Babel

[Gamblour.]

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett? Both former stars of the Fountain....hmm, we'll see who has the last laugh.

[©brad]

Anyway...This is the film of 2006...

2007, no?

anyway, i agree.

the latinos are owning the white boys if you ask me. iñárritu and meirelles are two of the best filmmakers working today.

[JG]

EDIT: nevermind

2007, no?

Produced by Jon Kilik and Steve Golin, "Babel" will be released by Paramount in fall 2006

[©brad]

my bad.

[MacGuffin]

Bullet Time
Source: Jeffery Wells; Hollywood Elsewhere



*READ AT OWN RISK*

Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Babel, which will have its debut at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, 5.23, regrettably hasn't been seen by yours truly. But I did read a late '04 version of Guillermo Ariagga's script four or five weeks ago, and the good part was that I didn't get the "all" of it until the morning after I finished it.

That's what finally sold me. Anything that takes a day to kick in, anything that gains upon reflection...

Spare and precise, the Babel script tells four stories that take place in three countries -- Tunisia, Mexico and Japan. Clearly an exotic element here, and yet the film uses a plot device (and in fact a thematic strategy) that fans of Inarritu's last two films will immediately find familiar.

The story's about several disparate characters (four of them played by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal and a young unknown Japanese actress, Rinko Yakusho) who are linked, in the same way that the characters in Inarritu's Amores Perros and 21 Grams are linked, by a single violent act.

"I can say the film is about incommunication, misunderstanding and loneliness," Inarritu said in an interview we did on 5.5, or about twelve days ago.

"But for me, on a personal level, being such a multi-dramatic film, the bottom line DNA of this film is about how fragile and vulnerable we are. How do you say, this is a chain, this is a little piece of the chain? A link? For me when a link is broken then the chain is broken. And that, for me, is what this film is about."

The Tunisian section has two stories -- that of a married American tourist couple (Pitt, Blanchett) and their encounter with a bullet, and a story about how that bullet is haphazardly fired from a long distance away by a pair of youths playing with a newly-purchased rifle, and about the consequences of this.

The Mexican section is about this couple's nanny (Adriana Barraza) and her taking Pitt and Blanchett's kids (Elle Fanning, Nathan Gamble) across the border into Mexico for a wedding, which leads to bad things all around, particularly for her nephew (Gael Garcia Bernal).

The Japanese portion is about the relationship between a wealthy businessman (Koji Yakusho) and his deaf daughter (Rinko Kikuchi), and the daughter's encounters with various men, among them a visiting police detective.

I wasn't allowed to see Babel as part of my interview deal, but as I waited to speak with Inarritu I saw a bit of footage on the large editing-room screen.

It showed a hyper, frenzied, salt-and-pepper-haired Pitt, playing, as Inarritu described, "a 49 year-old...a guy who's been through some tough times." The footage showed Pitt's character, who is called Richard, helping to carry his wounded bleeding wife (Blanchett) through the streets of a small Tunisian village.

I began our chat with my observation that the script feels good and strong at first, but smallish and concise and a bit less plot-driven than Amores perros and 21 Grams Then it sinks in a bit, and then it really kicks in the next morning.

"That's a good wine you're describing," said Innaritu. "I agree -- it's a very multi- layered film. I'm still looking to it. Every time, as I am seven months with this, every time I discover more layers, more things...it's true what you are saying."

Babel's similarity to Amores perros and 21 Grams -- all three being about a violent blow shattering many lives -- may suggest that Guillermo Ariagga, the screenwriter of all three as well as author of the Tommy Lee Jones western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, had something to do with shaping Babel's basic plot. But Inarritu says it was pretty much his own.

"Babel was an idea I had when I first arrived in the United States," he recalls. "This film would have been impossible without me being a director in exile, I would say. Because what comes from this is that you have a consciousness...a very strange perspective of your country and of yourself.

"I'm speaking of a complex relationship between a citizen of a Third World country" -- Inarritu was born, raised and launched his career in Mexico -- "and this country, and the traveling that I have done in the last six years, the way you understand things. So I guess that was what [led] to the necessity of making this film.

"So I started working on this thing with Carlos Cuaron [the brother of Alfonso Cuaron and screenwriter of Y Tu Mama Tambien]. In the beginning. He would be the writer. But we began it as an argument and never took it beyond that, so we decided that he would do another project that we were developing.

"At this point I invited Guillermo to participate in this story, and we obviously...as part of that process, we decided to share a lot of things."

"I think Babel is different from Amores perros and 21 Grams because the range of this film is completely different, style-wise, than the other ones. Because every story has a particular narrative and personality, and I feel that this is a more cinematic piece.

"I tried to combine the realistic aesthetic that normally I have been working in, but qualitating from an imaginary world where the music and the sound is a guiding force. There are a lot of sound elements in Babel. I was really taking the audio seriously. Using it to try and be inside a character.

"I stripped down so many things in the script by myself, and I was constantly adjusting and adapting and rewriting a lot of things based upon the culture and the situation I was in. It was a very difficult and informative process.

"I feel it is a very different film from the other ones -- you will see this soon -- in tone and style. It's more cinematic. I can only put only one line in the script, but in the shooting I can make a ten-minute piece out of a whole interior consciousness [trip] by one of the characters.

"I had to make a lot of decisions. In a good way. I added some things, and I also took out some things. I was shaping a lot and learning a lot and learning the limitations of the actors. So in the end I took out like 30% of the script down, in the editing. So there have been a lot of changes."

We spoke of Rinko Kikuchi, a non-hearing-impaired Japanese actress that Inarritu cast as a sexually provocative teenager who has a hang-up about male attention, or a lack of.

"I first went to Japan in December 2004...just by myself, the trip being self-financed like always," Innaritu said. "I was looking for a Lolita kind of star, not quite attractive in an obvious way but one that you can really have some bad thoughts about her, but not quite in that way. It was difficult.

"I saw Rinko once, and then again nine months later when I returned, and I had never prom ised anything but she had studied sign language all by herself and signed as well the other girls. I can tell you she was better than the deaf girls. It was really impressive.

At what point did he sign Pitt, Blanchett and Bernal?

"I approached Brad and Cate in, I think, January or February of '05, and they said yes and we were shooting by May 2nd. It was a very fast process. Brad is playing an older character. I want to give him a kind of gravity so he looks older. No more boyish, and I think he looks great. I told him, I think you will be a very interesting old man.

"Gael, I always wanted We originally had just two stories...the Moroccan kids story [he used Morocco as a Tunisian substitute] and the Americans who receive the shot, which originally, by the way, was the man who received the shot...we changed it later to the woman...but this was a very, very early stage in the argument I had with Cuaron.

"But we needed two more stories, I said. We need to tell a story about Mexico, about a nanny. The story about Mexico and the border because I am very affected by that. The nanny who works with me at my home is called Julia, and she has told me the saddest stories you've ever heard. So for the border sequence, I always felt that would be best to have Gael. Partly because he is a master of accents and people in the north talk very differently. Always I have him in mind.

"We went into pre-production in Morocco in March '05, and we started shooting May 2nd. All three countries in sequence. The last day of filming was December 1, 2005.

"We shot in Morocco, and then pre-production in Mexico, and then we shot in Mexico, and then over to Japan for pre-production and then we shot there. It was the same as doing four separate films, which was intellectually and emotionally very difficult. To shoot something in Morocco and at the same time think about the likelihood that a scene would cut directly into a scene I know I will shoot in Japan seven or eight months later. It was an exercise.

"And it was such a struggle, about going or not going to Cannes," he added. "But we finally decided that Cannes is a good platform for this kind of film. It's a four-language film, a very personal film, a very complicated film, and this festival exists for that...for this kind of film.

"Now, I'm not sure exactly who is going to be in Cannes. Perhaps with Brad and his baby coming he will not be there...I'm not sure. But possibly Cate will come. And all the other actors. We are working on getting visas for the little [Moroccan] kids."

I mentioned the cliche about filmmakers facing the inevitable pit of depression after they have finished a long project. To avoid this some directors develop one, two or three films at the same time so they can jump right into the something fresh after one is finished.

"The only way I can conceive films like this is being quiet and being alone," Inarritu replied. "If I go into the machinery, into the factory thing, it's good but I don't know that I have the skills to have three girlfriends. I'm a one-woman man.

"From Amores perros to 21 Grams I needed two years. It is always that. That is the time I need to assimilate, to be working the characters, to know who they are. It's a very conceptual and quiet internal process, and I need that time to develop it."

I mentioned Inarritu's excellent BMW commercial, "Powder Keg," which was made in '01 and co-starred Clive Owen, and then asked if he had been approached to do one of those idiosyncratic American Express commercials that M. Night Shyamalan and Wes Anderson have directed.

"They offered me to do one, and I reject," Inarritu replied. "I reject because, first of all, for me, to expose myself with a crowd like that...it's like a capitalist statement. I worry about that statement. It's not safe in Mexico to be the American Express guy. That's not a smart thing for me."

Inarritu took part in that recent, very large Latino demonstration in Los Angeles (which also happened in other cities) against a proposed change in U.S. immigration and labor laws that would adversely affect the economy and culture of Latin communities all over.

"I didn't send my kids to the school that day -- I took them with me [to the demonstration]," Inarritu said. "The guys in the editing room were shouting bad things at me. We were facing a deadline, they said. I said, 'Guys, a man is defined not just by work but by what he believes.' They were furious at me.

"The kids and I took a taxi and arrived on Broadway downtown, and we spent four hours there and the kids loved it. It was peaceful, not angriness. You need us, we need you. It was a beautiful experience. An amazing experience."

It seemed to me like the biggest and best organized demonstration by Latinos in this country ever, I said. "Mexico doesn't have that kind of organization," he replied. "If we had that power in Mexico we would throw out the president. This is a human rights thing."

We discussed his director friend Guillermo del Toro, who has advised Inarritu about pruning his films in the editing room, and who has his own film, Pan's Labrynth (Picturehouse), showing at Cannes this year. Inarritu calls it "very sad."

"I helped him finish it," he explained. "He helped me to take out three minutes from my film, and I helped him take out nine minutes from his."

He then switched back to Babel by asking, "Did you like the script?" Very much, I repeated. I guess I hadn't really said that in my initial comments.

"The other ones were more plot driven," Inarritu said. "This one is more character driven. One of the things I liked the most about it is the Japanese section, because there's nothing happening. There is no plot in it. It is the undercurrent thing that, little by little, begins to take you somewhere."



Inarritu, Babel editor Stephen Mirrione

[MacGuffin]

Film clip

[greenowl]

nice clip. Thank you.

Am I the only one that really loves Guil's dialogue?

Sort of Pinter like, maybe.

I don't know... just controlled as hell.

[MacGuffin]

Q&A: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
By Anne Thompson, Hollywood Reporter

Rushing to complete postproduction on his third feature, "Babel," in time for its In Competition debut in Cannes, Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu had just returned from the massive May 5 immigrants protest march in Los Angeles, where he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter deputy film editor Anne Thompson about his sprawling $25 million film. Shot in three countries and in four languages, "Babel" references the Biblical notion of many people speaking but not able to communicate. But film, which uses images to reach people all over the globe, says Inarritu, "is as close to Esperanto as it gets."

The Hollywood Reporter: Had you been in Cannes before?
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Cannes has been very significant for me. With my first film "Amores perros" six years ago, at that time there was a guy who selected films in Latin America, but none ever went into the competition. So my film went into Critics Week and won best film, and got a lot of attention. Life is wisdom. Playing the underdog made possible what happened in Cannes for me, when my career changed completely.

THR: Things have improved for Latin American cinema since then.
Inarritu: I am very happy. That has changed so much since 2000. Not only me, but Alfonso Cuaron, Carlos Reygadas, Guillermo del Toro, have all changed the perception of Latin American film. Now there are two Mexican films in Competition. What's happening, funnily enough, is not the consequence of something political-cultural happening in my country. These are individual miracles happening at the same time, three individuals changing things.

THR: How did you manage to make such a challenging film with a studio distributor and still hang on to your freedom?
Inarritu: It's four films set in three different countries with three to four big names and mostly nonactors. It's very cheap; it's basically a self-financed independent film. We put everything together; I developed it myself. Producers Steve Golin and Jon Kilik helped. I had already cast the main cast and scouted locations when I presented "Babel" to the different studios. Brad Grey, the new chairman at Paramount, wanted to change the perception of the old studio. Paramount put up 50% for rights to distribute in American territories. I have control over every line, I have final cut. It's been the same since "Amores perros." I consider myself a lucky guy.

THR: How was working with movie star Brad Pitt, who was partnered with Grey at Plan B?
Inarritu: Of course he and Brad had a good relationship, but he was in before we signed up with Brad Grey. The whole experience was difficult -- intense is the word I would use. Directing actors in another language is not easy at all. I thought for the American couple traveling through Morocco who are in an intense situation, sad, and personally emotional, Brad represented the American I needed for this story. It wasn't the obvious choice: This is (not) a Brad Pitt role. Normally in my choices, I go against what your standard instinct would tell you. Art is transformation. It was challenging for Brad to leave 'Brad Pitt' behind and become a fragile human being. That gets the adrenaline higher. He represents a wide range of American citizens; he's an icon to play with, figure out and manage.

