JODOROWSKY: "I am old. I have so many things to do, so every day I
get quicker, in order to do them! I don't want to die without doing
everything I wanted to do."
http://www.arthurmag.com/2010/02/01/jodorowsky-i-am-old/
BY Jay Babcock
Feb 1, 2010
One from the archives: an interview conducted in person with
Jodorowsky in Burbank back in summer 2003. Jodo's then-forthcoming
book on the Tarot has since been published, and is now available in
English as The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards
(Destiny/Inner Traditions). Click on the cover above for purchase
info at amazon. Here's a 4.2mb PDF excerpt from the book, courtesy of
the publisher. Also: Jodorowsky and Allen Klein reconciled prior to
Klein's death last year, and as a result, all of Jodo's ABKCO films
are now available on dvd.
--
In the Heart of the Universe
Jay Babcock talks with visionary comics author Alexandro Jodorowsky
Originally published in LAWeekly on January 01, 2004
In 1970, Alexandro Jodorowsky was launched into the counterculture
consciousness via an utterly outre film called El Topo, which
screened for seven straight months at a theater in New York City.
Violent, mystical and more outrageous than Bunuel or Fellini's
surrealist dreamaramas, El Topo was the first midnight movie, a
Western that divided critics even as it gained a rabid cult following
of turned-on heads including John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Dennis Hopper.
Without the benefit of advertising, the film showed seven nights a
week to packed audiences. "Within two months," said the theater's
visionary manager, Ben Barenholtz, who booked the film, "the limos
lined up every night. It became a must-see item."
Allen Klein, infamous manager of the Beatles and Rolling Stones,
signed Jodorowsky to a film deal. An El Topo book was published by
Lenny Bruce/Miles Davis/Jimi Hendrix/Last Poets producer Alan
Douglasits first half was the film's nominal screenplay; the second
half was a lengthy, startling interview with the auteur.
Born in 1929 and raised in a Chilean seaside town by Jewish-Russian
immigrants, Jodorowsky had early ambitions as a poet. Dropping out of
university, he formed a puppet company that toured Chile. He left for
France in 1953 to find the Surrealists. With Artaud's The Theater and
Its Double as his bible, Jodorowsky worked in film, theater and with
mime Marcel Marceaufor whom Jodorowsky wrote various ingenious
scenarios. He spent the '60s bouncing back and forth between France
and Mexico in France, he co-founded the post-Surrealist Panic
Movement with Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal, and in Mexico he
drew a weekly comic strip, wrote books, staged plays and finally
directed his first real feature-length film, a Dali-esque version of
Arrabal's play Fando y Lis. The Fando y Lis was scandalous and barely
screened, but it allowed Jodorowsky to raise the money to make El
Topo, the film that would bring him into the English-language world.
By summer 1972, anticipation for Jodorowsky's next film was high
enough for Rolling Stone to send a correspondent to Mexico for a
visit to the set of his new film, The Holy Mountain. The resulting
article, which was second-billed on the magazine's cover to a piece
on Van Morrison, described scenes, props and conversations that
bordered between sensational and plain mad. Participants in the film
seemed to be in awe of what they were doing: One P.A. said, "You
know, I think this is the most important thing going on in the world
today. At the very least, it's the most far-out." The finished film
may be just that if you can find it. At some point around the
film's release, Jodorowsky and Klein had a serious falling out that
continues to this day, which means The Holy Mountain has never
received a legitimate release on videotape or DVD (bootlegs are, of
course, available).
In the following years, Jodorowsky attempted to adapt Frank Herbert's
Dune to film. The project ultimately failed, but it drew Jodorowsky
into contact with French comics artist Moebius, who, along with Swiss
artist H.R. Giger, had contributed design and storyboarding work to
the film. Jodorowsky began to collaborate with Moebius on comics, and
a new career was born.
Indeed, when I sat down with Jodorowsky this past summer for an
hourlong conversation, the extent of that career was obvious: He was
hard at work on scripts for six different comics projects.
