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Sharon Stone, a headache for José Frade
The film: In 1988 Javier Elorrieta and producer José Frade decided to update Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's classic, Sangre y Arena , which had already been brought to the screen three times. They kept the essence (the love triangle between an aspiring bullfighter, his lifelong girlfriend and a rich lady who stands between them) but revamped to the taste of the time: the uncomplexed erotic thriller. With the foreign market in mind, it was filmed in English and with American actors, including Sharon Stone (Pennsylvania, 1955). The American was less than five years from becoming the quintessential sex symbol thanks to her role in Basic Instinct, but at that time she was only a very beautiful blonde that we had seen in films like Crazy Police Academy 4, Above the Law or Jackson Action and she had as her greatest merit in her resume a brief step in Woody Allen's cinema - so brief that her role in Memories was simply called "Pretty Girl on the Train". At his side, the almost unknown Christopher Rydell, Ana Torrent, Antonio Flores and José Luis de Vilallonga filmed a script between Madrid and Seville signed by Rafael Azcona himself.
How did the experience turn out? Based on the stories that have come out, it seems that it turned out better for her than for those who suffered it. As Elorrieta himself acknowledged, Stone limited himself to interacting with him and Rydell isolating himself from the rest except to complain about almost everything, from the upholstery to the colony that was used by some member of the team, which led the actress to maintain more than one pulse with producer José Frade. An attitude that fits with the story collected in the Los Angeles Times that has always haunted her and according to which her attitude in the filming of King Solomon's Mines had been so unbearable that before she filmed a bath scene some members of the technical team they had peed in the water. Despite this, not everything was negative: the immense popularity that the actress achieved thanks to Basic Instinct caused that in 1992 one of the dresses she had worn in the film was auctioned to collect funds to fight AIDS with two rackets by Arancha Sánchez Vicario and a pony by Bertín Osborne.
Viggo Mortensen, everyone's colleague
The film: In 2006, Alatriste , the adaptation of Pérez Reverte's best-selling novel, became one of the most ambitious projects in Spanish cinema. With a record budget and high expectations, its director, Agustín Díaz Yanes, was clear from the beginning that this project could only be based on the charisma of an international star and no one fit better with the role of the swordsman than Viggo Mortensen (New York, 1958). After the success of The Lord of the Rings, the New Yorker had become a well-known face on a planetary level and also had an additional advantage: he spoke perfectly Spanish and already knew the national cinema. He had worked on the adaptation of Ray Loriga's debut, My Brother's Gun , and on José Luis Acosta Gimlet's thriller . Would Mortensen agree to return to Spanish cinema now that he was a megastar? "I really liked the script, and if you really want me to do this character, and it turns out that you can, it would be an honor for me, I would like to." That was his response, as reflected in a Rocío García report for EL COUNTRY in which Díaz Yanes highlighted the facilities provided by the actor from the beginning.
How did the experience turn out? It is well known that to enter the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, Mortensen slept in the open and even sewed his own clothes, so it is not surprising to discover that to get into the skin of Diego Alatriste, Leon de point to the satisfaction of Pérez Reverte, who was fascinated by the intensity of the actor. His filming partners were also dazzled by the star, who not only took the trouble to watch his films to learn about his work, but also took a bag of sweets and sweets and typical Argentine drinks to the shoot every day (the actor lived several years in Argentina, hence his perfect Spanish). In the same report, Unax Ugalde, Alatriste's most faithful companion on screen, recounted an anecdote that perfectly reflects the New Yorker's detailed character: "When he met my great childhood fondness for Sugus candy, I found myself one day in my dressing room with the silhouette with my name on the ground all done with Sugus. " Apart from his interventions in the national cinema, there is another good reason for the actor to feel closely linked to Spain: for several years he has lived in Madrid with his partner, the actress Ariadna Gil.
Nicole Kidman, the star in a big house
The film: At just 30 years old, Alejandro Amenábar faced Los otros with his first project in English and also with his first big blockbuster, with a dizzying budget of 21 million dollars. Tom Cruise, who had purchased the rights to his previous film, Open Your Eyes , embarked on executive production and the first consequence was that his then-wife Nicole Kidman (Hawaii, 1967), notably lowering her cache, ended up playing the part. in which the director had imagined Emily Watson.
