FIRESTONE: Where were you born? JODOROWSKY: It's embarrassing for me to answer realistic questions. That's why I close my eyes. I was born in Iquique, in the north of Chile, where I lived until I was eight. Then I went to Santiago to study. I went to college. I studied psychology and philosophy for two years. Then I left the university to work with marionettes and theatre and everything else. My father was born in Russia and my mother in Argentina. Her parents were Russian. That's the story of my life. I directed many plays in the university theatre and did a lot of work in mime. By the time I was twenty-three I had a company of fifty people. Then I went to Paris where I studied with Etienne Decroux. He was Marceau's and Barrault's teacher. I worked with Marceau for six years; I wrote two mimes for him, The Mask Maker and The Cage; and I made a world tour with him as his partner. There were only three of us in the company. I also directed Maurice Chevalier when he resumed his career at the L'Alhambra Theatre. The show was so successful that the theatre was renamed after Chevlier. I was also the first to direct Michel Legrand and I introduced him at the L'Alhambra Theatre. For a year I directed the Trois Baudets Theatre with Canetti, the impresario. Raymond Devos and Guy Behart got their start at that theatre. OK. There are so many things. Then I went to Mexico where I've directed more than a hundred plays. I did lonesco's The Chairs, Victims of Duty, and Exit the King. I did Exit the King with the best actor in Mexico, Lopez Tarso, in an eight-hundred-seat theatre. We had full houses every night. I did Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Strindberg's Ghost Sonata, and an adaptation of his Dream Play. That play has bout fifty characters. I reduced them to two, a man and a woman, and I rewrote half of the play. That's the adaptation I used. I also did surrealistic plays...I wrote one with Leonora Carrington. Then I returned to Paris and founded a Panic Theatre group with Arrabal, Topor, and Sternberg. We staged a happening in Paris that lasted for four hours. Arrabal mentions this happening often in his autobiography. I directed it. Ferlinghetti saw it and published it in his City Lights Journal. Arrabal has asked me to write about my theories on theatre for his theatre magazine. An entire issue. But I couldn't do it because my theories on theatre change every three hours. What else do you want to know? I've done so much, so much. I have a comic strip, etcetera, etcetera...I have a weekly comic strip in a right-wing newspaper in Mexico, The Herald. But when they realized what I was saying, it was too late to do anything about it because a million people were reading it every week. It's more successful than Mandrake the Magician. I've been doing this strip for almost two-hundred weeks. It's called Panic Fables. I didn't know how to draw when I started, but I'm learning, right? FIRESTONE: They're fantastic. Beautiful. JODOROWSKY: Yes. I've done much. Let me see. I've worked with marionettes. I've worked with the circus. I've danced. I was a painter-a flat brush painter, like Hitler. I painted houses. I have an anecdote about that experience that I like very much. I arrived on the job the first day expecting to find a crude laborer. And instead I found a Master. The head painter turned out to be a disciple of Gurdjieff. And the man who painted with me was an Arab who celebrated the Ramadan. He was very religious. So we would paint to the music of Bach. One day when we were painting a castle, the head painter told me to plaster a crack in the wall and gave me the plaster. Then he hit me over the head with a stick that had an inscription on it: "In springtime, the flowers bloom." (Like the Zen Masters who would hit their disciples over the head. Actually, the Masters hit them on the shoulders. So I've had my share of blows from Zen Masters.) Then he picked up a piece of iron pipe, broke the plaster, and made the crack larger. And then he plastered it over again. And he told me that as long as I pitied the crack, I could never plaster it well. To cure a wound, you must first open it. You must respect it. That's why I don't pity myself. If I have to cut a section from the film, I cut it. And if I fail, I accept that too. That's why I say that I have triumphed in life...because I've learned how to fail. OK. This is my biography. FIRESTONE: Fando and Lis. JODOROWSKY: Ah! Yes. I also filmed Fando and Lis. I've really made three films in my life. The first picture I made was in Paris, with a girl, Ruth Michelly, and an American. His name was Saul Gilbert. But this picture was a fable done in mime. And it has an introduction by Jean Cocteau. Cocteau liked it very much and wrote the introduction. Saul Gilbert died of cancer. Before he died he had a beautiful yellowish color, like old ivory. His wife went to live in Germany. Ruth Michelly. I mention her name because if this interview is published she might read it and tell me were the film is. That film was lost; she took it with her. It was based on The Severed Heads by Thomas Mann. I think it was good because Cocteau liked it so much. But I had no idea of what I was doing when I made the film. It was my first. The second was Fando and Lis. It was based on Arrabal's play. I had directed that play and worked with it so much that I knew it by heart. It has two characters, a boy and a girl, who encounter three other characters during the play. For me those three characters represent the world, society. So