jodorowsky sacramental melodrama

7/28/2019 Jodorowsky SACRAMENTAL Melodrama

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and arrange my bones in such a way that I got up completelyunhurt.) I pinch her breast to put her down. Calm.

The black woman brings me lemons. The yellow!I arrange them on the ground in a circle. I kneel in the

center. Swuari position.A professional hair-stylist, almost paralyzed with fright,

approaches to cut my hair.The woman covered with honey comes down from the

roof of the automobile. I dance with her.Sexual desire with dream-like force. Her panties seemed

to sum up all social hypocrisy. I take them off without any

warning. The fabric slips down her honey-covered thighs.Bees. The impact of her black pubis. The submission of thewoman. Her half-closed eyes. Her natural acceptance of nudity.Liberty. Purity. She kneels beside me.

Onto her body, radiating out from her belly, I stick thehair that is being cut from me.

I want to create the impression that her pubic hair isgrowing like a forest and invading her entire body. The haircutters hands are paralyzed with nervousness. The executionerhas to finish shaving my head.

Two Catherine Hartley models, strangers to everything,and frightened to death of soiling their very expensive silkdresses (rented for the occasion) come and go, bringing 250

loaves of bread on stage.Now my brain is on fire. I pull four black snakes out of asilver pot. At first I try to make a hair piece out of them withadhesive tape, but then I tape them onto my chest like twoliving crosses. My perspiration hinders me.

The snakes twist around my hands like live water.Marriage.

I chase the pink woman with the snakes. She hides in theautomobile, like a turtle in its shell. She dances inside.Reminds me of a fish in the aquarium.

I frighten one of the models in green. She drops herbread and jumps back.

A spectator laughs. I throw the bread at her face. (At aparty, several days later, she comes up to me and tells me that

the bread I threw at her gave her a feeling of a communion. Asif I had administered a gigantic host through her skull.)

All of a sudden, lucidity: seeing the public seated therein their arm chairs, paralyzed, hysterical, excited butimmobile, without bodily participation, terrorized by the chaoswhich is about to engulf them; I want to throw the snakes atthem or blow them up.

I restrain myself. I refuse the easy scandal of collectivepanic.

Calm. Violence of the music. Amplifiers at full blast.I put on orange pants, shirt and shoes. The color of a

buddhist burned alive.I leave and return with a heavy cross made of two

wooden beams. On it, a chicken crucified upside down, ass inthe air, with two nails in its claws, like a christ with its head cutoff. I had let it rot for a week. On the cross, two signs to directtraffic: below, a sign with an arrow which reads Exit above;over the chicken, a sign which reads No Exit. I give the crossto the silver woman. I bring on another one. Two directionalsigns: always a sign below which directs you up; always a signabove which forbids leaving.

I give the cross to one of the white women. I bring on athird cross. I give it to the other white woman.

The two women mount the crosses, turning them intogigantic phalluses; they fight; one of the two shoves the point

of the wood in the window of the automobile and goes throughmovements of a sex act with the vehicle.

I move the basin from the front to the rear of the cross.The crucified chicken is shaken over the spectators heads. Welet the crosses fall.

I choose the musician with the longest hair. I lift him up.He is as rigid as a mummy.

I dress him up in a popes costume. I cover him withstoles.

The women, kneeling, open their mouths and stick outtheir tongues as far as possible.

A new character appears: a woman in a tubular costume,like a standing worm. With this costume I wanted to give theidea of a papal form in the process of rotting. A pope goneCamembert.

The musician, with the gestures of a priest, opens a jar ofpreserved fruit. He places a yellow apricot-half in the mouthsof each of the women. They swallow it in one gulp.

Host in heavy syrup!A pregnant-looking woman enters. Cardboard stomach.

The Pope notices that she has a plaster hand. He takes thehatchet and smashes it to pieces. He opens her stomach with apick (I have to control him to keep him from really woundingher).

He puts his hands inside her stomach and pulls out manylight bulbs. The woman cries out as if she were giving birth.She gets up, takes a rubber baby out of her bosom and hits thePope in the chest with it. It falls to the ground. The womanleaves. I pick up the baby. I open its belly with a scalpel andpull out a living fish twisting in agony.

End of the music. Brutal drum solo.The fish continues to twist; the drummer shakes

champagne bottles until they explode.Seeing the foam covering everyone, the Pope has an

epileptic fit. The fish dies. The drums are silent. The animal isthrown off the ramp; it falls in the middle of the audience.Presence of death.

Everyone exits but me.

Jewish music. Excruciating hymn. Slowness.Two immense white hands throw me a cows head.

Sixteen pounds. Its whiteness, its wetness; its eyes, its tongue.My arms feels its coldness. I become cold myself. For a

moment, I become the head.I feel my body: a corpse in the shape of a cows head. I

fall to my knees. I want to scream out. I cant because the headhas its mouth closed. I shove my index finger in its eyes. Myfingers slip around the eyeballs. I sense nothing except myfinger a sensitive satellite circling around a dead planet. I feellike the cows head: Blind. The desire to see.

I pierce the tongue with an awl; I open the jaws. I pullout the tongue. I direct the head, mouth open, towards heaven,

while I look up, mouth open.A scream which is not mine, but the corpses. Once

again, I see the public. Immobile, frozen, made of cows headskin. We are all the corpse. I throw the head into the middle ofthe room. It is the center of our circle.

Enter a rabbi (the immense white hands were his).He is wearing a black coat, a black hat, Santa Claus

white beard. His walk is that of Frankensteins monster.He stands on a silver basin. He pulls three bottles of milk

from a leather valise.He turns them over on his hat.

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I press my cheek to his face. His face is white. We bathe.Baptism.

He grabs me by the ears and kisses me passionately onthe mouth. His hands grasp my buttocks. The kiss lasts severalminutes. We tremble, electric. Kaddish.

With a black pencil, he draws two lines from the cornersof my mouth to my chin. My jaw now looks like aventriloquists dummys.

