Alejandro Jodorowsky : RFI

in breif: jodoworsky makes (according to hoyle and breton) surrealist films that usually have a lot to do with his weird sense of religious synecretism. (sp ?)

he lives in mexico city, and is actually polish i think. does a series of comics with moebius, and was scheduled to direct "dune" before lynch...

y'know I saw holy mountain again for the first time in crazy years last month. in college I always thought it was gangbusters & fun, but probably not 'good', but last month it seemed really heartfelt and genuinely brilliant.

fando & lis probably my favorite, I should see that again too

PENTHOUSE
Were you exposed to sex at a young age?

JODOROWSKY
Yes... One day a little friend, eight years old, came back with a bucket
and there was a male sex inside.  He was friend of the daughter
of one of the prostitutes.  The prostitutes had killed a sailor and cut
off his sex and he showed us.  It was very strange.  We went to
the cemetery and made a little grave and we buried the sex.
 Also, one day we found a great stone, an enormous stone,
floating in the sea.  The stone came floating in to the beach.

PENTHOUSE
A floating stone?

JODOROWSKY
Yes, and we could not move this stone.  No one believed us.
I was followed by a bee, a golden bee.  For three years,
every day, the golden bee followed us.

like the opening scene when the forty naked children run up to pluck the flower growing from the Thief's palm, leaving a stigmata -- there's a five second shot of the kids where it's clear that all of their genitals are painted green

or the iconic paintings in the Alchemist's Tower in the background -- many are inscribed with perfectly legible titles & details

or the scene where the man meets them outside the Pantheon Bar -- never noticed that he was standing on top of several giant turtles before, funny thing

even if you think you've seen it too many times, I recommend seeing this print if you get the chance

you could mention where you saw it, you know.

ABKCO Films and Anchor Bay Entertainment have just announced a pair of titles that we've been waiting for on DVD since Day One of this format... El Topo and The Holy Mountain! No kidding! Anchor Bay will release a special limited edition collector's box set, The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, on DVD on 5/1 (SRP $49.98). The set will contain El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Fando Y Lis on DVD, fully restored and remastered from new HD transfers in anamorphic widescreen video, with Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 audio (El Topo is 125 minutes in Spanish, The Holy Mountain is 114 minutes in English, Fando Y Lis is 93 minutes in Spanish). The box set will also include 2 music CDs containing the soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain, as well as a DVD of Jodorowsky's never-before-released first film, La Cravate. El Topo and The Holy Mountain will also be available separately (SRP $24.98 each). The El Topo DVD will contain audio commentary by the director, the original theatrical trailer (with English voice-over), a 2006 on-camera interview with the director as well as an exclusive new interview, a photo gallery and original script excerpts. The Holy Mountain DVD will include audio commentary with the director, deleted scenes with commentary, the original theatrical trailer (with English voice-over), the Tarot short with commentary, a restoration process short, restoration credits, a photo gallery and original script excerpts. Fando Y Lis will include audio commentary with the director and the La Constellation Jodorowsky documentary. Subtitles on the discs will be available in English, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.

Love it. You won't get that sort of thing with the Bladerunner reissue!

i totally blew it, i thought this was NEXT weekend!!!!!!!

haha dood we did this at all our shows last year (Holy Mtn, El Topo, and the collected Anger stuff)

xpost

The box set will also include 2 music CDs containing the soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain

one of the cruelest taunts in Holy Mountain is the ending credit 'original soundtrack available on ABKCO Records and Tapes' -- that never happened, did it? I have the Apple vinyl release of El Topo, which is okay, but it's Holy Mountain that's the freakout, tons of electronics, feedback, sprawl, Don Cherry

the trailer for Holy Mountain has some great lines in it, a narrator saying things like 'THE HOLY MOUNTAIN -- is a film beyond human JUDGEMENT or CRITICISM'

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo...

they better not have someone covering "weasel and junior, sadie and krug."

i mean, i have copies but i love the Castro and I wanna see the new prints!!!

all the extras in this film, they've all got the strangest expressions, you can see it all

yeah, me too. All I have ever seen is the Japanese VHS...

Ohhh want! Where are they from?