I told Arrabal that I would use the two main characters and eliminate the other three, replacing them with whatever or whomever I wanted. In other words, that I would do a film with the young boy and girl. And I filmed it without a script because I knew the play so well...and I started playing with it. I filmed on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays. And I never thought that it would be shown. But it was shown at the International Film Festival in Acapulco...and they wanted to lynch me. The concept of Mexican film was changed. It was quite a scandal. Now there's a clothing store in Mexico called Fando And Lis. FIRESTONE: It was made in Mexico. JODOROWSKY: Yes, I filmed in Mexico. It was my first feature film. RODAY: Did it have scenes with eggs? JODOROWSKY: Eggs. Yes. Why do you ask that? RODAY: A Mexican I met yesterday told me. He said they are the most remarkable images he's ever seen. The eggs. JODOROWSKY: In Fando and Lis. The film was sold to Cannon Productions here in New York. But I think they behaved rather stupidly because they cut all the strong scenes. They wanted to direct themselves to the readers of the New York Times. They edited the film with the taste of the New York Times critic in mind, and they killed it. Of course I don't recognize the version that's here in the United States. But I have a copy of the complete version in Mexico. There are many things in Fando and Lis that resemble Fellini's Satyricon, but my film was made three years before Satyricon. There are so many similarities that you might think I copied Fellini's film. RODAY: That's what this man said yesterday. Not that you copied it. He said, "Three years ago I saw Satyricon, with the eggs and the..." JODOROWSKY: Yes, yes. That's right. But in black and white. That was Fando and Lis. However, I prefer El Topo because it was my first professional feature film. And I think that the art of filmmaking is something you learn through actions, by doing it...not by learning theories. And as you do it, your mind starts to change. I can feel a change in myself, for example. I know that my vision will be more...more general when I make my next film. And that I'll be able to express myself with greater freedom because I have experience. Without experience, you cannot make films. Right? It's like Karate. You can't learn it from a book. You have to attend a school and be around other people. Yes. Then you begin to feel it in your bones and not in your mind. Yes. That's what I feel...that is doing. I also think that films should be a form of life. For example, there should be no alienation between the creator, the actor, and the film itself. And certain experiences in the film should be real. Like the first scene of El Topo, for example. The bear and the photograph that the child buries. It is really his first toy and the photo is really a picture of his mother. And it should produce a change in him. FIRESTONE: How long did it take to make El Topo? JODOROWSKY: Nine months. From the moment I conceived the idea until it was completed. I wrote it, prepared it, Viskin raised the money, I filmed it and edited it. Viskin and I got together on a Monday. I had nothing thought out and Viskin didn't have a penny. And we said, "Let's make a film." Then I found the idea and Viskin found the money. Nine months. There were moments during the filming period when the technicians would queue up to receive their money. And Viskin would race up in his car to pay them. He had just managed to borrow the money. Borrow or steal...I don't know. Really, really, I think of Viskin as a very magical person for me. Because I am...well, I don't know if I'm an artist, but I live like an artist. Viskin lives like a normal person, but he is crazy as I am. In this world. We know that you can't make films without money, and to a crazy person up against the money world is crazy...I needed someone who was realistically crazy. I never had to ask Viskin's permission to do anything. I always did what ever I wanted to. And sometimes Viskin didn't even know what I was doing. But he had confidence in what I was doing. At times I would tell Viskin that I needed him to go to Torreon, the red-light district, and bring me twenty prostitutes. He would go without asking questions. Or I would ask him to by me two hundred rubbers, prophylactics. And with great dignity, Viskin would go to the pharmacy to buy them. I used them for the blood effects. Etcetera, etcetera. Nine months. Nine months. Editing, costumes, everything. RODAY: How did you describe the picture to Viskin when you first started? At the first meeting, what did you tell him? That you wanted to make a picture? JODOROWSKY: No. I began working with Viskin when I made Fando and Lis. So he knew me and how I worked. We said, "Fando and Lis was banned here, but we sold it to Cannon in the United States." When I made Fando and Lis the film industry in Mexico was closed to me. But the scandal it created opened the doors for me. So when we were accepted into the industry, we decided to make a film which would be even stronger than Fando and Lis. Right? So we made a film. And it wasn't banned. They cut a half hour from it before we could show it in Mexico. That's the whole story. RODAY: You've written books too. JODOROWSKY: Yes, I've written books: Panic Stories, Panic Games, Panic Theatre...Panic philosophy. They're out of print in Mexico. Now I'm writing a novel. I want to finish it this year. I've been writing it for five years. Five years ago it was