December 2019
Jorge Molina

BIO

GUEST:
JORGE MOLINA

HOST:
LYNN CRUZ

Bio:

Jorge Molina
(Palma Soriano, 1966)

Jorge Molina is an actor and director ahead of his time approaching the Cuban audiovisual context from irreverence and nonconformity. He transgresses the traditional thematic repertoire, charting sex, death, desire, and monstrosity. He is interested in the dark elements of human nature, resorting to the clichés of horror cinema, immersed in an eclectic universe full of cinematographic references.

PROGRAMMING: DECEMBER 2019

Sunday, December 1 at 8 pm


Gíbaros (2012) / 10 ́/ Short / Color / HD


PROGRAMMING: NOVEMBER 2019

Friday, November 29 at 8 pm


Molina’s Culpa (1992) / 18 ́/ B&W / 35m

Fría Jennie (2000) / 10 ́/ B&N/ Color, Video, Hi8

Molina’s Mofo (2008) / 40 ́ / Color / Video

Molina, El Hombre Que Hablaba Con Marte (2009 / 29 ́/ Color / Video


Saturday, November 30 at 8 pm


Molina’s Ferozz (2010) / 73 ́/ Color / HD

Molina’s Margarita (2018) / 47 ́/ Color / HD

INTERVIEW

This interview with Cuban filmmaker Jorge Molina, which we will publish in three parts, took place during the Independent Film–Pending Film Festival in the Directors Cycle, organized by INSTAR in Havana in 2019. This first part followed the screening of the films Culpa [Guilt[ (1993), Fría Jenny [Cold Jenny] (2001), Mofo (2008), and El hombre que hablaba con marte [The Man Who Talked to Mars] (2009).

You’re a controversial filmmaker. How would you like to be introduced?

People say a lot of things about me, and I don’t do shit, because I make movies so that I don’t kill myself, I’m very angry about the things going on everywhere, and sometimes it’s really confusing, right? We are social creatures. This is my version of therapy and I make movies for myself; if people like them, great, if not, screw them. We must keep going.

When Julio García Espinosa was studying at the experimental center in Rome, he used to say that he had a teacher who was one of the great directors of Italian neorealism… This was around the 1950s, these people were making their films coming out of the war, and this man asked in the classroom—where Titón, Birri, and others were also present—“What does it take to be a filmmaker?” And people began to respond that they needed talent, this and that, and the old man just watched and said: “Health, because this is such an exhausting profession, that you really have to have a passion, and a desire, and health above all so as not to get sick, because one can get sick, one can catch cancer, one can catch all kinds of things.”

Well, you’re going to see some of my demons, and then we’ll talk. I love to talk, welcome to the world of Molina...

You can sit wherever you’d like.

No, I’m going to sit outside, because with movies the important thing is the process of making them. When they’re done I don’t like them. So I begin another one, to experience it again.

You don’t even like one [of your movies]?

There are moments that I like, but I start to watch them and think: “This could have been done differently, these characters are too similar, a villain and a protagonist are acting in the same manner, theatrical mistakes…” So the best movie is the one you’re about to make. I’m happiest creating, but if you’re happy with the product you’re dead. And I take that on as a challenge, just like giving classes, inspiring people.

El hombre que hablaba con Marte has nods to many films. They say the worst nightmare is to transform fantasy into reality.

I confess that my only fantasies are sexual. But I have my feet on the ground. I’m a guy with modest aspirations. People call it “cinema,” but with all this technological and digital development, all that crap that has come to really destroy cinema, we’d better call it audiovisual material. Because it is no longer on film roll. The word “cinema” has remained because it’s beautiful for all the glamor it contains, all that. What I feel is that contemporary audiovisual work has become so intellectualized that it has lost the ability to surprise. That thing that the Lumière brothers achieved when the locomotive was coming towards the camera and the people were running away, that’s been lost. Among the special effects, the porno-poverty that Latin America exports to European festivals, I’ve always refused to do that.

My audiovisual fantasy is all the experiences I had as a child, the movies I saw, the books I read, from Jules Verne, Salgari, what one reads as a boy, to the B movies I watched, especially from the 1950s, Jack Arnold, Kurt Neumann, a lot of people. And that’s what I like, playing with genres, above all having fun, having fun! Because there’s something I sometimes hear directors saying: “I really was torn up making this film.” And I think, well, I don’t know, did he rip his anus? Well, okay, he tore himself apart and suffered through the creation. Don’t fuck around: cinema should be fun and if it’s not, don’t do it. Because, as I said, you’ve got to be really healthy and have a lot of passion, and talent of course. But there are a lot of people who don’t have talent and they still make movies.