I finally saw Holy Mountain and I actually quite liked it.

I got that Jodo shirt recently lol

my local video store sells them

i've been trying to track down the recent reprint of The Incal for some time now partly due to my love of jodo's wild imagination but mostly because Moebius's artwork just looks stunning. any other good Moebius stuff any1 can recommend?

uh all of it? it is a pain tracking down english versions of his stuff tho. That Humanoids reprint of the Incal has already gone out of print, iirc, and I had to semi-beg my local comics store guy to set aside a copy for me

I should amend that - I'm not really interested in the Blueberry stuff. I would love to get my hands on a copy of the Airtight Garage material that featured Jerry Cornelius cuz Moorcock + Moebius is like all-time dream collaboration in my mind

maybe i'll check out my local comic shop to see if i can get lucky.

also is Before The Incal a new story or a reprint?

Moebius rip

Bumping this to return to the discussion of his comics. Has anyone read any of these? Are they any good? What should I expect?

I'm curious about Before The Incal and The Metabarons in particular.

I like his films and I like comics, but I'm not entirely convinced that Jodorowsky + comics would be a good thing.

I browsed through one of those at a comic shop (not sure which) and the artwork was amazing

Yes these comics have been on my "to buy" list for years. Not sure where to start.

I bought a bunch of the Moebius graphic novel series that Epic put out in the 80s. I liked the artwork but didn't really "get" it. Are these similar?

Humanoids' recent reprinting of the Incal is amazing. funny too.

The Moebius-Jodorowsky INCAL series is def the place to start w/ Jodo comics - classic psychedelic-spiritual space opera, and close to the madness of Jodorowsky's movies. Epic/Marvel translated the whole series in the 80s, as a standalone set of three graphic novels that ran alongside their Moebius graphic novel series; a subsequent reprinting by DC/Humanoids featured new and not very good computer recolouring. The recent hardback Incal series restores the original and better colouring and is the edition to get.

There is also a new and very affordable hardcover collection of THE MADWOMAN OF THE SACRED HEART, Jodorowsky and Moebius' other significant collaboration; a blasphemous fable set in the 'here and now'. It's perhaps slightly more approachable (ie coherent) than INCAL.

I also like the three translated volumes of the BORGIA series by Jodorowsky and Italian smut master Milo Manara that I've read; it's a fairly straight-forward historical sex romp and the very definition of 'guilty pleasure', but there are enough flashes of Jodorowsky's wit and subversion to make it more than just a beautifully rendered wank mag in hardcovers.

Thanks!

Is Before The Incal at all comprehensible if I haven't read the original Incal series?

lol Kanye

old men married to much younger women

Dunno how long it'll be available without a subscription, but here's yesterday's WSJ.com coverage of Jodo's Dune; check the slide show of art. Wonder if they'll even put out a ltd. ed. of this huge Moebius storyboard book, with "every camera angle, every bit of dialogue," in what would have been 12 hours and change,apparently. Don't suppose there's any change of mini-series...?http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304250204579433104251809202?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304250204579433104251809202.html

someone make this movie happen.

Sorry, I should have read the NY Times piece before posting that; it covers a lot more ground. Looking fwd to the documentary, anyway.

Just saw the documentary. It was pretty good! Jodorowsky himself is talking in most of the picture, and he tells the greatest stories. Many of these stories are LOL hilarious, like his meeting with Orson Welles. It sounds like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon!

There are plenty of bits where they animate storyboards or create CGI versions of the concept paintings, and in those moments I was in awe of what might have been, because the vision behind the film was so sharp and so brilliant, it even shows through in these crude dramatizations. This was very inspiring to watch! I am going to have to dig up some science fiction art books I have and just let my mind wander...

