Almodóvar turns 70: these are his most 'Almodóvar' moments

September 25 changes the decade and at 70, after being honored at the Venice Festival, Pedro Almodóvar will be back in the race for the Oscars. LOC remember the moments

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Pedro Almodovar. JOSÉ AYMÁ

Not all directors can boast 70 years with such a hectic and full of experience trajectory

The 20 revelations of Pedro Almodóvar that he makes about himself in 'Pain and Glory'

September 25 changes the decade and at 70, after being honored at the Venice Festival, Pedro Almodóvar will be back in the race for the Oscars. LOC remembers the stellar moments of the director. Not all directors can boast 70 years with such a hectic career, where intense experiences and surprising anecdotes abound. Here is a good handful of them.

THE VOICE OF HIS LOVE

Its beginnings go back beyond Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls from the pile . In the 70s, when Almodóvar projected his short films to friends, curious and acquaintances. Due to the limitations of the format - they lacked sound - it was the director himself who narrated what happened, doubling all the characters.

Almodóvar, in 1983, in the Rock-Ola room, before acting.

COLLAPSING THE GREAT ROAD

It happened in 1991. Which cavalcade of the Magi, two giant heels, pulled by trucks, left from the Plaza de Cibeles to reach the extinct Palacio de la Música cinema. On them, saluting effusively, Almodóvar and his actors. The pedestrians could not suppress their surprise by observing Victoria Abril, Miguel Bosé and Marisa Paredes , four meters above. It is clear, it was the premiere of High Heels . And so it is done.

REJECTED HOLLYWOOD

In the early 1990s, coinciding with his international recognition, he was proposed to direct Sister Act . He declined the offer, confessing that he did not trust his English or the artistic freedom he had been promised. It is impossible not to imagine how the Whoopi Goldberg convent would have been under the baton of Almodóvar.

HONORIS CAUSE

"I have not gone to university, I am a self-taught person; however, my work is studied here exhaustively." They were the words of the director after receiving in 2009 the Honoris Causa by Harvard University. Seven years later he received the same distinction from the University of Oxford, adding to the one already received in 1998 by the University of Castilla-La Mancha.

EQUIS

That was the classification that Atame received for commercialization in the United States. The lyrics are reserved for pornography, and such an assignment came through the scene where a toy diver enters Victoria Abril's vagina while relaxing in the bathtub. In the American premiere Almodóvar played irony and celebrated it with a giant X-shaped cake , but not before giving the assistants a mechanical submariner like the one that appears in the film.

PEACE STONE

During the 1990 Goya gala, Carmen Maura and the director agreed on the same stage. They had not seen each other for a year and without speaking. The media looked forward to the meeting. There was no break that would have caused a stir in Spanish cinema. Almodóvar, newcomer from Berlin, and after giving him a fragment of the Wall torn down the previous year, broke the ice: "If a wall as frightening, as irrational and as solid as that one has fallen, that wall that separates you and I believe that may also fall from one moment to another. " Impossible not to applaud, although it took 16 more years to work together.

THE MOST UNIVERSAL

This term, so often coined, made more sense when in 2016 MoMA organized a retrospective with much of its work. It was not the first time that he obtained such recognition from the museum, that five years ago he had already valued his work with a tribute that Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour did not lack.

A DISC

In his case, his album has not stopped being purchased and has been listed for years among collectors of bizarre pieces. It is not surprising that being submerged in Madrid de la Movida and with the impudence that characterized him, Almodóvar ended up forming a musical duo with Fabio McNamara , to the delight of a few lucky ones. The adventure was ephemeral, but left for the remains some other television performance and its self-promotion in Labyrinth of Passions (1982).

HOST OF JANE FONDA

The gastronomic routes were not yet stretched when Almodóvar decided to take the charismatic actress to eat the classic eggs of Casa Lucio Persecuted by a wave of photographers. Jane was in Madrid to promote her latest film and took the opportunity to meet with the director. He intended to bring a remake of Women to the American screens on the verge of a nervous breakdown , an idea that finally did not prosper because he did not finish motivating him.

PROPHET IN HIS EARTH

Not everyone can boast of having a park that bears his name. In 1990, the fairground of Calzada de Calatrava , the filmmaker's town, became Pedro Almodóvar Park. To the joy of his countrymen, the filmmaker went to the inauguration. And he was not alone, next to him were Antonio Banderas, Bibiana Fernández, María Barranco and Loles León.

SCANDAL IN VENICE

The film festival dismissed the candidacy of Between Darkness (1983), in a maneuver made by Gian Luigi Rondi , director of the event that shouted in the sky before a feature film in which a group of nuns used drugs , tamed wild animals and helped To young astray. Rondi left the film out of competition but its projection not only enthusiasm to the public, but it was also there that a term that would become eternal was forged: the Almodóvar girls .

With Anna Wintour, at MoMa.REUTERS

PASSION IN MONACO

They must still remember in the Principality that Dance of the Rose of 2008. Almodóvar was elected ambassador of the party with the idea of emulating the fun and debauchery of the already mythified Movida. The director knew how to captivate Carolina and Alberto.

PRAYERS ATTENDED

If it is already mythical to win an Oscar, when Almodóvar got it for Todo sobre mi madre (2000), he turned his speech into something unusual as well as fun. The Manchego did not hesitate to thank his triumph for the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Head, the Sacred Heart of Mary, St. Jude Thaddeus and Jesus of Medinaceli.

KING MIDAS AND A PHARAONA

Almodóvar and Lola Flores got on stage together at the Xenon nightclub in 1993 to raise funds for a shelter for AIDS patients, at a time when not everyone was aware of the problem. Pedro and Lola started to sing Help, help me .

I HAVE BEEN SAID THAT IT IS HIS BIRTHDAY

The then Prince Felipe nodded from the armchair when Almodóvar, who had just come up to pick up the Goya for Everything about my mother , asked him if it was his birthday. He did not hesitate to dedicate it to him and continued: "Majesty, I do not know what to call him, because I see that he is so young. If I were a little more ... I do not know what, because as Marilyn I would sing happy birthday to you, but I dare not."

IN THE BED WITH MADONNA

This was the name of the docu-reality that the singer was recording there in 1990. He landed in Madrid to perform at Vicente Calderón, and one day before Almodóvar organized a party in his honor at the Palace Hotel. That crossing of Titans aroused a maximum expectation that would be satiated months later on VHS, with a Madonna somewhat insolent and willing to seduce Antonio Banderas.