He sits on the butchers block. One of his hands pressesagainst my back as if he wanted to push through, cut the spinalcord, put his fingers inside my rib cage and squeeze my lungs,

forcing them to cry out or pray. He makes me move. I feel likea mechanism, a robot. Anguish. Need to no longer be amachine.

I slip my hand between his legs. I open his fly.I put hand inside and with an insane force I rip out a

pigs foot, like the one which I imagined to be my fathersphallus when I was five. I put my other hand in and pull out apair of bulls testicles. I spread his arms out in a cross. Therabbi screams as if he had been castrated. He seems dead.

The Jewish music gets louder;Each time it becomes more melancholy.A butcher appears wearing a hat, coat, black beard, his

apron covered with blood.

He lays the rabbi down and begins the autopsy: He putshis hands inside the coat and pulls out an enormous cowsheart. Smell of meat.

I nail the heart on the cross with the rotting chicken.From under the rabbis vest he extracts a liver and a pair

of inflated lungs; I nail them to the cross. A long piece of gut. Inail it up.

The butcher exits. Terrified, I lift the rabbis hat. I pullout his brain. I smash it on my head.

I take the cross and place it near the rabbi. I take a longstrip of red plastic from the valise and tie the old man to thecross which is covered with guts.

I lift the whole thing: wood, meat, clothing, body, andthrow it off the ramp into the audience. (The whole affair

weighed about 250 pounds: in spite of the violence of the blow,the man felt nothing, and was not harmed in the least.)

Enter the white, black, pink, and silver women. Theykneel.

Waiting.Enter a new character: a woman covered in black satin

cut in triangles. A kind of spiders web. A six foot ovalinflatable raft is attached to her costume and looks like anenormous vagina. Orange plastic filled with air. The bottom ofthe boat is white plastic.

Symbol: the hymen.Dance. She beckons me. When I approach, she pushes

me away. When I move away, she follows me. She climbs on

me. The raft covers me completely. I take up the hatchet. I ripthrough the white bottom. Scream. I rip open the web and takerefuge in the vagina. I stay in between her legs, hidden by theblack satin. From a sac which she has hidden near her stomach,I pull out forty living turtles which I throw to the audience.

They seem to gush out of the enormous vagina. Likeliving stones, you might say.

I begin to be born. Cries of a woman giving birth. Awoman sobs. I fall to the ground in the middle of glass fromelectric bulbs, pieces of plates, feathers, blood, splinters ofburned out fireworks (while my head was being shaved Iexploded 36, one for each year of existence), pools of honey,

pieces of apricots, lemons, bread, milk, meat, rags, slivers owood, mails, sweat: I am born again into the world. My criesound like those of a baby or an old man. The old rabbmaking desperate efforts, jumps around, attached to the croslike a pig in agony. He gets free from the plastic strip. He exit

The woman-mother pushes the black woman to me. I liher up. I carry her to the center of the stage with her armspread. A cadaver-cross: the black paint suggests a cremationmy own death.

In giving me life, the woman had thrown death in marms. I begin to burn.

The women tie us together with bandages. I am attacheto her at the waist, the arms, the legs and the neck. This boncorpse is incrusted in me and I in she. We are like two Siamestwins: almost a single being. We improvise a dance, slowlyWe sprawl on the ground. The movements are neither hers nomine, but both at once. We can control them.

The white and pink women pour mint, currant and lemosyrup on us. The sticky liquid, green-red-yellow covers umixed with dust it forms a kind of mud.

Magma.The curtain begins to fall slowly. Our two united bodie

gripping each other, like two columns. We want to get up; wfall.

The curtain falls.(All the elements employed in the Sacramentmelodrama were thrown off the ramp into the audienccostumes, hatchets, containers, animals, bread, automobiparts; etc. Great squabble among those present who fought likbirds of prey over the division of the spoils. Nothinremained.)

Translated by Marc Estrin

Pages 75-83CITY LIGHTS JOURNALNumber 3Edited by: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

1966City Lights Books

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"YOUR BRAIN IS A CRAZY GUY"[originally published in Mean Magazine #6; Dec '99-Jan '00]http://www.jaybabcock.com/jodomean.html

Visionary Poly-Artist ALEXANDRO JODOROWSKYtalks with Jay Babcock about psychomagic, shamanism, videogames and Marilyn Manson--as well as his spirit-bending filmsand comics.

A man holds all the universe within him; and art is hisview of it. But in the work of some artists spiral vast galaxiesof meaning and imagination that dwarf by many magnitudes

the plebian earthbound work of others.Seventy-year-old Alexandro Jodorowsky-post-Surrealist

filmmaker, author, puppeteer, Tarot expert, post-Jungianpsychological theorist, playwright, novelist-is one such artist.

Screen Jodorowsky's El Topo or Holy Mountain, readThe Incal of The Meta-Baron comics, or listen to one of hisinterviews or lectures, and you encounter a one-man spiritualmulticulture at play: the anthropological erudition andenthusiasm of Joseph Campbell roughhousing with anoutrageous artistic sensibility that begins at Bunuel, Beckettand Breton and ends in some psychedelic sci-fi super-space:the kind of man who can screenwrite "He lifts up the robe anddraws a pistol" and then comment Talmud-style in the margins,

"I don't know if he draws it from a gunbelt or from hisunconscious."

Unfortunately, for all but the most clued-in and hookedup in the English-sqawking world, most of Jodorowsky'sartistic and philosophical output of the last 30 years has beentantalizingly unavailable: films have gone unissued on video,comics and other written work have gone untranslated ordropped out of print. But, finally, at the turn of the century, thesituation is changing.

Jodorowsky's "lost" 1967 film Fando y Lis has beenreissued on DVD by San Francisco-based Fantoma Films (whohave generously included a director's comments track byJodorowsky and the excellent, full-length '95 French

documentary La Constellation Jodorowsky), Holy Mountainhas been released (by England's T/K) for the first time (legally)on video, and, perhaps most signifitcantly, the U.S. branch ofHumanoides Associes has begun an ambitious program ofprinting English-language editions of Jodorowsky's prodigiousgraphic novel output.

So the time seemed right for Mean to give the endlesslyaphoristic, giddily profound Mr. Jodorowsky the kind of forumin American publications he enjoyed in the early '70s when ElTopo and Holy Mountain were consecutive midnight moviesuccesses and the Chilean-born director was regarded by manysurviving counter-culture types (John Lennon, Peter Fonda andDennis Hopper among them) and journalists as the Guy WhoJust May Have the Answer. So we rang Alexandro in Paris atmidnight recently to find out what he's up to, what he'sthinking and get him to reflect a bit on his long and storiedcareer, even if he once said, "As soon as I define myself, I amdead."

That said, let us attempt a synopsis for the new initiates.Born in 1929 to Russian Jewish parents, Jodorowsky grew upin Iquique, Chile, a barren, rocks-and-pebble seaside villagewhere (Jodorowsky claims) it has not rained for 300 years. Asa child he developed a love for fantastic films like FlashGordon, Zorro and especially The Hunchback of Notre Dameand Frankenstein ("I love the monster!" he says), encounteredethnic differences and (he was cicrumcised, his friends were

not) and witnessed the goings-on you'd expect of a port townwith a prostitutes' avenue-although his story of seeing a deadsailor's penis in a box (which he and his friends buried in thesurf) sounds like the kind of experience only a Jodorowsky (ora Fellini) could have.

Jodorowsky studied philosophy and psychology for twoyears at the University of Santiago before quitting; "I hateduniversity, so I made puppets," Jodorowsky says on the Fandoy Lis'commentary track, matter-of-factly explaining histransition from student to marionette. By the time he left Chilein 1953, Jodorowsky had a 50-person company devoted to

radical ideas about theatre ("Artaud was my Bible") and a hostof new ambitions. Over the next decade, Jodorowsky studiedwith the mime guru Etienne Decroux in Paris, mimeographedMarcel Marceau's famous "The Cage," toured the world, anddirected the legendary Maurice Chevalier in the theatre.

By the mid-'60s, Jodorowsky had formed a loose,outrageous conspiracy of post-Surrealist, Absurdist artists likeplaywright and author Fernando Arrabal they jokingly dubbedthe Panic Movement. The Panic Movement, Arrabal explainsin La Constellation Jodorowsky, "was based on the explosionof reason. We knew what has become obvious for sciencetoday: that we are unable to explain the world solely throughthe means of reason.

We are not soldiers for confusion. What we are for isuncertainty, the impossibility to explain the fact that time andspace is an illusion." The Panic artists' most infamous eventwas 1965's four-hour "Sacramental Melodrama," perhaps theworld's first "happening": a live performance involving nudity,self-flagellation, turtles, gelatin, live rock n roll, raw meat andplenty of leather.

On his return to Mexico in the late-'60s, Jodorowskywrote three novels, started writing and drawing a subversiveweekly comic strip ("Panic Fables") in the right-wingnewspaper The Herald, and formed a popular avant gardetheatre company that performed the works of Beckett, Ionesco,Adamov, Strindberg and their absurd ilk. Eventually, in 1967,Jodorowsky adapted one such play, Arrabal's Fando y Lis, to

film, subsituting his typical resourcefulness for his lack offormal training in cinema: he tied himself to his camermanwith a rubber strap in order to spontaneously place shots,employed a non-professional cast that included his wife, hisfriends, local thieves and prostitutes, a physician, and a groupof underground transvestites, and shot without license onweekends in an abandoned mine with a budget of $100,000.

The result was a surreal parade of sacrilege: sex foreplayin a cemetary, on-camera blood-drinking, Mexico's traditionalwhite-haired matron depicted as a lascivious gambler and abizarre scene involving baby serpents and a female toy doll. Bythe time the film had passed the one-hour mark during itspremiere at the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival, most of those in

attendance had left the theatre, outraged by what they hadwitnessed on screen. Afterwards, Jodorowsky escaped therock-throwing rabble that had gathered outside the theatre byhiding on the floor of a getaway limo. Some of the film's"actors" sided wioth popular opinion against Jodorowsky;meanwhile Mexico's most famous film director declared thathe was prepared to murder Jodorowsky as a point of nationalhonor. The film was soon banned in Mexico; a severely editedversion was eventually released in the U.S.

Jodorowsky was now commited to film."Vishkin [the next film's would-be financier] and I got

together on a Monday," remembers Jodorowsky. "I had nothing

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thought out and Vishkin didn't have a penny. And we said,'Let's make a film.' Then I found the idea and Vishkin foundthe money." Nine months later, El Topo was completed. Thisone-of-a-kind Eastern-as Western metaphysical allegory, whichJodorowsky scripted, designed, directed, scored and starred in,was an immediate hit on New York's nascent midnight moviecircuit , playing to a sold-out Elgin Theatre for seven straightmonths.

Celebrity enthusiasts for El Topo included Yoko Ono,Bob Dylan, Sam Fuller, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, a youngPeter Gabriel, and Yoko Ono and John Lennon. It would be

Lennon who would secure the $1 million budget forJodorowosky's next film, via the ABKCO, the financialmanagement company for the Beatles and the Rolling Stonesrun by the notorious Allen Klein.

"It was very easy to do [El Topo]," said Jodorowsky in a1971 conversation, published in El Topo: A Book of the Film,that outlined his radical theories of cinema in general and hisambitions for his next film (1973's Holy Mountain) inparticular. "I think we had a kind of communication workingamong us, a very magical communication. When you live thepicture, when you are not acting, there is no dichotomy...noalienation. What you are doing is real. Because I think that ifyou want a picture to change the world, you must first change

the actors in the picture. And before doing that, you mustchange yourself. Right? This must be done. With every newpicture, I must change myself, I must kill myself, and I must beborn. I must kill the actors and they must be born. And then theaudiences, the audiences who go to the movies, must beassassinated, killed, destroyed, and they must leave the theatreas new people. That is a good picture....When I direct a film,everybody-myself included-falls into such trances that there isdead silence, because our lives are at stake."

For Holy Mountain, a film (very generally) about thequest for enlightenment and immortality, the directorunderwent a long series of training in different spiritual artsand rituals that included a week without sleep under thesupervision of a Zen master, LSD trips with a hippie guru, etc.

The film's crew lived together in isolation under Jodorowsky'sdirection for one month. And finally, they were ready to makewhat is arguably Jodorowsky's cinematic masterpiece, apulsing, mindbending, unforgettable fantasma of metaphysicalideas and extravagant, super-real tableaux.

"Jodorowsky is insanely talented," says Arrabal inConstellation. "Quite literally, he's talented to the point ofmadness. But as with all madmen there's a method to hismadness. He's a mathematical madman. He's a divine madman.He's a constructivist madman."

So if Jodorowsky's films are created in a trance--he sayshe cannot remember his intention, that it is essentially allintuition, that he is speaking from his unconscious to the

audience's unconscious, using a culturally loaded symboliclanguage--but they are also, at least to Jodorowsky, eminentlytranslatable. "You ask me about any symbol you like," he saysin The Book of El Topo. "I know the meaning of every symbolthere is. So do you, because the meaning of every symbol isrecorded in your brain cells. It's already been written down.Everything can be read.

Everything is a book. You can read a hat, shoes...anumbrella."

Jodorowsky's other films, with the exception of 1989'sreturn-to-form Santa Sangre, have been disappoinments: hisnow-legendary 1975 version of Dune was scotched after pre-

production; a children's fable entitled Tusk was such a disastethat all prints were quickly destroyed; and 1993's The RainboThief was strictly a work-for-hire affair ("It was like receivin300 blows with a stick every day! I hated Peter O'Toole! wanted to KICK Peter O' Toole!") But to fixate oJodorowsky-as-filmmaker is to substitute a melodramatic losmaster career arc for the truer--and far more interesting--storyThe disaster that was Dune (for more details, see the unediteQ& A below) led directly to Jodorowsky's involvement European comics via French artist (and Dune storyboardeJean 'Moebius' Giraud. The two initially collaborated on Th

Incal, a science fiction romp doubling as a journey of seldiscovery. Many more Jodorowsky-scripted graphic albumswith both Moebius and other big-name European comics artislike Zoran Janetov, Fred Beltran and Juan Giminez--havfollowed since.

Meanwhile, Jodorowsky has cemented his reputation aone of the world's leading interpreters of the Tarot, writtenovels and plays, given a series of free weekly lectures sinc1981 called The Cabaret Mystique, and developed a posJungian system of psychological therapy he cal"psychomagic."

"It is a continuation of my artistic work, and I don't sewhy an artist shouldn't be interested in therapy," Jodorowsk

says in Constellation. "All of our problems originated from thway we were born. And the way we were born depends on themotional relationships between our mother and father.realized that we had a family unconscious... I am a thinkinfamily. My illnesses are created by my family. My behaviothe way I live, my conception of money, my emotional ansexual relationships are all created by my family. Indeed thpsychological and genetic field I come from marks my wholife... If I want to understand my self, I have to understand mfamily tree, because I am permanently possessed, as in voodooEven when we cut ties with our family, we carry it. In ouunconscious, the persons are always alive. The dead live witus.

"Exploring the family tree means engaging in a fierc

battle with the monster, like a nightmare, so that the monstecan give you the treasure.

The family tree is a real nightmare where we finsadomasochism everywhere, narcissism everywhere, selhatred everywhere. So with the exrement that is the family trewe have to produce the treasure gold."

Following is a slightly edited transcript of my midnighphone conversation with Jodo, integrated with a few follow-uemail exhanges. Special thanks to Dorna Khazemi for helpinwith translation and transcription.

YOU ARE UP AT MIDNIGHT?Yes, I work. I do not sleep.YOU WORK AT NIGHT?

Yes, I like that. There are no sounds from the street. It better. [snip]

I will try my best because I don't speak English--I spealike Speedy Gonzalez.

OK. I'VE JUST FINISHED READING THE INCAFOR THE FIRST TIME. I GUESS THE BOOKS THAT ARCOMING OUT, WHICH I HAVEN'T YET READ, ARRELATED TO 'THE INCAL.' Yes, I write a whole universeThe characters I developed, those characters, that society. Thmoment of the galaxy...

THE METABARONS--

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The genealogical tree of the MetaBaron, of hisfamily...And then I developing another series ThePantechnologist..the Technopriests, I develop that. And someother books.

IT'S THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE THAT STARTEDOUT OF THIS COLLABORATION WITH MOEBIUS?

With Moebius, and then with Giminez, Beltran,Janjetov... Not only Moebius.

BUT THOSE WERE THE INITIAL BOOKS.The initial, yes, Moebius.A LOT OF AMERICANS KNOW YOU ONLY FOR

YOUR FILMS, NOT YOUR COMICS.Yes, I know.BUT YOU'VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN

COMICS, RIGHT?Always, before I make movies, I do comics. I like that.

For me it's an art as movies. It's an activity. I don't see who isbetter. It's a way of expression, no? For me the modern novelare graphic novels, no?

AND WITH FILM, YOU ALWAYS HAVE TOWRESTLE WITH THE STUDIO--

With the studio, the producer, the industry, the money.You cannot express yourself.

AND WITH COMICS, YOU'VE FOUND IT MUCH

EASIER--Yes! Because you have only the artist, you and theeditor...

AND THE LIMITS OF YOUR IMAGINATION.And nobody to put on limits. The only limit we have is

to faith. Because is a more expensive than to publish a novel. Itis original film, you cannot continue it. I am liking Europevery, very well. It is better than other countries, in Europe.France.

YOU ARE LIVING IN PARIS, NOW?Yes.HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?Oh, 20 years.YOU'VE LIVED ALL OVER THE WORLD--

Yes. I don't know what nationality I have! I was born inChile but when I think about myself, I don't have a nationality.

