Almodóvar will shoot his first feature film in English in New York

The presence of Pedro Almodóvar (Calzada de Calatrava, 73 years old) in Cannes always causes boiling in the local public. This time he participates in a special session with his medium-length film Strange way of life, a western that will arrive in Spanish theaters on May 26, with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as two ex-lovers who cross their steps again by passion, and by very different and subsequent intentions. The filmmaker presents it at the French festival with a subsequent talk with Hawke, which has caused long queues and the disappearance in seconds at the virtual box office of tickets for the event. On the eve of the trip he spoke with EL PAÍS about this process of creation, about his childhood aversion to the genre, which later became a passion for the classic western to the point that he tried to shoot one in the mid-nineties, about the lesson learned after the project of Manual for cleaning women was truncated, with Cate Blanchett, and his next film: he will finally shoot a feature film in English (after the two medium-length films) in New York and with two Anglo-Saxon actresses.

More information

Pedro Almodóvar: "If I hadn't left town, I would have ended up in jail or committing suicide"

One summer five years ago, Pedro Almodóvar turned on his computer and wrote a story. He kept it with many others. "It's my usual writing process, because a lot of times I do it for pleasure. I come up with something, I write 10 to 15 pages and leave them archived on the computer," he explains. "One afternoon I wrote the dialogue of two cowboys the morning after their reunion, after spending a whole night fucking and drinking. I liked it a lot and put it to rest." Some of the stories stored on the computer and in old blue folders have been grouped in the book The Last Dream, which the filmmaker published a month ago. But the cowboys had a special trip. "I wrote it in part, though not only, as a response to Brokeback Mountain." Ang Lee's film was one of the Hollywood offers that Almodóvar rejected, because he understood that they were not going to let him "develop the action" where he wanted. "There's a nod to Brokeback Mountain when they were wondering what two men were going to do on a ranch, and here Pedro Pascal responds to Heath Ledger [in an imaginary crossover of characters]. That time was the only one in which Hollywood, in a big production, talks about that world and the mutual desire of two men... even though it was a modern West and instead of cowboys they were shepherds."

The #ExtrañaFormadeVida team plays pétanque in Cannes. pic.twitter.com/NC4Goi4wWh

— Agustín Almodóvar (@AgustinAlmo) May 17, 2023

For Almodóvar, the fact that there are no more westerns with gay characters "speaks to the fact that there is some taboo, because it is an absolutely masculine gender." And remember the few titles with female protagonists, such as Johnny Guitar. "Of course, it's a film by Nicholas Ray, who was always a special director, who subverted genres," he says. "It's like in bullfighting or men's football, we don't talk about homosexuality because the taboo flies in a similar way. In the western we have never talked about the desire between two cowboys and I was very interested in its dramatic development, "he says.

Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, in 'Strange Way of Life'.

However, the filmmaker always saw it as micro-theater, until a year after writing it he crossed paths with Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director of Saint Laurent, and proposed to produce something: "Vaccarello had just produced Lux Aeterna, by Gaspar Noé, and I immediately thought of those two cowboys, to develop how they had arrived at that situation and how they got out of it."

To what extent did Almodóvar film this short film thinking that he would later face Manual para mujeres de la limpieza, a project finally abandoned? "In fact, the two shorts, which by the way have whetted my appetite to continue shooting in this format – and I consider a third to close the trilogy – both this one and The Human Voice, are born out there, to experience how I saw myself directing in English," he explains. "Before and during the filming of Strange Way of Life I had a lot of time to reflect on Manual ..., and it led me to understand that it was too big a project for me. Above all, because of my physical conditions. You had to make many long trips to locate in Ciudad Juarez, Albuquerque, Oakland, in a Mexican bay near Acapulco... and my back gives no more of itself. And another reason, which I realized in that free time in which I was waiting for Cate Blanchett [producer and protagonist of Manual..., she continues with the project], is that each element of the sets was going to be made new: each table, each chair, each book ... I'm very pejiguero with the decoration department, I supervise every detail, and just think about it, ugh. I got to prepare a street 100 meters from Oakland, and to choose objects that appeared in a pharmacy. As it is a period drama you have to manufacture everything, and I understood that I was going to go crazy, that I would not have the same control."

