Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Alejandro Jodorowsky or Alexandro Jodorowsky (IPA: /a.le.ˈxan.ð̪ɾo xo.ð̪o.ˈɾov.ski/) (born February 7, 1929, in Tocopilla, Chile) is an actor, playwright, director, producer, composer, mime, comic book writer and psychotherapist born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents of Russian origin. In 1973 he adopted Mexican citizenship, but some years later he was naturalized as French. He is particularly known for having directed a handful of esoteric, surreal and shocking films, and for having written several comic books.

The revered cult filmmaker once stated, "I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs." He is also a New Age spiritualist, and one of the world's leading researchers of the Tarot. Jodorowsky has lately committed a lot of attention to developing a psychological therapy called "Psychomagic" which aims to heal the psychological wounds suffered in the early stages of life. This therapy is based on the belief that the performance of certain outside acts can directly act upon the unconscious mind, releasing it from a series of traumas, some of which are passed down from generation to generation. These acts are prescribed by the therapist after having studied the patient's personality and family tree.

Contents 1 Artistic career 2 Film-making career 3 Comic books 4 Plays (incomplete) 5 Filmography 6 Bibliography 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Artistic career

In 1962 he created the Panic Movement, together with Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal. He has also worked with famous artists such as Marcel Marceau, Maurice Chevalier, H.R. Giger, Dan O'Bannon, Jean Giraud (Mœbius).

On December 3, 2005, he officiated at the non-denominational marriage ceremony of friend Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese (real name: Heather Sweet) at Castle Gurteen in Kilsheelan, home of artist Gottfried Helnwein , in Tipperary, Ireland. Manson has stated that Jodorowsky influenced his entire visual style.[1]

[edit] Film-making career

Jodorowsky once said, "Most directors make films with their eyes. I make films with my cojones (testicles)."

He started his film career in Mexico, where he later made most of his films, with Fando y Lis (1968). The feature-length film debuted in Acapulco at the Film Festival and is famous for having incited a full scale riot there, requiring that Jodorowsky be smuggled out in a limousine.

El Topo (1970), a mystical western, was his second film and is now considered a cult classic. John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped arrange the film's release and distribution in the United States through Beatles manager Allen Klein.

Jodorowsky's third film, La Montaña Sagrada (The Holy Mountain) (1973), was entirely financed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. At a projected budget of $1,500,000 (in USA dollars), it was to have been the most expensive Mexican film production to date. The film reportedly cost only half that amount.

Jodorowsky began working in 1975 on an adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. The project was intended to involve his son Brontis (Paul), Orson Welles as the Baron, Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha, Alain Delon as Duncan Idaho, Geraldine Chaplin as Lady Jessica, Dan O'Bannon for the script, Chris Foss, Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Ultimately, its funding evaporated, but Jodorowsky claimed it was sabotaged by the major studios in Hollywood because it was too French (a strange claim considering that Jodorowsky, while a naturalized citizen of France, has never identified with any particular country or culture. Although the funding and his producer, Jerome Seydoux, were French). Many close to the project claim that the set designs later turned up in Star Wars. Several of the people working on Jodorowsky's version of Dune later worked on Alien with elements (specifically those designed by Giger) similar to that of the failed Dune project. In the early 1980s, David Lynch would later make the first film adaptation of Dune.

In 1980, Jodorowsky directed a children's film, Tusk, in India from a novel by Reginald Campbell. The story, dealing with a young woman's soulful connection to a highly prized elephant, fell far short of expectations, exhibiting little of the director's metaphysical flair. Jodorowsky has since publicly disowned this film.

In 1989 Jodorowsky completed the Mexican-Italian production Santa Sangre. The film received limited theatrical distribution, putting Jodorowsky back on the cultural map despite its mixed critical reviews. The film delved into psychodrama territory with its protagonist becoming the amputated arms and hands of his mother and committing a string of murders in the process. Several of Jodorowsky's sons were recruited as actors.

He followed in 1990 with a very different film, The Rainbow Thief. Though it gave Jodorowsky a chance to work with actual "movie stars" Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, the producer effectively curtailed most of Jodorowsky's artistic inclinations, threatening to fire him on the spot if anything in the script was changed.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Jodorowsky attempted to make a sequel to El Topo called at different times The Sons of El Topo and Abelcain, but could not find investors for the project.

In 2000, Jodorowsky won the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Underground Film Festival. He attended the Festival and his films were shown, including "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain", which at the time had grey legal status. According to festival director Bryan Wendorf, it was an open question of whether CUFF would be allowed to show the two films, or whether the police would show up and shut the festival down.

Currently, Fando y Lis and Santa Sangre are the only of Jodorowsky's work available on DVD. Neither El Topo nor The Holy Mountain have been available on videocassette or DVD in the United States or the United Kingdom (although unauthorised VHS releases of both titles hit UK retail shelves briefly in 1999) due to ownership disputes with distributor Allen Klein. Since the dispute's settlement in 2004, however, plans to re-release Jodorowsky's films have been announced by ABKCO Films. On January 19, 2007 the website digitalbits.com announced that on May 01, 2007 Anchor Bay will release a box set that will include "El Topo", "The Holy Mountain" and "Fando y Lis". A limited edition of the set will include both the "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain" soundtracks. And, in early February 2007, Tartan Video announced its May 14, 2007 release date for the UK PAL DVD editions of El Topo, The Holy Mountain and the 6-disc box set which, alongside the aforementioned feature films, will include the 2 soundtrack CDs, as well as separate DVD editions of Jodorowsky's 1968 debut feature Fando y Lis (with his 1957 short, La Cravate aka Les têtes interverties, included as an extra) and the 1994 feature-length documentary La Constellation Jodorowsky. Notably, Fando y Lis and La Cravate were extensively digitally restored and remastered in London during late 2006, thus providing the perfect compliment to the quality restoration work undertaken on El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the States by Abkco, and ensuring that the presentation of Fando y Lis is a significant improvement over the 2001 Fantoma DVD edition. Prior to the availability of these legitimate releases, only inferior quality, optically censored bootleg copies of both El Topo and The Holy Mountain have been circulated illegally on the Internet on DVD.