THR: You were also working with many nonactors?
Inarritu: To not only work with Brad and Cate (Blanchett) but humble village people and a little kid was crazy, crazy to try and penetrate their culture and tell their stories from their points of view. The four different languages are Arabic, English, Spanish, Japanese. I try to make it feel easy for the audience so it's not a language barrier, it's human beings talking. It's speaking English while trying to survive Babelism.

THR: How did you cast the unknowns in Morocco?
Inarritu: We announced it from a mosque. We videotaped hundreds from different little villages who had never seen a camera in their lives. We had to teach them to perform. Dialogue coach and great actress Hiam Abbas translated for all the Moroccan nonactors. I relied on her, she was my right arm, telling them what to do. They used mimicry. It was an interesting process, without languages. We understood each other.

THR: Where did the Mexican story come from?
Inarritu: It's a nanny taking care of two American kids (of the couple in Morocco) who has to cross the border. It's a sad story inspired by a nanny working with me who told me so many sad stories. She's played by Adriana Barraza, who played the mother of Gael (Garcia Bernal) in "Amores perros." Gael plays her nephew here.

THR: What is "Babel" really about?
Inarritu: It's about people trying to communicate across barriers and borders of language in different situations in third-world countries. For me, the story is about how vulnerable and fragile human beings are. I would not have conceived this personal idea without being a director in exile living five years in L.A. outside my country. How difficult it is to communicate. Ideas and prejudices more than borders divide us. I started the script with Carlos Cuaron, brother of Alfonso, then invited Guillermo (Arriaga, author of "21 Grams") to finish the script with me. I traveled to Japan, it was a circus of one year out of the country with my wife and two kids, now 11 and 8. It was a human transformative experience.

THR: This movie seems deeply felt by you.
Inarritu: Every film for me is a testimony of my point of view of life, who I am, my weaknesses and virtues. This one is very personal. I was throwing ideas into the script. I was traveling around for one year. This was special to me.

THR: What is the Japanese story?
Inarritu: It's kind of silent. The camera is on the deaf mute teenage girl, played by newcomer Rinko Kikuchi. Her father is the unbelievable actor Koji Yokusho. It's one of the most hypnotic stories. The three stories are related, but they are physically related only briefly -- with just a touch. They take place over two days. The running time is two hours, 15 minutes.

THR: Will your old agent, John Lesher, release the movie through his specialty division?
Inarritu: Both (divisions of Paramount) will release it. I died happy with John Lesher doing this. I hope all of the cast will come to Cannes. If Brad's kid is born a little before, he'll do his best. Many of the cast have never seen each other, this will be their first time. That will be very beautiful.

THR: What will you be doing next?
Inarritu: I have so many ideas. I need at least a couple of months to rest. We're releasing the film in October. I'll take the summer off and spend some time with the kids and catch up with the world.

[Pubrick]

Iñárritu: [Brad Pitt] represents a wide range of American citizens; he's an icon to play with, figure out and manage.

don't let pete hear you say that.

[MacGuffin]

Babel
By Ray Bennett, Hollywood Reporter

*READ REVIEW AT OWN RISK*

Tense, relentless and difficult to watch at times, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel" is an emotionally shattering drama in which a simple act of kindness leads to events that pierce our veneer of civilization and bring on the white noise of terror.

Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga involve six families, most of them not known to one another, in four countries on three continents in their story of random fate and the perils of being unable to communicate.

Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal give committed ensemble performances alongside seasoned character performers and non-actors as the story ranges from Morocco to San Diego to Tokyo.

The film, which also features exceptional work by director of photography Rodrigo Prieto, production designer Brigitte Broch, editors Stephen Mirrione and Douglas Crise, and composer Gustavo Santaolalla, is headed for major prizes and large, appreciative audiences.

As with his previous films, Inarritu tells his story using scenes out of order so that the pieces fall together in a jagged form that heightens the tension. It starts in the Moroccan desert, where a man buys a Winchester rifle from a neighbor to help keep the jackals away from his herd of goats. A Japanese hunter had gifted the neighbor with the rifle in gratitude for his work as a guide.

The rifle is entrusted to the goat herder's two young sons who end up firing it from a mountainside at a coach filled with Western tourists just to see how far the bullet would go.

The bullet, however, strikes an American named Susan (Blanchett) who is traveling with her husband Richard (Pitt) in attempt to patch up their marriage following the death of a child.

