anderswolleck

Chilean born filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky changed the world in 1971 when he released El Topo, a bizarre psychedelic Mexican western. The film became an immediate hit on the burgeoning midnight movie scene. Since then Jodorowsky has done a number of wonderful films, all fascinating and beautiful, such as Holy Mountain, The Rainbow Thief and Santa sangre. They are all highly personal tales filled with commentary on religion, sex and so much more. Jodorowsky has also done groundbreaking work on comic books with such legendary artists as Moebius, Georges Bess, Juan Gimenez and many more.

Now, after 30 years, Jodorowsky and his distributor Abkco films have settled their differences and finally El Topo and Holy Mountain will be re-released in theaters and enjoy proper DVD releases. I had a chance to talk with Jodorowsky in person on a recent visit to New York City.

Check out the official website for the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Daniel Robert Epstein: Obviously were sitting here in the Abkco offices so you settled your disagreements with them?

Alejandro Jodorowsky: We were for 30 years in a fight, [music impresario] Allen [Klein] and me, but we decided together to finish because it was idiotic to fight like this, there was no reason.

DRE: There was really no reason?

AJ: I was guilty, myself was guilty. At that time Allen Klein proposed to me to do The Story of O but I escaped. I didnt want to do it. I really escaped. But he had prepared everything and he wanted to make an erotic picture. Then I escaped and he said that nobody would see your picture anymore. I offended him. I understand because I escaped. I take a plane, I went to another country; I escaped.

DRE: So does this mean the movies will come out on DVD?

AJ: Yes and in the theaters also. We show in the theaters first. These are very, very good copies. The best I ever had. I think of myself from one side as a poet, I do everything and the other side like a painter, for me to make a picture is like to make a painting and then the image is very important for me, the quality of the image and now I have what I want.

DRE: Will there be a lot of extras on the DVD?

AJ: Ah yes, fantastic, they are as good as the picture, the bonuses.

DRE: What are the bonuses?

AJ: They are some moments I took out of my first picture I did when I was almost 20 years old. I explain the tarot and the ideas in Holy Mountain. Interviews that are very well done.

DRE: Do you do a commentary?

AJ: Yes, on three of them.

DRE: Wow.

AJ: Fando y Lis, El Topo and Holy Mountain.

DRE: El Topo became a seminal movie after its release in the United States. What were your expectations when you finished the film?

AJ: I never in my life have expectations. I only live. I was very surprised one day, when I was invited to New York for a Bangladesh concert. Ok, I came and a limousine was waiting for me. It was the first time in my life I was in a limousine and I was with a very beautiful Hindu secretary. I came to the first row for the Bangladesh concert and then they took me to a restaurant with all the musicians there. I was astonished. It was almost like a dream. I never expected nothing.

DRE: A big part of the experience of seeing your movies was being on psychedelics and other drugs, were you ever into drugs?

AJ: No, no, for me it wasnt my reality. At that time, in New York if you dont take drugs or smoke marijuana or cocaine, you were an idiot person. The first time I smoked a marijuana cigarette I was 40 years old in order to sell the picture. I did it because nobody would take me seriously if I had never smoked. When I went to a party here in New York I had to go to a window with a little hole to breathe because all the smoke from the marijuana was killing me.

DRE: What was your mindset when you were making the films?

AJ: I have a monstrous imagination. I am like a monster, more than Dali, more than Salvador Dali. I have an enormous imagination and all my life I was like that. It is something I do naturally.

DRE: It was only recently that I found out that you were born from Jewish parents.

AJ: I am three-quarters because my grandmother on my mothers side, was raped by a Russian Cossack in Russia. Then she escaped but my grandmother was pregnant with my mother. My mother had a Jewish mother and was the daughter of rape, so she was half. Meanwhile my father was completely Jewish so I have some of a rapist man in my blood.

DRE: El Topo is such a collision of different religions and different ideas. Was Judaism part of that?

AJ: Yeah, yeah, El Topo dress like a rabbi.

DRE: I never looked at it that way [laughs].

