Fernando Colomo: «The only problem of shooting is the script»
Fernando Colomo (Madrid, 1946) is a great shy who likes to observe: his little lenses dominate a child body that hides a whole scientist of the little gestures.Fernando, in addition, is one of our best comediographers - without discussion the greatest domain of the always dodge lightness - and has enduring more than three decades with films as absurd as tender.Those two adjectives would also be worth it for this unnoticed transfer of Professor Tornasol.
How did your hobby for cinema start?
Comes from the first Tarzan movie I saw.It was called Tarzan and the Magic Fountain, 1949, in black and white with Lex Barker as Tarzan.I was very impressed: when I got home I got on the kitchen table and began to throw knives [laughs].At that time the cinema was very cheap and remembers that there was no television.I used to be a comic artist and had done a correspondence course.There I learned perspective, valuation tricks.It was very good.
Didn't you offer your work to Bruguera?From 60 to 70 it is a booming company ...
Not yet.I left my cartoonist's hobby because I was more interested in cinema.But he was very fond of comic.
Are you from the generation of chocolate chromos?Those who gave photos of Hollywood stars and always evoke Zulueta and Almodóvar.
I also did that.And he collected hand programs that gave the exit in Navalcarnero, a Sunday.On Thursday we were in gang, when there were double programs, and in the cinephorum of school vi the 400 blows.It was a film in which the protagonist was my age: an identification occurred.I was fascinated.
He leído que eras aficionado a Film Ideal y otras revistas.How did you get to the Canon of film directors that you liked?
At the same time I saw the 400 ... I got an advertising letter from a film magazine called Cine Estudio.I told my father that I wanted to subscribe to that magazine, some two hundred pesetas a year, and my father told me "this is advertising, you don't have to listen to him".To which I replied "already, but I really like that".I gave him so much the can that signed me.I got the first number and they didn't get any more [laughs].My father told me, "Do you see it? They have deceived you".But in that magazine they said they were the founders of the ideal film and went to the kiosk to ask about her.They took a number, "How much does it cost?", "Twelve pesetas" ...
The magazines was the dissemination at that time;years before the Internet.
Yes, indeed.In fact, from my cinephile era I remember that there was censorship until 77.Very little arrived, although Bergman premiered on the Gran Vía ...
Se veía como «cine religioso». Era el cineasta favorito de la Seminci de Valladolid…
He wore all the golden spikes and let him pass: it was the great Santón.At that time you could not choose movies and then we swallowed everything there was.I became an obasse.We signed up for the National Filmoteca of Spain, when it began to make sessions, and projected one a week at the National Institute of Industry.I lied, I said I was over eighteen years old..
This is fun, because I don't imagine a director more opposite to you.
Unclear.Now I would die if I see it whole.I had that modern thing at that time.Another movie that struck me a lot, that I already saw just because my friends did not want to go see her [laughs], was last year in Marienbad by Alain Resnais, in Pompeya cinema.I got to make a picture, even.As everything did not arrive for censorship, you made the cineclub of the French Institute, although they arrived without subtitles.
Without subtitles?
I had studied French in high school, but I didn't understand anything.There I saw Godard's Chinoise and I fell asleep [laughs].
La última película de Wes Anderson, La crónica francesa, tiene un segmento inspirado en estas películas galas de finales de los 60.
I have not seen her yet.I have been a crazy one from Godard until 68 ...
In fact, it is impossible not to quote Rohmer or Truffaut;The most obvious French authors in your first films and short. El encuentro casual de los dos amigos en el corto Pomporrutas Imperiales es puro cine francés…
Yes.I was very interested in French cinema: from 400 ... you discover Truffaut and then to Godard.The latter had something fascinating: films as a separate band were made apart from everything.Five minutes from movie Godard says "For spectators who have arrived late: it is a love story ...".I made a brief summary of the film: those boutade fascinated me.
En Jules et Jim Truffaut congela fotogramas y juega con el formato muchas veces.They were rupturists with American cinema ...
Truffaut, look, then he throws on the pianist, who had something romantic.It was very irregular.