IS IT GOOD TO NOT HAVE A NATIONALITY?It's good, but not at the moment. [laughter] Maybe in

two more centuries it will be good. Now is very good for me,but to live in the world is difficult, because now the world islike the Olympiad--you need to have a country. But in my mindI don't have a country.

YES. CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUTTHE PANIC MOVEMENT?

That was a moment of my life when I want to...this is inthe '60s, eh?...I was going to the Surrealist group with AndreBreton. And at this time I was fortunate to meet good artists--

Arrabal and Topov. And right then I leave the Surrealistmovement--in that time, Andre Breton was very old. He had alot of limits now, because the Surrealists were a Romanticmovement, and they didn't like science fiction, they didn't likerock, they didn't like pornography, they didn't like a lot ofthings of the world, no? We started to go further than this andwe made the Panic.

WHAT WAS THE MOVEMENT? THERE WEREHAPPENINGS? WHAT DID THE PANIC ARTISTS MAKE?

We made Happenings. Before the Happenings, we makea that was called ..ephermis...ephermetic... Which wassomething like performance, no? In that time we did that. We

thought the Panic artist, he make everything: movies, comics,poetry, painting, everything, no? Poly-artist!

THE NAME COMES FROM THE GREEK--The word Pan means "totality."AH. NOW WHAT HAPPENED WITH THAT

MOVEMENT, DID IT JUST END AFTER A COUPLAYEARS?

No. Because this movement was a joke! We didn'tbelieve in that. We made that in order to laugh at our culture.People speak about Panic...we never make meetings, only wewent to restaurant and laughed. We loved making jokes. Later

we have a lot of Panic followers...painters, writers, people saythey're Panics. But for us it was a real joke.

OK. SO THAT WAS AFTER THE SURREALISTS.YOU WERE EMBRACING ALL THE THINGS THATWERE EXCITING YOU IN THE POPULAR CULTURE.

Yes.ROCK N ROLL, COMICS..All that in that time, yes. We liked books, Little Richard,

things like, no? [laughs]DO YOU FOLLOW WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE

POPULAR CULTURE RIGHT NOW?Now in the pop culture I have a big interest in the

interviews of Marilyn Manson. I like this guy. I find him very

interesting when he make interviews. I think this is one fellowwho is interesting for me. What he says, he is very artistic. Hisclips [videos] are very artistic. Some person cannotmisunderstand this guy. I don't know what is his musical value,but I like his optical values. He always is breaking limits, no?In what he says. I think he is not good for the moral and thingslike that, no? Art is always amoral. And he seems apersonal,this person. You cannot know who he is! Evil doesn't existthere. He is like a product, he is not like a human being. He'ssomething who is further than a human being. And that isimportant. He's supposed to have a mask, no? All the time he isan actor, he's a transvestite, but not woman, he's a transvestiteof something that is not human. And then for me, it isespecially artistic, what he does.

SIMILAR TO DAVID BOWIE IN THE '70S?Further than David Bowie. David Bowie is still human.

You can identify David Bowie, who he is. There's nomysteries, now.

YES, NOW. BUT IN THE '70S--In the 70s he was very interesting. He was important in

the 1970s. Now he is ...Marilyn Manson is going further--his interviews are

literally fantastic. I think he is a kind of genius, literally...YOU'RE ALMOST 70 NOW, RIGHT?Almost, yes. But I am not senile! At all.ARE YOU TREATED NOW LIKE ONE OF THE

WISE OLD MEN FROM YOUR FILMS?

LIsten, life is very, very beautiful. [laughs] In the centerof the horror, of the civilization, there is the happiness to bealive. This is a happiness, when you can create a world, no?,and you have a public, it is fantastic.

SO YOU'RE FEELING VERY HAPPY THESE DAYS?I always were happy. [laughs] I think I am idiotically

optimistic.DO YOU STILL FEEL LIKE YOU ARE LEARNING

THINGS?Yes! I am learning all of the time.WHAT ARE YOU LEARNING RIGHT NOW? WHO

ARE YOU LEARNING FROM?

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I am making a big, big study... Art? I don't need to studyart. No? Because art you are doing, it's the way you develop.But in another way, you can study things. Like the Tarot, themeaning of the Tarot. From there I went to psychology, and Iworked with the magic and psychology. I inventedPsychomagic.

CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THAT,BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOURWORK THERE?

It's a very, very long to speak about that...IT'S OKAY..

In Mexico, I knew a lot of old men...in the city ofMexico there are a lot of popular persons who, healing persons,no? They make phony miracles, no?

But--even if what they do is not real, the person who arein this, believes, they are good for the peoples.

SO EVEN IF IT IS NOT REAL, IF IT HAS A GOODEFFECT--

Yes, they do it. Better than medicine! Because they usefaith. Then I start to study psychological method they use. AndI apply that to psychoanalysis.

I create a therapeutic path that is Psychomagic. I usethe--how to say?

English is very difficult for me--I use the actions which

the people use in the superstition, I use the actions, I use thesame elements that we know is phony. We know that, no? Thatis the art. That is the language to speak to the unconscious ofthe person. It is magical-like.

AND THIS WAS SUCCESSFUL?Very! Very, a big success. I think because I make a

book, Psychomagic. I have a lot of followers of that, in Europe,in Spain, in Chile, in Mexico, in France, in Italy. A lot of theGestalt therapists used that now. From there I start to study alot of things like that, no?

NOW, WHEN WERE YOU DEVELOPING THEPSYCHOMAGIC? THE '70S?

No, no, the '80s.I'M SORRY, I DON'T KNOW ALL OF YOUR

HISTORY.You are not obliged to know! [laughter]SO WE ARE ALMOST TO THE YEAR 2000--When I was in the year 1980, I make nothing when I

went to 1981. We went one year to the other, this is all. Nowthere is this craziness. When we go from 1999 to the year 2000,is to go from one year to another. It is same thing--is nothing!Is nothing! It is going from one year to the other.

