While on the promotional tour for Take the Lead, Banderas spoke to About.com about working on El Camino de Los Ingleses, a film he’s obviously very passionate about:
Returning to the Director’s Chair and His Hometown: It’s been seven years since Banderas directed Crazy in Alabama starring Melanie Griffith and he found going back behind the camera was an incredible experience. “It’s unbelievable for many reasons. One of the reasons is that I went back to directing to my hometown, Malaga with a Spanish pronunciation with a Spanish company. I went back to 1978, which is the year that I left. So, for 28 years I didn’t go back to my hometown. I went back there for no more than a month or two months and this time I was there for almost eight months and had the opportunity to capture what it was.”
Banderas was still in the process of editing the film here in the States as of this interview, and is hoping to take the finished film on the festival circuit. “We may go to Venice. I think we deserve to go to Venice,” said Banderas. “I think I have the movie in my hands that can be selected in between the 16 movies that can go, but that is my opinion of course. That’s my baby. But I think it has possibilities. I wouldn’t say that, but I think I have something very special on my hands.”
Why Now and Why This Movie?: “This was something I wanted to do from a long ago. When I finished Crazy In Alabama it was my first movie and I wanted to do it, but sometimes it’s really difficult to get away from Hollywood. They pick you up by your hair and they sit you down and they say, ‘You ain’t going anywhere. You have this commitment, this commitment, you have to fulfill that.’ And then you get trapped kind of. So I untrapped myself and I went there, against the opinion of my agents who lose money for me doing that because I don’t make any money for making movies in Spain. I want to continue doing that, so they are going to be very unhappy, but I want to be happy.
I suppose my career in the future is going to go much more in that direction. I won’t stop acting, but may do more theater and make more movies that are important to me. Sometimes people don’t understand why I did that movie. ‘Why did you do that movie, man? That movie isn’t for you.’ And it’s because I wanted to work with a certain director. It happened to me with Brian De Palma, for example. When De Palma offered me ‘Femme Fatale he said, ‘But there is no character here. He’s just a shadow in the background. You don’t see anything about his life.’ I said, ‘I know, I know.’ He said, ‘That is me, that is [what] I have inside of me.’ I said, ‘Can I come here as a student of directing.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Well, I love your movies and I love the way you shoot. I am going to play the character you propose to me, but I am going to bring a notepad everyday.’ And he said, ‘Fine with me.’ That’s what I did and I learned a lot from him. Why he used certain lenses, why he frames like that. What is the meaning of doing that master shot in the middle of the movie, things like that. And it was beautiful.
Sometimes I do things like that and people may not understand it from the outside. In fact, I am not worried about my career at all. I think it’s an act of narcissism to worry so much about your career. [Someone may say], ‘You can’t do that because it’s going to put you down in the eyes of the people. And you are not that. In front of the other people you have to go in this direction.’ I don’t care. I’ve done everything. I’ve had an eclectic career. I’ve done movies for kids. I’ve done underground movies with Almodovar. I’ve done action movies, I’ve done musicals, cartoons like Puss in Boots. I like that. I don’t care what people are going to say when I die. F**k ‘em. I don’t care.”
No Cameos for Banderas: “No, I don’t dare to direct myself. Not yet, maybe more in the future. I would be doing close ups of myself all the time.”
Getting His Young Actors to Bond: “[My film] is a coming of age story - way harder than Take the Lead, totally different in the way that it’s dark and it’s very sexual. But I had to do the same thing, the same process. I brought the kids three weeks before principal photography in Malaga, put them in a hotel and I made them do a lot of activities together. And in two weeks, they were [close]. They called me yesterday when I was coming here. They called me from Madrid and they were all having dinner together. They keep going.”
