Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., July 03, 2008 Sivan 30, 5768 | | Israel Time: 17:33 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Car Rental Books Peres Conference Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Raging bull By Roi Bet Levi Tags: Mexico Legend has it that when a critic panned a collection of his short stories, calling them bland and empty, the Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga challenged the reviewer to a bare-fisted fight, faithful to his belief that "a man must be willing to defend his words with blood." Fortunately for the reviewer, the literary duel never took place. Had he accepted Arriaga's challenge, the critic would have faced a tall (1.90 meters), strong opponent who almost became a professional boxer in his early twenties. "My roommate in those years was on Mexico's Olympic swim team, and I was very envious of him," says Arriaga, 50, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing the screenplay for "Babel," starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. "I decided to start boxing. It's an area in which I had more than a little experience, from my days as a thrill-seeking youth on the streets of Mexico City. I began training for the Olympic trials for the Mexican team for the 1984 Los Angeles games, but then I was diagnosed with a heart infection. It's something that can be easily treated if you rest a lot and take medicine, but I refused and continued training. Not long after that, I had a cardiac event and was hospitalized for two months. There, in the narrow hospital bed, I made up my mind to become a writer. I didn't want to leave this world without leaving behind one piece of work, at least one, of significance. When I recovered I started writing like a maniac, and as a matter of fact I haven't stopped yet." In 2005, Arriaga took first prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his screenplay "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." In the past decade, he wrote the screenplays for the three films directed by his countryman Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: "Amores Perros," "21 Grams" and "Babel." He has also published three books and a collection of short stories, and his first book in Hebrew translation, "The Night Buffalo," has just been released (Ivrit Press and Keter, translated by Frieda Press-Danieli). Advertisement "I don't like being called a screenwriter," says Arriaga, who is now in Los Angeles completing the editing on his first film as a director, "The Burning Plain," starring Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron as a mother and daughter trying to mend their relationship. For the first time, he will have top billing in the film. This is a very momentous honor for Arriaga: "The word 'screenplay' (guion or 'outline' in Spanish) diminishes the contribution of the person who writes the movie. Having produced several movies and having directed one, I can attest that the writer's work is not confined to determining the film's general structure. It's a lot deeper and more significant than that," he says. "There's a lot of talk about the cinema of the 'auteur.' I always found it strange that for such a long and complicated process, in which so many creative people take part, only one person would receive all the credit. I put too much of my life and personal experiences into my stories to be thought of as someone who just 'helped' the film." Arriaga likes to call himself "an author who writes for the cinema," insisting that it's not just a matter of semantics. "People go to the movies because of the stories that are presented there, and they remember the movies that they saw because of the stories presented in them," he says. "Everything that happens afterward is meant to serve the story and the characters that the screenwriter wrote." Should screenwriters be involved in the filming of the movie? "The screenwriter knows the characters better than anyone - their pasts, the way they think. In this sense, he could have a very important role to play on the set. He could sketch out the physical world in which the movie takes place, on any level. Someone who writes for the cinema needs to be incredibly efficient. He has to find the right image, the right word, the precise motion of the dialogue. He has to find a structure in which there is absolutely no waste of time or energy, and to find the right pace and the right tone that will propel the plot forward. For me, there's no difference between writing a book and writing a screenplay. I work on them for the same amount of time, two to three years, and invest the same emotional effort in them. The first paragraph in 'The Night Buffalo,' for instance, I wrote more than 800 times until I was satisfied with the result. I work the same way when I'm writing a script, so I don't think I should have less influence than other people on the final product." As a director, would you collaborate with another screenwriter? "It's hard for me to imagine. I need to create only my own works, not those of others. In the past I received offers to write screen adaptations of books by writers that I love, like 'The Wild Palms' by Faulkner, one of my favorite authors and a major influence on my writing, but I didn't agree. My idea has always been to create a private, independent world, a work that is all mine." Arriaga began writing at a very young age. "I always felt comfortable when I sat facing a blank page. As a kid, I mostly read encyclopedias but, luckily, in high school, I had a wonderful theater teacher who pushed me to write plays. At 15 I wrote my longest and most ambitious play, which was supposed to be given a commercial staging. We rehearsed for six months, and a few days before the premiere the director and a few of the cast members came to me and asked me to change a few bits of the play. I refused and in the end the play was never performed." After that, he began writing short stories for children's publications, as well as scripts for radio and television drama series, which paid his university tuition. (He majored in psychology). Along the way, he also acquired a tough-guy image, and a reputation for utter seriousness. Arriaga's first works depicted the lives of street youths in Mexico City in a very