Four hours from the nearest hospital, the coach takes a detour to a remote village where a local man offers shelter while the other tourists argue over whether to stay or leave.

Desperate, Richard phones the U.S. embassy pleading for help and also calls home in San Diego where their long-time maid Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is caring for their other two children. With Susan bleeding and near death in the desert, he begs Amelia to remain with the kids as he tries to get help.

Amelia's son, however, is getting married across the border and, having exhausted attempts to find another sitter, she decides to take the kids with her to the wedding in a car driven by her friendly but hot-headed nephew Santiago (Bernal).

As Richard fights to keep Susan alive with the help of a wise and calm old Moroccan woman and a veterinarian, the shooting escalates into an international incident with security forces believing terrorists to be responsible and hunting for the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a young deaf-mute woman named Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is grappling with the loss of her mother by suicide, fighting with her equally bereft father (Koji Yakusho), and trying to deal with the frustrations of adolescence.

The filmmakers succeed brilliantly in weaving these stories together, taking time to explore depth of character and relationships. The suspense builds throughout as everyone involved becomes lost in a place they don't understand with people they don't know if they can trust.

Several astonishing Tokyo sequences replicate what it might be like to be deaf-mute, and equal imagination is applied to scenes at night in the wasteland of the Mexico/California border and the barren mountains of Morocco.

This is not a fear-mongering movie, but it is unpredictable and shocking, with compassion hanging on for dear life.

BABEL
Paramount Pictures and Paramount Classics present an Anonymous Content production, an Una produccion de Zeta Film, a Central Films production.

Credits: Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu; Screenwriter: Guillermo Arriaga from an idea by Arriaga and Inarritu; Producers: Inarritu, Jon Kilik, Steve Golin; Director of photography: Rodrigo Prieto; Production designer: Brigitte Broch; Editors: Stephen Mirrione, Douglas Crise; Composer: Gustavo Santaolalla. Cast: Richard: Brad Pitt; Susan: Cate Blanchett; Santiago: Gael Garcia Bernal; Yasujiro: Koji Yakusho; Amelia: Adriana Barraza; Chieko: Rinko Kikuchi; Ahmed: Said Tarchani; Yussef: Boubker Ait El Caid; Debbie: Elle Fanning; Mike: Nathan Gamble; Anwar: Mohamed Akhzam; Tom: Peter Wight; Hassan: Abdelkader Bara; Abdullah: Mustapha Rachidi; Alarid: Driss Roukhe

No MPAA rating, running time 142 min

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

[picolas]

looks like it's already been remixed to look like an action/thriller.

[MacGuffin]

Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga on the weight of words
By Michael Fox, SF360

As debuts go, Guillermo Arriaga's explosive screenplay for "Amores Perros" is hard to beat. "21 Grams," his follow-up with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, provided more than enough emotional red meat for Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts to carve into Oscar nominations. For his next trick, Arriaga nabbed the prize for best screenplay at Cannes 2005 for "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," a modern Western about friendship, responsibility and the unintended effects of violence. "Babel," which stars Brad Pitt and garnered the best director award for Iñárritu this year at Cannes, opens in the fall.

But long before he achieved an international rep as a screenwriter, Arriaga was a novelist, TV producer, and documentary maker. His 1999 novel "The Night Buffalo," about a cocky Mexico City youth's turmoil following a friend's suicide, has just been published in English in the U.S. (Arriaga produced the film adaptation, which stars Diego Luna and is in postproduction.) The tall, bearded writer made a local stop last month during his abbreviated book tour, and we spoke a few hours before he headed out to the Balboa to introduce a screening of "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada."

SF360: Is there a disadvantage in having 'The Night Buffalo' come out here after you've made a name as a screenwriter?

Arriaga: Many people have said, 'It's clear, your cinematic influence.' (Laughs.) But I [finished] this a year before I began writing screenplays.

SF360: What's the difference between writing novels and screenplays?

Arriaga: The only difference is that in the script you have to deal with more collaboration process. But I use the same language and structure and dialogue. These people that say I have cinematic influence in my novel, they are wrong. I have been putting literary influence in my screenplays.

SF360: I understand you're a very hands-on producer on 'The Night Buffalo,' visiting the editing room every day. How does the director feel about that?

Arriaga: He feels OK. We have this [idea] like the director is the only one who has a work. I'm against that. When they say it's an auteur film, I say auteurs film. I have always been against the "film by" credit on a movie. It's a collaborative process and it deserves several authors.

SF360: Does Iñárritu adhere to that philosophy?

