• Interview. "Drinking is forgotten"

THE SERIES / 'The one that is coming'

I have always been a strong supporter of English series. I remember that dynasty of the Forsyte and Above and Below ; I have followed Victoria , Downton Abbey and The Crown with the greatest interest . A few years ago, I got hooked - which is an ideal word for series - with The West Wing of the White House and the first season of True Detective . (The second I did not understand, no matter how hard I tried.) In the mid-60s, TVE offered the series Hollywood through time, giving us an episode every week, almost at dawn, and that injection of nostalgia was good. Cinema has mutated again and is now Netflix. The series are again the 19th century brochures. As much as that. Just as addictive. People waited at the docks for the arrival of the ships to find out as soon as possible what was happening to little Dorrit. The Spanish series that I follow the most is La que se avecina : plots, scripts and dialogues, interpreters, production, everything is formidable.

THE FILM / 'Perdition'

I could say Casablanca , not because it is "the" movie but on the contrary: because it is "the" movies. But it would be unfair. And it is that the cinematographer (with him entered the twentieth century), has already given so many masterpieces that it exceeds what has been achieved in recent years by the novel, the theater, architecture and even music. Tonight, tonight, the film that I am going to "revisit", that Scott Fitzgerald would say, is Perdition , by Billy Wilder, the cathedral of Chartres from the film noir , but I also add Vertigo , by Hitch , and I do a double program like those of the Blue cinema in the sixties . I don't want to forget the mother films , from Cabiria de Pastrone to Kane de Welles, or from A woman from Paris , by Chaplin, to Te querré siempre , by Rossellini, because they are the indestructible films that make cinema evolve.

THE DISC / 'Like a Rolling Stone'

Like a rolling stone , by Dylan, 1965, has always headed my rock trilogy, along with Satisfaction (I can't get no) , The Rolling Stones, 1965, and Bohemian rapsody , Queen, 1975. I bought Bob's masterpiece at a Gran Vía store that was next to the Basements, or maybe it was in the Basements. I listened to it literally for hours on my Melodial turntable, perhaps it was a Lavis Dual, in any case one of those whose cover was the speaker. Dylan did not phrase, like Sinatra, but spit out the words. Its composition lasted six minutes and was built a bit like Ravel's Bolero . It enveloped you. The harmonica, in addition to the country tone , provided a certain challenge, such as the Easy rider motorcycles . He went a little to the music of the time like Bonnie and Clyde to Hollywood in transition; or Cassius Clay to sports. A revolution. The same one that took us from Cézanne to Picasso. For the record, I also like Luisa Linares and Los Galindos: Crazy, There are those who say of Jaén ... and I like my boyfriend . And Bach, Mozart, and Cole Porter. And Beethoven's symphonies, especially the odd ones. And the Swedish Rhapsody and the Blue Tango , which my mother heard and heard so much on the Lavis, or perhaps on the Melodial.

THE BOOK / 'The postman always knocks twice'

I reread more than I read. Lately, I've reread almost all of Umbral's work. The legend of the visionary Caesar, Madrid Trilogy, Deadly and pink, A being from afar ... Paco's prose is fun, agile, brave, young; his "page quality", an expression of which © belongs to Julián Marías, is luminous and, at the same time, full of pain. Like Galdós or Baroja, Umbral never distorts the past. But anyway, if you have to choose a book, I would recommend three: Human Servitude (S. Maugham), The Postman always calls twice (James Cain) and Music for Chameleons (Truman Capote). They are good books, entertaining, intelligent, with unforgettable dialogues, and the creative effort of their authors is not at all noticeable; pleasant, sensitive paragraphs, full of sparkles, of light depth. If Sherezade had painstakingly described what the robes of this or that Vizier or the harem of the palace or the markets of Baghdad looked like, they would have cut off his head in a second.

And rare is the day that I don't read Manolo Alcántara.

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