Because time is not divided into millenniums--thatdoesn't exist. For me, it is very natural. I am going from oneyear to the other year, so what is this thing. It doesn't meannothing to me! I am not proud to be in the 2000 year. What thedifference? It's a number!

IN THE INCAL BOOKS, YOU SAID YOU READMICKEY SPILLANE FOR INSPIRATION ANDGUIDANCE--

I read all the book of Mickey Spillane. Because I want tohave that rhythm, I want to have something there. ReadingSpillane, I got the timing of "The Incal."

THE STRUCTURE OF IT--Yes, yes.SUSPENSE--Yes.AH.

For other series I did, I had other inspirations. For THMETA-BARON, I read all the tragedies, the Greek tragedies.read from that. Then I make The MetaBaron, because that is tragedy. It's a tragic thing. A Greek tragedy from the futurBut Incal is more than a thriller, but this is why I read MickeSpillane.

WHAT ABOUT THE TECHNO-PRIEST BOOKS?The Techno-Priest I write about the whole new industr

of the CD-ROM, the new games in the world. The world igoing to be dominated by the games, now. Video games. Bumore advanced than video games. They are audiogram game

no? The games directs the galaxies, and the ruler of the galaxare the businessman, who is the Techno Priest. Businebecame religion.

I THINK WE HAVE THAT IN AMERICA, NOW.Yeah, you have that and you don't realize. [laughs] I

America the god is the dollar, no? That is God. At one time thdollar will be sacred. And the industry will be the Church. ThaI am doing. Then the Techno Priest is the history of the higpriest of that church, that industrial church. You need to learto know how to make games, how to use the humanity, how tconduct the humanity to make the games, and to buy thgames, etc. It is very interesting.

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN DESIGNING VIDE

GAMES YOURSELF?Yes. Last year I did in L.A. They're doing that now.went there and proposed, I say, Listen, I want to make this typof story, are you interested? They said, Yes, sure. I made twgames of, and I am making a game of the Meta-Baron, thethey are doing. I think, "There is a new artform." Verinteresting.

AND IF YOU COMBINE THE GAME WITH THINTERNET--

Yes. It is normal. Why is important? Because in thfuture world, the humanity will work less and less. And wihave more and more time for them, the games. And then wwill get bored. See my meaning? We are animals, we arbored. And then the games will be the most important thing.

You know now, the world, no? All the world we havare games. We see the world through television, like gameYou are in America, you know that.

You have the live television--when a person is killinsomebody, you see that on the television, you can follow thaLife is becoming a show, a game, no? More and more.

SO YOU HAVE TO DESIGN A BETTER GAME--Yes I think it is important. An artist needs to go there.WHAT IS THE KEY TO MAKING A GOOD VIDE

GAME?A video game ...you need to realize there is not only on

style of video game. You need to know all the different typeof video games, the different constructions. You have the vide

games--you need to kill all kind of things. You are a killer. Raa-tat-tat. [laughs] Then there are the combat. You are fightinand playing, any kind of fight. That is not interesting. Then yohave the game where you need to discover how to go from onside to the other, no? You need to choose the way A, the waB, the way C. You have chosen, like a tree. You go to the righor to the left. You construct if like a tree. There are othegames where you make a universe, and you put insidcharacters and then they start to move as a world. That iinteresting for me.

THAT WOULD SEEM TO BE THE GAME FOYOU--

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You create a universe, but you do not direct thecharacters. They will attempt to move. And then there is thecontent of the games which is very important. In the future youwill have one million players in a game, or 2 million, or 20million playing that game. There also the game you makedistant worlds where you are another living in the life inanother world, you know?

You need to choose what kind of game you want to do.SO I ASSUME YOU'D BE INTERESTED IN THE

GAME WHERE YOU CREATE THE WHOLE UNIVERSE--I prefer the games which are a mystery. You give to the

person a lot of choice. But you limit the choice in some way.It's a new way to tell a mystery. It's a multidimensionalmystery, it's a new way to construct a mystery, because in thenovel, the comics, the movies, you have one mystery, no? Inthe video game, now, there is another possibility: you willchoose the point of view from where you will see the picture.No? We are coming to a new way to tell these stories.Humanity never knew that way to tell stories. You can tell amystery from different point of view in the same moment. It'simportant, it's a real revolution.

WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT?Because all the life we have is made with the mind. The

world is what we think the world is. No? Revolution doesn't

exist, because the revolution is fake. It's a failure, revolution.You change one thing for another thing.Humanity cannot evolve with revolution. Humanity

cannot evolve without mutation, you know? WithTransformation. The games will change, will open the mind ofthe individual or the citizen, will give a freedom from theworld. There is change now. It's important. But these things aregood or are bad. The personal telephone did all kind of things-- open the way of communication, no? I want to open a way tofeel the world, to act in the world. What I am saying now isimportant. We will very soon be rid of television. Televisionwill die in order to be born another kind of communicationwho will be more complicated than television. It is veryexciting, very nice--very dangerous, also. Because you can be

manipulated very easily. You can lose your freedom.Everything will change. Life will change, politics will change,economy will change. We are going through a mutation.

PEOPLE WILL EXIST IN THIS SPACE RATHERTHAN INSIDE A COUNTRY, RIGHT?

Yes, right. Now in this moment, I am speaking with you.We are very, very far and we are speaking. I am there and youare here. In the net you can make music, you can do thattoday--different countries! You can write books! You will beable to do things human beings have never been able to dobefore. That is good!

YES. NOW, I READ THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLYWORKING ON A FILM WITH CARO?

I did the screenplay. My work is finished, I wrote thescript.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?He wanted to make something impossible--an actor who

gets lost in the universe. And that is all! Like one actor. Andthen I say, "Well, is difficult to make a picture for only oneactor."

BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU DID WITH MARCELMARCEAU--

Ah, well...When I write it for Caro, the one actormultiplies himself in the time, no? [Caro] says, "This isimpossible to do." So, I did it. I write it.