And so for me every shoot is a way to have a good time, for the actors and the crew to have a good time, the shooting process is the most interesting moment. The editing process is very boring and what comes later when the movie is seen, which is when it really exists, because if not it’s just a can of film, or a Blu-ray or a hard drive... But when it exists it ceases to be mine, it’s yours, because you’re already beginning to feel emotions about the work and they’re all different. And, look, I'm going to jump ahead now, because a lot of times people say that art can be political or not. And all art is political, for me politics is nothing more than negotiation and understanding between groups and powers. And no matter how much you want to separate yourself from that, the viewer politicizes it.

So I consider myself a storyteller who likes to fantasize, to do the things that I would like to have done, the women that I would have liked to have had. I would have liked to be Ava Gardner’s lover, for example. There’s a Dutch actress, Monique van de Ven, she’s the wife of Jan de Bont, who worked with Paul Verhoeven in his first films... I would have loved to sleep with that woman, but well, it didn’t happen. Sometimes you don’t get everything you want. But at least I can make a story where I’m a player and that’s fun.

In relation to space, The Man Who Talked to Mars is very theatrical, the promiscuity reminds me of Dogville, there are also many unlikely things... But you ask the viewer to enter the game, the process of creating the spaces. How did that idea come about?

Out of pure necessity. If you want to do that script another way, although as it is, it’s like that, but if you want to do it another way, you need a much higher level of production.

It’s almost a dystopian movie, it could almost be futuristic, where you could create metropolis-like spaces. So I said: “We’re going to have fun, we’re going to take a space and create emotions with lights and actors, and objects will only exist when they’re needed, and if not, they don't exist.” Black fabric and people who come in from all angles, dynamizing that staging with cinematographic images—it wasn’t theatrical with only a camera as witness.

But it was a financial decision, we made it with 100 CUC [around USD $100]. I paid Paula Ali 5 CUC, to a top actress, and I gave Renecito de la Cruz a bottle of rum, but they’re people who appreciate me, who admire me, I’ve managed to create a group of people who believe in me and they get into my game, and they know that if they’re going to work with Molina they’re going to act, to make movies, and that it’s a game. Because life is so fucked up that somehow I have to exorcise my demons, I have to feel good somehow, and that’s the only way. Everyone in the audiovisual industry wants money and that’s not bad, but people complain a lot: “I don't have money, I don’t have this or that,” and I always say that’s a justification for doing nothing. It’s better to be a promise than not collide with reality. The film that I could have made… No, people, life is too short. If I were a tortoise or an elephant, great, but I’m a humble mortal who’s going to die at any moment, maybe I’ll leave here and get hit by a car. That’s why you have to leave something behind. If you’re a good person or a bad person, nobody cares, you have to leave something behind. If people find it interesting, that’s great, and if not, then I’m sorry. I’m not Kubrick and I can prove it too, that’s fine.

In The Man Who Talked to Mars you work on alienation, your character lives through the telescope and television. He is even capable of killing in order to preserve his fantasy. If you had to talk about the character, do you really think it’s the influence of Mars that sickens this fantasy?

Actually the film had a different ending, and it’s what people saw and I said: “No, it’s better the way it is,” because do you know what people saw? People saw themselves as being happy. At the end when she gazes—which was filmed, but I didn’t use it—there was a pretty little house with little blue flowers, and the two of them: a happy couple, and that’s what brought on the masturbation. I mean, in the end one saw one’s desires. But I said: “No, it’s better that we don’t see what they saw, it’s more interesting that way, for people to imagine it.” Because sometimes a critic or the viewer judges you for the things you do in art. For example, people who watch my stuff say: “Molina is a pervert, who knows, a drug addict, a guy who drinks a lot, right?” Because they’re films about the human condition, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that we all carry inside. And I’m a simple guy, I’m a family man. I’ve been with a woman for twenty-five years but I haven’t gotten married, I have two beautiful daughters, I think I’m a father... I try to be the best I can, a good father. So I’m just a dreamer, a guy who wants to tell stories. For me cinema is therapy, I’m telling you, shock therapy.

How was the work with the actors, in this case with Paula Ali in this erotic scene?