Trueba consideraba Las dos inglesas y el amor la mejor película de Truffaut.
Is one of the good.
Una cosa sobre Pomporrutas… es que es anterior a otras historias en tiendas de discos como Alta fidelidad o El amor en fuga del propio Truffaut.
Oh yeah?She didn't remember.I was going to buy an opera album, I had no idea: I asked Madame Bovary instead of Madame Butterfly.That happened to me [laughs].Suddenly there is a character that gives me back behind, "Pussy, Fernando", and I see a guy with glasses, redhead, and I didn't recognize him.All the dialogues of the short, thus, are real.When I am with that guy, "this is a short," and at the end of talking to him, the owner of the store "Your friend Manolo is a very special guy, huh?".He told me: "Don't you know what a novel has written?""How?""And in English!POLICIACA ».I told the short to the owner and told me "you can roll here as long as you do not have your fist up" [laughs].
How did you live your double life as an architect and budding filmmaker?Did you have amateur friends in the faculty to cinema?
Architecture is an accident: before getting into that race I had already directed a movie at school, which had no title.It was, of course, under the influence of Antonioni and 8 mm.
Antonioni and his stylized fixed plans are a good reference with little budget and actors ...
Clear.Now we laugh at him, to last bull, but at the time it was God.I don't remember anyone making a bad criticism: we saw him how to go to Mass.I continue with the architecture, which did not end up telling you: I with seventeen years end the pre -university and at that time there was no faculty of information sciences.There was only the Official Film School.There they studied all the previous generation: Saura, Regueiro, Camus, etc..
The last great generation of the film school ...
Yes.These were what was called "the new Spanish cinema".You should be twenty -three years to examine you and the problem I have is that I meet a "gap".As the drawing was very good, my idea was to study Fine Arts.It was doing a little time and then introducing myself to cinema.My father told me "that is not a career" and I had no choice but to do architecture, because my older brother had just entered into architecture and had all his books, notes, etc..
That is your complicated relationship with the film school, which had its death in the 70s.
I got into architecture - it cost me a little at the beginning - and then in the fourth year I decide to introduce myself to the Official Film School.I examined, I approved the first test, and then realized that there were only eight places in the direction.
In the dictatorship, both the Official School of Film and Journalism, limited the enrolled to avoid people contrary to the regime.
Clear.Studying cinema was like a kind of postgraduate, most had studied philosophy or right.The directors of that generation all had a career of that style.I see what direction I had two hundred and fifty -so many candidates ...
Everyone wanted to be authors.
The comments were that the squares were already given: two of the minister, two of the Director General.And I said, "Jolin, I want to enter anyway".Then I saw that in decoration seven for eight seats [laughs] had signed up for eight seats..I went to talk to Juan Julio Baena, who was the director, and told him that he had finished architecture, that I liked the cinema and that I had thought about being a director ... and I said "but I thought that mine is more decoration".He replied "that had to have thought before, you can't change one".
Total, which changed me because he was interested.I was examining: there were five tests over a month.I arrived at the last and entered decoration, and not in the direction.The following year my idea was to present myself again in the direction, as others were doing, and seeing that I was not a communist and those things approved you [laughs].
Maybe they even approved you for being, depending on the right teacher ...
What's going: they had made tremendous purges after the generation of Bardem.Baena was obsessed with the Communist Party because he had been from the Communist Party.
The great anti -communists have all those origins.
Exactly.Had passed to the opposite side.I could not combine, in the end, the studies and I had to leave it.I only did the "María" subjects of the Official Film School.The following year, when I wanted to introduce myself as director, the film school was closed and the Faculty of Information Sciences appeared.
How did you produce your first shorts?Was it complicated?Was there state money?
I produce them with the money I earned as an architect.I remember that I did them with photography director Javier Aguirresarobe and he said "you make a chalet and a short".
Es divertido que coincide tu etapa de arquitecto con Las verdes praderas de José Luis Garci y el «chalecito» de toda la emergente burguesía de capitales.