Collaborating with a host of the world's finest talents during the
last 25 years, Jodorowsky has found in comics an art form that can
accommodate his seemingly boundless imagination. And what comics they
are: the Philip K. Dick-gone-cosmic series The Incal, the Homeric
space opera The Metabarons, the revenge/ redemption series Son of the
Gun, the strange Western Bouncer. With the opening of Humanoids
Publishing's North American branch in 1999, most of Jodorowsky's
comic work is finally available in English.
In conversation, the almost 75-year-old Jodorowsky remains dazzling.
Speaking in broken English (which has been slightly cleaned up in the
following excerpts from our conversation), his tone is generous,
self-deprecating, inquisitive and almost childlike in its sense of
wonder. He has made only three films since 1972's The Holy Mountain
the lost-children's fable Tusk (1980), the gonzo Grand Guignol Santa
Sangre (1989), and the make-work The Rainbow Thief (1990) and
although he has often spoken of an imminent return to the form, one
guesses that in the business climate of 2003 this has got to be a
long shot. He has, however, recently finished a number of substantial
projects: a book-length commentary on the Bible, a lengthy
restoration of what he considers to be the original Tarot deck, a
collection of short stories and a book of poems. And in February, his
decades-in-the-making, 400-page guide to the tarot will be published in Europe.
Q: You are at work on an alarming number of projects for someone of
any age. Where is all the energy coming from?
ALEXANDRO JODOROWSKY: Energy is coming because I will die very soon.
I am old. I have so many things to do, so every day I get quicker, in
order to do them! I don't want to die without doing everything I wanted to do.
Q: You are known as a filmmaker, but for the last 25 years you have
been writing comics, not making films . . .
Everything I could not do in movies, I make in comics and writing. I
do comics because I think it's an art form as big as movies or
painting or poetry. The graphic novel is a fantastic thing for me.
For four or five years every Sunday I drew a comics page, a complete
story. But it was very basic. When I saw Moebius making the drawings,
I stopped. And I never make any more. Moebius, Boucq, Bess, Juan
Gimenez, Beltran they're geniuses. How can they draw like that? It
is a miracle. When you see a painting by Travis Charest? He's
incredible . . . some kind of a monster!
Q: When you make films, you are present at every stage: scripting,
designing, directing, editing and so on. But with comics, you write a
script and give it to someone else.
No, it's not like that. First, before I work with an artist on a
series, I see his drawings. If I like his drawings, I can write for
him. Because I admire this person! Then, I have a long conversation
with him, to learn what he likes drawing, what he actually wants to
do [in the series]. While he is speaking with me, I start to see him,
his psychological profile . . . I make an invasion of his soul. An
exploration. I go inside to find out who he is. What he is like. Then
I discuss with him an idea for a story. He gives me a lot of ideas,
and I say yes. Then I go up to the house and I write my story and
then I convince him that I used everything he said to me. And he is
happy because I am working with him. Not with his idea I work with
his feelings.
Q: So there is a constant collaboration with the artist?
Yes. Constant. With Boucq, for example, on Bouncer, I call him by
telephone at the end of every day. I say, "What have you been drawing
today? How did you feel doing that?" Sometimes he says, "In this
scene, I feel this character cannot do that," and we discuss. If he
doesn't like that, or he cannot do it, I make another scene, similar,
where he feels good. I am fascinated with these stories. For me it is
not a work to earn money only. It's a creative thing, you know?
Q: Do you take risks in your work?
Yes . . . In The Metabarons, I always finish each book with an
impossible crisis. They have a problem. The person has no testicle;
he needs to make a son. How? Impossible. I wait . . . I wait . . .
And then, slowly thank you! the solution came. It's kind of a
"mediumity," a kind of inspiration. In one moment I have the idea.
Then, when I start to write, everything comes! It's like when you are
a photographer, and you put the paper in the acid and slowly the
photograph starts to develop. It's exactly like that.
