After two years of intense work in Paris, just when it seemed that Dune was finally about to be completed, the producer abruptly aborted the project. It was a dreadful blow to all of us. Dan O’Bannon, the future special effects director, returned to Los Angeles so stressed he had to spend two years being treated in a psychiatric clinic. Giger, the painter hired to design the sets, raged angrily at me about this “failure.” I refused to let myself be brought down by this assault of reality.
As I told my friend, the artist Moebius who had worked on costume designs and also designed the three thousand images used in the film: “Failure does not exist. It is a concept of the mind. Instead, let us call this a change of path.”
And then, because we could no longer express our visions in cinematic form, I proposed we work together on graphic novels. Thus was born the success of The Incal.
Shortly after his twelfth birthday, my son Cristobal told me he didn’t want to return to his school at St. Mandé. I asked him whether he was bored with the studies or with the teachers.
“No, it’s not that. It’s that I’ve been humiliated.”
Then, between two sobs, he told me the story. The biggest and strongest kid in the school, Albert, was jealous because a girl he liked preferred the company of my son. This Albert had pasted photocopies of a sort of poster on the walls of the school and courtyard: it displayed Cristobal’s photo and the words dwarf, jew, and thief. Now the other students were laughing at him.
“This is a koan,” I told him. “Don’t run away from the situation; instead, solve it. You must find a way to punish your enemy and restore your dignity with the other students.”
“But how? He’s a lot stronger than I am. If I fight him, he’ll smash my face in. It’s just the excuse he’s looking for.”
“Cristobal, not all fights are equal. That’s why strategy is important. You must strike him at a time and in such a way that he can’t defend himself.”
I helped him work out a plan. The next day, Cristobal returned to school. He waited until Albert, who was in a more advanced class, had entered a classroom with his fellow students. When he knew they were all seated, he opened the door without permission, ignored the teacher, walked straight over to where Albert was sitting, and began to administer a flurry of violent slaps to his face. The sheer surprise of this paralyzed Albert. By the time he started to react, the scandal already had the class in an uproar. He and Cristobal were held immobile by the other boys, and the teacher, who was both very angry and intrigued, led both boys to the principal’s office.
Cristobal showed the principal a copy of the poster and complained of being publicly humiliated and racially slandered. He stated that he had slapped Albert in order to regain his self-esteem. The principal reacted by summoning Albert’s parents and threatening to expel him from the school. Still following our strategy, Cristobal said that he would be willing to forgive Albert on condition that the boy apologize in public. Albert offered his apology before an assembly of the student body in the courtyard.
At the Cannes Film Festival, the producer Claudio Argento organized a press conference for me to present the project of my next film, Santa Sangre. More than ten years had passed since The Holy Mountain. The journalists there regarded me as a has-been filmmaker. One of them opened the discussion with a nasty remark:
“Do you think you can still shoot a film? After all, you’re a little rusty.”
“A rusty knife has a double power,” I replied. “At the same time it cuts, it poisons.”
I was shooting Santa Sangre right in the middle of Garibaldi Plaza in Mexico City when the idea came to me to have a blind choir sing a religious hymn in the scene we were going to film the next day inside the church. My casting director told me it was impossible to find a blind choir on such short notice. At the end of the day’s work, I decided to walk back to my hotel. A blind man carrying a guitar walked toward me, and his cane tapped against my leg. He excused himself and went on. Suddenly, I realized that this was an example of what I have always believed: accidents are miracles in disguise. I ran after the man, stopped him, and asked him if he knew any religious songs.
“Of course I do,” he answered. “I’ve even composed one. I belong to a choir of blind musicians. There are thirty of us, and we are all Protestants. Right now, I’m going to a rehearsal.”
I went with him. The thirty blind people, each playing a guitar, sang a hymn that began, “The end of the world is almost here. .” The next day, my casting director was flabbergasted to see them arrive at the church for the filming.
When Santa Sangre premiered in Rome, some journalists asked me which film director had most influenced me.
“Fellini,” I answered without hesitation. When I was very young, it was his film La Strada that first made me feel I wanted to be a film director someday.
This homage appeared in the press, and one of the master’s secretaries telephoned me to say Fellini would like to meet me. I was invited to come that very evening to watch the shooting of a scene from La voce della luna. A car arrived to pick me up and take me to a huge vacant lot outside the city. Very shyly, I walked toward a group of technicians working in the shadows and getting ready to plug in the projectors. Then a shadow that seemed huge headed toward me with open arms. I recognized Fellini.
“Jodorowsky!” he exclaimed, with a great smile.
On the verge of tears, I answered, “Papa!” and we embraced.
At that instant, a torrential rain began to fall. Amid the great disorder and consternation of this, we both ran for shelter along with all the actors and technicians. I lost sight of him and never saw him again, but that brief exchange of two words is one of my most treasured memories.
In the year 2000, the Chilean film and TV actor Bastian Bodenholfer was appointed as cultural attaché at the Chilean embassy in Paris. Full of enthusiasm, he was determined to teach the French about the culture of his own country, but he ran up against the barrier of insufficient funding. He was being asked to engage in many activities without spending a penny. He had heard about my Cabaret Mystique, conferences that I held every Wednesday in a very uncomfortable karate dojo with a large audience that had no problem with sitting on a hard wooden floor. He offered me instead a comfortable room at the Chilean embassy.
Wanting to collaborate with my amiable compatriot, I accepted his suggestion that I give a free conference there every two weeks. We set up a meeting to have a look at the auditorium. It was very comfortable and could hold at least five hundred people, the usual size of my audience. Then he told me, with an embarrassed look, that the wife of the ambassador wanted to meet me right away, and he asked if I would mind.
“Of course not, Bastian, let’s go.”
He led me into a smaller reception room. Now I understood his look of embarrassment. With foreboding and resignation I submitted to a tedious process of being interrogated by this woman who saw herself as a representative of Chilean “aristocracy.” She treated me as though I were some indigent asking for a favor rather than offering one. Summoning all my patience, I recited a curriculum vitae, but this did not stop her from wanting to know full details about the content of my conferences and warning me: “As you know, this embassy cannot allow people to take whatever liberties they please.” My attaché friend was red with shame and anger. I took a deep breath. Then Bastian arose and, inventing a pretext that we were late for an important meeting, took leave of her, thus extracting me from her claws.