Almodóvar, with his jeans Hawke and Pascal, and the actors who play them as young men, Jason Fernández and José Condessa.

And didn't he also think that, after decades of being his own boss, his protagonist was his producer and, therefore, his superior? "We didn't talk about it, really, because Cate didn't have time for much. If I had shot last year, I would have gotten into the film and managed. But living that twelve-month wait allowed me to write another story that I liked, film this short film and face my doubts. There was another fact. I rehearse a lot, and I realized that neither Pedro nor Ethan are so used to my rhythm. And there were only two. In Manual ... there are many more characters, sets and locations, I sensed it impossible. With great pain in my heart, so I liked the script, I understood that the most honest thing was to get off the project. I guess I've been terrible with Cate."

I left 'Manual for cleaning women' because I have understood that I am good at the contemporary, that I can do all the art direction, and intimate films with few characters"

Return to Strange Way of Life, which filmed last summer in Almeria. "I keep seeing it as a short film, and I like that it is in Cannes, it seems to me an unbeatable place because of the love they give to cinema," he explains. As in much of his cinema, there is a balance between passion and family, between which of the two ties can be more. "It's that traditional values, family, are part of the heart of the West. And they enrich the history of these two types. I thought of them as two of the wild group that accompany William Holden, who roll up one night, separate and meet again 25 years later: one is a sheriff, the other a father who comes to defend his son. The desire remains, although both have opposing interests." Almodóvar phoned Hawke and Pascal directly, and they accepted instantly. "They seemed and seem perfect for the characters."

Pedro Almodóvar, filming in Almería, in a photo of his brother, producer Agustín Almodóvar, on Twitter.

In the background, in Strange Way of Life beats the subversion of Almodóvar. As a headline and musicalize a western with a fado. Not so much the use as a pictorial reference of Georgia O'Keefe, one of whose paintings even appears on the wall of the ranch of the final sequence. The director explains: "I'm fascinated by O'Keefe's varied work, those mountains, those flowers, those things... The only anachronistic thing is fado, and I indulged in the whim. But it is necessary to quickly introduce the viewer to the melancholy of the story. In the rest I have been very careful: I used paintings by Maynard Dixon, the first painter focused on Indians and cowboys for his work in magazines with very comic colors, and a painting by Lillie Langtry, just a star at the time of my film [second or third decade of the twentieth century]. Look, I didn't want to be caught in an anachronism, when I always didn't care." Pascal wears a green jacket in the film, which Almodóvar quickly justifies with an image of James Stewart in Anthony Mann's Distant Horizons: it is identical.

The western, the American genre

On the genre he remembers that he did not play Indians and cowboys: "The western never interested me much until I came to Madrid. Today I have many DVDs, more that classic, Mann's or John Sturges's, than theEuropean western. From there except Corbucci." In the mid-nineties Almodóvar considered shooting a western, and bought the rights to The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, the 1991 novel Tom Spanbauer. "I took it to a Tennessee Williams-type tone, although infinitely more erotic, with gay Indians and cowboys. I wrote the script, but no one dared to produce it."

In the mid-nineties I bought the rights to 'The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon', but nobody dared to produce such a gay and erotic western."

The filmmaker points out another detail about the western, the great American genre "with which they have built their national epic, have stylized and embellished their past." And that's why he has been inspired by the movies, not by the reality of the time. "In Leone's favor it must be said that between him and Morricone they reinvented it. I have taken it to my land, I hope that the Americans do not find it too daring. Because it is the most conservative genre, which speaks of values such as land, honors it when there are still no laws, and with it the use and possession of weapons is justified. That cinema supported the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Almodóvar's professional future is already decided. "I'm preparing my new film, but at a medium pace. We had planned to shoot in October in New York three weeks of exteriors and interiors in Spain and there are very few hours of valid light. I already have the locations. We will move to spring for that matter, although my problem is that the two leading actresses are very busy. None ends before August, which if it were up to me we would already be shooting, "he crumbles. The interpreters are Anglo-Saxon and little else reveals a plot that, yes, will be shot in English. "With Cate Blanchett I have discovered that I have to be humble in my jobs. What I am good at is the contemporary, that I can do all the art direction, intimate films with few characters and with direct work with the actors as if it were a play".

Pedro Almodóvar with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, in a promotional photo. Nico Bustos

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber