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For the cinema, Hitchcock;
for literature, Quevedo, Valle-Inclán, Cunqueiro or some other echo of those who wrote in
La Codorniz,
or a figure like Edgar Neville, with whom he connects in both styles and more... Rodrigo Cortés (Pazos Hermos, Ourense , 49 years old) is an exuberant rarity within creation in Spain.
He wanted to be a painter, he studied to be a musician, a literary talent awoke in him very soon and since he did not want to give up any of that, he became a film director.
He creates movies that need to be watched more than told and books that can't be adapted to the screen.
Among the first, hits like
Buried, Red Lights,
with Robert de Niro, or
El amor en su lugar
.
From his books, a success like
The Extraordinary Years
and now
Verbolario
(both in Random), which he periodically publishes in
Abc
, his personal poetic dictionary, carved out of beautiful and bold definitions with puns.
Ask.
Is your
Verbolario
a white glove boxing match with words?
Answer:
Yes, a way to extract a confession from them, put a gooseneck in their faces and demand that they say what they really mean, not in theory.
Q.
An amendment to the dictionaries?
R.
_
An amendment with great respect to lexicographers because someone has to build the vase so that later the child comes and breaks it.
Words mutate, compress, even change their meaning frequently;
it is part of his nature.
Q.
_
You are a coconut.
R.
_
Of those who come to scare?
I don't know how to take it...
Q.
Of those who think... Although if we see his beginnings in the cinema with
Buried,
it was also scary.
R.
I like to mislead.
In that film one could imagine that it deals with the story of a contractor buried in a war that was not his, but for me it tells how someone tries to change the telephone company.
Q.
_
Like
La cabina
, by Mercero, but underground?
R.
_
That's it.
The force of an abstract premise is usually more enduring, while the supposedly social approach to things is usually fungible.
I am very interested in the allegorical force of stories as long as we do not look for it.
Q.
_
See how you are a coconut.
R.
_
Bah…
Q.
Coco is not defined in your
Verbolary.
Neither does cinema.
R.
_
I defined it the other day so they'll leave me alone.
Something like: woven spell of wonder and fear.
Q.
_
Good…
R.
I sit down to define words and anyone is worth it.
They do not belong to my concrete universe.
I sat in a room and began to watch.
When I ran out of that, I switched to another.
2,500 definitions later, you strip yourself in many ways.
Q.
Rodrigo is not coming either.
A.
No, for various reasons.
The first because it is a dictionary and not an encyclopedia.
I set strict rules for myself and I don't break them.
Q.
_
Do you impose them or do you not dare to define yourself?
R.
_
Yes, you could define me.
It would take me a while, but...
Q.
For example, apart from coconut…
A.
Surplus person.
Rodrigo Cortés, on November 10, in Madrid.Santi Burgos
Q.
_
Courteous, he's not coming either.
And his last name is used to play with things.
R.
It comes courtesy.
We read: natural composure among those who are still exploring their weak points.
He he…
Q.
What did you just realize?
What does he nail you to?
R.
Let's not give bullets to the enemy.
Q.
_
The grace of his book is that he can open it at random and smile.
R.
_
I think she is one of them, a good candidate to end up occupying a place in the bathroom, which is not a bad place.
You can start like this, but I hope everyone ends up going to
A
.
Although it may seem hard to believe, there is music that works from A to Z and that, I will not say that it is equal to a symphony, but rather to a long song with its own tempos.
Q.
In other words, does music help you structure your work?
R.
It works for everything.
When I edit my films, I do it from musical budgets, with musical vocabulary.
Because of the internal percussion, the internal rhythm, for me that importance is fundamental.
Q.
_
What makes you lose sleep the most?
The words or the images?
R.
_
I love both languages and I don't confuse them.
The cinematographic is concise, economical, each element counts.
Ideally, it does three things: define a character, move the action forward, and be kinetically interesting.
Instead, literature is the terrain of resonance and reflection, of evocation.
I do not confuse them.
Q.
Are they incompatible?
R.
_
High literature is very difficult to transfer to the cinema, they share few things.
The literature adaptable to the cinema is that of the plot and in good literature, the plot, many times, is not by far the most important thing.
Hitchcock made great movies with mediocre books in which he detected premises from which to explore true cinema.
Q.
Is it difficult for you to remember a great novel adapted to the cinema?
R.
_
They don't pour well.
After thinking a lot, we would find some exception, but right off the bat, we don't get it.
Q.
_
Will he commit the sin of adapting his novels to movies?
R.
The extraordinary years
is difficult to adapt.
Do not sit down to write a novel or a script, they are not transferable materials.
Q.
He also paints.
R.
When the teachers began to write in the notes that I drew well, I decided that I would be a painter, then a musician when I studied piano and then a writer... I ended up dedicating myself to the cinema because it sums up the three.
Q.
What is Hollywood like?
A chimera or a reality?
R.
_
The same mediocrities are replicated as anywhere, but exacerbated.
We are the same anywhere.
Hollywood is just Hollywood from outside of Hollywood.
It is a succession of meetings.
A place that smells very decorated and has the soul of a gas station, where everyone tells you that you are the chosen one and when you leave the office you find another and another chosen one.
Q.
And Madrid?
R.
_
I am Galician from Salamanca.
I have dual nationality, like Torrente... I guess we'll have to clarify: Torrente Ballester, not the other one.
Madrid is a city with a special vibration, not necessarily comfortable, but it is a place where the only thing that matters is what you do and how well you do it.
I appreciate that, although sometimes it seems like a sink where we all come to drain, but I respect it.
You come to Madrid to be left alone.
Q.
_
Why do you have to be from a place?
A.
Yes, why?
Here, not even the cats believe that the Retirement is theirs.
Q.
El Retiro is a bit of Max Estrella and Valle-Inclán, kings of the grotesque that you like so much.
R.
_
It is that we are grotesque, right?
Exaggerating things allows you to see them.
I do not feel to deform.
To give me freedom without making calculations.
If there's something I don't know how to do creatively, it's protect myself.
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