How did the experience turn out? Both the filming and the stay of the actress and the visits of Tom Cruise and his children took place in absolute secrecy, which was guaranteed by renting a full mountain house surrounded by ancient trees. The only inconvenience that transpired was the injury that the actress suffered during the filming of Moulin Rouge and that forced production to be delayed for four months. The real drama came when, after the last clapperboard hit, Cruise and Kidman announced their separation and the actor's name began to be related to that of his partner in Vanilla Sky , Penelope Cruz, something that somehow served to make the international press more space was devoted to a film that ended up becoming the highest grossing of Spanish cinema until the emergence of the phenomenon Eight Basque surnames .
Calista Flockhart, the muse for Toledo
The film: After the success of The Nameless and Darkness , Jaume Balagueró returned to betting on horror movies with a story about a children's hospital in which dark forces begin to manifest. For the role of the protagonist nurse, she had the actress Calista Flockhart (Illinois, 1964). "It was perfect to embody the character," he declared in EL PAÍS. "It has a fragile appearance, because it is very small, and at the same time it has an unusual force that transmits with the eyes. It is capable of evoking an uncontrollable intensity."
How did the experience turn out? Balagueró had already worked with international stars. His previous film, Darkness , was starring the Oscar-winning Anna Paquin, Ian Glenn (a few years before being the faithful Jorah Mormont) and Lena Olin, but the presence of these interpreters in Spain had not awakened as much expectation as that of Flockhart, popular not only for his role in Ally McBeal but also for his relationship with Harrison Ford, about which he avoided speaking despite the insistence of journalists. The visits of the actor, who at the time was preparing the shooting of Indiana Jones and the crystal skull , delighted the press. Both were seen in the Prado Museum, tasting suckling pig in Segovia and touring Toledo, where they had no problem getting photographed. And Ford was so enthusiastic about Toledo's cuisine that he even posed in a kitchen jacket.
David Hasselhoff, learning the worst of Castilian
The film: The unexpected success of Brain Drain resulted in a sequel now without Mario Casas and Amaia Salamanca, but with part of the original cast and with Harvard University (which really was the Cantabrian University of Comillas) instead of Oxford. With the United States as the backdrop, comedy turned to the humor of 80s Porkys- like comedies , reinforced by the presence of one of the most recognizable figures of the decade, singer and actor David Hasselhoff (Baltimore, 1952) . " Brain drain 2 brings American culture closer to Spanish and they believed that I was representative of that culture," said the actor at the press conference to present the film. The protagonist of The Fantastic Car was the absolute star of the trailer, which showed the protagonists teaching him the art of flattery with niceties such as "when I look at your cleavage, I put a hand on it" or "you have a powder that even Centella doesn't clean" .
How did the experience turn out? Hasselhoff, who had already given free rein to his taste for eschatological humor in comedies such as Balls Question , was delighted with his participation in the film and the corresponding promotion. He arrived at his inevitable visit to El hormiguero driving the emblematic Kitt, sang a duet with Pablo Motos and met a fan who had his image tattooed on his butt. Something that should not have scared him, much because he has continued to come to Spain on vacation regularly.
Leslie Nielsen: between idols and flatulence
The film: With its tributes to The Others, Sea Inside or Faun's Labyrinth, Spanish Movie , by Javier Ruiz Caldera, was in 2009 the first bet of Spanish cinema for the parody in the Top Secret style or Land as you can and nobody better to kick off the genre that Leslie Nielsen (Regina, Canada, 1928-Florida, 2010), Lieutenant Frank Drebin of the Grab It Saga series, and one of the essential faces of American humor, despite having spent more than half of his career between drama, horror and science fiction.
How did the experience turn out? "Having Leslie Nielsen in Spanish Movie was mandatory," Ruiz Caldera told Cinemanía after the actor's death in 2010. The director stressed how easy it had been to work with the actor and highlighted his fondness for improvising and playing pranks. According to him, Nielsen used to carry a little machine that imitated the sound of farts and started it at the most unexpected moments. It was not a new hobby: during the filming of Land as You Can, he gave one to each member of the team and such was his devotion to flatulence that on his tombstone you can read the phrase "Let'er rip", a pun on the words abbreviation RIP and "rip a fart" (fart). But undoubtedly the highlight of the film, which ended up being one of the highest grossing films of the year, was its meeting with another genius of unclassifiable humor: Chiquito de la Calzada. The confluence of both in the teaser had to be done in an improvised way and in a very short time, but the geniuses understood each other perfectly, the result can be seen here.