Q: Can you know that it's going to happen?
I don't suffer to write it. But when I need to write a new series, a
new album, for three days I do nothing. The only thing I can do is to
see movies, see television, read . . . Because I am as if paralyzed!
Suddenly, [with relief] the idea comes. I say thank you, because I am
grateful. I am really grateful because I received the idea. But I
don't construct the idea. I am not a constructor. I receive the idea.
Q: Where do you think it comes from?
The unconscious. It comes directly from the unconscious. I think the
unconscious is a very, very enormous universe, no? And when you open
the doors to the unconscious, you start to receive. Sometimes you see
a terrible vision of yourself: desires you don't want to have, ideas
you detest, feelings that hurt you. When you open the door, you can
see yourself in a very weird way, like a bad trip on LSD. You can
have that. You have all the hell, and paradise, no? You need to have
the courage to open the doors.
Q: And then you need to use what comes through the door, no matter
how terrible or strange . . .
Yes! When I wrote Son of the Gun, I was writing very comfortable,
then suddenly I said, "He has a tail like a cat. Impossible! That
will change all my story, all my characters. What I can do!" And [my
intuition says] "Trust me, he needs to be like that."
Q: You are a tarot expert. Do you see a connection between comics and
the tarot?
Sure, because the tarot is the language of the German, or of the
American, or of the Spanish. It is an optical language. A person
might not be a magician, but you can still read the tarot, and you
can learn to develop your gaze. With the tarot, you have drawings and
words together, and you can read it. You know, some people like to
play chess; others play cards. I myself like to read the tarot. It's
fun for me to do. Every Wednesday I do the tarot for something like
20 to 30 people. I only answer to present problems. I don't see the
future. I don't believe in the future! It's an exercise for my mind,
because it's the furthest from rationality. It awakens the intuition.
And, when you work years to develop your gaze, then you can create
all these things. It makes it easy to imagine the pages, a story,
art, comics. Look at what I am writing in The Metabarons: a whole,
enormous story! It's unique. It surprises even me.
Q: In the late '60s and '70s, especially in the period around the
release of The Holy Mountain, you spoke often in interviews about
trying to lose your ego.
Yes. In the beginning, I hoped to lose my ego. But this is
impossible. You cannot lose your ego. But you can tame your ego. But
to lose your ego is a legend it's not true. Even Buddha had an ego!
Q: How did you go about taming it?
By suffering. Life is full of suffering. And joy. But when you take
the lessons of the suffering, you start to realize that you are not
the center of the world. You are onecenter, but not the center. Every
one of us is a center of the universe. But the mistake is to think "I
am the onlycenter." And not the person around me. Also, you need to
learn you have value. Not to be a person who says, "I am not the
center, I am nothing. Nothing at all." You need to diminish on one
side, and on the other side you need to grow. That is the Work.
Then, you need to learn to see yourself with objectivity: As you see
a tree, and you see a cat, you see yourself. Every night I caress my
wife before sleeping. And then, I try to see myself. [Acting as if he
is looking in a mirror] I say, "What is that? Who am I? Am I a body
who has a spirit, or I am a spirit who has a body?" And then slowly I
find myself saying, "I am a spirit who has a body." And then I say,
"What am I saying? I am the product of this body. I don't love this
body. I don't like my belly, I don't like my white hair." But this
awful thing, this old man, is creating so beautiful a spirit! This
body is creating that! I need to honor this body.
Listen, for a lot of years I made a mistake. I thought to be humble
was to hide yourself, to not show you have a value. But, to be humble
is to recognize yourself. I am speaking as I am, in reality.
I am a national legend in Chile. I left before Allende; I returned
after Pinochet. They published my books and invited me to the book
convention. Because Chile is very closed it's like an island when
a Chilean goes out in the world and makes things, other Chileans are
astonished; you become a legend. They lined the streets . . . little
boys, they speak to me and demanded advice . . . and I gave them
answers. In that moment, it is very difficult to not have an ego, you know?
.
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