Pedro Almodóvar wanted to be a writer from an early age. In 1979, before Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón, he would create an explosive and popular literary character, the actress of pornographic photo novels Patty Diphusa. But Almodóvar ( Calzada de Calatrava, 1949) has written much more. Next to his office he keeps more than a hundred unpublished stories. There are some that are no longer: he publishes El último sueño (Reservoir Books), stories from the late sixties to today which, he says, are the closest thing to an autobiography he will write. Like for example the pages about the day after his mother's death. Or La visita, a preview, decades before, of La mala educación. And stories in which he unites, in every way, Barabbas and Jesus. In Memoria de un día vacío he admits that he has become a solitary expert. And, even, that he gets bored.
In the book he admits that he has turned his gaze towards himself, and has created a darker character, almost the opposite of Patty Diphusa. What was the turning point?
The passage of time itself. And it coincides with the death of my mother at the turn of the millennium. It would have changed anyway, as I have always tried to do in each film, but age does make my stories darker and more intimate. My life in the seventies was choral, always surrounded by people, having fun. Then I also wrote, although I don't know where I got the time, the truth, because I also worked at Telefónica. Well, I used to write there. My life has changed a lot from the eighties to the 2000s. Now it's almost the opposite, much more lonely; I see my friends, but much less.
In the prologue he says that he is more afraid now. of what
It is not a political fear, but a biological one. In the dictatorship, fear could be cut. And there was silence in the families. I was class and social conscious, because being born in a town and in a family with a certain precariousness immediately determines what class you belong to. And I still belong to that class, even if I have money now. Today, as always when there are social problems, populism tries to make us afraid. And I, that fear I felt during the dictatorship, I am not ready to recover it, whatever happens. But then there are the contingencies of life. I have lived much more than half of mine, and this affects me when it comes to living and telling stories. Although I haven't changed since I arrived in Madrid at the age of 18; he already had the same determination and knew absolutely what he wanted to do.
In Vida y muerte de Miguel, a kind of Benjamin Button, he talks about the need he had to escape the rural world.
I hope my people don't feel sorry for them, but from a very young age I had the feeling of being a kind of extraterrestrial, of having been born in a place where I didn't belong. The only time I was very hard on my parents was when I told them I was going to Madrid. My father had found me a job in a bank and I was the last thing he wanted. But, besides, I felt that I really would have starved to death if I had stayed there. When I re-read the story, I remembered where I wrote it, in the backyard, with an Olivetti that my mother had given me, with a butchered rabbit hanging next to it. I am surprised by his reflection on time and the futility of things and people. Suddenly, they disappear, you never see them again and it's like you never knew them.
In the book he explains the day after his mother's death. From her, he says, he learned that reality needs fiction to be more livable.
In the late fifties we had relatives working on an irrigation plan and we went there in search of improvements. We lived in a precarious way, and my mother, always very willing, began to read the letters that arrived to the neighbors who did not know about them. I noticed that sometimes he would improvise and talk about family characters and things that weren't there. Very seriously, even though I was a child, I said to her: "Mom, but how can you say these things?". She said to me: "But did you see how happy they were?". It's the first lesson he gave me, that in life you need to integrate a bit of fiction to make it more livable. And it's not lying or fantasizing.
What has left him the dreary religious education he received?
It turned me into an atheist very early on. Very atrocious things were happening at school, continuous abuse, I was horrified. And consciously or not I tried to misrepresent what I was taught. If he wrote a story about Christ and Barabbas, he would say the opposite. But in the early years when I was writing, I wasn't trying to transgress, because being a transgressor is a moral term. I never wanted to break any rules, that's thinking about good and bad things. He wanted to misrepresent and say the opposite. I felt, I don't know if I held a grudge, but I had been hurt, and I was taking revenge from the little power that a typewriter gives. Today when I read in the newspaper about the problems with the Church due to abuse and that nothing ever happens, I get angry. The Ombudsman believes that the Church will help him, and it never will.
Is it self-critical to write that he has become a solitary expert?
This century I have isolated myself little by little. I haven't become a misanthrope yet, but I have isolated myself more than is advisable. Choosing it myself It's not ideal. I usually work, but at times like Easter I have a really bad time alone in Madrid. And what's more, and it's something I didn't count on because I'm very stinky and I don't like talking about myself, that in the last few films I've had to take myself as a reference; the muse is me If I write something foreign and I don't like it, I put my hand back into my bowels and see what I find.