direct and raw way. They described brutal accidents, deaths, crude violence. His short stories, collected in the book "Retorno 201 / 201 Return," portrayed life in his childhood neighborhood, Colonia Unidad Modelo. "As a kid, I played in this tough, hot neighborhood, and I got into street fights almost every day. [At age 13, he lost his sense of smell as a result of one of these fights.] I had a great time. A lot of what I've learned about life I learned on the street, in my childhood, and a lot of that has gone into my stories and my movies." His brief boxing career followed not-very-successful stints as a professional soccer player and playing basketball on Mexico City's asphalt courts. Even now, as he splits his time between his home in Mexico City and his work in Los Angeles, he continues to play soccer on an amateur team made up primarily of Jews. ("I'm the only one there who never had a bar mitzvah, that's why I'm so happy my book was translated into Hebrew. Maybe now my Jewish friends on the team will give me a little more respect.") In your works there are many tragedies. Are they also taken from your personal experience? "There are many autobiographical elements in my works, but there haven't been tragedies in my life, fortunately. I don't aspire to document reality in my works, but rather to create a new world that is based on the truth. All I want to happen with my works is for the reader or viewer to say: 'He was there, in that world, he knows what he's talking about.' The central theme of my works is human existence. There are writers who are focused on style, or structure, but I strive for everything that I write to serve one purpose: understanding the human being, especially the contradictions that comprise him. The human being is measured by the decisions that he makes. This way of thinking, this pure existentialism, is something that pursues me wherever I go." Manuel, the hero of "The Night Buffalo," is also pursued by his thoughts and by the decisions he has made in his life. The novel also tells the story of Gregorio, Manuel's good friend, and their shared love for Tania. The big questions that keep them awake at night (including a solution to the complex riddle that Gregorio left behind for Manuel before his death) apparently have no answers. The reader of Arriaga's books should not expect a major catharsis at the end. His protagonists' quest for redemption and forgiveness (a theme that recurs in Arriaga's other works, such as "21 Grams") will not lead them to peace of mind. Instead it will toss them into the raging depths of human existence - madness, love, loss and blame. There's a lot of spirituality in your work. Are you a religious person? "No. Not at all. I grew up in an agnostic household, and when I was old enough to think for myself I decided that I was not a believer. What I wanted to do in my works was to say that if there is a heaven or hell, then they're to be found here, on earth. The advantage for a writer who doesn't believe in God is that it makes him a believer in the human race. I believe that human beings can redeem each other, without having to obey external rules. "If I had to reduce the main points of my faith to the bare minimum, I'd choose love and the written word. I don't need to elaborate on love, plenty of people speak about it, but for some reason the written word has lately tended to be disparaged. Written words are what developed our civilization. They are what enabled us to be who we are today. I despise this foolishness that you hear quoted all the time: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' It's an insult to the intelligence. You tell me - How many pictures are needed to explain the meaning of the word 'love'? How many pictures would it take to explain the word 'passion'? One word is worth a lot more than a thousand pictures. This doesn't mean that I think film is an inferior medium compared to the book, but I have no hesitation in saying that written words are sacred for me. They're what made me who I am today." Arriaga's uncompromising attitude toward the written word also led to his widely covered split from Inarritu, the director with whom he'd worked for years. About two years ago, in the initial months following the U.S. release of "Babel," Arriaga was quite vocal in expressing his dismay over the "disdainful" treatment he received after the success of the previous two films he'd written ("Amores Perros" and "21 Grams"), success that he felt was credited largely to the director. That year, the world media was raving over the "three musketeers of Mexican cinema" - Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro, director of "Pan's Labyrinth," and Alfonso Cuaron, director of "Y Tu Mama Tambien." Arriaga felt left out. Shortly before the Oscars ceremony - at which "Babel" won in only one category, Best Musical Score, after being nominated in seven - he publicly criticized Inarritu's decision to reduce his degree of collaboration with him on the set, a decision that Arriaga claimed hurt the quality of the final product. Arriaga was very organized and mathematical, at times somewhat laughably so, in his demand for recognition. He was quoted as saying that he was responsible for 95 percent of the structure of "21 Grams" and for 99 percent of the structure of "Amores Perros." How much was left, then, for Inarritu? Just a few crumbs, it seems. The reaction was not long in coming. Together with Gael Garcia Bernal (star of "Amores Perros" and "Babel") and other senior crew members who had worked with Inarritu and Arriaga in the past, Inarritu wrote a letter to Arriaga that was published in the Mexican entertainment magazine Chilango. "Guillermo, what a shame that because of your unjustified obsession with claiming all the credit for the film's success, you've forgotten that the cinema is a collaborative art," Arriaga's former friends wrote. "You never made us feel that you were a part of our team, and your recent statements in the press have made it necessary to say that the time has come to end the wonderful creative partnership that we had. All that we've received from you in the past year is bitterness and a lack of respect. It's a shame that your desire to be in the spotlight has affected your work." The letter concluded with: "We wish you success as you continue on your independent path." The bond between Arriaga and Inarritu, problems notwithstanding, was a bond between two virtuosos, a marvelous example of the way prose and cinema can come together. Their films contain much violence and chaos - the result of carelessness, stupidity and selfishness - and the charged atmosphere between the two of them helped this tension find its perfect expression on screen. In "Babel," however, the magic started to fade. More than a few scenes became an homage to Inarritu's technical brilliance as a master of impressive camera movements and frenetic and stomach-turning editing. Inarritu won the battle, but lost the war. His obvious and heavy touch in "Babel" hurt the film, and now he'll have to prove that he can continue to make quality films without Arriaga's screenplays. Arriaga, meanwhile, has already proved with "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" that he can get along just fine without his former partner. What do you think about Inarritu? About the way in which your creative collaboration came to an end? "I think that Alejandro is a good director. We made three films together that I'm very proud of and that I'll always be proud of. Between a director and a writer there has to be a close relationship. The director has to be, above all else, the writer's editor, the guy who tells him to tighten things a little here, to add a little somewhere else. You, as a writer, can accept or reject the recommendations. The writer and director have to believe in each other, and when this faith is damaged it's impossible to continue working together. This is what happened to us while working on 'Babel.' Each one of us wanted to take the film somewhere else. But in the end, we were nominated for seven Oscars, which is not a bad achievement, wouldn't you say?" All the signs of a big drama involving mutual respect, artistic envy and press interviews were there from the beginning. "I told myself, 'If I run into that guy, Inarritu, I'll tell him to go screw himself,'" Arriaga once said. Their first conflict came in the late 1990s, after Arriaga, who up to then had published two relatively successful books, read in the newspaper that Inarritu, then a budding young director, said that Ibero-American University, where he once studied, was filled with mediocre teachers. Arriaga, who at the time was teaching communications at the university, took the remark personally. "A mutual friend finally brought us together," relates Arriaga. "I told him, 'Go screw yourself,' but afterward he proposed that I write a comedy for him. I told him that I had no idea how to write a comedy, but that I had a good idea for a drama about dogfights." The drama about dogfights became the 2000 movie "Amores Perros," which made Arriaga and Inarritu stars in Mexico and led them to collaborate on two more movies in Hollywood, before their partnership unraveled. In this film, Arriaga's first, one can find all the typical characteristics of his later work: multiple story lines and intersecting characters and a fascination with the way a random accident affects their lives. "I wanted to examine how a trivial incident can have such a strong impact on different people who are connected to one another without even knowing it," he says. "One film wasn't enough for me to address this subject the way I wanted to, and so it became the trilogy of movies directed by Inarritu. This is also what's happening with my second trilogy, which is at its height with 'The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada' and with 'The Burning Plain,' in which I deal with boundaries. Both with physical boundaries and with the boundaries that people erect between themselves and their neighbors. In the new film I tell four stories about love, among friends, among relatives, and between a couple, who are all affected by a single tragic event, an accident that changes their lives." Arriaga wrote "Amores Perros" after he was in a serious accident on a highway in Mexico. "I was in the wrong place with the wrong people and I paid the price for it," he says, maintaining his silence over the exact cirumstances. "When you see the place where you were supposed to die, or at least one of the places where you were supposed to die, it changes everything for you, including the way you write. At the time, I had two stories in my head that I wanted to tell, and I realized that I could tell them through a traffic accident: a story about dogfights and a story about a nomad. I had two beginnings of stories, which could become one story about different worlds only by means of writing for the cinema." Your literary work often has a very cinematic quality to it, too. "The books I write are misleading. They seem very visual but in fact they develop inwardly, not outwardly. The landscapes described in them are internal, they touch on places that film cannot reach because it's limited to the third person. It's almost impossible to achieve the first-person perspective in a movie. It's very different than telling a story in the first person in order to present a subjective point of view. Sometimes you can come close to the first person by means of subjective filming, you can almost reach it, but somehow you always find yourself returning to the third person, to an external description. The cinema that interests me has a very strong orientation toward action, toward pure narrative. When I write, what guides me is the desire to advance the plot." If you had to choose between writing books and writing movies, which would you choose? "I lean in a different direction every time. For now, I always write a movie and then a book. What I can say is that the 40 days I spent directing my first movie in New Mexico and Texas was a fantastic experience, maybe the best in my life. I want to continue directing, and apparently I have no choice but to continue writing. And in order to continue writing I need to continue living. What I need most in life is an overdose of experiences." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Terror in the capital A Palestinian rammed his bulldozer into a bus in Jerusalem, killing three. Poetic injustice Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish blends sarcasm and hope in his latest work.

Read & React Shot and bleeding, Jerusalem terrorist kept going to kill baby's mother Responses: 93 ANALYSIS / Terrorist or petty criminal run amok? Responses: 101 Ari Shavit: Strike on Iran is good for Israel and U.S. in long run Responses: 54 Reuven Rivlin: Talkbackers, not security services, are setting Israeli policy Responses: 20 Obama enlists Jewish lawmakers in outreach effort Responses: 30 More Headlines 17:30 Qassam hits Negev, sixth since start of Gaza truce 12:40 Vice Premier: Parts of East Jerusalem should be severed from capital 12:18 How many missiles will be fired from Iran, Syria, Lebanon in the next war? 17:32 U.S. envoy: We won't intervene in Israel-Syria talks 15:59 Jerusalem terrorist's family told to take down mourners' tent 12:59 Obama enlists Jewish lawmakers in outreach effort 13:50 Barak okays construction of dormitory at Hebron seminary 15:56 Hitler wax figure unveiled in Berlin amid criticism 13:07 Iran: Israel holding diplomats who vanished in Lebanon in 1982 14:40 Supreme Court president: Our justices are the target of incitement 14:41 Study: Israelis like to smoke marijuana, less keen on coke 17:22 Man who killed IDF soldier outside Haifa nightclub gets life in prison Previous Editions Select Day 02 jul 01 jul 30 jun 29 jun 27 jun 26 jun 25 jun 24 jun 23 jun 22 jun 20 jun 19 jun

Special Offers Advertisement Dan Hotels Israel Live the Legend & experience an Unforgettable Summer Vacation Holyland Park Jerusalem Apartment Tower World Class Luxury In the heart of Tel-Aviv The Meier on Rothschild tower Your vacation starts here Israel Travel Center Guaranteed Lowest Rates Hebrew Summer courses From $39.95 Pardes Institute Summer Sessions http://www.pardes.org.il/ Fattal Hotel Chain Perfectly located hotels on best resorts of Israel. ISRAEL BONDS Build Israel Israel bonds - a multi-purpose way to celebrate Israel's 60th Eldan Rent a Car Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on all online reservations Junkyard Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt

Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Underground | Site rules |

Real Estate in Israel | Travel to Israel with Haaretz | Hotels Israel | Restaurants Israel | Tourist attractions Israel | Shops Israel

birthright Israel | Search engine marketing

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.

© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved