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Alex de la Iglesia: "I'm that fat guy who makes movies: it's the mask with which I go out on the street"

2022-04-19T04:08:59.055Z


The filmmaker returns to the big screen with 'Veneciafrenia', a film about a network of masks and glitter under which a decadent and dying Europe is hidden (which, of course, has nothing to do with the real one)


There is a terrifying, hostile and dying Europe under which we already know (although not so different either) and it is reached through Venice, to the misfortune of some Spanish tourists who end up locked up in it.

This is the approach of

Veneciafrenia

, a film with which Alex de la Iglesia (Bilbao, 56 years old), the director who has done the most to demonstrate that there is a gap and a market for fantastic cinema in Spain, returns to the big screen.

“It is an excuse to talk about something that obsesses me: the mask, the mask.

We all, in one way or another, run away from a mask;

we also use them to defend ourselves”, he warns in his office in Madrid, flanked by comics and childhood friends such as Darth Vader, King Kong, Saruman and Cthuluh

.

“In Venice all that is extreme: at Carnival everyone has that strange mask of happiness.

What is really hiding?

Well, a Europe that has disappeared, a concept of life that no longer exists, a world that is frankly dead, a corpse”.

Why do so many filmmakers, at a certain point in their career, become so interested in artifice?

It happened to Kubrick, to Spielberg, to Huston...

You don't intend it but it happens.

I am 56 years old: I have spent more time telling stories and being a filmmaker than doing anything else.

You yourself realize that you no longer see life in the same way.

Everything you see, you do it through a camera, people talk to you and you're hearing dialogues, I see a movie and I don't see it anymore, I analyze it.

Venicephrenia

speaks of a group of people who are used to artifice.

They prefer to go to the Venice of Las Vegas, but since it is very expensive, they end up in the real one, made of porcelain masks.

'How disgusting', they say, so much glitter and color.

They scratch and find the real Venice that hides a world of symbols and references and anguish.

Do we live in a world of masks?

There are people who wear a mask and another on top.

People who want to seem in line with the general thought and hide another underneath.

And below that, another.

Do you have a mask or a camera?

Camera.

They say that enough personality sneaks through it.

Deep down we are not what we authentically feel ourselves to be, but the mask that we accept to be, the character.

I'm that fat guy who makes movies.

It doesn't completely match my personality, I'm not just like that, but... it's the dress I wear to go out.

There are people who want to give a vision of themselves more in line with what they have inside.

Who is trying to lose weight.

I don't try.

I have decided to do other things.

Are those who say that it is easy to point out when a film is by Alex de la Iglesia right?

That is a natural part of the job of directing or working with the public.

In my case, people say: 'This is an Alex movie and this is not', which fascinates me.

I'll tell you which one is mine or which one isn't.

Each one is different and within each genre there are genres,

Veneciaphrenia

is very different from

El Bar

or

30 Monedas

.

It has a specific flavor.

Alex de la Iglesia: "I play 'Dungeons and Dragons' because I saw it in Spielberg's 'ET': this is how the 'freak' has ended up dominating the general public." Gianfranco Tripodo

If you have reverence for an almost recurrent imagery in your films, does it come from your childhood?

It is unavoidable.

You may think not, but your true way of being is established between the ages of 18 and 25. You end up conditioned by what you were, even denying it: “I will never be the way I was, I am going to be an adult, I am going to have a rational thought, I am going to be faithful to my ideas…”.

Whoever says that is worse than me.

Where specifically in childhood?

The first magazine I bought, with my money, in pesetas, a few, was

Famosos Monsters del Cine

,

an absurd magazine with black and white photographs of horror movies.

It captivated me to incredible levels.

I found photos of

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(1974), which I hadn't seen… It was a very premature thing, I don't know how my parents didn't take the magazine away from me, I'm talking about when I was four or five years old.

The first comics appeared on the center page, in color, they were drawings by Richard Corden: a story of a murderous Santa Claus with an ax that entered through the chimney to kill children... That one stuck with me.

I found German expressionism through those photos: “What is this

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

I want to see it.

Lon Chaney?

Unlike other directors of

nerd culture,

excuse me, you don't traffic in nostalgia.

No, because I consider it a present.

I have built my cinema through those impulses, I have a lot of respect for them.

I don't like people who take it as a joke.

I understand very well the character of the

freak,

a person obsessed with a certain cinema, and a certain culture, and certain comics.

I love him very much, I understand him and I respect him.

The word

geek

disgusts me.

I've always talked about the

freak,

the person who feels apart from society because they don't understand him.

Now it turns out that way of thinking dominates the

mainstream

.

Why?

Because there has been no alternative: the people of our generation have ended up dominating the process.

What do you think of the turn that

streaming has caused,

starting with Netflix, of not making its products for the general public but for fans of a particular franchise or genre?

To give them what they want instead of surprising them?

Things work when your intent to please is sincere.

The one who makes the [considered failed]

remake

of

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(2022) also wants to please, even himself at the moment when he does something absolutely extreme and groundbreaking.

Everyone is looking for an audience: you can be yourself and no one else.

In Leos Carax's cinema, in the first

[Boy meets girl,

1984] there is clearly an interest in enjoying a huge toy that is only for him and that generates a community of people who are related to that feeling.

In the last one

[Annette

, 2021] I already see him playing with that group of

nerds

in quotes who like Leos Carax's cinema.

The same happens with other great authors of our times, such as Ari Aster

[Hereditary

, 2018] ], or Panos Cosmatos

[Mandy

, 2018].

It's just a question of the market: whoever makes films for Cannes, to participate in critics' week, win the jury prize, is making films for them, in the same way as Zara and then the small specialized store.

He is one of the most active Spanish filmmakers on networks.

Are we right to be scared by what people release from anonymity, without a mask?

We got scared because for the first time we found out how people think, because it's something we didn't know.

We are not better or worse, nor do we have a more confused vision of life, but that did not reach us before.

Now we see it, we discover that not all of us have the capacity to accept certain information.

Everything is valid.

Noise is also valid.

Noise?

Knowing what they think: of you, of life, of politics.

“These people use Twitter to vent their hate”: no, he's speaking his mind.

We know who he is because he can say it openly.

All of this is information and it is invaluable.

You have to have the coldness to read it, even the negative comments, but it puts you in the real world.

Through a mobile.

In the film, I care a lot about the moment when someone kills someone and people take out their cell phones.

They do not believe the reality they are seeing.

If you don't have a mask, you take out your mobile, which is your mask.

You need something.

You need something between yourself and reality because you cannot directly look at it.

You put a mobile, you defend yourself with it, you see life as a video...

He entered the pandemic after 18 weeks directing

the eight chapters of

30 coins,

his series for HBO Max

, then

Veneziaphrenia

and now I see the scripts for the second season of

30 coins there.

It will be 27 weeks of filming.

I can't get sick, it would stop everything.

Does this rhythm tire you?

I am in the best moment of my life.

I have always wanted to live rolling and now I live rolling.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-04-19

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