| Page: 1 | Rating: Unrated [0] |
Jodorowsky 1973 Penthouse Interview
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» beercrack a répondu le Tue 29 Nov, 2005 @ 8:01am |
 Coolness: 71645 | Unlike so many of the film makers of the past 20 years, Alejandro Jodorowsky came late to international prominence. At 43, he is just beginning to be recognized as the man whose explosive and controversial creativity will probably make him one of the outstanding film directors of the next 10 years. His last film, El Topo, was hailed as "a monumental work of filmic art" and Jodorowsky was called "a man of passionate erudition" by the New York Times. Said Newsweek: "His surrealistic vision cannot be copied. It is nothing if not unique." On the other hand, Pauline Kael of the New Yorker found it a "horror circus" and " a head show", while Commonweal dismissed it as "merely gross and pretentious". The Village Voice came closer. "Its humor attacks reality, creating a comedy that provokes laughter in order to overcome horror - a comedy that becomes a cult of salvation."
Jodorowsky took the time to suffer and experience life before formulating what he would say on film. He worked with-at the feet of, if you will-Marceau and Arrabal. He is often compared with Bunuel. He has been laboring in shadows. Liberation from the masters was a part of the theme of El Topo. It is a prominent part of The Holy Mountain, which should be having its American premiere at about the time you are reading this. (If Jodorowsky remains true to his track record the film will be condemned and censored in Mexico, where he produced it and where he now lives.) Holy Mountain is the story of how a group of powerful and rich people came together-with one thief-to seek the guidance of a master, who is played by Jodorowsky. The master is to lead them up a holy mountain in search of immortality and enlightenment. But Jodorowsky, an eclectic believer in the Asian systems of meditation, preaches the emptying of the mind, so that true enlightenment within us may manifest itself. Doesn't sound too bizarre or gory? Well, in his films people bleed-they bleed all the time. And they bleed strange things: birds, cherries, green blood. Lots of people find such things upsetting. In the first scenes of El Topo a circular pool of blood is discovered and a child is found impaled. Then we see 100 women, dressed in bridal white, lying raped and murdered. Inside a church swing the corpses of their 100 bridegrooms. Later, El Topo (Jodorowsky) castrates the colonel responsible for the atrocity. When El Topo's seven-year-old son (Jodorowsky's real son, Brontis) attempts to follow him, he kicks him in the mouth and tells him, "Destroy me. You no longer depend on anyone." In the end, El Topo immolates himself like a protesting Buddhist. For the scene, Jodorowsky covered a skeleton with beefsteak and set it afire. Jodorowsky says he is not seeking shock for shock's sake and you rather tend to believe him because, should he choose to make a smooth box-office shocker, he could probably do it better than anyone. Instead he continues to give birth to a riot of symbols in an attempt to " . . . speak to your unconscious from my unconscious." In El Topo for example, he took a legless man and an armless man and put them together to make one "John Wayne". They hated each other and fought incessantly. "That is how we are, no?" asks Jodorowsky. "That is symbolic. Our arms fighting our legs. One part of us always fighting against another. Such waste." In his private life he is just as apt to shake up people as he is in his films. He once approached a man he had never met and demanded: "Who are you? Why are you wearing those clothes? You know what I think you need ? To be fucked in the ass." Jodorowsky is now married to a lady named Valerie. He has three sons (each by a different woman) all of whom live with him. He also has a daughter who lives in Germany with her mother. He was born in Iqueque, Chile, a town of 2,000, and moved to Santiago when he was 12. He later entered the university with ideas of becoming a doctor. But the lure of the theater forced him to drop out after two years. He worked with marionettes and then for six years he was with Marcel Marceau, touring the world and creating mimes including The Mask and The Cage. Most important were his collaborations with Arrabal, master of the Theater of Cruelty. He then moved to Mexico City where he now lives. Among the talents which help support him are those of a comic-strip artist. His cartoons "Panic Fables" appear in Mexican newspapers and they are, of course, controversial. He has directed more than 100 plays, including the works of Ionesco and Beckett, and he has done four films. His first picture, in Paris, was based on The Transposed Heads by Thomas Mann. Later he directed his own version of Arrabal's Fando and Lis. It was entered in the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival and was roundly denounced as "corrosive and corrupting". Undaunted, Jodorowsky made El Topo. It sent the Mexican authorities reeling. They refused to sponsor it at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. He works on shoestring budgets with anybody he feels can do a job for him. Cripples, prostitutes, rock musicians, retired public officials. Even real actors. Except for operating the camera, Jodorowsky does all the major creative work. In both El Topo and The Holy Mountain he produced, directed, wrote, scored, costumed and did the scenic design. And, of course, he played the starring roles. He is possibly the only producer in history who puts clauses in the contracts of his female players guaranteeing that they do not have to sleep with him. Despite his sometimes ferocious words and actions, he is a soft spoken, polite man who is an attentive listener. His sometimes strange grammar is due partly to Spanish structures, and partly to his unique way of expressing himself. This Penthouse interview was put together over a period of almost a year by Rick Kleiner while on location for The Holy Mountain, but with contributions by Jules Siegel and Penthouse Interview Editor Richard Ballad. Penthouse: Many people call you a madman. Are you ? Jodorowsky: Sometimes I feel myself absolutely mad. I say what I am doing here? Because I feel reality so unreal and myself so strange. I have a mind, a liver, a heart. Everything I look and I feel is inside myself. It's not reality. What I am is enormous reaction. It is not the thing. I am not the feeling. I am what is felt. The man who feels. Everything is so subjective. If someone say to me, I am mad, I say yes, I am absolutely mad like all the civilization and like all the persons in this planet. I think all the humanity now is absolutely crazy and mad. And some day when my essence sees myself, how my ego is crazy and mad, I laugh-with love and compassion. And in the moment when you have the enlightenment you start to laugh. Because you see yourself, how crazy and mad you are. Then you feel compassion. I have great pity on myself because I am so mad and crazy. Penthouse: You have a volatile temper. But how much of it is real and how much contrived? Jodorowsky: If you go to water . . . if the water runs and finds a stone which impedes its flow, the water attacks the stone and moves it so that the stone goes with the water to the ocean. In every situation where there is a stone I lose my temper in order to move the stone. I must make a fight in order to get some reaction from the other person. But it is only in order to achieve that. I never lose my temper when I am with a person doing another thing. Not doing my work. Penthouse: Some people can't accept your efforts as sincere. They don't understand you and they ask, in effect, "What's your game?" Jodorowsky: When I start to make art I was a neurotic. In the university, I have degrees in philosophy, mathematics and physics. In the University of Santiago. But I was so lazy-I only like to see pictures, and go to the movies, see paintings and read poems. It was a great party. But study was not. In two days I prepare for all the examens. I have great qualifications and then I forget. One day I say I want not to study like this. I say "No." I want to devote myself to marionettes, to puppets. And I start to make circus puppets, and theater puppets. But always my ego was there and I was trying to be famous. You know why? Because at same time I realize I was a mortal. I will die. I hadn't any answer to this problem. So in my South American environment I choose to become famous. To make a work in order to never die in history. No ? This was my first game. Little by little, in Fando and Lis, and then more in El Topo, I start to accept death completely, and I feel very good about this. I start El Topo absolutely closed. In the end of El Topo, I am more open to this human problem. And then in this picture, The Holy Mountain, step by step, I forget all the problems of being famous, all the problems of having money. I forget everything, the only game I am making now is to make a picture. But to make a picture absolutely involved with my objective life. For me, now, there is no difference between the picture and the life. Also, for me the most important thing is shooting the picture, not the picture. This is my game now. It's a certain kind of way to open yourself, to progress, to be more near the completely man. Penthouse: Can you tell us a little of the sequence of events in The Holy Mountain? Jodorowsky: The movement of the picture is from a fairy tale to the realistic, no? The theme is very simple. The master takes nine other persons, who make a solar system, and promises to these persons immortality. In all the traditions there is a sacred holy mountain. And on top of the mountain-there are always immortals, Olympians. Then the master says: "We need to steal from them the secret of immortality. Other persons put together all their force in order to steal money, to steal from a bank. Why we do not put our forces together to steal the secret of immortality? The immortals are wise persons, enlightened persons. In order to fight with them we need to become wise and enlightened. And then we need to travel and be powerful in our wisdom to fight with the immortals." We come to the top of the mountain and ... but no, I cannot tell you what is in the picture. But I finish it in a very surprised way. Penthouse: You speak so much of symbols. If we get too many don't they become like thumbs in our eyes? Jodorowsky; There are many ways to speak. You can yell at a person or you can speak very sweet. Normally a picture speaks to certain parts of the human being. We make a distinction among the athletic-muscular part of the human being and his sexual life, his mental life and his emotional life. I don't speak to any one of these centers. I speak with my unconscious to your unconscious. It's another kind of language. I am trying to put the dreams into reality and not trying to put reality into dreams. When you sit with me to see the picture what I am doing is to put your symbols in reality. Everyone of us have in his unconscious symbols. You have everything in your mind. Man is not a creator. But man is all the time discovering. What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves. That is why a picture like this you hate or you love. You can not be indifferent. In every scene I put animals. I went to study the meaning of animals. We have the meaning of animals within ourselves because we have collective memory. When you take for example the hippopotamus. The hippo was a god for the Egyptians. He is the weight of the earth. When I put in a hippopotamus I know exactly how a person's unconscious would feel. Penthouse: There was much talk about violence in El Topo. Is there a great deal of bloodletting or substitutes for bloodletting in The Holy Mountain? Jodorowsky: Not so much. Penthouse: Tell us about the Arica training classes for the people in your film. Jodorowsky: Ah, yes. I was searching for masters because in my picture I speak about masters. And then I went to see some Hindu yoga classic masters-gurus. Also I had two years of training with a Zen master. And before we made the picture I went with my wife to a seven -days-without-sleep training of this master. When we finished this-suffering a lot-we take for one month the Arica training. The Arica training has some Hindu exercises, some Japan exercises, some Egyptian exercises. Very eclectic. The secret of this training is the mixture, also there was a master there, the creator of the training, and I studied him in order to play myself a master. With him I feel a kind of initiation and I feel like I'm playing a real master, not a fairy-tale master. Penthouse: You have-said that you studied with a master until you realized that you cannot really learn from a master. Jodorowsky: Yes, the only thing a master can teach is how to learn about yourself. There are no secrets. They are only techniques to waken yourself. There are some massage techniques. There are some breathing techniques, etc. No? So then I give to all the group in my picture one month Arica training. Another month, living together. We don't go out to the street. We sleep only four hours. Penthouse: Did it have an effect on them? Jodorowsky: You live together for four months, any kind of training is useful. You learn something and you change a lot. You know DeBono, the English writer? He wrote Lateral Thinking. I think he is a fantastic man. He says a person will give so much time to learn how to play golf, but not how to work his own mind. They think they can already do it, and the only thing they need is to know some secret. it's not like this. When a group starts to work together in any kind of training it works for the group. The training makes a group. It brings them together. We were like brothers. You will see the picture. Penthouse: What happens to the concept of the individual hero? Jodorowsky: In The Holy Mountain I decided to finish with the individual hero because I think it's an invention of Hollywood. The individual hero against the society. I think of the collective man. Man is humanity. In The Holy Mountain I take a collective hero. There are 12 persons. Ten of them, they are the solar system. Two more persons make the zodiac. And then we go to the complete adventure, like a collective group. We are searching not for our inner faith. What we are searching for is our inner humanity. I can explain this more clearly if I make a comparison between Freud and Jung. Freud was searching for the individual conscience and Jung was searching for the collective unconscious. I take a Jungian position, a Wilhelm Reich position. Reich felt that in order to give health to the individual we must give health to society. Penthouse: I'm sure we'd have to qualify this in some way because you, Alejandro Jodorowsky, are certainly an individualist. Jodorowsky: I agree we are all individuals. But all the secret teachings, all the esoteric societies are searching for is the objective man and not the subjective man. There was a time when Proust and all kinds of writers like Kafka and all kinds of artists were searching for subjective art. I am searching for objective art. When my subjectivity is put out, then I can say, this was the search of The Holy Mountain. Killing the subjectivity. Finding myself the complete or the universal man. Penthouse: You were allowing yourself to become a vessel, a tool. Jodorowsky: Yes, like all the poets and the mystics in the world. No ? You don't oppose the universal will. You don't oppose yourself. Let