"My idea about Brazil?" "I think it's better than Hawaii!" ""FOREIGN EYE"" "It's a dream country." "We only have images of sun, beaches." "I know Brazil is strong in soccer." "A lot of the girls on the beaches wear thong bikinis and no top..." "And football and love, and romance and jungle." "The culture industry shares the responsibility of reproducing these clichés that we're always trying to get away from." "Tired of being force-fed these ideas, I decided to make this documentary." "Now we switch positions." "We turn the camera around." ""Brazil is a character in about 220 foreign movies."" "Then I decided to find those who created this character called Brazil." "The producers, writers, actors and directors, the industry and its people." "Because the flesh and blood behind the industry interested us." "The original film, which we called "Blame it on Rio,"" "was filmed in france..." "And..." "In the south of france, I believe." "The American adaptation needed the same sense of romance, the same sort of sensual background." "And so I think when most people think of what is a sensual place, and since france was out, as it already had been done, we naturally thought of Brazil, we naturally thought of Rio." " Hey, those are the girls." " Hi!" "Hi!" "You have this reputation for sensuality, but you don't regard nudity as sensuality." "Part of the villainy is Rio's fault, 'cause you blame it on Rio." "And that's the sense of the title almost." "It's a purposeful attempt to take the onus of the crime away from the man." "People misunderstand the morality." "I mean, before I went there, I said," ""There is no topless." "Have you ever seen a topless girl in Ipanema?"" "I said, "No, I think you get arrested."" "In the french movie, there was a particular scene, rather funny, of a woman walking topless." "I have been to french beaches much, but there is toplessness there." "It was a very funny scene, she was walking with a 3-year-old daughter." "The 3-year-old daughter was wearing a top, but the mother was not." "And we wanted to recreate that." "They smiled." "Maybe we should talk to them." "We can't." "They're practically naked." "Try to picture them with clothes then." "What can I tell you?" "It was a mistake, it was clearly a mistake." " This place can make you crazy." " I think the monkey likes you." "The monkeys?" "There are no monkeys?" " Not on the beaches." " In the forest, not on the beaches." "Not on the beach." "They heard there was topless, they came from the forest to get a look." "Studios, I think, are perhaps more guilty of this, because they end up taking the movie and deciding what to push." "And I think that they wanted to push that sort of renegade sexuality, and freedom and, you know, libertine kind of way." "We wanted the couple to see... the man and the woman, or the love interest in the motion picture, to be stimulated by seeing a marriage." "I, truly, did not have any idea what a Brazilian wedding ceremony's like." "And chances are the one in the movie is completely incorrect." "It's more a moviemaker's idea of what a Brazilian wedding is like." "Our story about Brazil is not a story about Brazil." "We did little that depended on our knowledge of Brazilian culture." "We had the flavor." "It was an American cake, but it had a Brazilian frosting, you know." "And championship of the world in just six months!" "That's right, we're gonna buy a house." "Buy a house with a swimming pool in, right in the middle of the house!" "Then we're gonna go traveling, me and my kid, right?" "All over the world." "Where would we go?" " Brazil!" " What will we see in Brazil?" "I know, I know." "A lot of señoritas dancing the cha-cha-cha." "I'm dancing cha-cha-cha, cha-cha-cha." "That's nice, that's a nice reference to Brazil." "The general Brazilian aspect for Americans, much of it has come through the music and the cinema, too." "And just this playfulness about Brazil and happiness, you know." "And I don't think that's wrong, either." "I think that's a delightful aspect of Brazil." "Work?" "No, no work." "Just play, just play on the beach." "I don't know if they work down there, they're always vacationing." "They have parties all the time." "The year before, we had a big tour of South America to present "Cartouche," a film we made before." "We arrived in Copacabana and I said to Jean-Paul," ""This place is great." "Let's make a movie called 'That Man from Rio'."" "He said ok." "We talked to the producer, and he said, "Go ahead." That's how it started." "I wanted to make a movie that reminded me of my adolescence." "They asked me to make a "TinTin,"" "but I didn't want to make an adaptation of a comic book." "But it is, in any case, based on the spirit of Hergé's "TinTin."" "We could shoot the movie in any exotic place," "Bolivia, or any other place in South America." "It was the first place we had been to and as we said from the beginning it'd be called "The Man from Rio,"" "it never changed." "For us, it's an exotic trip." "The fruits... and the sun." "LONG LIVE BRAZIL" "That's it." "This film of mine, even back then, it wasn't an image of Brazil." "It was an imaginary image of a place full of exoticism." "Which was true based on the little Brazilian characters in the movie and the general tone of the film." "We met very nice and sweet people." "The people who I met were really nice, very happy, very cheerful, very open." " Do you live there?" " Yeah." "Come." "The film did well around the world, even in the U.S." "Anyway, as a french film." "I don't know why this film, which is simply amusing, was so successful." "I don't think it did well in Brazil." "But this is normal." "People who know the country know it isn't like that." "But I understand how you feel." "I am always irritated with American movies shot in Paris." "I see stupid details." "We see the Parisian guard..." "In "Irma, la Douce" by Billy Wilder, he's working the night shift." "That was the story." "And..." "Jack Lemmon, who played the french guard, had a hat and a billy club." "He couldn't stop twirling his billy club like this." "A french guard would never do such a thing." "These are stupid details." "And a french guard who speaks English is already a little bizarre." "It is the equivalent, I imagine." "All these non-Brazilian films, they have this ready-made picture of Brazil." "And when they work with a script or something, they use this cliché." "And sometimes I think they want it as a cliché." "We used it as a cliché." "I will show you." "There are a lot of English films with this kind of end." "Did you see them?" "Probably we got our idea from other." "Unfortunately, they're still the old colonial style." "They don't want to go deeper into the Brazilian soul." "They want to be on the beach side, so to speak." "Beach and a woman lying on the beach in bikini." "When I think of Brazil, I think of football, samba, caipirinha." "Brazil is a cliché for a very good reason and I'll tell you the reason:" "Brazil produces more beautiful people than any other nation." "Sex?" "Brazilian woman dancers." " Women with big butts." " All the women, beautiful." "Although they're clichés, and you wanna be taken more seriously," "I think you should dance less and get uglier." "And then everybody would take you very seriously." "'Cause we don't dance like that and we're quite ugly where I come from, and everybody takes us very seriously." "And like samba." "When the beat starts, anything can happen." "Brazil is like that." "This is what I think of when I think of Brazil:" "I think of topless, gorgeous women on the beach." "That's a mistake. "Blame it on Rio" has a scene that shows topless, but topless is almost forbidden in Brazil." "See, I've never been there." "I only have the cliched ideas in my head." " Where did you contract the malaria?" " In Bolivia, I was on an expedition." "I'm a musicologist, I collect ethnic folk songs." "I'm going to São Paulo for holiday." "You'll like my country's music." " There's a bit of Brazil in you." " Oh yeah?" "See, you are sad and happy." "You don't smile, but you're content." "Sad and happy at the same time." "In Brazil we have a term for that, it's "saudade."" "It's like melancholic, nostalgic, it's very bossa nova." ""Next Stop Wonderland" I think, that's what... the Brazilian music was meant to evoke" "this kind of far-away, dreamy landscape and this kind of escapist place to go to." "Whenever she was fantasizing and day-dreaming in her mind, something that would take you out of your normal atmosphere." "The Bossa Nova phenomenon was very important, that was a world, gigantic phenomenon, a happy music that created the image of Brazil, of beautiful women, the temperature, the ocean..." "So why don't you come with me to São Paulo?" "He was a little bit of a cliché in the film, right?" "In the kind of negative connotation." "He's somebody who's talking sweetly to all the ladies, making you feel like you're the number one lady, then turns his back and speaks to the next lady like she's number one." "And I think that's the stereotypical idea of the Latin lover." "Smooth." "Always very smooth, yeah?" "But this guys wasn't such a nice guy, right?" "My idea is, a Latin lover is somebody who just sweeps you off your feet." "They're on the beach again, you know, in their gorgeous muscles, and the tan skin, the beautiful accent." "He's an actor from New York, I knew that he wasn't Brazilian, but I didn't know his accent was bad, that's terrible!" "In Northern Brazil, people who believe in Candomblé, they offer this to the goddess of the sea, Jemanjá." "Now there was also supposed to be fried fish, I thought better of it." "There was a scene that was very funny for us, it was in São Paulo." "He invites you to go to the beach in São Paulo, and São Paulo is a huge industrial city that has no beach." "Oh my God!" "See?" "Unbelievable!" "I wonder..." "I'm sure the filmmakers knew that, they were making fun of this character, right?" "There were 4-meter waves, and I had back problems." "I can say it was from the boat, it went up and down!" "And each time I would cry!" "And I shouted, "Wow, look how beautiful it is, so beautiful!"" "It is true that I always dreamed about going to Brazil." "Mostly because I heard people saying that Brazil had the most beautiful women in the world." "When a producer told me," ""I have a friend in Brazil, Gabriel Albicocco,"" "who was also a good friend of mine." "He asked me, "Don't you want to write a movie for us to shoot it in Brazil?"" "I haven't written the script for Brazil." " So, you already had a script?" " Yes, I wrote one." "He said that, and I answered, "We leave tomorrow!"" "Father Superior said I would see the evil, but where's the evil?" "I'd always see the evil in my face!" "It's not possible, Lord." "It's not normal." "It was funny, because they were twins, one was a priest, the other one, a criminal." "The priest is sent to Rio." "For disciplinary reasons, he goes to Rio." "And the other one was a drug dealer that arrives in Rio!" "See, that was the city's main idea:" "Rio, a place of total pleasure!" "Facing the evil." "What an evil." "What do people say about Brazilian girls?" "I really want to believe it!" "It's the devil!" "Sex?" "Lpanema." "Facing the evil." "Flesh and blood." "Sex?" "Caricature, I believe." "Caricature of a certain Brazil." "That's not normal." "Then I see a newsstand covered by magnificent pictures of a girl, amazingly beautiful, in her bathing suit, close up." "I said, "Are you guys crazy?" "Why didn't you call her?" "Is she famous?"" ""Yes, she is very popular."" ""But are you crazy?" "Call her immediately!" "She is what I want, exactly what I want."" "And then they start laughing. "What are you laughing at?" "I'm serious." "She's who I want." "She's so beautiful!"" ""Do you understand what is written in Portuguese?"" ""The most beautiful woman in the world is a man!"" "First, we have to talk about business." "But before we need to have the merchandise." "Do me a favor and meet me in a little bit." "You have to lend me a million dollars!" "Let me breathe." " You bastard... asshole!" " Jealous!" "How could I show that she was a man?" "It was hard." "I couldn't show her sex." "When he goes looking for her, crazy for her, because he is totally in love, he goes looking for her in the bathroom and he finds her pissing standing up." "It's a terrible image!" "This phenomenon of falling in love with Brazil and Brazilian women is not a cliché, it is true." "I'm proof of it." "I really have a passion for Brazil." "I arrived here in 55, end of 55, beginning of 56, only to stay a month or two of my vacation." "I was in college, I was studying fine arts." "And, like everybody, I fell in love with Brazil and stayed for two years." "The way Brazilian women walk is unique." "What can I say?" "When you first arrive here, go to Copacabana or Salvador and the way they swing their hips..." "I'm going to be hated in Brazil." "I went to Brazil." "I stayed in Rio for two months." "And then?" "Then I met a sublime black woman with a butt, such a big butt!" "Well, I think I surrendered..." "How do I say it in Portuguese?" "I surrendered to the charm of Brazilian mulatas, like many other foreign guys and many Brazilians, right?" "PLEASURE À LA CARTE" "They love butts down there." "THE NEW SHOW THAT GIVES TASTE TO THE PARTY" "Women do anything to show they are beautiful." "They love to show." "What surprised me was that they learn how to walk when they're kids." "And Gabriel Albicocco explained that to me:" "They are obligated to walk that way, swinging their hips, and they do anything to be pretty." "I think it is magnificent!" "But what struck me the most, at the beginning I was a bit shocked, but then I thought, "It's wonderful!"" "When we see in Manhattan..." "Rio could be considered a Manhattan, we truly find ourselves in New York." "When you see a girl of 15 with her parents in their sixties, and we see her wearing little shorts where you can see everything," "it is very tormenting!" "If we see it in Paris..." "The curious thing is that this behavior is normal there!" "The concept of Brazil and the tourism industry of Brazil, you know, pushes the celebration of the carnival, you know." "And you see it every year." "I mean, in television, you know, certain things for certain countries, whether it's the running of the bulls in Spain or..." "You know, various things that become ultimately, finally clichés." "I'm not responsible for this image of Brazil, I'm not the guilty one." "I'm responsible but not guilty." "There is an expression by a female politician here that said," ""Je suis responsable mais pas culpable."" "This one is really not very friendly to people." "Let me get the other one." " No, no, no, no." " Do