00:00It was very impressive, because it was one more proposal than the ones you present.
00:05At that time, I didn't know this was going to end, nor did I know that it had been almost four decades.
00:12I found out later.
00:14So when I received that the proposal was accepted,
00:18and that they were going to send me the contract to review the conditions,
00:22to be able to sign it, in short, and start the process,
00:25it was very exciting, especially because I managed to have contact with the secretary of many years,
00:30Mrs. Margaret Morehouse,
00:33whose retirement also contributed, to a certain extent, to making the decision to close the program.
00:38So, yes, it was quite exciting,
00:41and in shock at first, because one says, well, what did I get myself into?
00:45Now we have to do it.
00:47When I read a little about other Dollar Babies later,
00:51I realized that, at first, I made a decision that had to do with economic and management capacity,
00:58a main location, four or five characters,
01:02ah, come on, that's something I could do, I think.
01:05The mistake, why a mistake?
01:07Because it turns out that Stephen King has an exquisite writing in details,
01:12and I think that he, like very few authors,
01:17a page of Stephen King is not worth a minute, it is impossible.
01:21So that was my first mistake.
01:24About the pre-production march, one sees, hey, to see some detail.
01:29I commented at some point, X scene of the story,
01:34and the protagonist defends himself and takes a cigarette,
01:37and he throws it in the eye of the guard,
01:40and he comes out of the basin, etc.
01:44It is so descriptive that you say, come on, sign that, how do you do it?
01:49Then one realizes that it was complicated.
01:53So I mentioned that that is one thing,
01:58and the other has to do with adapting things according to what one has,
02:03and not to lose sight of the fact that if we go to a commercial order proposal,
02:07it has to do with something much more altruistic,
02:10pay forward, as the Americans say,
02:14that feeling so altruistic, you have to be up to it.
02:18So I said, hey, here you have to have a huge respect for every word,
02:22every thing that has come from your being,
02:25and see how one can tell it in the best possible way.
02:28It attracts me, in terms of what you ask,
02:31to do this in Latin America was valuable,
02:34because the story, which I read about 14,
02:37of what was on the list, 12, 14, if I remember correctly,
02:40but this one mentioned that the protagonist,
02:44this American citizen, former reporter of the New York Times,
02:48goes to a country in South America.
02:51There I said, I am South American, I like this,
02:55and it also caught my attention that I had not had access to see adaptations
02:59that were precisely made by South Americans,
03:02as the writer thought.
03:04I said, here is a point in favor,
03:07it seems to me that this is something that has not been done,
03:10to have South Americans, who are the ones who take hostage,
03:13or kidnap to a certain extent the protagonist,
03:16and there everything begins to develop.
03:19That for the rest they speak to him in English,
03:22which does not have to be perfect, with a very marked Latin accent.
03:25That is what I visualized that the writer thought,
03:28and that had given us to see it.
03:31My interest then to shoot the film in English and not in Spanish,
03:34the most attached to the book in that sense.
03:37I have some of the protagonists, or co-protagonists,
03:40who actually had a well-developed English.
03:43For example, my Escobar, one of the leaders,
03:47lived more than a decade in New York,
03:50so he had an accent, or several accents that he could make.
03:53My torturer lived in Washington,
03:56so I was selecting people who had learned the language
04:00in good terms and we could play with those accents.
04:03There are more people who are all fans,
04:06in some way or another, of the writer,
04:09and it generated an additional motivation,
04:12something much stronger, that went beyond a budget or a job,
04:15but it was something much more, I would say, visionary in that sense.
04:18The desire to do something, to give your life a different meaning
04:21for the next few months.
04:24And that worked very well.
04:27The truth is that when they say that less is more,
04:30I don't agree. The truth is that with more budget it's always better.
04:33You're going to have other problems, of course.
04:36But, going back to the beginning,
04:39when I speak a little about the details
04:42that this author has,
04:45I would love to recreate things that are so specific,
04:48but at the same time they are so explicit,
04:51and there is a line between what could be even grotesque
04:54or very sensitive to other people,
04:57that is to play a little with the theater of the mind.
05:00How far can I show? And maybe if I don't show this,
05:03because I don't have a way to do it, but it can turn out better.
05:06It's like a trap that you fall into.
05:09I think you have to do several functions,
05:12develop yourself as much as you can,
05:15if necessary.
05:18In this type of rehearsal, I think it is valid
05:21that one can play a little with different fronts
05:24of the technical aspects, the direction of the photograph,
05:27the lighting, the sound, the editing, the voice production,
05:30etc., each of the stages of the organization.
05:33There is one thing that can allow you to achieve certain things
05:36and naturally you have to have the support of the whole team.
05:39How do I deal with the little budget
05:42with the human resource? What I do is look with
05:45tweezers, which is not easy,
05:48each person who participates in the process.
05:51The human quality and respect of the people
05:54who work on a bi-visual project are the key
05:57to counteract the lack of budget.
06:00On the contrary, sometimes when there is a good budget,
06:03the human resource fails a bit and other problems begin.
06:06In the Dollar Baby you have to take advantage
06:09of manufacturing human teams that are highly motivated,
06:12beyond economic resources,
06:15with a mutual sense of respect, admiration
06:18and a sense of body. It is very teamwork.
06:21It is the way that, at least for me in recent years,
06:24has served me to work with reduced budgets
06:27and have results that seem to be worth much more
06:30or that in other places you cannot do it
06:33because you have very little budget.
06:36Look, I have reflected a little on
06:39scripts that are very well detailed.
06:42Maybe it is the reason,
06:45reading a little here and there,
06:48I agree with many articles that mention
06:51why Stephen King is so sought after
06:54or so required to adapt his works.
06:57Precisely because he is so detail-oriented
07:00that you practically have to enter to produce only.
07:03He describes things a lot,
07:06in great depth, the details.
07:09That is something that must be rescued.
07:12It seems to me that personally
07:15I should try to write just like that,
07:18to give more depth to the characters,
07:21to the situations, to the details
07:24and that makes it much easier for the future
07:27audiovisual product.
07:30I don't know if it's a teaching, but at least a reflection.
07:33And the other thing is that it stays for you
07:36forever.
07:39No one can deny,
07:42regardless of whether we like it more or less,
07:45depending on the person of this author,
07:48that he is the most important living,
07:51not only of the last century, but of what goes on today.
07:54It is indisputable and there are already
07:57a lot of people who follow him.
08:00And a deep learning.
08:03The characters of Stephen King are not free.
08:06When the drama is unleashed,
08:09it is the consequence of a deep development of what happens.
08:12In this same story, Fletcher does not reach
08:15extreme violence out of nowhere.
08:18When we get to the outcome of Fletcher,
08:21or in the room of death, if we keep the original name of the story,
08:24it is because the man has already been vulnerable
08:27in his rights to the extreme.
08:30This need arises,
08:33or this that is intrinsic in the background of every human being,
08:36that goes beyond survival.
08:39It is not a visceral feeling of revenge or free fury.
08:42That made me reflect a lot
08:45about a deep sense of terror.
08:48When I was much younger, I thought that terror was light,
08:51even cheap, or you could underestimate it.
08:54Today I realize that there is a much deeper terror
08:57that has to do with the development, I would say,
09:00of the soul of each character.
09:03It is very different, it is not free violence.
09:06When we reach a degree of violence,
09:09it is because it is the inevitable consequence of a lot of abuses that happened before.
09:12That was what fascinated me the most,
09:15to inculcate a little bit in this huge writer.
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