Nacho Vigalondo. Cabezón de la Sal, 1977. Director. We all grow older and the former prodigy is now a mentor to young talents in The Incubator , ECAM's film development project. He laughs at it. A little like everything.

Are you tired of talking about coronavirus, confinement and de-escalation? Since the speeds we live under are what they are, one could already predict when the coronavirus was at its peak that, in a couple of weeks, it would be a completely different thing.. Before it even disappeared as a threat. In all the interviews I did during confinement, I was asked if I had thought about making a movie about the coronavirus, but the idea is lazy. First, because you take it for granted that everyone is cherishing the same issue and, second, that everyone is going to be exhausted from this story tomorrow before four in the afternoon. Also, you already made a movie about a confinement: 'Alien', in 2012 Yes. I think the curse of my films is that they always get a little ahead of events. There are directors who have the gift of hitting the bull's eye at the right time, but I always deviate a little towards the near future (laughs). What have you missed talking about during these months of monotheme? because my usual conversations are usually about topics very related to confinement. I play a lot of video games and board games, which are hobbies that seem almost like a preparation for this time. And how I like to playonline or via webcam , because I have been doing the same as always. It seems like I have been training all my life for a confinement. It would be better to confine yourself now, that the 'Last of us 2' is coming out. I will confess that I had not played the first until confinement. I admit that it is a game that I did not pay due attention to because thematically [pandemic, zombies and apocalypse] seemed to me a very worn out question, but it is memorable once you assume that the premise you have seen a million times. It is as if the western exhausts you and for that reason you do not pay attention to Sergio Leone in the late 60s. You would be missing something very big. I am dazzled by the first part, so the second will disintegrate me. In the project of 'The Incubator' you are mentoring a young director, Yayo Herrero. Not so long ago, the young promise was you ... Two days ago ... and now I am Gandalf. It is undeniable that I am getting old. When you make shorts and then movies, it is normal that you are surrounded by people who also make shorts and then movies; people who are breaking copper at the same time as you. That makes it very common to help each other. Although it is true that it happens more when you are younger, then laziness comes and you do not have the same energy as with your twenties, when you were eager to be questioned and to question others. This mentoring experience makes me feel older, but it also takes me back to a younger stage of my life. It's a curious fold in time. When someone asks me for a writing tip, I never quite know what to say other than "read a lot and choose what to copy." Is something similar happening with the cinema? When writing a script or making a movie, no matter how many movies you have seen, no matter how skinny your ass is and how big your video library is, you have probably included flagrant errors that only someone detects from outside. A fundamental tool when it comes to writing and shooting is distance and you don't have it. You need a less flawed external look that detects errors, sometimes as simple as that something is not understood. And we see it in works of consecrated people, only we do not say it because they are untouchable. For example, many things from the last of Tarantino, from making them a newcomer, we hung from the highest gallows. Call me smart, but I suspect you did not like 'Once upon a time in Hollywood'. It is a film made from a throne, from the assurance that it will be well received. I will always say that the 90s Tarantino was terrified of the need to bewitch the masses and that terror was what made his films incredibly rigorous. Now it seems to me that he is very calm ... and with reason. He writes from a throne, but it is a throne that he has raised brick by brick. I like that you take Tarantino out, because I have the feeling that that throne that nobody in the US disputes, here would have cost him more. I think that directors like you, with a less intense profile and genre cinema, Spain have been stripped of prestige. Those who, thanks to God, have a defined personality are as if we positioned ourselves politically. To start with, there are people who are going to like you and people who are going to provoke a certain rejection. And the more radical your proclamation is, the more it repulses. It is true what you say, but I think that positioning yourself firmly always benefits more than it hurts. Just as there are genres that instant prestige can grant you, which tends to dilute with the passage of time, others, like terror, work differently. If you make a horror classic, they will recognize you in a few years. Let the person who anticipated the day of its premiere raise his hand that Halloween would become a classic. I remember a time when John Carpenter was a questioned man, his legendary aura was gained while I was already alive. Or that of Sergio Leone, who is blatant. In my childhood, talking about Leone was like talking about Michael Bay now. There are exercises that give you immediate prestige and others that macerate over time, but, from the most visceral sincerity, I maintain that I do not care about prestige. Man, a little bit is always appreciated ... Let's see, for Of course I would like to be in a pantheon of names in the future, but I will not allow myself to lift a finger based on that lust. If you started making movies with your ear in glory and approval, chances are you were doing absolutely bogus exercises. That is what you need to protect yourself from. The sector that should never speak of prestige is that of the artists themselves, because if we start to think in those terms, we lose sincerity. The author is so suspicious to me that he only has the box office figures for the first weekend in mind as the one telegraphing the film for selection at a festival. I find it a sin to reduce your movies to mere tools to achieve objectives.