At the end of the movie I think he posits maybe creating an animated version of "Dune" in the future. I think if he did a Kickstarter it would be incredibly successful, and he could make a pretty great 12-hour or 20-hour "Dune".

yup, infiintely worthwhile to just hear jodorowsky tell anecdotes. i thought it wouldve been interesting to hear from 1 of the studio execs who they pitched to (or did they get some initial funds from someone?), they may not say anything that enlightening but idk it seems fishy that theyd even get this far if everyone was steadfast that it had to be ~12 hrs or w/e at that time

I saw El Topo a few years ago and although I admired it for being imaginative, unpredictable and having so many phases, I really didn't enjoy it that much, I actually found it a challenge to finish. So for a while I just thought since it was the most famous and available, that should probably be a reliable test for seeing if I wanted more of his work.
Now that I've watched Santa Sangre, Holy Mountain and Fando & Lis in the past two weeks, I can say that El Topo is not remotely a reliable test. I was actually kind of pleased to see Jodorowsky say that he didn't think it was that great a film in retrospect.

I really loved Santa Sangre. Holy Mountain was impressive and highly amusing with it's repeatedly surprising parade of crazy shit and Fando & Lis had it's strong moments of surreal imagery but Santa Sangre was more of a well rounded experience with an emotional centre; it had the unpredictable phases, the crazy ideas but it was all pulled off more satisfyingly for me than the other films.

I kind of wanted to be a complete convert but some things about the man unsettle me.

- I don't know how seriously or literally his therapy is supposed to be taken but I've heard that he prescribed that someone bite into sand regularly to cure their real physical pains; also a part of one of his therapy sessions filmed for documentary had him saying that one volunteer's father died of throat cancer because of his trouble expressing himself. Are people supposed to believe this or is it just supposed to be a different way of looking at a real situation?
I heard him say that only conmen use tarot to tell the future, so that inclines me to give him the benefit of doubt about the tarot readings he does for his fans.

- It was pretty shady how they used that stump limbed man to represent the thief's "monstrosity" in Holy Mountain and it initially made me think that you were supposed to start seeing the teacher as corrupt, but it didn't really turn out that way.

- He threw live turtles at an audience at one of his early plays. The dogfight in Holy Mountain looked worryingly brutal. The stories of him torturing the Fando & Lis cast and him getting permission from the El Topo actress to rape her.

I don't know if I want to listen to the commentary tracks for these three films. It was difficult to decipher a coherent philosophy from Holy Mountain and it seemed unlikely Jodorowsky was endorsing these methods of enlightenment when you see everything else about him, so maybe it's a waste of time trying to make it seem coherent. I feel like he is making up what ever sounds poetic at any given moment (he has an incredible talent for creative improvisation) rather than constructing an elaborate but solid philosophy.

It was really strange seeing Moebius in those roleplay therapy sessions in a documentary.

Also seen that he was naked for a filmed introduction to his new film

he has a pretty coherent philosophy as detailed in his Psychomagic and Tarot books

Does it line up with the things in Holy Mountain or did he intend any of that to be taken seriously?

He is not the same person now that he was in the early 70s. Altho I think the underlying theme of holy mountain (life as performance) is still central for him.

yeah I really need to read those books.

Life as performance sounds about right, didn't they essentially improvise the last half of that movie, the walk up the mountain, more or less?

El Topo is a little aimless but I love how flashy it is, it's like if Harry Houdini directed a Western, it's an endless font of tricks. It's mostly set in the desert, and I think that limitation makes it seem more real. Plus I love the ending, how he turns into that bizarre mountain hermit who frees all the deformed outcasts. Maybe it's a bit silly but you do get the same feeling as Holy Mountain, of a someone trying to escape. Of the film itself trying to leave the projector.

in the last part of the film where they are hiking up the mountain, I seem to recall that he demanded they all trip on mushrooms or something similar, and that the part where they confront their worst fears, he really did force the actors to confront the things they were most scared of in real life and then filmed it.

I recently finished both The Incal and Before The Incal and I highly recommend them. Even though they are very much as kooky as his films, they feel more focused and consistent, and the artwork is fantastic in both.

excited about upcoming opening. also lol:

I can’t do anything with an actor. I hate actors! They are poison! You cannot be free with stars. Even when the actor doesn’t want to be paid, because they want to work with you, they still bring ten persons—one who cuts the hair, one who brings their Big Mac, one who makes the massage. [Imitates an actor] "Oh, I need a close-up not from this side, but from this side. I can’t say this line…"

Is that where the idea of "Psychomagic" comes in? Explain how that works.

