everyone puts their own thing and watches a different movie. And then there is the public figure, who usually has very little to do with you. For example, I read an interview with you in which the journalist seemed to force you to be constantly funny. If you wanted to be serious, I wouldn't let you. The public figure is a stereotype.
"Yes, yes, that is so." The burden of this business we are in is that people want to be clear about things, they want to know who you are. And then they label you: this is that man who makes funny movies. And there is a moment when you say, hey, excuse me, I make funny movies, or not. Billy Wilder may be the director who has made the best comedies in the world, but also brutal dramatic films. And his comedies are terrifying… And his comedies are even more terrifying than his dramas! For example, The Apartment Scares Me is probably one of the best movies I've ever seen, but I wouldn't dare say it's one of the best comedies, because it scares me. I feel so identified with the cowardice and anguish of the protagonist ... That guy who to please the grown-ups makes parties in his own house and everyone thinks he's horny and he's not ...
–And inside she is crying.
–And that is so similar to what can happen to me, to what happens to all of us, that that movie terrifies me. But the wonderful thing about Wilder is that he makes us have a good time telling us the truth.
"That's what you do in your very black comedies."
–Azcona, who I think is one of the most important people in Spanish culture in recent decades, said that he did not do comedies, that he did grotesque tragedies. And it is something that I would also subscribe to.
- What I did when I was young was drawing comics.
Yes, I really liked drawing. And at the same time that I was drawing and was in the Philosophy bar, I got into the university's film club. And then a friend, Enrique Urbizu, started shooting a movie. I always say that I got into the movies out of envy. At that time the people who made films were all serious people, Pilar Miró, Mario Camus, they were not kids. I thought that to make films you had to be like that, someone serious and with an official document authorizing you to be a director… But Urbizu's courage and audacity showed me that someone like me could also make a film. And there my world broke. I spent a week without sleep telling myself: if I don't make movies, nothing makes sense. If I don't make movies, I'll die.
–And he made his first short film, Mirindas murderers.
–Yes, we had to learn everything as we went… I had exactly the money to pay for the film, I didn't have more. I couldn't pay the actors and they left. It was a short four days and they didn't even hold out. The protagonist left the second day and I had about a million shots that I had to do, with my back turned. Hence, the short has such strange planning.
"But everything went well for him very quickly." After that, you wrote a script with your longtime co-writer, Jorge Guericoechevarría, and Almodóvar produced the film.
–Well, yes, we gave the script to a friend, Paz Sufrategui, who works with Almodóvar, and Paz told us that Pedro wanted to talk to us… Ugh, the impact was tremendous. Pedro was the one who asked us to make the film. Because if he tells us: no, I want you to sweep ...
- They would have answered: yes, yes ...
Yes, yes, Pedro, whatever you say. I want you to make a documentary about whales ... Well, nothing, come on, it's done. But no, he produced the script for us and we made Mutant Action, an incredibly poorly directed movie.
-No, what's up, it's very good. I liked it a lot. It was very original.
We did everything on the fly. Who is going to direct the movie? I said. And I thought: someone is going to slap me right now ... I think that now I would not dare to shoot Mutant Action, because I know the consequences of things. The engine of action is ignorance. If someone had told me: no, look, this is going to bring you all this series of problems, you are going to read in a newspaper that you are an idiot ... then I probably would not have dared.
-Your second film, The Day of the Beast, was a huge success ...
-It was an idea that we had for a long time, from the university. Jorge and I didn't dare to do it in the first place because it seemed difficult to us. In the initial project the story spoke of a priest from the University of Deusto, which is where I studied, who travels to the blast furnaces of Sestao to look for the Antichrist. And also at the beginning The Day of the Beast was not a comedy at all. It was called The Black Kiss, and the film ended in the Kio Towers, and there were 5000 priests from all over the world at the top of one of the towers, and through a rope they were walking in the abyss to the other building, and in the Another tower was Satan, who was fifty feet tall, sitting on a throne. Then all the priests would turn around and give Satan a kiss on the backside, and on the backside they would see his own face ... In medieval tales that speak of the devil, that's how it is ... That was the first script we wrote. But when we read it we realized that that was impossible.
–You do a thousand things at the same time, participate in short film festivals, draw comics, write narratives, prepare a thousand scripts for film and television, run a “blog”… Not for. You look like Obelix, you fell into the kettle.
-I also look alike in volume ... One of the great mysteries of Humanity still unsolved is whether it is better to wear pants above or below the belly. And I'm with Obélix, I think it's much better from above.
- I said it because of the constant "accelerate". It is as if as a child he had swallowed a magic pot of energy ...
-Yes, the truth is that since I started making movies I'm like ... I feel like I'm in a free fall, it's like I'm falling all the time into a bottomless abyss, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... But, of course, how is a free fall very long because I have already gotten used to it, and from time to time, while I fall, I read the newspaper, and I have sofas that fall with me, I am comfortable in the fall.
–Having had two daughters, hasn't it given you some calm?
-It has changed my life. Now I finally find a meaning to existence. Thanks to my daughters, and also to my wife. I always had the feeling that life is an Ionesco play, but not now. It is that the script of life is very well thought out, because when that slump of the second act comes, suddenly two little things appear that depend on you and you realize that there are things more important than you. We all think that we are the protagonist of our film, and maybe not, we may be a mere secondary. And that is very comforting. Anyway, I have to learn to enjoy the good.
–You said before that you don't want to stop. What are you running from? What personal fires do you have behind your back? I know you have been through difficult circumstances ... Your father died when you were a child ...
"My father died when I was twelve." And my sister died of cancer at thirty, and I didn't know how to cope with it at all. I ran away. And I have a brother with mental problems for as long as I can remember, and that is also very difficult. Sometimes you feel like things have no solution, and that is what often makes you go crazy, right?…. But, oh, I don't like all this stuff we're talking about. We are sinning from excessive self-awareness. If I read this interview, I would not like this character at all. But how weeping, having an impressive life, an impressive luck! And it's true, I do. I am privileged, I am happy making movies. What I admire most in the world is the humorist. To the person who is dedicated to making people laugh. And especially to the comedian who has no pretense whatsoever. That is why I have said many times that I would like to make a chemically pure film, exclusively for fun. Without any pain behind.
–A film that celebrates the joy of life. Because joy exists.
–Yes… There are happy moments. You are in a table, you have eaten well, you are with someone with whom you are well, you are having a coffee, you are calm, the girls run around, and you say to yourself, this is life. And it is perfect. Yes it's true. That exist…
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Source: page 12