Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
In the second part of the Spanish director's COVID-19 quarantine diary, he mentions the first time he left his apartment after seventeen days of self-confinement — beginning some memories of Madonna, Warren Beatty and the Oscars.
On Monday night, with the announcement of new quarantine measures, I felt the symptoms of claustrophobia for the first time. They appeared later because I had a claustrophobia and amhobia for some time. I know they are two completely opposite symptoms, but my body is so contradictory, and that's one of its characteristics, and it's always been.
That night I knew I was going to try to go out the next day, and it felt like I was going to do a long-planned crime. It's also a bit like indulging in the pleasure of stealing pleasure and can't stop. It does sound a bit like the content of fiction published in cheap low-end publications, which is really helpless, but I blame it on the effects of confinement.
My plan was simple: going out grocery shopping, a real shopping, for the real needs of my personal life. So I went out fully dressed on Tuesday morning, and I felt like I had done something out of the ordinary: well-dressed! It's been seventeen days since I last did this, and I've always treated dressing as a very intimate and special thing.
I recall all sorts of other dress-up occasions that were very important moments for me; I realize now that they have always been ingrained in my mind. For example, I think of the time in 1980 when I walked neatly on Lope de Rueda to the Peñalver Cinema on Conde de Peñalver to attend the premiere of Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom. Even though it was a second screening in a movie theater, I still thought of it as a premiere similar to the One at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. It was the first time my film was seen by an audience, as part of a commercial tour in a real movie theater. It took my friends a year and a half to make this movie. The theater was packed and the audience laughed. I remember wearing a red satin bomber vintage jacket i bought at London's Portobello market.
Dressing up isn't always part of the plan, or at least not in your memory. I remember that two years after the premiere of "The Legend of the Spirited Woman", still in the center of La Movida (Madrid's famous Wenqing district), I subconsciously put on a gray Zhongshan suit and went to a bar in Malasaña, which was opened by a boy of my choice. I've always disliked the Nakayama suit, I prefer to wear Perkins because it can block my double chin. I remember this Nakayama suit because for the next two years, the boy became a part of my life. He left this mark.
I remember the purple silk evening gown and the pair of studded ankle boots designed by designer Antonio Alvarado, like the pair designed by Christian Louboutin now, which I wore when I first attended the Oscars in 1989. We didn't win the award for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and my relationship with Carmen Maura fell apart afterwards, but I still remember the trip to Los Angeles full of great activities.
About four or five days before the awards ceremony, we had dinner at Jane Fonda's house, and she was keen to remake The Woman on the Verge of Collapse. She invited a handful of guests, including Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson, as well as her partner at the time. Her partner told Bibiana Fernández that he saw her watching a Lakers game in the afternoon. And then there's Cher, whose natural makeup makes her look just like a pixel, more beautiful, cuter, and shorter than I thought.
And Morgan Fairchild. It's her! (I thought the next guest would probably be someone like Susan Sontag.) I was really surprised because I felt Morgan Fairchild's acting skills were slightly inferior to others (although she had a small deal on Brotherhood Hero Morgan Fairchild and Falcon Crest). Jane Fonda must have noticed my surprise because she later explained that she had joined Morgan Fairchild in demonstrations, and Morgan was a little more feminist than Fonda herself.
Throughout the dinner we were overwhelmed by the charm of the female guests and Jack. We took a lot of pictures with them, and the paintings hanging on the walls, which Jane Fonda's father, Henry Fonda, painted.
The morning after the awards ceremony, I received a call from a woman at the hotel. She told me that maybe she wasn't aware of its effects, but her voice did impress me at the time, "Hello, I'm Madonna." I'm working on Dick Tracy (1990) and I'd love to show you around the set. I don't have much work today to leave the whole day to you. ”
It could be a fake Madonna, or a pervert trying to crush me in a dump that James Ellroy has described very well in his novels.
If you've read The Black Dahlia, you know what I'm talking about: Arrowrie's mother was mutilated somewhere in the wasteland. You can also watch my beloved Brian De Palma film of the same name based on this book, starring Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank, but the truth is that it didn't end so well. The film is a good fit for quarantine viewing programs, but before recommending it, I would also recommend other Brian de Palma films: Sisters (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Carlito's Way (1993), Body Double (1984) – Starred Morgan Fairchild, who was slender at the peak of his career at the time — and most importantly, Al Pacino's Scarface (1983). Leave Dahlia Noir behind and put these movies on your viewing schedule. You'll thank me for that later. These are movie treasures, easy to understand, and fun. I'll give you a list of recommendations at the end.