Yes. It came from there. I was studying Tarot, like a pleasure. I also study psychoanalysis: Erich Fromm, etc. With the Tarot system, you read the present like a test. You can find out something about a person immediately, in eight minutes. But in psychoanalysis it can take you two or four years, because you are speaking. Now, a man might say, "I want to make love with my mother." I say, "Now you have an Oedipus Complex." Now you know… but what do you do? The psychoanalyst might say, "Sublimation," that sort of thing. He has no answer. But I need a solution. I realized that words have no solution. But an act has a solution. When you have this desire, you cannot sublimate it. You want to kill somebody, you want to fuck somebody…you cannot change it. You need to realize this desire. Kill somebody, fuck with your mother or father! You need to do it—but as metaphor, artistically. You need to take a photo of the face of your mother, put the face of your mother on the face of a woman, even if it’s a whore. Put the clothes of your mother on this woman, and make love to her, screaming the name of your mother. You need to kill your father? Put the photo of your father on a tree, and take a knife and put the knife into your father 100 times!

Hmm, this looks promising. Has anyone seen?

http://criticsroundup.com/film/the-dance-of-reality/

it comes out in the U.S. tomorrow

coming to the Bay Area for a one week engagement on the 30th. (I will be seeing it at the SF Opera Plaza)

Oh shit, I better get on that.

Really looking forward to this. Have to admit that I'm mostly anticipating the hot mother.

I doubt it will show in glasgow. Sad that there was so much more excitement over the Dune thing.

Caught it when it played in France last year. It's fairly lo-fi compared to his previous epics but still Jodo.

saw this Sunday. It feels like a natural progression from Santa Sangre, which it understandably resembles the most stylistically and thematically. He was never one for versimilitude/realism and this is no exception. He's sort of even more extreme in that regard than someone like Wes Anderson, who people criticize for treating his actors and sets like dolls in a dollhouse; here everyone and everything is a symbol, an archetype, a carefully constructed image. But unlike Anderson, who punctuates the stiltedness with flashes of recognizable humanity, Jodo goes straight for the subconscious, relying on the strength and audacity of the imagery to carry everything along. So while you never feel like you're watching anything approaching a realistic approximation of people or events, you are continually and repeatedly struck by how well these completely bonkers and over-the-top moments are conveying some underlying truth about the characters and what's going on. And it is surprising - some things get portrayed symbolically or in pantomime and then other things are portrayed so literally that they're genuinely shocking (I won't spoil any details). I feel like I laughed more than most people in the theater, for whatever reason. While it is being marketed as the story of Jodo's childhood I think it's more accurately the story of his father, who he invents a redemptive arc for, and comes across as alternately horrible, comical and tragic. I will say that the film's most striking moment is probably when he gets the plague and Jodo's mom "cures" him.

there's a recurring "death to high prices" character/schtick that is also v funny

Brontis Jodorowsky was really great in this. It's odd that he doesn't work more often as an actor. Maybe he only acts for fun?

watching this tonight

Going to probably get this for myself for Festivus or whatever

Series: The Metabarons
Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Humanoids, Inc.; 40th anniversary ed edition (February 25, 2015)
Language: English

I kind of only care about his comics w moebius

metabarons is fantastic but i couldn't get through the technopriests series

I've read The Incal, Before the Incal and The Technopriests and really enjoyed each one. The Technopriests is the only science fiction work that reminds me of Charles Dickens. Not sure if it is a part of a series, the one I have is just a big hardcover. I've got the Metabarons on the shelf but haven't read it yet. The artwork on the Incal prequel and the Technopriests were both very well done.

Although Frank Pavich's wonderful 2013 documentary made everyone cognizant of Jodorowsky's Dune, most cinephiles are still blissfully unaware of that director's OTHER unrealized film adaptation: Bedknobs & Broomsticks. pic.twitter.com/eCDMIoQmM8

— The Bartledanian (@Decervelage) September 12, 2019

fairly sure this is an elaborate fib -- faust didn't exist in the late 60s, for one thing -- but it ought to be true

Yeah this is a put-on

Amusing though