In an interview with Premier Magazine, Jodorowsky said his next project will be a gangster film called King Shot. Marilyn Manson will play a 300-year-old pope, he said, and Nick Nolte has also expressed interest in working with the director. In the interview, Jodorowsky also said he wanted to make a sequel to El Topo, but couldn't raise the funds.

[edit] Comic books

He started his comic carrer in Mexico with the creation of Anibal 5 series in the mid 1966 with illustrations by Manuel Moro and had his turn in drawing his own comic strip in the weekly 'Fabulas Panicas' series, that appeared in the Mexican magazine Heraldo de Mexico. After his third movie, Tusk he started to deeply study the Tarot and started The Incal with Jean Giraud (Mœbius). This graphic novel has its roots deep in the Tarot and its symbols. i.e. the protagonist of The Incal, John Difool, is linked to the Fool card. The Incal (which would have branch off into a prequel and sequel) would form the first in a sequence of several science fiction comic book series, all set in the same space opera Jodoverse (or "Metabarons Universe") published by Humanoids Publishing.

Comic books set in this milieu The Caste of the Metabarons, The Technopriests, Incal, Moonface, and Megalex and also a RPG adaptation, The Metabarons Roleplaying Game. Many ideas and concepts featured in this universe derive from Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Dune (which he would have only loosely based upon Frank Herbert's original novel) later turned up in this sequence, which also contain many references to Dune in general.

Moebius and Jodorowsky sued Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, claiming that the 1997 film borrowed graphic and story elements from The Incal, but lost their case.^[1] In a 2002 interview with the Danish comic book magazine Strip!, Jodorowsky actually claimed that he considered it an honour that somebody stole his ideas which is not surprising as Jodorowsky believes that authors do not create the stories they tell as much as they make personal interpretations of myths universal to the collective human subconsciousness.

Other action comics by Jodorowsky outside the genre of science fiction include the historically-based Bouncer, Son Of The Gun and The White Lama all illustrated by George Bess.

The Crowned Heart (translated into English as The Madwoman of the Sacred Heart), a racy satire on religion set in contemporary times, won Jodorowsky and his collaborator, Jean Giraud, a 2001 Haxtur Award for Best Long Strip. He is currently working on a new graphic novel for the U.S. market.

Jodorwosky's comic book work also appears in Taboo volume 4 (ed. Stephen Thrower) which features an interview with the director, designs for his version of Frank Herbert's 'Dune', comic storyboards for 'El Topo', and a collabortation with Moebius with the illustrated 'Eyes of the Cat'.

He collaborate with Milo Manara in the title Borgia (2006), graphic novel about the life of the Borgias.

[edit] Plays (incomplete)

• Zaratustra (1976)
• El ensueño
• La ópera del orden
• El Gorila
• Las sillas
• Penélope
• El diario de un loco
• El juego que todos jugamos
• Opera panique

[edit] Filmography

• Les têtes interverties (1957)
  • The Transposed Heads
  • The Severed Heads
• Fando y Lis (1967)
  • Fando and Lis
• El Topo (1970)
  • The Mole
• The Holy Mountain (1973)
• Tusk (1978)
• Santa sangre (1989)
  • Holy Blood
• The Rainbow Thief (1990)
• King Shot (TBA)
• Triptych (TBA)

[edit] Bibliography

• Cuentos Panicos (1963) illustrations by Roland Topor
• Teatro Pánico (1965)
• Juegos Pánicos (1965)
• El Topo, fábula pánica con imágenes (1970) scrreenplay from the film El Topo
• Fábulas Pánicas (1977) reprints from some strips of el Heraldo de Mexico
• Las ansias carnívoras de la nada (1991)
• Donde mejor canta un pájaro (1994)
• Psychomagie/Approches d´une thérapie panique (1995) ISBN 968-6941-04-5
• Griffes D´Ange (1996) illustrations by Jean Giraud
• Antología Pánica (1996) with Daniel González-Dueñas
• Los Evangelios para sanar (1997) ISBN 968-27-0701-3
• La Sagesse des blagues;Le doigt et la lune;Les histoires de Mulla Nasrudin (1997) illustrations by George Bess
• El niño del jueves negro (1999)
• Albina y los hombres-perro (2000)
• La Trampa Sagrada (2000)
• No basta decir (2000)
• La danza de la realidad (2001) Jodorowksy's autobiography ISBN 987-566-067-1
• El loro de las siete lenguas (2001)
• El Paso del ganso (2001)
• Ópera Panique,ou l`éloge de la quotidenneté (2001) play
• El tesoro de la sombra (2003)
• Fábulas Pánicas (2003) reprints of all strips of el Herlado de México
• El dedo y la luna (2004)
• Piedras del camino (2004)
• La voie du Tarot (2004)
• Yo, el tarot (2004)
• El Maestro y las Magas (2006)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Jodorowsky official site (Spanish)
• The Symbol Grows: Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Jodorowsky le scénariste (contains list of comic works) (French)
• Jodo Universe: Inside the Esoteric Mind of Alejandro Jodorowsky (from Res Magazine)
• Premiere Magazine interview with Jodorowsky
• SuicideGirls interview with Jodorowsky by Daniel Robert Epstein
• Publisher of Anarchy and Alchemy book