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We met in a small bar on a small street. Outside, the rain. At the table: director, writer, and pedagogue Iván Morales, actor Pol Fernández, and myself. Both embarked a year ago, along with Toni Rey –director of photography–, on a cinematic adventure that concludes very soon with the premiere of two unforgettable sequences from Minnie and Moskovitz and Faces.
Marta: Tell me about the genesis of this project.
Iván Morales- This is something that is born from a very prosaic place, which is that we were doing a course based on scenes by Cassavetes… because Cassavetes, as a director, as a spectator, as a writer, has always meant a very big beacon to me, a path to follow. He has always seemed to me a great reference for creative freedom, for how the creative and artistic act goes hand in hand with life, and how truly evolving in your life and evolving in your art go together. (…) My mother introduced me to Cassavetes, and then as a director I was blown away, and as a pedagogue, the material of his scripts is truly fantastic for working with actors who want to investigate.
Pol Fernández- I didn't know Cassavetes. I discovered him reading a script on the first day in class with Iván. It was an approximation, an entry into him from another place. One of the things the course said was that there would be a showcase of the worked scenes and that perhaps they would be filmed. Time passed, the course was fucking great, but like in all courses, some things work out and others don't… and in the end, we did a showcase and I thought it would be really cool to film it.
IM – And this gentleman took the bull by the horns and we got it off the ground.
Pol Fernández: "Life can be shit, we are not going to camouflage it, we are not going to lie to ourselves, inasmuch as it is shit; what happens is that we are alive, and that must be dignified, no matter what, wherever we are and whatever happens."M- This you have done, is it a remake, is it a reinterpretation, is it a homage?
IM- It is a tribute and a revisitation of his universe through our own present. I have done revisitations of other people, of Rohmer… and then I direct texts by other people. But this is more of a revisitation in the sense that the text itself has been manipulated.
PF- Yes. In the end, the essence is there, in that these are those situations. But for me, seen from an actor's perspective, what was being created was very massive and very beautiful. It was going from cinema to theater, and then taking what we did in theater, to cinema. From one thing, another thing was created, and from that other thing, another new one. And it is returning to the master. But not from the "let's emulate Cassavetes," but from the work we did.
IM- When you do someone else's text, you have to find the genuine core of what that story wants to tell you and, from there, once you find that, you can betray everything you want.
M- But, perhaps the core for you is one and for another it is another, right?
IM- Of course, that's how it should be. In the dialogue you establish with the work, you are a concrete being with your circumstances and your gaze… as in any relationship. I equate it to any relationship. With people it's like that. That is, the truth of each person is theirs, but when you dialogue with that person, the one you read is the one you read, and you strive for it to be the most truthful and the most honest; but you read from your place, and in that meeting place of the two people or of a team and a material, a concrete reading is made. Here we changed the gender of some character and we changed the historical situation.
M- The actors' work in Cassavetes' scenes is powerful, isn't it?
IM- Absolutely.
PF- It's heavy, and we would already be talking about what is dangerous in interpretation, where each one gets involved and where not. It is true that it requires absolute trust in what is happening and total surrender. What we sometimes said… these are life-or-death situations in a good sense, you go all out. And I'm not talking about a great action or great violence but about emotional states; at least in what we have recorded, these are quite extreme situations.
IM- And we also shot it very guerrilla-style, with a great team and fantastic human material, but very guerrilla-style and with the accidents of guerrilla warfare, and trying to use all that in favor of the characters' extreme situation.
Iván Morales: "He opened the door to everyday life. They are characters who sometimes desperately seek their happiness and encounter social constraints that do not allow it, with how to somehow overcome those constraints to end up living the purest thing, which is love."M- Does Cassavetes always talk about the fucked up part of life?
IM- Yes, because for him life is everything, it's the fucked up and the not fucked up. He is very interested in seeing the human being. For me, Cassavetes is a post-Charles Manson, post-Vietnam evolution of Frank Capra.
PF- It would be like taking off Hollywood's makeup and being rawer in that sense.
IM- And Capra responded to another historical moment. Cassavetes responds to a historical moment in which there is no possible evasion from the rawness of life. Cassavetes brings to cinema the legacy of the beat generation, tries to work in Hollywood as a director but messes it up badly making A child is waiting, which is his attempt at commercial cinema. (...) That is, he belongs to a historical moment that is just prior to the revolution... well, in fact, he is the godfather of the cinematographic revolution that comes later with Scorsese and with Dennis Hopper and Coppola and so on. He is the precursor of this, the one who demonstrates that cinema in the US can be something that is a mirror of a complex generation (...).
That is, he is a product of that moment, and his cinema responds to that rawness, but deep down he is a romantic. He believes in human beings, he believes in concrete social structures, and his cinema simply explains how human beings often fight against the unhappiness caused by the social conventions we are forced to play by. And then, on top of that, in the end, he always gives hope to his characters.
M- And they touch the limit
IM- They touch the limit, but more on an emotional level. Cassavetes thought about people.
M- He was an author, he had his own voice. Define his voice for me:
IM- Hope in human beings, the value of being truly honest and going all the way, loyalty to the tribe. All his films are home movies, family cinema in the literal sense. Household stuff!
M- Everyday life!
IM- Yes, but he opened the door to everyday life. They are characters who desperately seek their happiness sometimes and who encounter social constraints that do not allow it, with how to overcome those constraints in some way to end up living the purest thing, which is love.
PF- Yes, because I confirm that voice that Iván describes. I would add the word "dignity." Because it is very important. Because in the end, at least in these scenes, it is something I have connected with a lot. That is, life can be shit, we are not going to camouflage it, we are not going to lie to ourselves, inasmuch as it is shit; what happens is that we are alive, and that must be dignified, no matter what, wherever we are and whatever happens. I believe that these are characters with whom, to their ultimate consequences, we are going to dignify ourselves. That is why they do not stop fighting and are like heroes.
* The two sequences, co-produced by Todo por el punk, Los Montoya and Toni Rey, were shot in Barcelona a year ago, have been made by a team of about 30 people, and will premiere very soon at the Zumzeig cinema in Barcelona.