I am very simple when it comes to directing actors. You simply talk… The first thing with actors is to look them in the eye, that is very important because people don’t look at each other, and it’s said that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. And it’s true. I say things. I say: “I want you to undress for me.” And they do. It’s that simple, there’s no secret. They simply believe me, and that is the greatest achievement, that they believe in you. Now, if you start posing and wearing jackets and a Bolshevik cap, like all those fakers who make movies… And they say, “I don't want to work with you,” ah, well, it must be for a reason. But there’s no secret. I do try for each story to have the level of acting it deserves (if it's your script or co-written with someone). Lately the scripts I’m using are written by other people. I sometimes change things during the shoot, but generally I take a story that is not mine, because for me it’s also a challenge to bring other people’s things to my world. It’s a lot of fun… And you can’t please everyone.

Is there a Cuban underground cinema? Do you consider yourself a punk director?

The problem with modernity and postmodernity is that they have to give everything a name, a genre, a group, a movement. The problem with audiovisuals now is that they’re empty because people have nothing to tell. Too much Facebook, too many social networks, too much nonsense, people are idiots. 92% of the world's population is idiotic... I hope you’re not among that percentage. I’m a teacher and often my students not only don’t know, they haven’t seen anything, which is valid because no one is born knowing, but they don’t seek knowledge, which is terrible. Cuban underground cinema does exist, as long as the underground is that which is not official. But there is no movement, no manifesto, hence the famous maxim: “Divide and conquer.” I think the Internet is both the greatest and the most terrible thing that could happen to human beings. Depending on how you use it. There’s an exacerbation of the individual. People prefer to sext than to fuck. But I digress...

Underground… There are the kids who made Sangre cubana [Cuban Blood], kids from La Lisa who decided not to be criminals and make a movie, there are people in Mayarí, in Caibarién, who make series influenced by El Paquete, but it’s also that today anyone can film, and there are people who… Look [snatches interviewer’s cell phone and shows it to the audience], if I give this to a monkey, the monkey can film with this, and well, maybe we don’t have the ability to determine if the monkey’s movie is any good or not… But that’s dangerous, the Danes with their shitty Dogma 95 made the world believe that anyone can make a movie. And that’s not true.

So don’t you consider yourself part of a movement, of an aesthetic?

Perhaps Molinism. I handle myself like the surrealists, pure automatism, an idea occurs to me and I go out like a bull and do it whether it’s right or wrong. Because, look, I have colleagues who live thinking about who they’ll make a movie for, that’s terrible. There are people who make films for festivals. I can name names, but it’s not nice to speak ill of colleagues... Although I love to speak ill of a lot of people. There are people who do audiovisual work to please the authorities, others do it for children. It’s okay. I would like to, but I can’t think of anything like that. I think that in this profession what you have to have is honesty. Because the French are sometimes guilty of all this—sometimes they take and legitimize an Indonesian film and when you see it the camera is like this [makes a wobbling gesture with his hands], and you say “but this guy doesn't even know how to film a birthday party, now they say he’s the best director in the world.” That happens. In other words, in the end we continue to be colonized, they continue to impose on us a paradigm of what is good. There are lots of countries with good movies and we don’t watch them because they don’t have distribution and stuff. We continue as always, wanting to please someone—let’s first please ourselves.

I am a very… odd Cuban. I’ve never been interested in leaving my country. Most of my colleagues leave because they don’t have “creative freedom,” and then none of them do anything, but oh well. It’s normal. Or “I'm leaving because I’m suffocated.” Pure justifications. It has to be done. If you’re a painter, paint. If you do audiovisuals, do them. For me, the only thing you have to have is a camera and an idea in your head, and an actress who gets naked and an actor who gets naked... That’s it. I’m happy. It’s that simple. Life is very simple, we’re the ones who complicate it, and it all has to do with sex. Freud.

Let’s move on to Molinaʼs Mofo. The protagonist’s dream of money to achieve happiness. Do you think the film has anything to do with the change that took place in Cuba in the 1990s?

I wanted to make a movie about a criminal who robs a bank, simple, nothing more. I wanted to pay homage to Hitchcock’s films, film noir, the femme fatale, that woman who you know is going to lead you to your death, but it doesn’t matter, because you’re having a good time, and you die and game over. What inspired that movie was a cover of a band that I love, called the Steve Miller Band, the album The Joker, and on the cover there was a Joker, a guy with a clown mask, and I said: “Joker.” And my friend who wrote the script said: “Look, Mofo, that comes from Mofa.” And it can happen: “A guy whose wife dies and he’s looking for her in another woman.” And that’s how the film came about, as simple as that. I called it “Havana: 2027” because 2046 already existed, it’s a film by Wong Kar Wai, and I said, “Well, let it be like half.” Now you see how things come together. There’s a very famous anecdote about Buñuel, an extraordinary director, that when he made The Exterminating Angel he was at a university talking and people were saying: “No, it’s a reflection of the bourgeoisie and you locked these people up, and blah blah…” And the guy says: “No, I did it because I bloody felt like it, okay?”

