Venice magazine (www.venicemag.com) features an interview with Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel”) conducted by Jose Martinez. By the way, all three films were written by Guillermo Arriaga. Here’s what the director said about the stages of film-making:
“As you know, films are made in stages, and the first one is the script where you dream. And it’s an abstract territory that is essential to the film-making process. The second stage is when you confront the abstract to the concrete world, and the third stage is the editing where you sculpt all the stones and find the elephant inside.” (The latter is a reference to the idea that a sculptor knows there’s an elephant inside a block of stone and then chips away all the bits that are not the elephant.)
He was asked what he enjoys about telling a complex or multi-layered story: “I think Latin American literature has a lot to do with that. ..My father, too, is a great storyteller who always starts at the middle of the story and goes to the ending and then drops in a little bit of the beginning.”
However, he doesn’t disparage linear story construction: “People say it’s more difficult telling a fragmented story but I don’t think it’s more difficult. I think linear, chronological storytelling is entertaining and super difficult.”