you speak Portuguese, dear?" "The film "Samba" was an idea by an American music producer, a very famous music producer, a rock 'n' roll producer named Lou Adler." "He was in love with Brazil and he decided to do this movie "Samba."" "He was going to tell a story of an American who had lost his way, emotionally, who came to Brazil for holiday and saw the samba school, and saw this woman of the samba school, and fell in love with her and wanted to bring her," "and what she represented, back to America." "MOVIE NOT MADE" "The movie had the good intention of treating this post-modern concept of a carnival star afraid of moving to Hollywood to become a star, because she didn't want to become a Carmem Miranda." "So, it is a little post-modern in this sense." "So, I think the intention was good, the intention was good." "But the guys behind it were so withdrawn from reality, so..." "They were not... they wanted to be very much part of Brazilian life, but, you know, they were hid in the suite in the Rio Palace, while saying, "We wanna be on the street," you know." "When I did "Wild Orchid," I wanted a very exotic, very sensual place, that people identified with sensuality, and I also wanted to shoot the carnival at the time, which was fascinating." "So I chose Brazil." "In the story of that film, the culture basically pulls specially the woman character, into connecting with her own sensuality." "So I used the culture that way." "But I don't think anybody can deny that Brazil is a very sensual culture." "You feel the native culture, the Indian culture in it." "So many slaves were brought there, so you still feel the black culture, the African culture, and then you have the imposition of a sort of Christianity on top of it all." "But it all comes together in a much different way than it does here." "I wanted to do an imaginary Rio, that's absolutely true." "Rio changed and evolved into another kind of city, that probably wasn't in my imagination." "But when I went to Bahia," "I saw elements that I felt should be in Rio." "The Rio of my mind was like a combination of those two cities." "I've seen that boy before." "Miles from here." "I can't put a forest inside New York, that's what I'm saying." "Even if I want." "And I can want that!" " You can do it, you can do it." " But at the same time I can't." "Instead, this must be clearly a fantasy, because everybody knows NY has no forest." "Do you know the difference?" "Yeah, I think you're right." "People don't know what Rio looks like." "You're absolutely right about that." "That's why I made the decision." "There are very few people who really know what Rio looks like." "I believe that film has a very plastic meaning." "I guess it is arrogant to do that." "I don't know, it's a prerogative." "I mean, it's a decision..." "That decision I remember making, and it was a conscious decision." "I didn't do it out of arrogance, just out of making a fantasy Rio." "There's a certain arrogance in people who make films that..." ""Maybe it's better for us if in this scene everybody in London... drives on the right side of the street, instead of the left side of the street." "Then the car chase will work better, or we'll reverse the film."" "I think and I admit to being part of that culture in a sense... that perhaps disregards reality for several hundred feet of film that may be dishonest." "When Bob Rafelson came to Brazil, he had spent a lot of time in Africa." "He was of the theory that black people all over the world understand soul-brother handshake." "Right?" "Which goes something like this." "I can't quite do it myself." "And with this... he would be able to communicate even if the didn't speak the language." "He could communicate with all black Brazilians." "So I go over to this black actor, a little guy." "I knew him," "I can't remember his name, but I said," ""There is this Hollywood director." "He made this movie with Jack Nicholson fucking Jessica Lange on a table." "Do you know this movie?"" "He said, "Of course I do!" "Do you want to meet the director?"" ""Of course, I do!"" "At this moment they'd just finished shooting, so he was eating lunch, and they had this plate of chicken and rice." "And so, I bring Rafelson over." "And Rafelson grabs the chicken out of his plate, takes a big chunk out of it, puts it back down and does this handshake with him." "It looks like you are washing your hands to get the grease off." "And this black actor is sitting there like this, he's in a state of shock." "And I said, "Bob, come here a second!" "Listen." "The people here, they are very gentle, sweet, nice people, well... you know, good-humoured people, and you're scaring them." "You're acting in a way that's a little aggressive, it's throwing them off."" ""I gave him the handshake which every black man in the world knows." "First, I ate to show I'm not afraid of eating off a black man's plate." "Then, I gave him the