I have seen most of your films and like you said, your imagination is obviously huge. But that seems to come out ever more in your comic books.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, more because I can do whatever I want. Its easy. I say the ideas, I have an artist that will do it. I dont have any critical producer. I am free and then I go as far as I want or as I can. But also, I have not only a big imagination, but I never stop reading and you want to talk about religion. I studied Kabbalah, Buddhism, Tantraism, Masonic initiation, the Egyptian initiation, Greek initiation. Holy Mountain is like a dictionary of symbols. I use everything I study in some way. Now its easy to say Madonna is Kabbalahist. But in that time you had to study the Kabbalah to say you are a real Kabbalahist [laughs].

DRE: It takes more than one viewing to understand your films.

AJ: I understand. I say that when Holy Mountain came out, it is like a song. People listen to a song a hundred times and the more they listen to the song the more they love it. Why would a picture not be like this? I would make a picture impossible to see one time. You would see a picture and then you would come to see it a new time and it would be a new picture. I knew a person who saw my picture 30 times and always they feel its a different thing.

DRE: Whats interesting about the comic books is that they seem a little more cohesive than the movies.

AJ: Its not like that. Its because now I have more coherence. That is the reality. When I made the film I was not so coherent. It is progress. I write the Son of El Topo and its a lot more coherent.

DRE: Are you still set to direct Son of El Topo?

AJ: I was going to do it but I never raised the money. I was almost at the point of doing it but I failed.

DRE: I remember reading that you had written something for Alfonso Arau to direct.

AJ: At that time I had one for Alfonso Arau but not now. I have nothing to see with Alfonso today. But in the beginning he was an actor and I directed him in a show.

DRE: Are you working on anything to direct?

AJ: Now they going to put up a play called The School of Ventriloquists that I wrote. Its going to be premiering in Belgium. Then next year it will be published in a book of my plays. Another play I wrote called Opera Panica is playing everywhere in Europe. I like making the plays.

DRE: Last year I happened to be in France when there was a dual show of Moebius/Miyazaki works. I had never seen Moebius designs for the movie version of Dune you wanted to make but they were at that show. Are you and Moebius working on something new?

AJ: We finished work already. But now Moebius with the age, hes a little tired and he cannot take big projects now.

DRE: Are you tired at all?

AJ: No, I am not tired at all. Yesterday I slept ten hours and actually I feel pretty good. I am working to live 120 years. In two and a half more years I will be 80 years old. But I am alive and I feel very, very well. The only thing is I dont look at myself in the mirrors.

DRE: Why not?

AJ: I look old [laughs]. I dont want to see that.

DRE: What made you want to make a western like El Topo?

AJ: I wanted to make a Western, but I failed. I made an Eastern.

DRE: [laughs] What inspires you now?

AJ: What inspires me now? I need to think now. [pause]

In this moment I am inspired by phenomenon of pregnancy for women. That is inspiring. I am inspired in the phenomena of and the study of the process of pregnancy. I was thinking of myself and how I was in the belly of my mother. I am always thinking like this. Always an artist speaks of his own experiences and then you make symbols about it. At that time when I made El Topo I was with a woman who escape with another woman. My lover was an actress in the theater. I share my woman with this actress and one day I find that the actress was also making love with my woman and then I said, Well, we would be three, why not. Then I went to bed to sleep and to sleep with these women was so great. I remember it was three oclock in the morning in the garden at the patio, waiting and listen to screaming and then I lost my woman. The woman took my woman. That is in El Topo. It is real life.

DRE: Graphic novels are so popular right now and my favorite book of yours is The Madwoman of the Sacred Heart.

AJ: I liked that one. You know what, I will tell you something. I lived two years with that crazy woman in order to write what she was thinking. I sacrificed myself two years with that crazy woman and then I wrote that book. Its a true story, two years with the crazy woman.

DRE: Well it cant be completely true.

AJ: She tried to kill me before. One day she was so mad, I escaped and then I closed the door. She destroyed the door. I was scared to death by then and did that in order to write the story. I liked the story. I liked it a lot and Im very happy that you liked it.