IS THE FILM GOING TO BE MADE?They will do it, but the picture takes four years til they

do it. It's a question of time, from the script, from the earlyphase, there is a lot of time.

RIGHT. WHAT ELSE ARE YOU WORKING ON ATTHE MOMENT?

Listen, in just this moment, I am very busy making thecomics because it is a big success. And then I make sevenseries, different series. Every month until the end of the year, Ihave a book who's coming, one book every month. And thenalso I write novels--they're going very well in Spanish, in

French and in Italian, and German, no? You will know mybooks in the United States one day maybe. Also I finish atheatre play they will show in Italy.

A lot of things like that. I have my therapies. I have nottime to make other things. Maybe I will start another picture, Iwill do another picture, but is difficult to do a picture. First, ittakes a whole year to do it, no? Then you need to fight againststudio people because the industry doesn't want a personality tomake a picture, they want a product.

And more and more the goals are collective struggles,no? And more and more expensive! It's difficult, but it'spossible that the capital, the money, is difficult to obtain, youneed to have agreements with televisions and bankers and they

will change your script and you cannot doing what you want!That is the thing, no? I admire the person who make Matrix orStarship Troopers, things like that, no? Pictures like that I likea lot, myself. They are industry products, but they are good.

THEY HAPPEN IN SPITE OF THE INDUSTRY, NOTBECAUSE OF THE INDUSTRY.

Yes! That is not for me now.WILL THERE BE A SEQUEL TO 'EL TOPO'? I'VE

SEEN THE TITLES "SON OF EL TOPO"AND "EL TORO" MENTIONED--I won't do a conventional "Part II". I wrote a script

named Abelcain, which could be the story of the Sons of ElTopo. I've been looking for five years for a producer to investfive million dollars in the project. Impossible.

AH. YOUR COMICS ARE SET IN THE FUTURE,WHEREAS EL TOPO AND HOLY MOUNTAIN WEREAPPARENTLY IN THE PRESENT--

No, you see now, there are still, they are not old, becausethe present was not a real present. It was the same world--like afairy tale, was out of reality. I don't like to make an art that's inreality. Realism I don't like. I don't like! I dislike. I like in thefuture.

FOR SOME REASON WE CAN'T SEE HOLYMOUNTAIN IN THE UNITED STATES...

This is because Allen Klein.WHAT IS THE DEAL? THAT GUY SEEMS LIKE A

VERY BAD MAN--

He's a bad man. Listen, I don't know why he hate me. Hewant to kill El Topo, he want to kill The Holy Mountain. Hetried to kill that, but it's impossible because it's full of pirates,the world. And all the world see my picture in pirate. Pirateseverywhere! Now there are pirates in England, very goodcopies. He cannot stop that, he tried for 20 or 30 years he triedto stop this picture, he cannot do it.

HE'S A REAL SCOUNDREL.Yes, he's a monster!HE SEEMS TO HAVE DONE THIS TO A LOT OF

PEOPLE.

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I think he has an illness of power. No? And then he camewith an ego trip with me. He wanted to talk to me, he wantedme to make pornographic pictures. And then I went out. I sayNo, he want me to make a pornography, so I escape from him.And then he says this: "You don't want to work for me, we killyour work." That is so! For me, he's a criminal. When you tryto kill a art, you are a killer, a criminal. For me I condemn himto be killed! Really! He deserves that, to be condemned to bekilled!

KENNETH ANGER IS ALSO UPSET WITH ALLENKLEIN FOR SOME REASON--

He's a criminal! Allen Klein is a real criminal, he needsto be killed.

UM. YOU CAME INTO CONTACT WITH THE GUYTHROUGH JOHN LENNON, RIGHT?

Yes, John Lennon liked El Topo. He saw El Topo inNew York at the Indian Theatre. And then it started. And thenthrough Allen Klein, because Lennon have Apple...He hadApple give me one million dollars to do The Holy Mountain.That's what happened.

I ALSO WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT--How, where you will put all that, it's impossible!WELL, WE HAVE A SPECIAL MAGAZINE...[snip]Ah! Well, okay.

I DID HAVE A COUPLE QUESTIONS FROMFRIENDS...ARE YOU STILL A CHILEAN CITIZEN?I went out of Chile in 1953 and then I was 40 years

without go. And then I went out to Chile before Allende and Icame when Pinochet was finished. Now I go, every year I gofor ten days, because they publish my books there.

And every year they publish one book, I go to Chile. Iam hero in Chile!

[laughs] Also I am French. I have dual nationalities.NOW, A LOT OF YOUR FILMS AND COMICS ARE

ASSOCIATED WITH DRUG USE.Drug use? Listen. Mmm. That was the culture. The drug

culture was the '60s, was like that. But that is not my world,you know? I am not a drug artist.

I was always...in very good health! [laughs] I neveruse....Sure, I take LSD twice. And hallucinogenic mushroomtwice. That is all!

DID YOU FIND THESE TO BE ENLIGHTENING,INSIGHTFUL EXPERIENCES?

When I take the LSD, I hired a guru who give it, whoguide the experience.

It was also insightful from the [Inca?] training. He cameto Mexico and I make two sessions of him of eight hours. Thatwas a guru. The guru was Oscar Ichazo. He used to promise hisfollowers that he would give them enlightenment very quickly,using the best from the Eastern techniques as a cocktail. Hecalled it the Arica training. He wanted to be a new Scientology,

but they failed. But anyway, was interesting. I didn't make thatin order to have fun! I wanted to open my mind in order tomake The Holy Mountain. This kind of drug doesn't give youillumination, but shows you how your brain is a crazy guy.Because we live inside a crazy world with our brain. And thatopen you to your own craziness inside. You can see there arepossibilities. And when you see the possibilities, and the toxiceffects have gone, you know where you can go.

