King Shot (2009)

[rich]

very much to admire in his films but alas not much to love

rich

On 4/13/09, Tara Brady <madame.brady at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey Dave,
>
> From my stash and every bit as mad as you'd suppose...
>
>
>
> First published May, 2007.
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>
>  ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY INTERVIEW –
>
>  “Last night I dream of blind men,” says Alejandro Jodorowsky. “Twelve of
> them had surrounded another blind man and were beating him. They surrounded
> me but I said “I am not blind” so they leave me alone.”
>
>   Say ‘hello’ to a true underground hero, a celebrated actor, playwright,
> director, producer, composer, mime, graphic novelist, psychotherapist and
> newsreader.
>
> Born in 1929 in Chile to Russian-Jewish immigrants who owned a dry-goods
> store, the young Jodorowsky would develop an interest in puppetry and mime
> and found a theatre company that, at its peak, would employ 60 people. He
> left for Paris, reportedly throwing his address book into the sea on the
> way, to collaborate with Marcel Marceau on some of his most famous
> mimeograms. Over the next few years, Jodorowsky would alternate between
> working in Mexico City and in Paris, staging the playwrights who would be
> major influences on his film career, including Samuel Beckett, Ionesco,
> August Strindberg, Theatre of Cruelty champion Antonin Artaud and Spanish
> playwright Fernando Arrabal, (with whom he launched the Panic Movement.)
>
>     “I am like a diamond”, he laughs, “a stone with many faces. I have had a
> family and written comics and done many things. I could leave film. But it
> was good for me, very good.”
>
>    For his first film project, he adapted the Arrabal play *Fando and
> Lis,*which Jodorowsky had recently staged. The film, a tale of two
> quarrelling
> lovers looking for the magical city of Tar, was banned in Mexico after
> starting a riot at the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival.
>
>   “Mexico was very conservative at that time,” he recalls. “I had to be
> smuggled out of the screening. They were so offended by everything in the
> film.”
>
>   Happily, despite a life-threatening high-speed chase after the Acapulco
> screening, he kept at it. Decades have passed since he became the patron
> saint of New York’s hip midnight movie subculture and there are now so many
> myths around the cult filmmaker I’ve been inclined to doubt his very
> existence. Yet here he is in London, promoting the DVD release of *Holy
> Mountain * and *El Topo, *his two ‘lost’ masterpieces.
>
>   This, of course, is stupendous news for film fans. Though bootleg editions
> of these peyote classics have long doubled as the Holy Grail for video store
> brats, it’s been thirty years since Beatles’ manager Allen Klein withdrew
> both titles from circulation.
>
>   Details of the split between the director and Klein, who holds the
> distribution rights, are now legendary. When John Lennon decided *El
> Topo*was his favourite film, he convinced his manager to buy it.
>
> Klein then produced *Holy Mountain, * the fantastically far-out follow-up.
>
> “I owe John and Yoko a great deal”, says Jodorowsky in heavily accented
> English. “I am an artist, not an industrial movie-maker. Art comes from deep
> inside of your soul and is very, very difficult to distribute! When I came
> to the United States with *El Topo *the big companies said, "We don't know
> how to open that." It was impossible to show. Then one person (theatre owner
> Ben Barenholtz) showed it to John Lennon and he liked it. So he showed it
> with his picture made with Yoko Ono. It began to show at midnight, which
> started midnight movies, pictures like *Pink Flamingos*. They called that
> "Midnight Mass." After a year, Allen Klein bought the picture. John Lennon
> recommended that I get the money to do whatever I want. Klein gave me a
> million dollars. For me it was enormous amount.”
>
>   Klein promptly withdrew the films when Jodorowsky refused to direct an
> adaptation of Pauline Reage’s * The Story Of O.* Some accounts have it that
> Klein hated *Holy Mountain*, but loved *El Topo *like a fine wine.
>
> * “*I just did not want to make something sexual”, explains Jodorowsky. “I