DRE: [laughs] Would you ever be interested in turning one of your graphic novels, like The Metabarons, into a cartoon?

AJ: I cannot do it. I would be interested in another to do The Metabarons because I am not enough Hollywood to do that. Because its so expensive, its like Superman, you know. Hollywood needs to do that. I am looking at Hollywood to do it. I cannot do it but I would be happy for someone to do it. They are two American directors [named Alex and Andrew Smith] in Hollywood who take the option for Juan Solo [also known as Son of the Gun] which was drawn by [Georges] Bess, it is a gangster movie in Mexico. I dont know if they will do it.

DRE: I read that you conducted the wedding ceremony of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese.

AJ: Yes. Sure, its true. He said I am the biggest director ever and that he liked the Holy Mountain. In Holy Mountain I played the alchemist with the white coat and he said he dreamed to be married by me in that costume. Then I was embarrassed, I said, Listen that costume doesnt exist anymore. It was 20, 30 years ago. He said, give me your measurements and I will make your costume. Then when I came to the wedding the costume was waiting for me.

DRE: [laughs] Thats so great.

AJ: Yes, wasnt it? He offered to me a speech and she made a speech and I married them by the water, earth, air and fire. I united them by the four elements.

DRE: Do you still see a lot of movies?

AJ: Yes, everyday. I work a lot, I write all the day. When it gets to ten oclock at night, I see two pictures in DVD. I dont go to the movies.

DRE: Do you like modern Mexican filmmaking like Guillermo Del Toro?

AJ: Yeah, Guillermo Del Toro is a good friend. He write to me and we became friends. He is the next generation.

DRE: His new film, Pans Labyrinth is beautiful.

AJ: Yes, I want to go see that. Hes a fantastic guy. I like Guillermo and hes a good friend. But also I see a lot of South Korean pictures. I see oriental pictures because I dont know the actors. I dont see the big ego. I see occidental pictures that are amazing. The smell of most actors is terrible. Jack Nicholsons smell is insufferable.

DRE: Do you have a time frame when you want to make your next picture?

AJ: I am very busy now because I wrote the book. I hope to be free in February of next year. I economize, save money myself in the bank and then I have this money in order to lose this money. I will lose this money. I dont want benefits from the movie. I dont expect to make my money back. I want to show my picture for free. All the pictures now are ill of money. They need to make hundred million dollars. Money is the illness of movies so is the star system and all the weapons and cars in the movies. I would make a picture in order to lose money. I would lose all the money I accumulate for years. I would make it free on the internet so that all the people would be able to see that. I will make a revolution.

DRE: Are you very interested in the internet?

AJ: It is unique and interesting to me because in some ways it is more dangerous than the atomic bomb. You realize the biggest power of the United States is the internet because in any moment we can cut the internet in any country. But in another way its a way of freedom of expression. You have the two sides. But in the freedom of expression we have also the CIA, looking at what you are seeing. Its very complicated but there are so many possibilities.

DRE: Do you have any tattoos?

AJ: I have only a scar from circumcision. If you want I can show you.

DRE: You know, that would certainly be a story to tell. Maybe sometime after I take some acid.

25 years ago you tried to make a movie of Frank Herberts Dune. Are there any other American books you have a desire to adapt?

AJ: No, that was the only one I chose to adapt in this time. I decided to adapt because it was a miraculous history. It was fantastic. For the moment I havent found one because I am a creator. Dune I wanted to do and now I am reading what his son [Brian Herbert] is writing.

DRE: Yeah, its pretty good.

AJ: It is very good because when you read Dune you dont understand the first 100 pages. But now you can understand the genius of Frank Herbert because in his mind all that has an explanation and with the work of his son now you can realize how big was Herbert.

DRE: Do your children make films?

AJ: Brontis is a theater actor. Cristobal is a painter and a shaman. My youngest son Adn has a website where you can hear his music. They are a group of five musicians and the record comes out and now they do concerts. He is a big success.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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