seven hundred pages long. Now it's a hundred! RODAY: Which do you prefer, film or novel? JODOROWSKY: I make movies, but I think I can express myself better in a novel. You have all the possibilities there. Right? RODAY: Except the ones that only belong to film. JODOROWSKY: No. I read the Surrealist Manifesto and Andre Breton spoke about this...about the novel...about postcards. He took a passage from a Dostoevski book, the description of a room, the walls, the flowers, the light...and Breton said, "All these descriptions, all these worlds...they're postcards." And another surrealist, Raymond Rousell says, "I try to say as much as possible with as few words as possible." Strong, right? I said that the novel has all possibilities, but I was speaking of the novel as I understand the novel. Anais Nin spoke about the novel. She wrote one novel all her life...daily: a diary. She was constantly writing it. Like Milareppa, the Tibetan saint who spoke in poetry all his life. He wrote a hundred thousand poems because his whole life was a poem. For a novelist, his whole life is a novel. That's why it's such a pleasure to do this interview. Because it's part of my novel. RODAY: But don't you feel the same way about film? JODOROWSKY: I think my films are also part of my novel. RODAY: But writing the novel isn't part of your film. JODOROWSKY: I'll answer the way I feel. The dove is the Annunciation for Mary, and Mary is the Annunciation for the dove. So both the dove and Mary became pregnant. And at the end of nine months, Mary laid a huge egg. And the dove gave birth to a human foetus. Right? And the person born of the dove was Judas. Etcetera. This is the way of saying that everything in the picture is part of the novel, and the novel is part of the picture. But all these things are fragments: part of you, or part of me, or part of life. We cannot separate politics from religion from art. Reality is one. And the person who says. "I am a politician," isn't accurate. He has to say, "I feel politics." We must get to the politics we feel. Right? It's merely a means of expressing yourself. Politics is the means of expression for politicians. But everything is contained in politics, just as everything is contained in art. Like the philosopher Nicholas DeCusa says, "Everything is in everything." RODAY: The different structure are so intrinsic to each of the forms, each of the media. When you say they're both the same, that you're writing your novel as part of the film and that your film is part of the novel, we wonder about the product. Will your novel be filled with pictures? Will your films be filled with narratives? Will everything you do be parabolic, the way you do it now? I mean parables about the dove, parables about the Four Master...? JODORWOSKY: Yes, I think in symbols. RODAY: You see, I think you could write a novel with one word. JODOROWSKY: Yes, and I will. But it won't be with one word; it'll be with one dot. It's the story of the Koran, as we have said before: the whole Koran is contained in the first sentence, the first sentence in the first word, the first word in the first letter, and the first letter in the first dot. But since the dot is nothing, I can make a novel with nothing. I know a Japanese painter who swam his paintings. This is what I mean: if you're an apple tree, you bear apples. That's all you can do. Because you're an apple tree. That's it. We can't separate one thing from another. That's what I mean when I talk about communications media. Nothing is nothing. Right? Everything is everything. Because politics has become theatre; theatre is film; film is song. Right? It's art. RODAY: Why do you make art? Why? JODOROWSKY: I make art because I'm an apple tree. RODAY: But you're also a plum tree, an orange tree... JODOROWSKY: I express myself. I don't possess myself. I express myself. I can't even say my self. I clean my plate. Every day I wake up with a dirty plate. And I clean it. And when I've cleaned it well, the plate trembles...and produces an apple. Why do you do art? Why do anything? So many people ask me, "Why do you do such and such? There are so many people who are dying, so many people who are hungry, so many people who are killed. Why do you do what you do?" But I'm very old. I'm a hundred and fifty years old. And in all those years, people have and continue to come to me and ask, "Why? Why are you doing this? What for?" And in those years, I've seen the world give birth to Borges, Frank Zappa, Crumb, Cortazar, DeBono. These people don't ask why you're doing this or that: they do. But had all these people listened twenty years ago to people who say, "Why do this? Why do that? So many people are suffering, so many people are being killed," we'd have nothing today. Right? Nothing. The person who feels the need to do nothing, that's all right too. Good. For me, non-action is this: not pushing yourself, but not holding yourself back, either. That is non-action...in you right? If song is born in you, sing. But don't try to sing when you don't have a voice. Right? But we all have voices. RODAY: Let's sing. JODOROWSKY: OK. COHEN: Everything is permitted. JODOROWSKY: Everything is permitted. And then we choose...I'm very happy talking like this, because when I talk to Latin American journalists, I have to be very logical. And really, I'm very happy when I can talk like this because I can show how I think, how I feel. I prefer it this way...not so serious. But if you want, I can also speak very logically. RODAY: I have no more questions.