Clear.I made those chalets: it was the municipal architect of Villa del Prado, the town of my father, and then I was on Saturdays and I got out of work.I went short with that, with later aids, with points.I never took more than two, but with those made the short.All working in Cooperativa, since even with my third short, Imperial Pomporrutas, we distribute the money.I do, then, a producer called La Salamandra with money from my architect friends and the one who had accumulated, saving, while living at my parents' house.
Francoist ladies who wanted villa financed your cinema.
[Laughs].Well, Francoistas: I made cutle.
Quiero que nos hables de la triada Tigres de papel, Ópera prima y Pepi, Luci y Boom, que son tres películas libres que fundan casi la comedia madrileña.Were you aware of creating a genre?
No, no, in any way.In fact, "the Madrid comedy" at the beginning was called "the new Madrid customs comedy," it was something that someone was invented and that bought everyone.I was against and Trueba said "it is neither comedy, nor is it from Madrid, nor is it new, nor is it a costumbrista" [laughs].
Each of the three is a step on a ladder to social liberation.They even resemble improvised appearance.How much are in the dialogues of the script and how much of the actors?
Well look, paper tigers is from the least improvised movies I have made.Everything was written except for some phrases by Concha Gregori, who made a secondary character.I even realized that the script was too long, something that Joaquín Hinojosa did not like, because he took away phrases.
Tigres de papel es una cápsula temporal del inicio de la democracia.Were you aware of doing it?
No, I had to make a movie that was very cheap, it is shot in eighteen days, and we shot eight to three in the morning so as not to pay the food.To do so, with a seventeen team, we would get budget.It was a movie, thus, very spoken: I was written with that intention.When I went to write the script I knew that I had two decorated and said "Casa Juan: here you have to make five folios".And so "Alberto Casa ..." and five others.We were doing so.
He has aged very well, he had redifusion on the public TV recently ...
Clear.What I wanted to do is a movie of people who knew ...
La divisa de André Bazin de «el cine como extensión de la vida».
I knew that, of course, it had not been done.In the cinema of the beginning of democracy I was aware that I had a new world and that I was lucky to open that door.In fact, it is a film that when we shot it censorship had fallen a few months before and I was lucky: the dialogues would not have passed this.
Political discussions ...
That of course.But you couldn't say a taco!The only allowed was "punching".
In all Berlanga movies that expression is said.
And they said "stuff"!The tigers of paper tigers was colloquial language and you couldn't have said "fuck" with censorship.
How many bronchs did you bet on the live sound in your first films?It was anathema for the old Spanish coach and it is not fully implanted until the 90s.
All!In the 80s the direct sound was already, huh?When Pedro Masó does the divorce that comes records direct sound.Berlanga and Garci, against, took a long time.Berlanga either sought naturalness.For me the direct sound in fundamental: it is likely that paper tigers is the first film shot with directly direct sound.Saura had done it, but there were bent parts ...
En el cine de Saura hay pocos diálogos.
Clear, se dialoga menos.In the spirit of Víctor Erice's hive the dialogues with girls were also direct sound.The problem there was that there was no technician: I talked to the sound coach who worked with Erice, but was in another story.He told me no, that he couldn't make the movie.We were looking for Miguel Ángel Polo, a microfonist in some American films, but we didn't have much idea how to do it.French cinema had more direct sound, but at the end of the getaway it is folded and the 400 ... in part too.It cost the direct sound a lot.We roll paper tigers in the month of August, since Madrid empties.We even put wood in the windows - which did not see each other - so that if a car passed, it did not notice much [laughs].
¿No te parece Carmen Maura una fuerza de la naturaleza en aquel tiempo? De todo el mundo teatral Los Goliardos es la única que se hizo célebre.
Completely.It was amazing.In Tigers of ... it's wonderful.
Partly you discover it in that film.
Yes, porque había hecho papeles pequeños con Pilar Miró, que era amiga suya, además de cortos.I hadn't made a protagonist.I was in a filming of one of those shorts, by Miguel Ángel Díez, and one thing happened: were Carmen Maura and Emilio Gutiérrez Caba.The first played a hippie and the other was the typical man who does surveys.
Gutiérrez Caba always played that role in the 70s ...