Since 'Colossal', in 2017, you do not direct a movie and you have been doing many series ('The neighbor', 'Just before Christ' ...). A few years ago I read to you that you did not think that TV could fill you. Has the medium or your need changed? That someone from my profile is suggested to do television is an absolute paradigm shift. It is very surprising that someone with the type of product that I make, can say no to some things because they are doing others. It seems crazy to me that now I'm overworked. I keep turning the same crank, but it is the lathe that has changed. It's a gift. If they told me a few years ago that I will not be releasing again in theaters, I would have taken it as a stab in the heart; Now I don't care. Now do you think you're not going to re-release a movie in a movie theater? Before the coronavirus. The traditional circuit of rooms has been limited to a type of production that, at first, is not mine. It is not the one that represents me. So I have long assumed it. The real fear, let's speak clearly, is not to stop opening in theaters, it is to stop working, and things are going well for me there. It would seem a bit of a cretin to me if someone in my profile cried for not releasing in theaters. Has it cost you less to get your films in the US than in Spain? My films have always had a somewhat bumpy relationship with the theaters here ... what that makes me a normal film director. Let's talk about the phenomenon of back censorship, with recent cases such as 'Gone with the Wind' or 'Fawlty Towers'. Is it a danger to culture or a magnified anecdote? With Gone with the Wind, it was first announced that she had been removed from HBO and, in this cyberpunk reality in which we live, there are no longer multiple ways of seeing a movie, There is a growing concentration in the form of an oligopoly to access content. So if you disappear from a catalog, it is increasingly like being erased from history. And there I was scared. But then it wasn't so bad, they were just going to put up a poster explaining the context. I was surprised that so many people were outraged by a 10-second billboard in Gone with the Wind , saying that they were treating us like children, when it is an iconic tabletop film for the whole family. In two days, we have gone from doing a completely ignorant reading of the film to taking for granted that it is condescending to have it explained to us. We went from not finding out about anything to being little enteradillos. If everyone were like us, with our age and our knowledge, it would be stupid to put up a poster, but to think that everyone is like us is an act of total vanity. They will tell you that you are a good man subjected to political correctness ... The term political incorrectness has been greatly devalued. Those who now define themselves as politically incorrect are the politically correct guys of 20 years ago, who have grown old and demand that the ladybug jokes come back because they want everything to be like before. That political incorrectness is pure and simple nostalgia of the worst kind. It happens even among comedians: when you miss the freedom from before, deep down you are asking permission to repeat the jokes. That is already done. That there are such profound transformations in the perception of so many issues is fertile ground for new jokes. Let us do it! Looking at Miguel Bosé or Bunbury committed to conspiracy, do we give too much importance to the opinion of artists on non-artistic subjects? What happens is that as a society we have not yet been educated enough in the privilege of keeping silent. My most lucid moments are when I don't talk about issues that I clearly have limited knowledge of. When you are a child you think that wisdom is a substance that accumulates, but when you get old you discover that wisdom is being aware of everything you do not know, but what do we laugh about? I remember an interview with Nacho Cano in which they asked him about the current music he was listening to. And he said that he had a colleague who selected the things he was going to hear. I did not seek and choose him, like the rest of us. What I want to explain with this is that, from a degree of glory and prestige, it may be inevitable that your relationship with reality changes and your filters are very different from those of other people. The one who has talked to Miguel Bosé and Bunbury about 5G and microbes is the same guy with a straw hat and a feather. And, of course, these things happen.

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