SCREENS Bloody Beautiful Illusions Alejandro Jodorowsky, surrealism’s topo sangre, on Truth, Beauty, and the Internet BY MARC SAV LOV When Chilean filmmaker/writer/artist Alejandro Jodorowsky turns 82 on Feb. 7, he’ll have the distinction of being, insofar as we know, the eldest statesman of surrealist filmmaking. His breakout film, 1970’s visually kaleidoscopic, narratively ambitious El Topo, inverted and evis- cerated the dying spaghetti Western, taking a moribund genre and infusing it with a mystical madness and spiritual longing that Sergio Leone and his followers had only hinted at. (It also garnered enthusiastic praise from John Lennon and a young David Lynch.) Jodorowsky’s follow-up, The Holy Mountain, cemented his name as a cinematic synonym for dreamy metaphysical nightmares and led directly to an ill-fated attempt at creating a 14-hour adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was to feature both Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí. (If only.) But it was Santa Sangre, his 1989 masterpiece of oedipal desire and blood-drenched dis- figurement within and without a freakish, Fellini-esque cirque perdu, that won him the allegiance of a whole new generation of cult film fanatics who recognized it for what it was: art for art’s sake. (The Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz will host a rare 35mm screening of the film on Jan. 19.) Twenty-plus years later, Santa Sangre is finally getting a digitally remastered, Jodorowsky- authorized, double-disc DVD/Blu-ray release from cult boutiquers Severin Films. It’s been a lengthy and labyrinthine crawl into the sunlight for “the mole,” however. Jodorowsky’s filmic curriculum vitae is littered with abandoned or perpetually stalled projects, including his most recent near-miss, the epic “spaghetti gangster” film King Shot. The Austin Chronicle spoke to Jodorowsky from his home in Paris about his circuitous career, Alejandro Jodorowsky the nature of his often puzzling art, and his future filmmaking plans.

Austin Chronicle: What exactly happened to novels to your own complex spiritual beliefs [“psy- AJ: Pictures are like food. If someone offers even if the world of traditional distribution is your much-publicized film King Shot? That was choshamanism”]. Now your work is finding and you food, you take it, you eat it. All of my falling apart – announced several years ago as being ready to inspiring an entirely new generation online. Does pictures, my theatrical plays, my books, they AJ: That world is not falling apart. That world go into production – with Nick Nolte, Marilyn your ever-expanding influence surprise you? Or go out into the world and they change people. is still developing and changing. It is easy Manson, Udo Kier, Asia Argento, and Santa was that the plan all along? I do not want to speak too highly of myself, to think that that world is in trouble when Sangre producer Claudio Argento attached – but AJ: Throughout my life I have always made my but my pictures are very mystical, you know? the old things are replaced, but don’t forget it never materialized. pictures without the intention to make money, They are like big bells. Boom … boom … boom. that there are new things that are replacing Alejandro Jodorowsky: That did not hap- that must be very clear. For me, it was never They wake [audiences] up and [audiences] them. Myself, I am working intensely with pen because of the producers. They had my business. It was an extension of my soul. The say, “Why do you do that?” And I say to them, the Internet. Every day I [draw] a picture script, but they wanted a more industrial producers want the money, but myself, I want “Because you were asleep!” and write, in Spanish, on the Internet. I put product, and myself, I am not so industrial. only to work, like the person who does the AC: The opening of El Topo has a wonderful in there poetry, philosophy, art. Because of [The producers] no longer believe in the pic- decor or the electrician. Now I am trying to do line: “The mole digs through the earth seeking that I have an enormous amount of followers tures now, they believe only in the product, my next picture, The Dance of Reality, which the sun, but when he reaches the surface he is now. The Internet was not designed for that, how do you say? A new “mission of movies,” is also the title of my autobiography, with the blinded by the sun.” As a multidiscipline artist, but you can use it, anyone can use it, for art. like a business, only. Then, I goal to lose money! Now they have you ever been blinded by that metaphorical That is why I want to make a picture for the could not raise money after make pictures simply to make sun? Truth and beauty are often at odds with each Internet, because it’s a new way to express that point. But it is not over. money. Five-hundred million other in your films. yourself. It is the new way, not like television, I am always trying to make a dollars! Incredible! I am tired AJ: I will tell you a story. There was a Tibetan not like theatrical movies, not in theatre. It is picture. Always. Until the end of that, and so I will give this master who said, “Nothing is real, everything there, on the Internet. of my life I will do that. You picture for free on Internet. is an illusion.” One day, his disciples come to AC: You’ve invested so much time over the come really near sometimes, I am trying to give an expe- him and tell him that his son, his only son, is course of your career in projects that fell apart and then suddenly something rience that is useful, that will dying, and he begins to scream. The disciples or took very circuitous routes to finding an audi- happens. The politics, the help you to have a more ask: “Master, why are you screaming like ence. Looking back, are you satisfied, artistically world, the crisis. conscious life. That is what that? Your son is an illusion.” And the master or otherwise, with the trajectory of your career AC: Are you still planning to I am searching for in my art, says, “Yes, but he was the most beautiful of thus far? make Son of El Topo? in my images. Pictures are all the illusions.” AJ: Satisfied? I am happy, yes. That takes two AJ: I had Russian investors images, no? At the moment, I think that today we can not know the true things, to be happy. One, to be yourself, what for the Son of El Topo. They I am seeing a lot of old mov- beauty of things, but we continue to search you are, not what the other person wants invested some money, and ies, silent movies, and I have for our own beautiful illusions, the most you to be. Then, realize that there is nothing I worked for three months discovered again the cinema- beautiful thing in our life. Some people call it for you that is not for the others also. That with them making the script, tography and the tricks that the philosopher’s stone; religion calls it god; is important. A life without competition. making everything, and suddenly they disap- they are using because there are no words, just the more elemental person calls it love; the Happiness is the end of competition, the end peared, like the spirits! Until today, it has the beautiful images. political person calls it liberty. But every one of comparing yourself to the other. If some- been six months and I have no news from AC: What silent films, specifically, have you of us has the goal to find our most beautiful body gives something to you, something you them. They disappeared, and I don’t know been watching? illusion. Those illusions that are the movies didn’t ask for, you need to receive it. You give what happened, but they are not there. Maybe AJ: Now I am interested in Murnau. You know you have watched your whole life are worth me questions, I discover answers. By myself, I the extraterrestrials took them to another F.W. Murnau? I’m seeing all the pictures of his the happiness of the most beautiful illusion. have nothing to say. N planet, maybe they were taken by the Mafia, now. Also Tod Browning. They made fantastic Myself, I am blinded to truth. I cannot Severin Films Presents: Santa Sangre screens at I don’t know. movies. And, of course, Buster Keaton. know truth. It’s impossible. It’s too big for the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz (320 E. Sixth) on AC: Despite the many obstacles you’ve encoun- AC: I remember a number of walkouts while my mind. Wednesday, Jan. 19, at 6:30pm. Severin Films will release tered throughout your career, you’ve managed to watching Santa Sangre at the Dobie Theatre here AC: Thanks to the Internet and the digital a DVD/Blu-ray remastered version of the film on Jan. 25. create and sustain a stunningly personal body of in Austin during its initial run. Two decades on, revolution, essentially anyone with the inclina- You can read Alejandro Jodorowsky’s blog – en Español – at www.planocreativo.wordpress.com. work that ranges from film to theatre to graphic do you think the reaction will be at all different? tion can make a movie today and get it seen,

38 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E JANUARY 14, 2011 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m