the thing come and go out. No? Penthouse: One of the afflictions of modern man is the feeling that he is alone. How does your idea of "the collective man" deal with this? Jodorowsky: When a man says, "I am alone" it is because he does not know how to be with himself. When I speak of the collective man I am not speaking of being with more people. I am speaking of a man who feels in himself the whole of humanity. If you are an optimist you can say, "the universe is a construction." We can work for the construction of the universe, the construction of the human being or we can attack the universe and we can work to destroy the human being. When you take the position to work for the universe you start to work for yourself. In order to be a collective man you must make a sacrifice. Your life security, your family security. The collective man is the man working for humanity, even alone. And asking nothing. There are two kinds of prayer. The prayer to ask for something or the prayer to say "thank you" for everything I am having. This last prayer is that of the universal man. The universal man cannot feel guilty. The past is finished. There is a moment when you can say to your karma, "I love you. All the mistakes I have made were to reach this level. If I didn't do what I needed to do it is because I am not like what I am now. I was learning, I was fighting, I was making myself. I cannot feel guilty. The only thing I can do is to never repeat the same mistake. If I repeat the same mistake then I will be guilty." You must transform yourself from the ill man to the healthy man. Because really we need to cure our society's ills. There are war, there are pollution, we are killing the planet, so many have nothing to eat. So we are like the samurai. We win or we die. Now I think is a fantastic moment for all of us because now we are fighting for our world, our life. Now is the moment to be awake or to die. We are not alone. Penthouse: How important is your family compared to your films? Jodorowsky: I think everything you do in life have the same importance. No ? The film exists. And the family exists, on another level, in another situation. I don't know, maybe Valerie can answer this. The only thing I want to give my sons is happiness. Nothing more. The apple tree doesn't want to give happiness to the apples. He just makes the apples. In the family, I just make the family. In the film, I just make a picture. In the picture you must fight with so many problems and with the family you must not fight. It's only three, four or five persons. Nothing more. In the film there is 10,000 persons, 5,000 persons. Is more difficult. But I think more difficult than to make a picture or make a family is to make yourself. This for me is the most difficult of anything in life. To make a battle with yourself. This is really terrible work. I don't know, maybe because I am an artist I have so many great egos, so many mistakes, so many depression. When I make the picture my nervous system is so sensitive. I am really Ill of my nervous system. The actors come and just act. But, really, myself I am very ill in the night, every day thinking what I will do creating and inventing the situation and searching for what object I want or what I want to say, is a terrible thing. No? It's difficult to win the battle with yourself because in society we have a high percentage of self- destruction . . . Thanatos. You have 50% of Eros (creation) and 50% of Thanatos (destruction). This self-destruction is so strong in myself I must fight every day in order to have confidence in myself, not to be critical of myself, to only have the pleasure. I am looking all the time how I am not awake, how I am not enlightened, how in some part I am like a little boy. When I read what Buddha was, what Zen monk was, I feel so down I fight with myself. I want to cry. What difficulties I have to control myself with other persons. Always fighting not to be affected by the newspapers. Every day the newspaper insults me. Every day I have a new problem with society. This is difficult, to be a real, completely man. So making a family with me is easier. To make myself is terrible. To do it with family, is not so terrible. Penthouse: What kind of father are you ? Jodorowsky: Valerie can say what kind of father I am, what kind of husband I am. Valerie: I don't know really if he's a father. He spends very little time with the children. But the moments he spends with them, he is completely 100%. When he is filming he sees them twice a week for 15 minutes, a half-hour. And the children really enjoy it. Because he acts like a child with them. He is not trying to be the dominant father trying to teach the children. He reacts to what they need at the moment. If there are certain questions, Alejandro answers these questions. Jodorowsky: I finish with the idea of father and mother. They call us Alejandro and Valerie. I finish with the authority. They can dress themselves like they want. They can choose the schools that they want. If they don't |
Jodorowsky 1973 Penthouse Interview
| Page: 1 |
[ Haut de la page ] |
Poster Une Réponse |
Vous devez être connecté pour soumettre une réponse.
[ Haut de la page ] |