Back at Madonna, there's a good chance someone is kidding me, but based on my self-esteem (I didn't win an Oscar, I still have a strong sense of self-esteem), and I firmly believe that this is a real phone call. Madonna's voice told me the address of their filming set, and I was ecstatic and went there.
In fact, the entire crew was there, from Warren Beatty to Vittorio Storaro, and they all warmly received me. They literally thought of me as George Cukor. Beatty had to sit in a chair with his name on it, which was the director's chair, and let me see the footage they had just shot. I was ready to confess that I had discovered my sexuality when I was a child and had seen his performance in Splendor in the Grass (1961) (the construction worker in Pain & Glory did not exist), and in the end I resisted this impulse. They were filming a shot of the indistinct Al Pacino chattering. The following year he was nominated for an Oscar for the film, which eventually won three little golden men.
Madonna walked me around the set, and I met someone I admired for a long time: Milena Canonero, a costume designer who had already won three Oscars (she was nominated again the following year for The Supreme Detective), Chariots of Fire (1981), Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Cotton Club Milanella Cannono did not win an Oscar for Cotton Club, and the third was Marie Antoinette, a 2006 work directed by Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, director of Cotton Club. These three movies I also recommend to everyone to cope with the quarantine period. One of my favorites is Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
Milano Canonno won a fourth Oscar, but I don't remember which movie it was. Visiting her studio was probably the most impressive impression I can remember on that visit. And it was the only reason I wanted to stay in Hollywood: my obsession with detail.
One of the main characteristics of the comic book character Dick Tracy is his yellow hat. Milana was obsessed with finding the exact same yellow as the hat in the comics. She showed me about two hundred hats, and the only way to identify them was the subtle difference in color. I fully identify with this obsession with details. In a way, as long as it's within my capabilities, I'll do it when shooting. I don't know how to work any other way (but I do know how to do more with less).) ）
When you don't get an Oscar, Madonna calls you and gives you so much care, like she did the next day, and that shows how much this material girl is really interested in you. It wasn't long before we saw each other again, on one of her "Blond Ambition Tour" tours the following year.
We went out together every day during her stay in Madrid. I threw a grand flamenco party for her, La Polaca and her husband El Polaco at the Palace Hotel, along with Loles León, Bibiana Fernández and Rossy de Palma; but she had already made it clear to me, The only person she was interested in meeting besides me was another guest: Antonio Banderas. I promised her that Antonio would come, but I didn't tell her that he wouldn't come if I didn't let him bring his then-wife, Ana Leza, who was a huge fan of Madonna.
She, madonna herself, was going to arrange how we would sit (there were several round tables for my friends and her accompaniment at the time). Naturally, she sat at the main table, I was to her right, Antonio was to her left, and she arranged Anna to the farthest table in the lobby.
Except for the two of us—and a little charity given to the goddess Rapolaka—Madonna didn't notice anyone else. One member of her team took a very good camera and photographed everything that night, "as a souvenir," Madonna told me. It's a bit strange to me, but a good host doesn't ask too much.
I had to translate some questions that she was very interested in Antonio. It was a time when Antonio's career was advancing by leaps and bounds. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1989) was being released in the United States, and film critics and Hollywood (including Madonna) were crazy fascinated by him, but that night in 1990, he couldn't speak a word of English.
I say this because "In Bed with Madonna" came out a year later, and most of the film was filmed at the party at the Palace Hotel that day, and the harassment of Antonio was one of the main episodes in it, and it was clear that she had a sentence on the editing of Anna. At the end of the dinner, Anna plucked up the courage to come to our table and taunt the blonde and say, "It's not surprising that I can see that you like my husband, all women like him, but I don't care because I'm a modern woman." Madonna's response was: "Get out! （Get lost）”
It all seems frivolous, and it is, more like a record written by Patty Diphusa than our writing in isolation. When it comes to choosing things on its own, memories are always ridiculous. I don't mind that it looks a bit like the fall reckoning, if things were reversed and I shot Madonna and her team and then cut all the footage into a movie that was released worldwide, I would definitely be in a lawsuit and never turn around. Madonna treats us like fools, and one day I'm going to say that. She never asked us for the right to use the images, and even dubbed me — my English must not be that good.