> am a feminist. When I made *El Topo* I was a South American * machista.* I
> was a very, very angry person. I was a criminal. I had killed hundreds of
> animals. But by the time I finished I was a very, very kind person. I had
> come to realise what I was. And I was changing. That picture is a diary of
> life for me at that time. When I finished the film I knew I was *El Topo*.
> And I didn't want to make a picture about a woman who is a slave. I had to
> escape. But Allen Klein had put together a big budget project. So he was
> right to be angry.”
>
> How on earth did this long-running feud come to an end, I wonder?
>
> “ Ah listen”, he says. “The fight had lost it’s meaning long ago. I needed
> some peace just for myself. I asked why? I started meditating to discover
> where this hatred between us came from. And there was no reason. So I called
> him up and asked him to sit down. ‘You’ve been spending money blocking each
> other for years. What is the point?’ The years give you experience, you
> know. In three minutes we were good friends again. We’re old men now.”
>
> Determined to make things right, Klein flew Jodorowsky to New York to
> remaster the films and record a director’s commentary. The resulting
> package, on sale here this month, includes both titles and *Fando y
> Lis*(1967), Jodorowsky’s astonishing feature film debut. It may be one
> of the
> most essential DVD bundles ever put together.
>
>   Novices can thrill to the orgiastic spectacle of the conquest of Mexico
> re-enacted by toads, parades of Amazon women, a Christ manufacturing yard
> and many, many gatherings of freaks. It is literally, like nothing you’ve
> ever seen, though you may occasionally have a vague sense of déjà vu. Why?
> Well, even though his best work has been inaccessible, Jodorowsky’s
> influence on film culture has been immeasurable. The trippy texts of
> post-classical Hollywood – *Apocalypse Now, Easy Rider * – would never have
> come to pass without *El Topo. * Famously, even the films Jodorowsky never
> made have had a huge impact. The team he assembled for an aborted film
> adaptation of *Dune * - Dan O'Bannon and the artists Jean Giraud (aka
> Moebius), Chris Foss, and H.R. Giger – would recycle their ideas in *Alien.
> * Meanwhile, many of Jodorowsky’s illustrations for production design would
> find their way into *Star Wars; A New Hope.*
>
>    “I think it is wonderful”, Jodorowsky tells me. “In a way, it makes it a
> very rewarding experience. The team we put together for *Dune * did
> everything we wanted to do. It is good that people admired what we did and
> stole bits. It’s a tribute.”
>
>   Marilyn Manson, who is scheduled to appear alongside Nick Nolte in
> Jodorowsky’s next feature *King Shot*, was so taken with the imagery of
> *Holy
> Mountain * that he asked the director to officiate at his non-denominational
> marriage ceremony. On December 3rd, 2005, Jodorowsky, dressed in an
> alchemist costume from the film, presided over the wedding of Marilyn Manson
> and Dita Von Teese at Castle Gurteen in Kilsheelan, home of artist Gottfried
> Helnwein , in Tipperary, Ireland.
>
>   “He called me up and explained that he wanted to recreate the alchemist
> sequence”, says Jodorowsky. “I said, ‘oh, but the film was made so many
> years ago that I don’t have the right costume anymore’. He said, "Give me
> your measurements and we'll find it." So when I came to Ireland to marry
> him, the costume was waiting for me. That was his dream. I was just glad he
> understood the picture.”
>
>    - *The Jodorowsky Collection * is released on Tartan DVD on May 15th –
>
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> 2009/4/13 Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>
>> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892411/
>>
>> http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/jodorowskys-king-shot-lensing-tis-summer/
>>
>> http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/absurda-lynch-herzog-jodorowski/
>>
>> http://twitchfilm.net/archives/006452.html
>>
>> http://twitchfilm.net/archives/006746.html
>>
>>
>> http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2008/11/24/Interview-with-Alejandro-Jodorowsky-on-KING-SHOT-includes-concept-art
>>
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