The shy man.Maura offered him a coca-cola in that short and Díez had the intelligence not to cut.I wanted to see how the actors improvised.They finished and Maura said "I have already realized what it is to interpret: relax".I also said "I hear the word action and relax more than normal" [laughs].
Háblanos un poco del Madrid de la movida; fuiste el primero en inmortalizarlo en ¿Qué hace una chica como tú en un sitio como éste? ¿Era una ciudad tan creativa como parece? ¿O la nostalgia pesa demasiado?
No, it was not.It was a much smaller city, the people of the world knew each other, although we did not call it the "move" in origin (the word was grinding).You went out at night and found everyone: you started on the Milky Way and you finished in the sun.I was little to go out at night, but sometimes it left.There was, yes, an explosion of brutal creativity after the Francoist stage.The "move", also, depolitized: it was a dad children, not workers.
It is the thesis of Cultural Critic Víctor Lenore.
Completely.Fashion is important, the gay world, is a release ...
How do you know Fernando Trueba?Won't you be a bit of the older brother of his generation?
Yes, de hecho, yo a Trueba casi le saco nueve años.He does an interview on the last day of the filming of Tigres...We had plenty.I went home, I was very tired, and Trueba came and did a very long interview.In addition, he was a neighbor and we agreed by buying the country.We talked about cinema ...
El País uniendo a los progres de aquel tiempo…
[Laughs] Yes, sí.We become friends for neighborhood and fondness for cinema.Through a person named Dolores Devesa, library of the film school, we all join (including boyero).Devesa was a person much older than us, he made a bit of Trueba's mother (he got shelter in a crisis with his parents).
The first thing we did Trueba and I together is a short film that was called erotic stories (1980).This was called Könensonatten (pussy Sonata) and is one of the funniest things I have done: it was a tribute to Bergman and the voiceover was only the filmography of the Swedish director ...
El crítico Antonio Weinrichter juzgaba a Trueba y sus amigotes como unos «gamberros». ¿Tienes anécdotas divertidas de ellos? ¿Estuviste en alguna de sus performances contra la crítica sesuda?
Trueba told me things: once Jesus Hermida went to him.When they said goodbye they shake hands and Trueba wore a wooden hand [laughs].Once Oscar Apredo passed in a cineclub for Alfonso Ungría: he came to imitate him in an interview until one realized and said "forgive, I know that man and you are not any of you".
Do not you think there has always been a fundamental difference between your cinema and that of Trueba in the use of procacities?Your films are soft, light and maybe they have aged much better ...
I do not know.Trueba has also worked with Rafael Azcona, which is very given to things like that, although I have a straw in my black hand, huh ... [laughs].I think, I insist, that eschatology is due to Azcona.Eschatology for eschatology I am not interested.There is a director who influenced me a lot and was Alain Tanner and in fact the producer was called the salamandra in tribute to a film of this.For me it was a reference in making continuous planes, avoiding the plane and contrast, and not cutting.
¿No te parece, en perspectiva, que «la comedia madrileña» del tiempo acabó siendo un poco misógina? Finaliza en una sinopsis que se repetía: «Antonio Resines cazando chavalitas en una terraza de la Castellana con Óscar Ladoire al fondo».
[Laughs]. Yes, de hecho, Antonio Resines siempre lo contaba: «Me han dado este papel ¡y es un subnormal!».There is a time when this was done more than this.I keep saying that "Madrid comedy" there was none, since Trueba soon started working with Azcona.The first of José Luis Cuerda, Pares and Nones, could be "Madrid comedy", since it was a commission of a producer with Resines and Virginia Mataix.
Tus filmes del año 78 al 83 tienen rarezas medio policiacas como La Mano Negra.Did you try to get away from the Madrid comedy with this?
No, notice that the black hand is very autobiographical.And this autobiographical part is the police: even if it seems a lie.It is based on a character who also met Trueba.He was a school friend who said he had written a novel and adapted it to Pomporrutas ..., as I told, and resume contact with him was the origin of the black hand.Trueba and Boyero were fans of the black series writer Trevanian, Rodney William Whitaker, who made spy novels.