In this film you touch on social classes, different social strata.

Look, of course you talk about what you know, and no matter how dystopian you want to be, we don’t know the future. If you watch Blade Runner, an extraordinary movie, it’s just a film noir in the future, and Harrison Ford is like Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, and the lead is an android named Rachel, like the lead in Mofo, a femme fatale. That’s what they are. Because Ridley Scott didn’t know what the world was going to be like in that future, so you make it with what you know. For example, Memories of Underdevelopment, one of the great things about it is that since the country was put on pause, the film is still modern.

And that’s why, for me, the Havana of 2027 is exactly the Havana of the year in which it was filmed. I’m not interested... People could say “that phone is from ETECSA,” but it’s the one I had to work with. I work with what I have at hand. Most of my things are made with money from me and my friends. So if I have an ETECSA phone I don’t tell the art director—if I have one—to do something to it to make it look different; it’s from ETECSA and it’s great that way. If I need a car and I don’t have one, I use sound, those things aren’t going to change the story I’m going to tell. That’s what I wish everyone would do, but they don’t.

A girl who was going to play a transvestite in The Man Who Talked to Mars called me the same day of the filming and told me that her boyfriend, who was Spanish, wouldn’t let her “act with Molina,” and my producer told me, “You should be like Almodóvar, I know a transvestite…” And I told him: “Bring them.” The photographer went into a diabetic coma the day before we started… And a girl who was studying photography came to me and said: “I love your set.” And I gave her the camera and told her, “Go ahead, film it.” I can’t think about whether I have the right wardrobe, if I don’t have it, we’ll do it with this one [touches his shirt]. No problem. When the viewer gets into your game, he has already forgotten, because you’re already submerging him in your madness, but you have to manage to do it. Because if not, you can see the fissure, the dramaturgy starts to… [makes a gesture of a car driving over potholes].

Mofo has several narrative levels: the character’s reality, the reality that he imagines, and Mofo’s world, which has surreal elements, at times reminds me of the Mulholland Drive narrative. This type of structure is common in your films. How do you develop the scripts?

Many of those things are added by the screenwriter with whom I’m writing. They show it to me and I say, “Maybe if the character does this or that…” Because maybe I’m a better script consultant than script writer. But generally many things are in the scripts because they’re for cinephilia. The trick is to transform them into everything you’re talking about. Sometimes many things are in there as a joke or a nod. And then you change a lot of things. The script is a means to some better or worse end, which is the film. Sometimes film scripts are sold, but they’re the scripts of the already finished films, and what I would like to see is the original script with which they went to shoot, to see how it evolves or regresses. I believe that my films are not done with the explicit intention that you feel this or that, I believe that it is so that as it was for you, every person can think what they want. That’s art—it’s plural.

Immobility, as we see in the character of Mario Guerra sitting in a corner—how does that immobility affect you from a professional point of view?

In large capitalist societies like the United States, when someone was different, instead of distancing them, they were integrated. You see it with hippies turned yuppies. When independent cinema began with Maya Deren, Cassavetes, it really was independent, but with the Cohens… from Cassavetes’s Shadows, which cost 5,000 dollars, to one of the Cohens’, which cost 25 million, “independent” became a brand. So it really doesn’t affect me, because I don’t want to belong, to please. I simply want to tell the stories that I like. If they’re good or bad, I don’t care, they’re the ones I like. Let’s see, being different in our society has limitations, you have to be willing to pay the price of being different, and I accept it. Look, Mofo was made with five different cameras, because cameras were lent and taken from me, and although the change in texture is noticeable, that doesn’t matter, because I’m telling you a story, that’s why I’m telling you that technicality is bad for us. People now appreciate movies for the way they sound and the way they look. And I say: “And the stories?” Fría Jenny was made with 30 CUC, to pay the actress.

Fría Jenny [Cold Jenny]

Let’s see, people, Fría Jenny is just the same urban legend that’s told in every country. Here it’s an almendrón [taxi] driver that a woman hails and the guy falls for her, and after they have sex the guy’s dead because it was the greatest thing in the world. He goes back to look for her and when he gets to her house the mother tells him, “But she's been dead for two years or ten years or twenty.” Anyway, in this case the challenge was to shoot a short film in one night.

So there were three of us, and it was part of a three-short feature film called Dolman 2000. It was a parody of Dogma 95, but as a Black man from Centro Habana would say “dolman.” There was Yo soy Godzilla, which was done by Adrián García Bogliano, and the competition was to get a maximum of 100 shots every night, and the stories had to be based on something in front of you or that inspired you. I randomly picked up a double platinum Kiss album, and there was a song called “Cool Jean.” And I said, “My movie is called Cold Jenny. What’s it about? It’s about a dead person.” And so it was born, that’s it.

That character has psychopathic traits...

Yes, because it’s during the time that his wife left him, he had an existential crisis, he had nothing in the refrigerator, something was growing in the freezer, I think. And the record is from an Argentine band called Los Telépatas, who gave me all their music. And usually I don’t like music in movies, because if I don’t have Morricone, why would I put music in movies? But, well, I used a song called “Chica tóxica” and started playing around. The photo of the bride is of Faye Wong, the actress from Chungking Express—I would have liked to sleep with her, too—and then the song in the sex scene is a Faye Wong song that I thought was beautiful. I want to do a remake of that short. Now of course it would be the father, it couldn’t be the kid. In short, a single guy, I make movies about what I know. Let’s see, we’re in Cuba, I make Cuban films, even if they take place on Mars.

Your films have been called gore, pornographic, it has been said that it is a cinema made by an onanist...

Ah, yes, yes, I am an onanist to the end.

I think you are the greatest creator of punk cinema in Cuba.

I just found out!

You have provocative gender roles, explicit sex, violence, vulgar language...

Look, what I’m going to say really seems strange, but my references are Orson Welles and Billy Wilder. Orson Welles above all, I think he’s the greatest… There will be no one like Orson Welles. In fact, look at The Other Side of the Wind, reconstructed and released now, that’s the best thing right now, and the guy’s been dead forty years. And Billy Wilder because he was a guy who was able to understand American society in an extraordinary way, his comedies, he was a master.

For example, there are people who want to be like Tarkovsky. I want to be like Molina, everyone has to find their way. References are good, sometimes you mix a shake like Tarantino does and people say “Wow, that's fresh!” And, look, he didn’t invent anything. There is nothing to invent anymore. What you have to do is know how to tell a story. But the human brain is a hard drive and I’ve seen a lot of movies. For example, in Mofo there’s a reptilian character called Ikiroku, that comes from a movie I saw when I was a child called Mensaje al espacio [Message to Space]. In the movie they shot the princess and the old woman said: “Ikiroku, make her your wife!” And I was impressed by that. It’s the only thing I remembered from the movie and I put that in Mofo thirty years later. The movie was horrible, I worked with Sonny Chiba.

There’s a big impasse in your career between Culpa [Guilt] (1993) and Fría Jenny [Cold Jenny] (2001). What was going on at that time?

Love. I dedicated myself to loving and forgetting about my career… Until one day I realized that I was eating a lot of shit. And I came back.

Culpa [Guilt] was your EICTV thesis and you can tell you faced your demons.

That was a script that I wrote in an afternoon with a friend for fun. And we said, what if the guy does this, and if the guy’s a faggot, and we laughed. And when it was time to graduate, I had to write a script, I couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t! And suddenly I opened a drawer and there was the snazzy script for Culpa, and I said: “This is my thesis.” But it was to solve my problem as a student, I had to submit something.

I had been very impressed by a film by Paul Verhoeven, one of my favorite directors, called The Fourth Man. A movie about a gay writer who likes a boy… And the movie had a scene that made Molina’s Culpa the way it is. The character arrives at a church where there’s a life-size Christ and begins to touch it and when he touches it, the Christ was the boy. And that image seemed disturbing, extraordinary, beautiful. And from that moment I began to give shape to that story. That’s why it’s important to watch stuff.

The story could take place in Cuba or anywhere, in a town hit by the murderer, a disturbed guy, I love disturbed characters, which I had seen in Hitchcock films, for example, Psycho... And above all, the Catholic religion is what most closely resembles Marxism, communism. They both always make you feel guilty. Ever since I was a child, I’ve loved to masturbate, since I was eight years old... And my aunt would yell at me every once in a while: “You can’t do that, pig, you’ll grow hair!” And I looked at my hands to see if hair was coming out... And all of that together is Molina’s Culpa.

