"A friend of mind made a clever point that I should repeat here:" "that Bunuel invented reality shows with The Exterminating Angel." "And he's right." "What is The Exterminating Angel if not a reality show about people who can't leave that room?" "To this very day I don't know what the film is about." "And I discussed it a lot with Don Luis, but he'd say whatever he wanted, things maybe he himself didn't believe." "That's how he was." "He'd play with your mind, and with the ideas you'd formed." "For example, a bear appears." "Then the film starts, and we make two entrances." ""No, don't make them exactly the same." "Make it clear it's two different shots, that they entered the house twice."" "I asked him, "Why do we enter the house twice?"" "He said, "Haven't you ever had breakfast twice or bathed twice in one day?" ""Well, yes." "Well, then?" "Why not go in twice?"" "Not very convincing, but that's how he explained it." "I asked him about the "disease."" "We'd all concluded it was like a plague that we human beings had brought upon ourselves through our faults, our aggression, our lack of effort, our laziness, etc." "It all causes this disease that keeps us from moving, making any progress, leaving, etc." "That was my conclusion." "I talked to Bunuel a lot about it, because the actors had their doubts." "Many of them had very fixed ideas, taking their character as their starting point." "For example, I thought Rambal was like Jesus Christ, because he blindfolds himself and the lamb, things that make you see a character a certain way." "But it was very hard." "He puts the bear and lambs in the beginning as part of a joke, and he keeps the joke up until they trip up the waiter." "These are all gags in the beginning to show we're in a totally absurd context." "So I asked, "What happens to the lambs and the bear now?"" "So when I see the final version in the theater," "I see the scene where the bear chases the lambs, and one of the lambs comes into the room with us." "The point was that we'd eat the lamb." "He said, "A person can live X days without water and X days without food."" "The butler got water by cracking open the pipes, but what about food?" "The bear chases the lambs and provides us with food." "People in the theater were saying, "The bear is a communist!" "It's a symbol of communism!"" "When Bunuel heard that, he nearly died laughing." "It was a very surrealistic film, so you can't analyze it." "We'd analyze things but never really understand them." "There's the hand that moves around on its own." "They smash up the cello for firewood to roast the lamb." "That's because Bunuel had an ongoing feud with Casals, so he's destroying Casals and his cello." "His feelings were mixed up in what he was making." "For example, when the ladies come out of the "bathroom,"" "they say, "Did you see that?" "An eagle flew by." "How odd!"" "I got up the courage to ask Bunuel why." "He said, "When we'd go hunting back home in Calanda, there was an outcropping on the mountain, with a pit where we'd relieve ourselves." "Once while I was peeing, I looked over, and an eagle flew by."" "So he put it in the film, though it was an entirely different context." "But he'd incorporate his own life experiences." "That's his genius as a surrealist." "And before I sat down, an eagle flew by 40 feet below me." "The wind blew a gust of dry leaves in my face." "The setting was laid out in the screenplay, which was originally called Castaways on Providence Street." "He'd written an adaptation with Luis Alcoriza, but he wanted to make it in London, because the characters were Londoners, Europeans." "So he wanted to make it there." "Financially we weren't in good shape." "Viridiana was critically acclaimed, but no money had come from it yet." "So we thought about how to make it." "Gustavo, who'd jumped in as producer right from the start, figured that we could make it in Mexico." "He'd spoken to previous collaborators of Bunuel's." ""There's even a house on a street called Providencia." "We could get that in a shot."" "I joined in, trying to convince Bunuel to make it in Mexico." "But he kept saying, "No, we can't make it in Mexico." "There aren't napkins of this size here like there are in Europe."" ""Come on, Don Luis." "We can have those made."" "We gradually convinced him, but it made it a difficult shoot, because he was unhappy with lots of things." "He demanded more and more things that we just couldn't find." "There are beautiful things in Mexico, but people wouldn't always lend or rent them to us, and we simply couldn't afford to buy works of art for the set." "To the delightful evening our friend Silvia provided us..." "Casting was difficult too." "It was like two lead roles divided among 22 characters." "When he found out I wanted to be in it, he said, "After Viridiana, how could you do one of these small roles?"" "I said, "For you I'd do any role!" "I'm going to be in it!"" "'All right, you'll play the Valkyrie. " And that's the role he gave me." "Making the film was terribly hard on the actors." "I happened to mention to him that I didn't feel grimy enough." ""I go home every night and shower and wash my hair." "I get a little dirty, but I don't feel dirty." "My hair doesn't really get messed up."" "He says, "You know what?" "I'll smear all of you with honey and then dirt."" "My God!" "You can't imagine how unpleasant and repugnant it is to have honey all over your arms and dirt rubbed on your neck, face, and arms, and in our hair too." "Then we really did start feeling grimy and awful, what the characters were really going through." "It was all very strict, very measured, very calculated." "Nobody could deviate from what he asked for." "He alone knew what he was doing." "We knew what we were portraying... happiness, sadness, discomfort, etc., but we really couldn't find out why." "As a person, he was like a child." "He was arbitrary like a child." "For example, his sister Concha often came to visit him." "He used to get up at 6:00 a.m. and have lunch at 1:00 p.m." "He'd receive friends around noon or 12:30." "Dinner was at 6:00, and everyone was in bed by 7:00." "He had his poor wife Jeanne used to that." "At least she eventually got a TV to watch in her room." "When Conchita arrived, their dogs would scratch at her door and wake her up very early." "She'd quarrel with Bunuel and complain that she couldn't get any sleep." "Don Luis wouldn't answer, and the dogs would do it again." "One day she snuck out on the terrace and caught Bunuel scratching the dog's paws against the door." "He was childish about things like that." "He behaved like a stubborn child." "He wanted to do what he wanted to do - and he did!"