Hitchock Goes Science Fiction:
An Interview With Nacho Vigalondo, Director of TIMECRIMES
How are you feeling after the last night (screening + Karoake challenge)
My trick is trying not to think about that(jet lag) but I always fail. When I come to LA my body is upside...I am like a cheap version of the hulk. It's like the hulk without the special effects. It's 1:45am in Madrid (4pm here).
Where did the movie come from?
It comes from my love of the time travel part of science fiction stories. I've been really into science fiction for all my life. I love the work of authors like Phillip K. Dick. I've been enjoying these tales all of my life. I wanted to make, to take this feeling into the movies...this complexity but at the same time this funny element. So I wanted to make, first of all, a funny film, a fast funny film easy to enjoy. And after that I wanted to try to make this kind of challenge to the audience. At the same time when I was working on the draft, I wrote several drafts of this, when the naked girl came in the 5th or 6th draft, came this sort of femme fatale element close to films like Body Double or Rear Window. It's like Hitchcock goes science fiction. So two of my favorite stuff in life: science fiction and crime come together.
Did you look at particular stories or films?
When you're writing you try to make your influence live through you so you're not conscious of what you're using and what you're not. But when I was shooting this script I had Psycho in my laptop. I tried to check that film because it's pretty close. I don't want to make this kind of open homage to other films, I wanted to make this kind of inspired by Psycho. But...there are some parts on that movie, for example, all that sequence when Norman Bates takes the corpse of that girl from the bath to the car, that part of the movie for me is pure magic, it's my favorite part of the movie. Not the shower killing, I love that obviously, but what comes immediately after...I love that. And I wanted to keep that kind of mute feeling. They are like dancing...in that sequence, at the same time it's something really gripping because it's murder. That mixture of feelings is something I wanted to take to the movie. I like it in Hitchcock films when things are sinister and silly at the same time. You can laugh at the movie the same time you feel so afraid of what's happening, like in Vertigo or The Birds or Dial M.
What about that crazy trailer?
On my web page I put the American trailer and I said to the people what do you think about this. Half of the people were they like it, the other half didn't like it. In this case, as a relatively new filmmaker I am so worried about the trailer...but there comes a point at which you surrender and you are thinking about your next film. Maybe it's a new kind of trailer, a trailer to be seen after the film...a post trailer.
How did you plot it?
I knew from the beginning that my budget was not going to be great. I knew that my big special effect would be the script itself and when you find so many difficulties in order to find budget...in order to find the film, you have plenty of time to make another draft of the script, and another draft and another draft. In this kind of story you have to write from the left to the right and once you reach the end you have to go back to the beginning because something at the end changed. It was a living hell writing this script because every minor detail could affect another 70 things in the story. It was, it was, something...it was really funny to make this kind of puzzle and then it was a nighmare.
Did you use cards, did you write straight…
I made this kind of drawing and made this drawing and I had to put all this...I had this same drawing in my room and I made all the details not only in horizontal but in vertical. And...but the most difficult part of everything is you have this, you are very concerned about things matching in itself but at the same time it has to be funny. So that's the real quest of this kind of script, it's a real challenge. It has to work in a mathematical way but it really works as a movie with a core with some kind of emotion...it had to make sense in both ways, that's the difficult part. Because it's not that difficult to make mathematical equation and solve it. What is difficult is to make a funny mathematical equation.
Why did you want to make it funny?
Because for me movies is for fun, this is the first thing, movies have to be for fun.
Fun to enjoy yourself or fun to escape?
Both, both things at the same time. I don't know...I don't think in such a detailed way but for me even if I picture myself as a European author I have to make funny things because that's what I like when I go into movies, I love to have fun with movies and I love when authors...some authors of some movies they destroy the barrier between the art stuff and the genre stuff, the quality stuff and the funny stuff. I don't think there's a real barrier between these both dimensions. So you can destroy this frontier and play with both. My favorite authors have those...the classic filmmakers they didn't make any kind of, they didn't separate these two things in movies.
So the pink bandages, is that something that you planned?
No, it came with the script. It came with...it was...I feel so fortunate because the script gave that to me. I didn't have this monster in my mind but the script, different elements appeared in the script and the pink mummy appeared by itself, the scissors, the color, the band-aids appeared. And I felt pretty fortunate because when a script gives you the monster you can feel that something is working. At the same time I love cheap costumes. If this movie becomes very famous I am giving people the opportunity to make a really cheap horror costume. Only 1 scissor, and you only need 1 bandage, a trenchcoat, mixing colors to make a pink thing. It's so cheap, that's my gift to mankind, "the invisible man with the scissors".
You don't know where this film is going.
I love the idea of playing at that level. At the beginning of the story we have this situation where he's in the middle of the forest and she's naked, it's like...a cheap erotic film from the 70s. The beginning is like this surrealist situation I cannot remember the name of the author...big breasts?
Russ Meyer?
Yeah, it sounds like a Russell Meyer situation. It's impossible, a girl naked in the forest. I love that maybe if you stop the film at this point and you don't know anything about Timecrimes, you wonder which kind of movie are we seeing...this is an erotic film, this is a comedy….I love the idea of not guiding the audience but playing with the audience because most of the modern films, they are so concerned, they are so worried about guiding the audience in a very specific way.
What's next?
I don't know. I have this bunch of projects but I don't know what's next. I don't know if my next film is going to be American or Spanish. I don't know but I want to stick to the Giallo thing, I want to be close to the science fiction thing.
Timecrimes opens December 12, 2008
Written and Directed by Nacho Vigalondo; produced by Esteban Ibarretxe, Eduardo Caerneros, and Javier Ibarretxe; cinematography by Flavio Labiano; edited by Jose Luis Romeu; music by Chucky Namanera. Released by Magnet. Running time: 89 minutes.
With: Karra Elejalde (Hector), Nacho Vigalondo (Chico/Boy), Candela Fernandez (Clara) and Barbara Goenaga (Chica/Girl).