One night, having dinner with them, they took the theme of Trevanian - they had left the book in a car - and I said "Yes, she is my colleague from school".He said it was him and we got an interview for the country that would have come out of not knowing that my friend, with a point of madness, was not Trevanian [laughs].He said "Hop to get the interview, I don't want to locate me here".Behind the novelist hidden.A fascinating story ...
En todos esos filmes existe la figura del «hombre maduro en crisis».Was it an archetype of the 80s?It is as if many discovered that they wanted to escape their boring life as Reginald Perry.
I do not know, aunque tengo la película Estoy en crisis, que es de las que menos me gustan mías.I don't think that archetype existed, although in the film the protagonist was a ghost that invented this to flirt.I write the script with Andreu Martín and I wanted.It was a story that I loved, but I was already made: I read it in Star magazine.
Quiero que nos cuentes más sobre la estupenda La línea del cielo, una de las pocas comedias bilingües español e inglés y de las mejores aproximaciones a Nueva York desde nuestro cine.
That beautiful island movie are my favorites because they are the ones I surrounded with less means, but with more freedom.And without written script ...
Didn't you have a previous script?
I wrote three folios without knowing how it would end: I lost them even, although I took a photocopy that saved us.No one knew what we were doing.It was "tomorrow we shot here";"And what do I say?", "Well, say this".I have a lot of love to that movie: we shot her with five people and the Americans told us "this is not a low Budget, it is a Budget" [laughs].
¿Unirías esta película a El crack o Ángeles gordos en una trilogía improvisada de directores españoles en Estados Unidos? Las tres no son nada complacientes con el sueño americano…
Angeles Gordos is an attempt by Summers, a guy with a lot of talent, to make that story in English, although I think he does not just set.The line ... is rather a story that comes to me for a vital need as if you have to paint a picture or make a painting.I saw that I wanted to make a movie about what was going on to me: they called my alter ego resines.
De hecho, ¿no crees que es posible que sea el mejor papel protagonista de Antonio Resines? Llegó a citarle el crítico Vincent Canby como actor notable en New York Times…
Canby made us wonderful criticism, he was a very respected critic.Everything in that movie is true: we were having a fatal.We asked ourselves «Why don't we go to Madrid?We don't have a hard! ".
The contrast to the hedonistic New York cinema of Scorsese, gangsters of party party, and your movie in which Resines is a poor photographer without money that has horta shirts ...
[Laughs].Everything happened to us too ... we had a rented room and put Resines and Ángel Luis Fernández.We asked for a matt.He lived in the Village and Resines and company we were renting at the Eagle Hotel, which was a hotel of whores and such.I had a armored glass and everything ...
Es hilarante pensar en Resines como secundario de Pánico en Needle Park o Taxi Driver.In the first, several sites with armored glass leave ...
Clear.Resines told me "And this armored glass?".I replied "this is mandatory in all New York hotels".And he believed it [laughs].The two shared a room, we started to roll (it lasted four weeks), and soon they appear in my room saying "fuck, colome, you have put us in a whores house!".
Resines said: "Aer when we returned to the hotel we found some lumis and told us" huh, we have a room here and in a moment ... "[laughs].We changed to a hotel that was the same and paid halfway with a credit card.I told them, "Hop, that a little money will reach us".As they did not lite with them, they were alone in a room, they thought they were a couple Resines and Luis Fernández ...
Hay un gran sketch en esa película y es Resines pensando que la profesora del curso de inglés le dice «perfecto» a su pronunciación cuando se refiere al gallego que va siguiente en la dicción.Is it written or improvised?
No, no, it was true [laughs].I adapted it in the notes I had written and solved the narrative gaps with the voiceover.We could shoot some things and others not, since we had no budget.The anecdote of the diction happened to me: this perfect was a Galician.I had already studied English here, but I kept learning there.
In the beginning the movie starts from a script called Pintor in New York, which was preparing with others, and I'm going to document myself.The idea was to make a film of Tapies's anecdote: a collector took him to a gunpoint to restore one of his paintings.I wanted to do it with Fernando Fernán-Gómez.From there I leave the script to the Americans, who were friends with my English teacher and just others more.I was trying to contact the art world and my English level did not do it with anyone.
I signed up for classes in the morning and the first day they already put me at the zero level.I remember entering a guy and when I asked the profession I heard Writer, but I had nothing painted as a writer.Waiter had understood as Writer [laughs].And this Galician waiter was called perfect.The teacher who comes out on the scene is the same as really: all the sequences of the class in English we roll them at the end of the lesson for an hour and a half.
En 1985 produces tu único gran fiasco, El caballero del dragón, que llegó a ser incluso chiste recurrente.What is your failure?Script, actors?Could Miguel Bosé with a leading role?
Buff, that movie.Miguel Bosé was a blessing: people got with him, but it's almost the best of the movie.In fact, at first they were going to do the main role Imanol Arias and Victoria Abril.Enrique Ventura made the illustrations ...
He is an excellent cartoonist: perhaps the best illustrator of Catalan humorous magazines ...
Very good, of course.He, along with Miguel Ángel Nieto, made comic as grouted in the desert and are authors of the script with me and Andreu Martín.
Tell us your experience with Klaus Kinski in filming;perverse polymorph as unbearable as fun.
Funny?It was a nightmare!He was an out of control and I had no power to throw him.We were looking for months before: Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston ... we shuffle to Vicent Price, which would have been wonderful ...
It would have been fantastic.
I had a throat operation and could not.The same agent recommended Kinski.We knew I had a bad reputation, but I had a name."We will treat it well and ...".
Any funny Kinski's anecdote?
All!We tried to end him at noon: roll with him caused tension.He arrived in the morning and did not make up, since he was Moreno (he was right).He put on the costumes, a kind of poncho - he was alchemist - he had a mirror and threw his hair in front.The time it took to arrive with the person with a mirror was insulting: «Where is my fucking mirror?Whatty Production Whatty! ".It took the lights and said «What are you doing with lights?Fucking Lights!It’s This to David Lean Movie? »[laughs].I hated David Lean because he had envied him.That was every day!She challenged us with a "did we stick?".To which he responded "it is not worth it".
Do you know what was a German soldier in the last days of the III Reich?
Hosts, I wouldn't miss [laughs].He was a son of a bitch at a level ... everything I told in his obituary is true.
La vida alegre, tu siguiente filme, es una divertida pieza testimonio del ocaso de los 80.How did you imbue yourself in that lumpen world that is cited in the film?
It is a movie based on my sister Concha's life, which is a bit of Verónica Forqué's character.She had a clinic and, since she didn't have patients, she went to look for prostitutes.I told me anecdotes of these and I thought "here is a movie": he introduced me to the meretrity who does Massiel's role in the film, which was called Rosi.We were left with her on the street of La Ballesta, he called my sister, "Conchaaaa!", And I told him "we left a little while and tell us things";"Yes, yes, without problems".We sat down with her on a terrace and realized that the waiters did not attend us.
Just for sitting with her?
Yes, sí.And she told me "they are not going to attend you here now".My sister Concha introduced me to many people and the character of Guillermo Montesinos is based on Manolo Trillo (founder of the Citizen Antisida Committee of Madrid).I went home, even.The character of the transvestite or the neighbors were true, although scripted.
Me sorprenden las dificultades de producción de Miss Caribe, tu película más autoindulgente.Did they stop you how to tell you in different biographies?
Yes, sí.The history of Miss Caribe is that there was no money.It started without him and every two or three there was a threat of strike of the technicians and actors there.The Spanish team was six.It is shot in a very short time, five weeks, and the fourth week they arrested us.They put the three of production in jail, the prosecutor's office was called, of that town that I do not know if it was called Villahermosa or Vistahermosa.We were in a hotel called Holiday Inn: we had been paid for several weeks and nothing had been paid ...
Who carried production?
Andrés Vicente Gómez.We have never told it ...
La comedieta Bajarse al moro casi finaliza tu etapa más libre y tiene mucho del espíritu golfo de los 80.Did you know that you were going to make a box office with her?
