Matt here…

Oscar nominated Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga deserves at least half the credit Alejandro González Iñárritu has recieved for his three epics BABEL, 21 GRAMS and AMORES PERROS. You can’t make a great movie, without a great script and Arriaga has provided three golden one’s for his great friend.

But like all great writers, there comes a time when you have to branch out into directing. His feature film directing debut THE BURNING PLAIN opens in the U.K. this week. Starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger, it’s a two-tiered storyline concerning a mother (Basinger) and daughter (Theron) who try to form a bond after the young woman’s difficult childhood.

Once again Arriaga is working with multiple storylines and perspectives, a technique which he has used in all his scripts so far.

OWF’s Michael Edwards caught up with Arriaga to discuss the nitty gritty of production and debate the finer points of artistic endeavour. Enjoy!

ME: Rather than telling a story on a simple timeline you portray lives as shattered by particular events, and follow the emotional fallout. Is that part of a broader world view or a device you think is effective on the big screen?

GA: There is a theory that you can build a story for films in three acts. This, I think, is unnatural. We never tell stories like that in real life, we always go back and forth. So I always like to have an organic way to tell stories, I never have a premeditated way of telling them. In the beginning I’ll just feel the best way to tell the story so that the audience can engage with a narrative that is emotional.

ME: Did you find it beneficial to direct as well as write the film?

GA: What’s really weird about directing is that you’re the one who is directing it but there are many voices which confront you. You have a dialogue with people. You have to seduce and convince people of what you think is the right thing, and when you are not able to do so they have every right to confront and make the point. That’s the beauty of it. You cannot go to someone like Charlize and say ‘You have to sit here and do this and this and this” because she’ll say ‘Oh, sure. Why?’ Really. She’s not a woman you can just tell what to do. My DP Robert Elswit has a very strong personality, you cannot say ‘Robert! You do this and this and this’, he’ll say ‘Yes… Why?’ So it’s just not about control. It’s about seducing, it’s about collaborating, it’s about listening. it’s about making a point.

ME: As a writer do you sometimes find that difficult?

GA: On the contrary. Fortunately as a writer I know how to use words. There are some directors who only know how to put the camera in place, and they do not now how to say things. Because I’m a writer I can talk and talk and talk to convince people. And I think that if I have any good qualities as a director it’s my ability to communicate with actors. I perfectly understand acting and to explain to them what I want them to do.

ME: A lot what you write has an abstract, philosophical quality. I was really wondering whether thinking like that makes you feel detached from human relationship?

GA: I don’t think it’s abstract. I think it’s really basic. I don’t think of my work as philosophical, I’m not that indulgent! It’s more raw, it’s more things that are really happening. For example when I was directing Charlize I was saying ‘In this scene, think what happened to your breast when you left your baby and you have all this milk inside’. Those kind of images help and it’s not philosophical – it’s real. Brett Cullen who played Robert, Kim’s husband, I said to him ‘Does your character know how to swim?’ and he says ‘Yes of course!’ Where the fuck did he learn? This is the desert. So that pushed him to understand who he was. Those kind of non-philosophical things, really practical, life experience things, help me to direct a film.

ME: How do you begin to come up with these characters though? Where does it all begin?

GA: It’s a mystery where stories come from. I try to bring them from my own experiences in life. There are two places where people have a relation to there work: some come from libraries and films so they are like trying to make films like the things they have seen. I try and make the films like the things I have seen in life, like the things around me.

ME: That kind of brings us to the cultural crossover between Mexico and America in the film. I felt like you left it in the background and didn’t make an issue of it. It was just that people are Mexican or American and what matters is how they feel about each other as people. Is that how you see the world?

GA: Not necessarily. I think sometimes there’s an understanding between the two peoples, but even though we share a border sometimes there’s a profound misunderstanding. There is also a profoundly loving relationship between Mexicans and Americans though. I have a friend who migrated to the United States, an illegal alien (I’ve known him since he was one and now he’s thirty) and he married a woman who doesn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English. And his wife is an Iraq veteran. They have kids who don’t speak Spanish so they can’t speak to their grandparents. It’s quite funny, very strange.

ME: That is strange. So if these stories come to you organically and infuse you from your own experiences does that mean you don’t never struggle for your next idea?

GA: I have the sense that writers have only a gallon of ink, and sooner or later you run out. Right now I have stories, fortunately, but many of them have been in the deposit for years and I am scared to death that I will not  have stories to tell. I support the family only with my stories.

ME: I’ve seen that you’re a very gifted director as well, if the stories did run out would you be tempted to director someone else’s writing?

GA: Thank you. You know I have this feeling that with writers, it’s like you’re a fraud and sooner or later someone will discover that you’re a fraud. Directors are the same. And there are directors that make masterpieces and then the next film is so bad. I won’t mention names but they make two or three great films and then they run out, it’s like they have nothing else to say. Getting to that point really can drive a creator crazy.

ME: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to become a creator?

GA: I think, first of all, you have to learn from your tradition. What sort of storytelling tradition do you have. Do you want to tell stories? Do you want to play with the language? What do you want to do with your work? Then try to feel who has done a work like yours before. As I said before, there are people who write books from other books, or like me who write books, or films, from life experience, and there are those who like to use language and play with language to tell the story. But my next piece of advice is not to worry about it. Your work belongs to your own species. It caused a lot of anxiety to me that I spent five or six years on a project and people say ‘I don’t like it, it’s shit’, and some people say ‘I love it’. I’m not writing for the people who say it’s shit, I’m writing for the other people who understand what I want and can judge my work on what I want not what they want.

ME: So who would you say is your species, your tradition?

GA: For example in my tradition I would say are William Faulkner, Hemingway, Shakespeare…

ME: Wow, those are some names…

GA: … and Deacons as well. So yeah. But it’s the tradition, I’m not saying that I’m in the same league as them. It’s just their tradition I’m following. I’m not into these writers who like to play with language or these directors who are self-indulgent with the image. I’m far away from people like Peter Greenaway for example, it’s a completely different tradition. And I’m not saying he’s bad or better, it’s just a different tradition of filmmaking. So I’m very clear on which tradition I belong to.

ME: Do you ever fear for the tradition given the popularity of these indulgent ways of filmmaking with big visual effects?

GA: No. I’ve been doing my films and been respected in Hollywood, no-one has asked me to do something different from what I’m doing. They have even offered me jobs for these kind of films and I just say ‘No, thank you’. Of course they’re willing to pay me much more for these kind of things, but I’m not in this business for money. I didn’t grow up with a sense that I’d do this for money, I do it for the pleasure of it.

ME: Do you think that’s a beneficial quality in a filmmaker or do you think you can make just as good films if it’s only a job?

GA: You know the problem it has not got to do with money, it has to do with whether you can see it or not. I have seen writers who, in order to be filmed, they sacrificed the integrity of their screenplay to make it more appealing and when you begin conceding you begin to lose what you’re doing.

ME: Are their any Mexican or Spanish directors that you think the Anglophone world is missing out on?

GA: There’s a couple of Mexican directors that British audiences have to take a look at. One is Carlos Reygadas and the other is Fernando Eimbcke, they are young, they are making propositions and I think they are important directors both of them.

ME: Have you ever been tempted to creatively collaborate with young filmmakers who you see such potential in?

GA: I always try to help whoever asks for my help. I think this is a business where if we don’t help each other we don’t survive, especially in Mexico. I have a lot of friends that are writing and directing, writing books or writing screenplays and directing. I gladly help them.

ME: Do you ever miss writing novels?

GA: Yes, of course. But I think I’m writing novels for cinema. I think I’m writing literature, because people say ‘when are you coming back to literature?’ and I have to reply that I never left literature.

THE BURNING PLAIN is out in the UK on March 13th and will hit the States later in the year.

(Interview conducted for Obsessed With Film and Screenjabber)