handshake, which every black man knows, because I walked across Africa and I can tell you that they all know it." "And so he understood that I'm with him."" "Okay!" "Do you understand?" "The mixed races?" "To me this is the fundamental thing about Brazil." "I think that's glorious!" "Yes, but always with a latent prejudice." " Stop!" " English?" "I'm impressed." "I'm very impressed." "Father sent me to the missionaries to learn about the white man." "Great." "What happened is:" "Menahem Golan, the executive producer of the film, heard the song "Lambada" that Kaoma had recorded when he was in Europe." "And it was a gigantic hit there, more successful than any Beatles tune." "So he wanted to do a picture based around the song "Lambada" and the dance, lambada." "There were other companies also that wanted to do a lambada picture, so he was in a huge rush to do it." "And he had no story, it was just the dance and the song." "So, I got together with a couple of writers and we came up with an idea to bring an Amazon princess from Brazil to the United States." "And her mission was to try and save the forest that was being burnt by the exploiters of the Amazon forest, where she lived." "Do you want to see the lambada?" "I'll show you the lambada." "It's a strange mix?" "Well, it's a mix that we frankly forced to make our story work." "Because, again, we wanted to bring lambada to the United States and we also wanted to expose what's happening in the rain forest." "So, we thought we could combine the two, even though it might not be technically accurate." "It was still, I think, a story that people could respond to." "When they were done watching the story, enjoying the music and dance, and what happens to the young woman when she comes to the US, they also came away at least with some knowledge that there is a rain forest and perhaps" "something should be done to protect it." " You live in the jungle?" " In the rain forest along the Amazon, but our home is being destroyed." "That's why we have come to you." "We need help to stop the destruction!" "These people are being driven from their homeland by P.E.T.K. Corp." "In less than 90 days, from the original concept, we were on screens all across the US." "It was, I think, maybe the fastest turnaround in the history of film." "Oh, Amazon, wow!" "I've heard there's creatures inside the Amazon that no one's ever seen, you know, there's still lots of medicine and stuff, so..." "Amazon to me is a very unique place on Earth." "I've never been there, I'm afraid of mosquitoes." "When you look back at the films that have been made about the Amazon area by America, over the years, as you say, you can see a lot of naïveté in it, a lot of lack of understanding." "Early on, it was because nobody even went down to take a look at it." "You know what I mean?" "They didn't have any connection to it." "They were gonna make this fellow from Iowa, a preacher from Iowa." "I said, "No, that doesn't sound right." "He's gotta be living in the jungle, he has to be part of the jungle somehow." "Suppose he was the son of a Nazi war criminal and he grew up in..."" "You know, we picked one of the countries, your know." "I said, "Yeah, the south of Brazil."" "So where do we get our accent from?" "Big river style!" "I had to have a masseuse, and this masseuse was very attractive, very strong, kind of blond girl, who talked like this, she never used any consonant, like that, there were no consonants," ""Hi, Jon, how you doing?" Like that." "I said, "Where are you from?" I thought she may've been from China." "And she said, "Argentina." I said, "Argentina?"" "I said, "I gotta use that accent."" "So I used that accent of that woman for the film." "Ever worked in a sushi bar, mister?" "Sarone, Paul Sarone." " Where are you from, Mr. Sarone?" " Paraguay." "Oh, there's the Amazon jungle there." "I thought it was in Africa, okay." "I thought the Amazon was sort of closer to North America." "Yeah, isn't that, like, the south of Brazil?" "Yeah, the south of Brazil." ""Brenda Starr" was based on a newspaper comic strip." "She was a very colorful, effervescent character, and went to the most exciting places." "And they said, "But where can we send her?"" "I said, "That's Rio, that's Brazil, that's the Amazon."" "You know, comic strips, they are strange, they are not real." "They are a cut, a high cut above reality." "And in the minds of the public, so is Rio." "Not so much all of Brazil, but more Rio." "That is..." "You say lpanema, Copacabana... the most romantic words in the language." "The thing about most clichés is they are true, otherwise they wouldn't become clichés, because they're repeated." "It's like type casting, a simplistic look and that immediately says" ""South America."" "It could be Mexico, it could be Uruguay, it could be Brazil." "But there's something that the public immediately recognizes." "And those are clichés." "You don't want