YOU'VE SEEN HOW YOU CAN CHANGEYOURSELF--

You see that, you see what is fixed, what limits youhave. And it's a help, in one moment of the life, it's a big help,

one experience like that. But you need to do it with a masterBecause if you do it alone or with other persons, you wiobtain nothing! It needs to be some kind of sacred experiencThat is the reality.

CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT OTHER EXPERIENCEYOU'VE HAD THAT YOU CONSIDER SACRED OIMPORTANT TO PEOPLE IN DEVELOPINTHEMSELVES?

It's important for me myself to go to primitive cultureand to have a contact because there you will know another wato think, another way to see the universe, the world.

ARE THERE ONES IN PARTICULAR--I did that a lot in Mexico, also in Chile with th

Mapuches [sp?], the Chilean Indians. I went there to study witthe medicine woman in Chile from the ...there the shamans arwomen. It was very interesting for me to go. I take for mysean excursion there. In Mexico also there are the brujos, thshamanic...it's important to know the shamanic experience. IBrazil, for example. But it's not important because some persoin Mexico make confusion, to take peyote, to take ayahuascto take drugs. That is not important. What is important is to bin contact with another way to feel natural in the world. It iimportant to go out of the city.

I make a lot of Zen meditations...Chines

philosophy...Kaballah. I was searching because I was afraid tdie. I was searching how not to die!Really...But when I start to die, I stop the mystic

search, no? Really, when you start to live is when you accept tdie. Then you are really in reality. Hmm! [laughs] Not before.

ARE YOU INTERESTED AT ALL IN AFRICACULTURES?

Yes, a lot. I study very very much the voodoo, a verspectacular religion.

Because in the voodoo what is important is thpossession. The possession.

How you go into a trance, how you are possessed. Thais very important because it's another way to feel naturHollywood makes the voodoo zombies and evil and idiocy lik

that. But voodoo is very respectable religion. And very wiseAnd is important to know that. The basis, the root of voodoo African. Very important. The African religion of thpossession, you can learn a lot. So I did it.

DO YOU BELIEVE THE PEOPLE ARE LITERALLYBEING POSSESSED BY SPIRITS, OR IS IT JUSIMPORTANT THAT THEY _BELIEVE_ THEY ARBEING POSSESSED BY SPIRITS?

No no no, I don't believe that! Listen...you see they apossessed by not anything, no? No, it's not like that. In thvoodoo, every god have a conduct, have his own movemenhis own dress, his own rhythm, his way to act. And then it is kind of sacred theatre. You are possessed. He is a mythic

character who come in you. You can call that 'archetypeBecause in the unconscious you have archetypes. You have tharchetype of Moon, of the Sun, you have the archetype of thwarrior... They may come to you, the archetypes from insidthe unconscious, they rise by the building up of realization, noI don't believe in gods, I believe in energies. There are differenpsychological energies you can awake.

THAT YOU CAN AWAKE FROM WITHIN YOUOWN UNCONSCIOUS--

The criminal archetype..the criminals, the serial killerthey are the one who are possessed by energies, by negativand criminal energy, no? The saint, he have another energy

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The artist have another energy. You have the energy of love...But in this unique expression of the human species, you haveways of..um..merde!

YOU CAN FIND DIFFERENT METHODS--Different energies--OF BRINGING THESE DIFFERENT ENERGIES TO--Yes, that's it. The average man has only one

energy...Only his family, his school, his town...these are oneenergy. But there are a lot of other energies you can discover!And that is good to break some limit in the mind. But it'sdangerous also, because you can broke your energies and you

can be possessed by the shape and try to destroy you. And inorder to go to study the possession you need to be a verybalanced person.

RIGHT. GOING BACK TO WHAT YOU WERESAYING EARLIER: I SUPPOSE USING THE VIDEOGAMES CAN BE ANOTHER METHOD OF BRINGINGFORTH...

Yes, but we have a problem now in video games.Because we are in the prehistorical moment, eh? Theprehistorical person in our history has to eat, has to fuck, has tofight. These things we know. They are primitive.

Why the game like that, how to kill, how to fight, how tofuck...These are the games. Very basic, no? They are bad

energies at the moment. We need to bring to that goodenergies, but this will take time. Because need to develop thatnew moment. We are in the basic moment, and then the kids,the boys, they learn violence, they're learning how to kill. Thisis what they are doing, no? But in the same moment they learnhow to direct the game, how tobe polyvalent], to have veryquick reaction... that is good also.

PERHAPS THE PEOPLE MAKING VIDEO GAMESSHOULD EXPERIENCE SOME SHAMANICTRADITIONS!

The people that are making video games are techniciansnow. They are not artists. This is why the new three dimension,the product, The Antz, the 3-D film, are so awful. They are notmade by artists, they are made by technicians. One day the

artists will learn all that and the artist will know the newtechniques. Now I have an artist named Beltran and he make acomic with me--

YES, HE USES COMPUTERS--Yes. It's fantastic! And we have an enormous success!

Because it's new, it's artistic, it's the first time an artist is alsotechnical, but is an artist. He's the only one in Europe now. Weneed more!

I HAVEN'T READ TECHNOPRIESTS YET...Ah. This is a book I made for boys of 13 years old, 14-

year-olds...eh? I like a lot, eh.WHAT AUDIENCE DID YOU WRITE THE INCAL

FOR?

The Incal? Adults. Children can read it, but they're foradults. "Adult."

What is an "adult"? 17 year, 18 years? I think. Maybe inAmerica now you have 13 years. It changes all the time. Now Iread an American girl of 11 years has 17 lovers! And I don'tknow how...[inaud] [giggles]

DO YOU COME TO AMERICA VERY OFTEN?I was there in Los Angeles, preparing this opening of

comics.With what bad English I have, how can I make an

interview. I swear to you I am more intelligent than that. Ispeak like an idiot, you know....

Now I am writing AFTER the Incal with Moebius. I startnext month to write that and Moebius starts in Novemberdrawing that. Three series of books. A trilogy. Before the Incal,The Incal, and After the Incal.

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jodorowsky sacramental melodrama

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