Arriaga: I don't think so. (Laughs.) I don't think so but I think it will be healthy to have a debate about it. Cinema is very young, and it's finding its own language, it's finding its own way to credit the authorship. For some time it was the producer who was the author of the film. In some countries, it was the writer. In some, the actor. I think the greatest crisis in cinema today is the crisis of stories, and one of the reasons is the figure of the writer hasn't been fully respected. The word in Spanish implies the guy who .... "What's your idea? OK, and now what?" I am a writer. I don't write other people's ideas. I only develop my own stories.

SF360: So you are the sole source of your ideas.

Arriaga: Yeah. I work with a director and a producer, I don't work for a director or producer, which is a different way of approaching the writing process.

SF360: How much of the crosscutting between the stories in 'Amores Perros' and '21 Grams' was your devising?

Arriaga: You can read the screenplay. I spent a lot of time doing that kind of structure. When some of the scenes don't work, you have to reshuffle. But I can tell you that 95 percent of the structure of '21 Grams' is in there. And almost 99 per cent of the structure of 'Amores Perros.'

SF360: Yet there's room for a director to bring his energy, shot selection and sense of composition.

Arriaga: I absolutely agree with you. But that doesn't mean that that presence has to cancel the authorship of the writer.

SF360: No, but there are directors who'll take a script and trim the dialogue and tell the story more visually.

Arriaga: It also happens in the theater and in music, and nobody ever questions Wagner and no one questions Shakespeare. You never say the Ninth Symphony by Luis Perez. You never say Hamlet by Marty Lupus. (Laughs.) Let's consider 'Paris, Texas.' Who has the coherence of the themes, Sam Shepard or Wim Wenders? Whose world is in there? Or Charlie Kaufman. Who's the one who has these ideas about the brain, Michel Gondry or Spike Jones or Charlie Kaufman? I do not want to take a single piece of the authority of the director, but it has to be shared.

SF360: Do you accept that your defining theme might be described as the tension between violence and morality?

Arriaga: Moral for me only means you have to assume the consequences of your acts. I think there are two kinds of writers, one who bases the work on [that] of other people and one who bases it on some life experience. I have seen the deep damage that violence can cause. Violence for me, it's not funny. Violence for me, it has consequences. So in this world where violence is banalized, life is superficial, I want to recover the importance of every single human life.

SF360: I would submit that Quentin Tarantino, to cite one well-known example, trivializes violence and death.

Arriaga: I'm happy you brought [up] Tarantino. They say that I [am] influenced [by] Tarantino, so I had to go and rent Tarantino movies to see who was my influence. I think Tarantino belongs to the other kind of writers. It's clear that he hasn't suffered real violence in his life. I don't have the sense of smell. I was cut by a knife before I was 14. So I know that violence is real. My cinema has nothing to do with Tarantino. You want to see one American influencing me? Go to William Faulkner.

SF360: Your films attract upscale arthouse audiences, but don't they have the potential to make more of a difference with young people enmeshed in lives of violence?

Arriaga: I don't think that's the purpose. I'm just describing characters that are very close to who I am, with similar backgrounds and similar ways of seeing life. As Flaubert would say, 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi.' I am my characters. It's always my life experience that is behind my characters. Before [I was] 18, I was involved in, like, 500 fights. So you see, I can never make 'Kill Bill.'

SF360: Do you get calls from Hollywood? I would imagine you're pretty selective in who you work with.

Arriaga: I have been honored by great offers by people I respect a lot, but I only write originals. I'm not good writing other people's ideas. I made the mistake of doing a rewrite ('Dallas Buyers Club') because I wanted to work with Marc Forster ('Monster's Ball') and Brad Pitt. In the end, I ended [up] working with Brad Pitt without the need of doing a rewrite. He's an actor who's willing to take risks even though he's a movie star. And now he has taken it in 'Babel.' He doesn't look beautiful, he looks old.

SF360: Finally, in your view, what makes more of a difference, documentary or narrative?

Arriaga: For me, fiction is the crown of everything, because it's a representation of the world from a very particular point of view. And that representation creates a new reality. Although documentaries give you the real sense of what's happening and open a lot of doors that you cannot imagine, fiction is always beyond. I think that human beings would be incomplete without fiction. As Stendhal said, 'The novel is a mirror on the road,' so you can see things that you cannot see another way.

[grand theft sparrow]

looks like it's already been remixed to look like an action/thriller.

Who cares?  So it'll trick people like my mom into going to see something good for a change.

[picolas]

Who cares?

aspiring shitty trailer makers