Iggy Pop, the rocker who didn't care about money
The film: In the year 95 Óscar Aibar designed Atolladero , one of the strangest films in Spanish cinema: a melancholic science fiction spaghetti western shot in the Monegros desert and based on a comic by the director himself. Mixing dinosaurs, cowboys and ruthless killers and with a cast that brought Iggy Pop (Michigan, 1947) together with Pere Ponce and Félix Rotaeta (who died during filming), Atolladero , who was born cursed, has ended up becoming a cult work. When Aibar contacted the singer, who had already played roles in films like John Waters' Cry Baby , he joined in delighted, fascinated by the possibility of playing a ruthless killer and also played the main theme of the film (which is not wasted ).
How did the experience turn out? Worthy of a novel. And so Aibar narrated it in the book Making Of (Mondadori), in which he used false names, but after which it was easy to glimpse the true characters like that Jim Rock in which the singer is clearly glimpsed. This allows us to discover the actor's fight during filming against his addictions and how he was the first to be willing to continue working when delays in payments threatened production. Despite the countless mishaps that the film suffered, the experience should not have been entirely negative because in 2014 he returned to Spain to shoot Blood Orange in Ibiza.
Hugh Grant: the movie did not like it, the girl did
The film: Contrary to the usual, which is to import foreign luminaries to play traditional characters, Gonzalo Suárez brought together in Remando al viento (1987) a handful of foreign actors, including Hugh Grant (London, 1960) and Elizabeth Hurley to recreate a story as British as the genesis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein character . The steep Asturian coasts were the scene in which Lord Byron (played by Grant), Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley were related and the result was a precious and anomalous film in the Spanish cinema that took the Silver Shell at the Festival of Cine de San Sebastián and six Goya awards, including that of best director.
How did the experience turn out? It seems that for Grant artistically it was not very satisfactory. During one of the tables in which The Hollywood Reporter gathers the actors in the awards season, the Briton gave her an example of movies that you know are failed before starting. "I was thinking, oh well, this doesn't make sense, this movie is being made in Spain with English actors, with a director who doesn't speak English and German money, he will never see the light of day, so just go, have fun for three months and flirts with the actress who plays Claire Claremont. ”On a personal level, that“ euro pudding ”, as she defined it, had an unbeatable result: the actress who played Claire Claremont was a debutant Elizabeth Hurley and during the filming they fell in love and They began a relationship that lasted thirteen years.
Klaus Kinski: only Miguel Bosé endured it
The film: After the success of La linea del cielo , Fernando Colomo moved away from his love for urban comedy to develop one of the most Martian projects in Spanish cinema. A medieval science fiction story based on the legend of Saint George and the dragon with Miguel Bosé playing an alien. A slow-motion disaster that was born with a commercial vocation and the highest budget that a Spanish film had ever had and was about to end Colomo's career. As well as its protagonist, the temperamental Klaus Kinski (Sopot, Poland, 1926-California, 1991) was on the verge of ending his mental health.
How did the experience turn out? For the role that Kinski ended up playing, Colomo had thought of several actors, among them Burt Lancaster and Vincent Price, but in the end due to scheduling problems they stayed with Kinski who was free: at that time no one wanted to work with him anymore. Colomo soon discovered the reasons. "He tried to rape the protagonist on the set, taking advantage of the characters' parental relationships. Fernando Rey broke his rib in an unfortunate struggle not foreseen in the script; Harvey Keitel did not dare to touch him because he had previously warned that the first incident would give him a slap, with the same tattooed arm that he exhibited in Taxi driver ”, Colomo wrote in his obituary for EL PAÍS, a tribute that came as a commission and he wrote on the condition that he be allowed to speak ill of the actor. The film, which ended up costing more than three hundred million when the average of the Spanish productions of the time was not less than fifty, had been thought to succeed in the international market but the criticism destroyed it and its presence abroad was null. However, years later he had a surprising new life as a cult film, as Colomo revealed on the blog of the writer José Luis Salvador Estébenez, "I was told that in the United States it was a cult film in the gay world when it came out on DVD, for Bosé, who was shaved and so on. "
Ryan Reynolds: destroyed, but I'm counting
The film: Influenced by his great reference, Alfred Hitchcock, the Galician Rodrigo Cortés took out of his sleeve a suffocating thriller called Buried that for an hour and a half keeps its protagonist buried in a coffin. A script that circulated around Hollywood without anyone paying attention to it and for whose development, apart from notable technical expertise, it required an actor willing to superhuman effort. And that's where the Canadian Ryan Reynolds (Vancouver, 1976) came into play who, demonstrating a good nose for the first time in his career, joined a project in which his dramatic talent finally stood out.
