Looking for Don Quijote's Own Shadow: An Interview with Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón about His Film El caballero Don Quijote (2002)

Looking for Don Quijote's Own Shadow: An Interview with Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón about His Film El caballero Don Quijote (2002) The Spanish director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón gained prominence during the 1970s and early '80s, in Spain's transition to democracy. His phantasmagorical settings, as in the female multi-generational saga La mitad del cielo (1986), and extreme, but believable characters, such as the tight-wing death squad, cum Christian chorus boys of Carnada negra (1977), won him a wide audience and critical ptizes throughout Europe, especially at the Berlin Film Festival . Gutiérrez Aragón represents a literate Spanish intelligensia, as evidenced by the range of references in Augusto M. Torres's interview book Conversaciones con Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón (Madrid: Fundamentos, 1985). He has adapted Kafka for the stage. His TV series El Quijote (1991) of Part I of Cervantes's masterpiece for RTVE, Spanish national television, was considered a success and continues to reach an international audience through video distribution. Dona Kercher and Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón met to discuss Cervantes and film once before in 1994 aftet the international release of the television series El Quijote. At that moment Gutiérrez Aragón had been named President of the Sociedad General de Autores de España. He was the first film director ever elected to this latgely ceremonial position. SGAE represents the intellectual property rights of all Spanish creative artists. Kercher incorporated those conversations in a critical article, "Marketing Cervantine Magic for a New Global Image of Spain," which appeared in the anthology edited by Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 6, 2002 130 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Matsha Kinder, Refiguring Spain: Cinema/Media/Representation (Duke UP, 1997, 99132 ). In 2001 Gutiérrez Aragón received yet another honor that broke ground to recognize film officially as the seventh art. Along with Luis Garcia Berlanga and José Luis Borau, he was chosen among die first filmmakers to be inducted into the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. He presented his formal acceptance speech in November 2001. Given that the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars are called "Goyas," this ceremony was symbolically appropriate. Goya himself sought and was granted membership in this institution to validate his status as major artist. The following is the text of an interview, conducted in Gutiérrez Aragón's office in Madrid on June 27, 2001, discussing his new project, a feature-length film entitled El caballero Don Quijote. The film, scheduled to open in November 2002, adapts Part II of Cervantes's novel. While Gutiérrez Aragón shared on screen credit with Camilo José Cela, the Nobel-Prize winning novelist, for adapting Part I in Don Quijote (1991), he solo wrote and directed the script to this new Cervantine version. Fernando Rey, now deceased, starred in the first film. The Spanish actor Juan Luis Galiardo, who among many other roles played Muñagorri in Berlanga 's 1994 Goya winning comedy Todos a la cárcel, plays the lead in El caballero Don Quijote. Dona M. Kercher Assumption College Dona Kercher: Mi gran pregunta es, después de todos los problemas de la primera parte y -, ,,, ., , , ■·■œ lj ru r . ' Manuel Gutierrez Aragon infus office the day or the el juramento de que amas , , t â– p. v , ■λ > " ' interview (photo by D. Kercher) [volverÃ-a a filmar El Quijote]... ¿Por qué filmar ahora la segunda parte? ¿Qué le hizo cambiar de idea? Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón: A mÃ- me gustaba más la segunda parte, como a casi todo el mundo, la segunda parte más que la primera. Entonces me quedé con las ganas de poder rodar la segunda parte. Por razones comerciales esto va a ser una pelÃ-cula y no se va a hablar especialmente de que sea la segunda parte, o la primera parte. No Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 131 se va a hablar de eso. Simplemente se va a llamar El caballero Don Quijote, que evidentemente lo que quiere decir es que comienza cuando Don Quijote ya es caballero. AsÃ- como la primera parte es una novela que se presta más hacerlo por...