Rodrigo Cortés (Salamanca, 1973) often thinks of that boy from San Justo Street for whom being a film director was something as unattainable as becoming an astronaut. Perhaps it was possible somewhere in Wisconsin, but not in Salamanca. Although he didn't have them all with him, he didn't care. Rodrigo spent his afternoons at the movies, played at making up movies and stole books from his parents' library.
"You only know what you've done and how you've evolved through comparison. There are moments of strange awakening, in the night shoots, when I look around and think that nothing makes sense. I see the trucks, the cameras, 75 people swarming around... And I realize that this is so because one day I wrote something on the laptop, "he explains in this special of In the library fromthe Book Fair that heads this news.
Cortés explains that, in his life, cinema and literature have always gone hand in hand, almost from the beginning. At the age of nine, he read Kafka's Metamorphosis, a novel that later inspired one of his first short films. Four decades later, the director is immersed in the filming of Escape. A film, based on Enrique Rubio's novel of the same name, which will be produced by Martin Scorsese.
When asked what he thinks is the secret to making a good adaptation, Cortés is clear that the only way is to betray the novel. In the video he explains how this betrayal is consummated. Which American author read non-stop in his teens? What does it bring you to meet the public at the Book Fair? What is the novel that you always recommend?, are other reflections that this space includes.
The Spanish director, screenwriter and writer, Rodrigo Cortés, reflects on these and other issues in this special of En la biblioteca de, a format in which we have known that of the Nobel Mario Vargas Llosa, that of novelists such as Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Javier Cercas, Rosa Montero or Julia Navarro, politicians such as José Manuel García-Margallo and Ángeles González-Sinde, or personalities of culture and cinema such as Fernando Trueba, Isabel Coixet, Peridis or Juan Diego Botto, among others.