No, either.It is a production by Carles Durán, had the rights of the original piece, and is associated with Victor Manuel.Durán dies in filming, he only really knew him on the phone, and made jokes in plan "China has touched me, I have a little life" [laughs].Víctor Manuel and José Luis García Sánchez was in charge of the production in the executive part.
Quiero que nos hables de Chicas de hoy en día, que es una serie por la cual muchos tenemos devoción y es un estupendo fin de fiesta de la comedia madrileña.There are better episodes than many films ...
I am very happy to say that: we did that series with great freedom.They were great actresses, Diana Peñalver and Carmen Conesa, had a great comic vision.I checked the first chapter recently and it was a fucking.In getting out to the Moor I know Joaquín Oristrelll, who made the entire floss of the script, and I convince him to collaborate in girls ... we shot like cinema and to record half an hour we had two and a half weeks and a half weeks.Three chapters were a movie, almost six weeks, so we had a lot of time to roll and we could develop the scripts perfectly without interference.And all with a phenomenal cast: these two actresses, Echanove, María Luisa Ponte, etc..
¿Es más difícil realizar comedia en televisión? Fuera de Chicas…, tus piezas para la pequeña pantalla siempre han tenido menos éxito, como si hubieran sido cercenadas por los productores…
Really the next one I do later is Oh, Lord, Lord!, But they had already shot six chapters.It was an idea of Andrés Pajares, although I entered shortly after.The idea was an old and a younger priest: the first was a cascarrabias and the second was the guay.The old man was more than eighty, Xesc Fortza (a very popular theater actor in the Balearic Islands), and that the sixth chapter gave a Patatús and ended in the UVI.
Stop the series and check the scripts.I had a lateral contact with Antena 3, I was preparing cheerful ma non troppo with money from them.Then Jorge Sánchez Gallo tells me, the one who carried this, "hey, I leave you some chapters to give me your opinion".I tell them "the director is not bad, to whom you have to throw is the scriptwriters" [laughs].They ask me to supervise it: they were all carafales errors by the chain."It is that at the beginning they were scripts of half an hour and now we want them forty minutes ...".
El Monty Python John Cleese decía que una telecomedia «de más de media hora» no puede tener gracia…
The problem was that they ate the same scripts and a coda [laughs] were added [laughs].I.
Producers are taking power on television as the 90s advance: their pieces are more works of these than of the filmmakers.
Clear.The freedom he had in RVTE, approved Pilar Miró, stopped having her.There was a series called the 80s.
Es tu único gran borrón junto al Caballero del Dragón.You had to have production pressures ...
It was crazy: in principle it was a series that was designed with two very good scriptwriters.The protagonist, in the beginning, was going to be a curricrito that would interpret Alex Angle.Shortly after they tell us that José Coronado has to do this role.We needed approval for everything ...
Probably of people who did not know everything about scripts.
I don't want to say names, but they were people who were there and they threw everything.To get an idea: I got the scripts at night, before rolling, and it was so bad that I rewrited that mimsa night [laughs].When I didn't have time, we made an Italian table - a script reading - and rewritten it among all.All this in forty minutes.I also had to respect the filming plan: tomorrow comes this, this and this.In a sequence two priests appeared, nobody knew why, and it occurred to me that they were from the mafia [laughs].
A partir de Rosa, Rosae, año 1993, tus comedias ganan en gravedad y muestran problemas sociales.Do they coincide with a personal change?
It can be, yes.I try not to follow the same cinema we made before and change, Rosa, Rosae started writing with Juan José Millás, but he retired because I drove him crazy.Then come cheerful ma non troppo and the butterfly effect, where I try to look for something else: change of generation.I realize that I have a more mature age and Ponce Ponce in Alegre Ma non Troppo was much younger;He didn't identify me with the characters ...
Were you looking for more stylized films in your 90's cinema?They begin to look more and more to the American productions of time, the improvisation of past times is lost ...
It can also be.But for example I think that Alegre ma non troppo and the butterfly effect remain very good;ROSA, ROSAE NO.This is what you say: they resemble North American film and were designed for a broad audience, it was not the madness of girls today ...
El duplo Los años bárbaros y Al sur de Granada son tu particular cine de «memoria histórica». ¿Pretendías traer del pasado hechos olvidados? ¿Cómo hacer comedia con el drama de la dictadura sin acabar en maniqueísmos?
In fact, the barbarian years are proposed by the screenwriters: José Ángel Esteban and Carlos López.I had done with them a television movie called that, which we shot in 16 mm in four weeks.We shot it with little money, sixty million pesetas, although we won a festival in Munich of television movies.We won a paste!The scriptwriters of that proposed an idea of a movie: two types that escape from the Valley of the Fallen with two American.I told them "this is not real" and they answered "it is!".
It should be the only one who did not know the story is: it was the biography of the writer Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz.It's a movie with one part, Vicente Aranda would say and another where I expressed a little: I wanted to make a film where the protagonists had a good time.What Sánchez-Albornoz told me is that it was "the best time" of his life when we were all thinking that he had had a very bad time [laughs].
Es cierto que Los años bárbaros tiene un tono vitalista en oposición al melodrama de posguerra clásico del cine español.
I did not want to make a movie to the Aranda, every postwar period and something like that, but a film of two young uncles who are involved in an adventure.
Con El próximo Oriente vuelves a un estilo más ligero que alcanza tus últimas películas.Is old age a return to origins?
Don't believe, huh?The next East has a suicide attempt.The story told could have been a drama.What is true is that it is increasingly difficult for me to summarize: when it comes to synthesizing something I use humor.I can't help it and I always get a little comedy.The next ... I also wanted to look for something multicultural, British cinema ...
Tiene un aire a Mi hermosa lavandería de Stephen Frears.
Yes, a esa película.In fact, the father's character in the beginning for the next East was an actor of my beautiful laundry, the uncle, who had worked before with John Huston in the man who could reign.We hired him, in fact, but he was alcoholized and we had to say goodbye [laughs].
Hablando del multiculturalismo, metes muchos temas actuales en tus filmes como el mundo youtuber o el poliamor.What are you inspired for the last turns of your comedies?
Polyamor comes from Isla Bonita and when I get on the Internet when I read comments I discover it.I had not heard the word polymorly, it sounded like foot (polypie!), And I got interested.It was apparently a new behavior, and they told me stories and I even went to the Polyamor Association of Madrid ...
Is there an association?
Yes [risas].And they are great.
How do you have such work capacity at your age?You have taken two films in 2021, impossible for many of your generation ...
Maybe for another generation.I think it's impossible, but also when working on television I have gained a lot of silence.Even the 80s, being a failed series, because they told me "we changed everything" overnight.So, it gives you a thing to dare and try to roll without script as I did in the line of heaven and island beautiful.
Actually, a director could always shoot two films a year.The problem is that it is almost impossible to raise projects economically.Be careful what you want was that my producer proposed to me and I accepted for money, while riding polyamor...I didn't think about "I'm playing my prestige here".It cost me health problems so much work huh?But, come on, I could shoot two films a year;The only problem of shooting is the script.
What are your future projects?Why not some memoirs?You met all the important cinema figurines of the 80s.
The memoirs I want to write them: I start telling anecdotes and many tell me "this you have to write it".But if I write memories, I can't direct: it's something very absorbent.I want to continue with the Line of Isla Bonita, but I need the support of Spanish public television, since it requires a lot of freedom and in Telecinco and Antena 3 would not have it.I would be the protagonist, I look for a personal and low -budget cinema.
This is what the Godard of the 70s defended.
Clear.He ended a movie on a Saturday and another started on Monday [laughs].
It is impossible not to ask you about the death of Verónica Forqué and how a brilliant actress, especially in comedy (you worked with her), was exploited by television.Do not you think that young filmmakers have no respect for old audiovisual glories?
Fuck, of course: it is a tremendous whore.I didn't see those programs, I don't like kitchen programs, but I saw YouTube extracts and did not recognize Verónica.I knew I had a little crazy era, but I didn't know that I had such a deep depression.I was even writing a role for her.It has been horrible, I don't just assimilate.