Go back to the previous story. Sometime at dinner, Madonna asked me, "Ask Antonio if he likes to hit women?" (That's how I swear I asked). I translated this question to him. Antonio didn't say anything, he muttered, pulled his face down, as if to say, "I'm a Spanish gentleman, and I'll do whatever women want me to do." "It was an eloquent silence and gesture for me. But Madonna wanted more of an answer, "You ask him again," and she said to me again, "Does he like women hitting him?" I translated it to him again, and the words "to hit" and "women" were familiar to me back in 1990. Antonio made the same gesture, meaning neither nor that he would only provide services at the request of the lady.
The reason for saying this, first of all, is because it is true and the most interesting moment of the night, but she doesn't feel that it fits in her movie. There needs to be an epidemic for the world to know the truth about that banquet.
On January 11 of this year, I had to go to two places in Los Angeles in one day, two almost simultaneous awards ceremonies for Pain and Glory for Best Foreign Language Film. I wore a black Givenchy suit with a perkins turtleneck sweater of the same color.
The first awards ceremony was held by AAPR (American Association of Retired Persons), which fights for rights for people over the age of 50. Spain does not have the culture of such pressure groups, which tend to push the government to approve measures that benefit the interests of certain groups.
AARPs have their own influential awards, and awards ceremonies are so important that they need to be broadcast live on TELEVISION. The award is called "The Grownups Movies Awards." They did award it to the best in the film industry of the year, so to speak, neither naïve nor naïve.
This year Annette Bening won an award in recognition of her entire career, "The Irishman" (2019) for Best Picture, and Scorsese for Best Director, renée Zellweger in Judy (2019) and Adam in "Uncut Gems" (2019). Sandler）。 Sandler was at the same table as me, and he was so gracious and calm that he never mentioned to me that he was upset that Antonio had an Oscar nomination that was supposed to be his, that he had performed so well in "The Original Diamond," or for Robert De Niro, but the Academy gave it to Antonio anyway. Noah Baumbach won the prize for her outstanding screenplay for Marriage Story (2019). (I began to be good friends with Noah and his wife, Greta Gerwig, and agreed to get together every time I came to New York.) Pain and Glory was the best foreign language film award.
Before the award, Annette Bening greeted me at my table, and she stood next to her equally radiant husband, Warren Beatty, who was 83 years old at the time. We congratulated each other, and Annette told me she wanted to buy the rights to Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women, but she was told I had bought it. We exchanged our thoughts on the book together—I also recommended it during quarantine, and reading Lucia Berlin's novels makes you feel like time standstill—and I told her that if the character were older she would definitely be the most ideal candidate. I say this because all the winners are already in their fifties.
I was the first to be announced because the organizers knew I had another awards event, the Los Angeles Critics' Awards, and before this (less formal) awards ceremony, the guests were already drunk at the cocktail party. In my acceptance speech, I mentioned Warren – I never told him about my sexual awakening, which is a miracle. But I'm glad to mention that I finally got him in one of my films, and remember the natalie Wood and Warren Beatty in Asier Etxeandia's monologue?
Dressed in the same suit and with the same willingness to please and be flattered, I arrived at the InterContinental Hotel, where film critics were seriously celebrating their authoritative awards and giving speeches on what had happened this year. Best Film went to Parasite; Best Actor: Antonio Banderas; Best International Film: Pain and Glory.
Let's get back to the point. I walked out of the house for the first time after seventeen days of absolute isolation, and I didn't want to lose the feeling I had experienced, and the reason was real: I wanted to go to a shop near my home that resembled a corner to buy some food.
It was a strange feeling, but it was also one of the unparalleled tranquility, a pleasant silence and emptiness. At that moment, I didn't think about the dead and the infected. I felt like I was immersed in an unprecedented picture of Madrid and an extraordinary situation that I still don't know how to express.
I'd rather not think about these victims (that's not true, I really wish I could help them as much as I could). We all know those terrible numbers, and I'm writing this to forget about them; it's a kind of forward-looking escapism. If I stopped and confronted reality, I think I would be crushed. And that's not what I want.
The original article of the | was published in the Eldiario.es, Spain, published on April 1, 2020
| BFI Spanish Translation: Mar Diestro-Dópido|Chinese Translation: Anon. @ Fan Translation
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Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer.
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