We had the privilege of talking with one of the greatest figures in current national literature: Guillermo Arriaga. This he told us.
Guillermo Arriaga He is an old acquaintance of nationally manufactured literature and cinema. He was the screenwriter of invaluable jewels of Mexican cinema as loves dogs and Babelled by Alejandro González Iñárritu. His work as a writer has given us books of the caliber of the night buffalo, save the fire and Foreignhis most recent novel, which since its publication has given much to talk about in the literary circuit.
We had the opportunity to talk with him about his participation in the International Book and Audiovisual Media Fair (FILMAQ). How could it be otherwise, the first question was about Foreignas we said, his most recent published work.
“Yesterday I had a conversation in a bookstore and what surprised me the most is that there were young people of 17, 18, 20 years old because they read Foreign, my last book. People of this age can identify with this book because it is a story of a character who, at the age of 15, has predetermined his destiny. He is an English nobleman who is going to inherit a brutal fortune. He prefers to give up that inheritance and dedicate himself to what moves him inside. It is a novel where the young man discovers science, the darkest of the meanderings of the human condition”.
“It gave me immense joy to see young people who had not been born when Amores perros came out and they told me that it is their favorite movie. And I told them ‘bastard, but you were less than 3 years old when it came out loves dogs‘. Also many of them have already read some of my books. I was very pleased to know that my work still connects with young people”.
Like any author, Guillermo is also a dedicated reader. When we asked him about the last book that kept him glued to the pages, he didn’t hesitate to answer: “There is a book called The most hidden memory of men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, a very young author, 28 years old, Senegalese. He is the youngest author to win the Prix Goncourt award. It is a book little known by readers, but very good.
We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask him about his favorite series. Guillermo confesses that he is not a big fan of them. “The only one that I have seen and that I can recommend is breaking bad”. As for movies, “I really liked The Spirits of the Island.”
A writer of short stories and novels that are mostly situated in the daily life of the city, I wonder if it has ever crossed his mind to do something for the comics or graphic novel industry.
“I wrote a comic for Save the Children, but I haven’t done anything for a graphic novel. It’s hard for me to understand. It takes a talent to write graphic novels and I don’t know if I have that talent. You have to think very short to know how your dialogue is going to go along with the image.”
A part of his creative process when shutting himself in to write is music. In this regard, Guillermo’s tastes are of an impressive variety: “I have a playlist that is three days of music. There are about 130 hours of music that I have stored. I have Ludovico and Philip Glass, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Manú Chao. It’s quite an eclectic variety.”
But what is it that leads Guillermo to choose such diverse tastes and how do they influence the process of creating a story? “It depends on the state of mind in which the novel is found. There are times when I listen to Selena, Los Tigres del Norte, northern music, Calle 13, a bit of everything…”.
Every artist keeps secrets that they rarely dare to share with the audience. But when we ask Guillermo Arriaga to tell us something about him that few know, he does not hesitate to answer: “I am a very, very close friend of my children. Not only am I a dad but we get along very poorly. I have two sons. I have just produced their first film for them, which they direct together. You’re going to see what movie these bastards threw themselves into. I wrote it at the age of 35, more or less, the same age as theirs. It was the first part of the trilogy of loves dogs and 21 grams. Somehow three thirty-somethings are making the movie.”
As a farewell, we asked the author and filmmaker to dedicate one last message to Smash readers:
“If any of them want to make art, please don’t say the blowjob about I’m chasing my dreams. They don’t have dreams, they have goals. If you set goals, it is much more likely that you will end up doing what you want”.
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