I also wanted to make a kind of film noir, but related to comics, to porn cinema, a pastiche. When I was a teenager, I used to shoot with an 8mm camera, a Kodak. My dad had promised to buy it for me, but poor thing, he couldn’t and I had a fight with my dad, I even stopped talking to him. But, well, with the money I was given or that was lent to me, I bought the Kodak camera. So I would go to the Cauto River in Palma Soriano to film my friends having sex with goats, mares, and I made anthropological films without knowing it. Some bits remain somewhere, because developing [the film] was difficult, and we were moving around a lot… It would be nice to expand on that.

One of my biggest dreams has been to direct a full-on pornographic film, with a good story, and to do it here, because I’m going to tell you something: I’m possibly the only EICTV graduate, well maybe Miguel [Coyula], too, in way, who believed the beautiful Athanasian oath that [Fernando] Birri wrote. I entered an extraordinary school at that time, it has been getting worse, but at that time it was one of the four best in the world. I said, if I apply myself, it is to make movies in my country, not to give my talent to Europeans, especially not to Americans, I have a very big problem with Americans. And most of my classmates went to Europe and nobody makes movies, nobody does anything. So the craziest guy, the one with ideological problems… Here he is.

Culpa [Guilt] had issues with the Catholic Church…

That was in Camagüey, I think he was the National Bishop, something like that, they sent a letter to Juan Antonio García Borrero. This film was complicated right from its genesis. At that time it wasn’t like now that anyone graduates. At that time there was a jury that reviewed the scripts, it was made up of knowledgeable people, Julio García Espinosa, Ambrosio Fornet, Octavio Cortázar, Jorge Fraga... And I remember that my film did not pass because, according to them, it had dramaturgical problems, they never explained to me what they were. I’m sure it was very sexual. And Arturo Sotto’s, which was Talco para lo negro, didn’t pass because it was too hermetic. We had to rewrite the scripts for that honorable jury to approve, and then I shot my original script, nothing happened. And since I shot it inside the school because it was during the Special Period, not an iota of gas was wasted there. I can be a good guy. And the field where the rape took place was behind it, right there. The location is what you see in the frame. The rest does not exist. I have my way of producing, and I have accepted being a poor filmmaker. Poor in money, but not in ideas.

You dedicate Culpa [Guilt] to Juan Orol. You were very clear from the beginning.

The king of Z movies. When I was a kid I wanted to be like Toshiro Mifune, but then I wanted to be like the guy who made that, and that’s when it all started. When I started wanting to watch things. While my friends were playing, I was in front of the TV, there were some extraordinary movie programs. I watched Argentine, Brazilian, Mexican movies, and I watched them while the others were eating shit. So Culpa was the film that had to be made. There’s one thing I can do and that is that I manage to take ownership of any story, even a story that I don’t like, and that’s a gift.

In the scenery you combine Coca-Cola logos with others in Russian.

Yeah, I had just come from the Soviet Union, and I had all these influences, and suddenly someone speaks in Russian, the agent says something like: “Guys, this is getting very bad, I’m leaving, too.”

Justice and Molina: The police catch the wrong person in Culpa and they don’t care.

Look, Nelson Rodríguez, my editing teacher, told me: “Take out that farce,” the scene with the police arriving seemed like that to him, a farce. And someone told me, “but if you take that out, and you keep the death of the whore, you stop being you, that irreverent guy who makes fun of everything.” But it wasn’t for nothing, it was just to put in the inept Keystone cops.

When there’s a crime, there’s always a moral problem. In the case of Culpa [Guilt], who would you save?

I’d save him, he’s a tremendous character, I should even do a sequel to that. Find the actor who lives in the United States and is already seasoned, and recover that character. I’d save him so that they call me a misogynist and stuff, of course. There’s one thing that is very consistent in my work, which is that women are always a danger, a threat.

And maybe if we get Freudian, there’s something that happened to me when I was eleven years old, this is in Solarix. I was a kid away at school—in the 1970s all these parents wanted to get us out of the house and put us in boarding school situations, to link study with work, but anyway... They told me: “You’re going to become a man.” And I was a little boy, eleven years old, and at the time I had a girlfriend, my first girlfriend, but I was afraid of her. One day we were working in the orange plantations and I felt something threatening behind me. And when I looked, what I saw was a succubus, a bug. And it was my girlfriend. And I pushed her and shoved her. And there, of course, my courtship ended. And that perhaps generated the notion that Molina’s women are always threatening women. Look, I consider myself a “man who loves women,” but still. I’ve been accused of being pornographic, misogynist, crazy. For me these are all titles of nobility. I am Molina, nothing more.

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