How did the experience turn out? " Buried prepared me psychologically for any shoot. It was only seventeen days and I thought it was the shortest shoot of my career, but then it was like three years of pain," said the actor during the presentation of the film, which he described as " traumatic ”. Cortés corroborated the harshness of the shoot: "We returned Ryan Reynolds in the most extreme conditions imaginable, with his back bleeding, his fingers scorched by the lighter and his skin completely eroded and destroyed by friction with the rough wood," he revealed to the Despite this, he stated that he was willing to return to work in Spain: "I have never had such an exhausting experience as Buried , it has been the greatest physical torture of my life. However, if I could shoot all the films in my life with a single director, I would choose Rodrigo Cortés ". Perhaps he considers it an amulet, after passing through that coffin he was chosen the sexiest man in the world, he took the role that changed his life, the tongue-tied Deadpool , and thanks to his sympathy and disinhibition on social networks (to Sometimes at the expense of his wife Blake Lively) he has become one of the most loved actors by viewers.
Naomi Watts: soaked but happy
The film: The dramatic adventure of the Spanish María Belón during the tsunami that devastated the coasts of Southeast Asia in 2004 served as the basis for director JA Bayona for The Impossible , the film that definitively opened the doors of Hollywood (and discovered world to Tom Holland). A huge technical challenge that involved four years of preparation and that required a great star in front. For this reason, the one chosen to give life to Belón was the British Naomi Watts (Shoreham, United Kingdom, 1968), who led a cast in which foreign names such as Ewan McGregor and Geraldine Chaplin were mixed with national actors such as Marta Etura.
How did the experience turn out? Despite the drawbacks of a shoot in which the technical challenges were joined by the worst storm in Thailand in four decades and some technical mishap that was about to endanger the physical integrity of Watts, the actress was enthusiastic about the Outcome. "I could not say with more sincerity how proud I am of this film. It is an important story, told from the truth, and we honor the story of María Belón." The actress, who declared herself a fan of The Orphanage , did not spare flattery for the director: “Juan Antonio has an enormous passion, as he has never seen anyone before. So much so that his determination convinced me to shoot the tape. I did not know if it was appropriate to do it because it is the greatest natural disaster in history. But as soon as I met him, I knew I wanted to do it. "The flattery was reciprocal: Bayona had always thought of her for the role. Aside from performing well at the box office, The Impossible gave Watts an Oscar nomination in the main category. Previously, she had already been nominated in the best secondary category thanks to 21 grams and another Spanish-speaking director, Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Anthony Perkins, the one who gave the best advice
The film: After his experience with Sharon Stone in Sangre y Arena , Javier Elorrieta rejoined an international cast in The worms do not wear a scarf , in English The naked target , with the idea of joining the car of The naked gun ( Grab it as you can in Spanish) in the Anglo-Saxon market. An unclassifiable comedy that mixed Anthony Perkins (New York, 1932-California, 1992) with Beatriz Carvajal and Quique Camoiras and which was one of the director's greatest setbacks.
How did the experience turn out? If Sharon Stone caught him off guard, it wasn't the same with Perkins, the film's lead actor. The forgotten Clayton Rohner warned him: “Damn, Perkins is coming. You're going to shit She is a prima donna . The baddest guy you can find. " However, what he found was a very curious actor with whom he developed a great friendship and who revealed some of his tricks, (Perkins himself was also a director, he got behind the camera in Psychosis III , and scriptwriter, because wrote the script for the thriller The End of Sheyla with composer Stephen Sondheim ). “I was wondering how I was going to make a scene and when I explained it to myself he would say to me: 'Very well, but aside from this, what do you think if I take a lot of sand, I carry it in my hands and when I stop the loose and you take me out full of dust? ' And, hey, he taught me four or five divine Hollywood tricks ”, Elorrieta revealed to José Luis Salvador Estébenez on the website La abadía de Berzano. Elorrieta also befriended the other great international star Roddy McDowall, a former child prodigy and popular for his role in The Planet of the Apes and in the television series The Tales of the Golden Monkey . "When I later went to Los Angeles, Perkins invited me to his house and Roddy McDowall to eat at his restaurant for two days. And it was that they were magnificent people who behaved with me wonderfully and were very affectionate. Like Sharon Stone I never saw her again, with Perkins and Roddy it was just the opposite, "he added.
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