to have to explain what the extras are doing." "You want to listen to them and think about what the principal actor in the foreground is thinking or saying." "And all movies, from around the world, have created these clichés for the background." " Excuse me." " Excuse me." "Is there a telephone?" "A telephone?" "Yes, Guadalupe, 20 km." "There was a reality to being in Brazil." "If we say we're there, it must look, smell and sound like it." "But I didn't want it to be cliché, except for the obvious:" "It's highly romantic." "That cliché we wanted." "Where I come from, the people believe in a giant water snake." ""The Cobra Grande."" "There is something in the film that is a little difficult for us also." "When they speak, they don't speak Portuguese, they speak Spanish." " That's right." "Spanish?" "I know." " But we speak Portuguese." "I know, I know, and I was told clear that all of South America and Mexico was to understand this picture." "So, we speak the most common language." "Studio money... if there were 10 people in Brazil interested in the movie and 11 in the rest of South America, they would go for the 11." "So they went for the biggest population." "I always wanted to make a movie about this time I lived in Salvador right after I arrived there, because it was the best time of my life." "I was young, in an intellectual and artistic environment, exciting, intense, with other people who were totally easy-going and relaxed." "But it is difficult to make such a movie for a foreign audience... because, first, the language." "Someone said something about this once, about a french movie." "Am I having Brazilian fishermen speaking french?" "Lmpossible." "When movies are made here for the American market, which deal with" "Latino subjects, even if they are geographically located in these countries, the reality is that these movies will be made in English." "As our next state deputy, Mr. Galvão, what do you think?" "Now that it's threatening the road, it's not a question of Economics, it becomes a matter of national security." "A road is a military necessity." "No road, no laws." "No laws, no nation." "Regarding Chico Mendes, it was very hard to find consistent accents and languages for the movie, because we had Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, actors from Central and South America..." "Very few actors here in L. A are Brazilians." "I mean, actors who had some success, who achieved such a level to be recognized." "So I remember we all tried to learn to pronounce the names, the last names of the characters, in a Brazilian way." " What's your name?" " Hélio." "I'm Chico." "Such as João or Brasil." " João." " João." "See?" ""TRUE, BUT NOT THAT MUCH"" ""The actors' accent is hilarious:" "Chico is Chicou;" "Mendes, Mendéz and Brazil is spoken with Spanish accent."" "If you don't speak English very well, the tendency is that you will not find work." "That's why they prefer to hire an American actor, who is also Latino, who speaks English perfectly and who could add some accent to the interpretation." "If I make a movie in Portuguese, it is a Brazilian movie." "Then, you don't have money, no french producer would pay for that." "So, the only possibility to make a movie with Brazil is to create an adventure, such as "That Man from Rio"," ""Black Orpheus,"" "that movie I made about fantasy and adventure." "Modern Brazil, industrial Brazil, the Brazil of São Paulo that works, that creates, that generates wealth, this Brazil is not exotic enough for french people." " Have you ever been to São Paulo?" " No, I never wanted to." "It is quite similar to what a french person would be familiar with." "There is no exotic interest in it and there is also a lack of reference." "I produce feature films." "I can't start shooting with a small camera like this one." "I'm not a documentary filmmaker." "It is not the same." "You need actors, costumes, machinery..." "We are faking all the time." "We fake it." "And we rebuild some sort of paradise that no longer exists." "So, at the beginning I thought about shooting this story in france." "Later I thought about Brazil, then I could stay for a while in Brazil." "I ended up staying in Venezuela because the Real was too expensive." "We didn't film in Amazon, we filmed in Vera Cruz, because we were afraid of going to Brazil, I mean, politically, because the movie was criticizing the Brazilian government." "I don't know if only for that or for economic reasons, too." " I never shot in Brazil." " Yeah, but "Brenda Starr" was..." ""Brenda Starr" took place in Brazil, the story was happening in Brazil, and we couldn't shoot it there, the studio wanted it in America." "So we filmed in florida, which we could make work, for a certain look." "The first scenes were shot here in L.A., at the Los Angeles Arboretum, which has various botanical growth we hoped would look something like where the Indians deep in the forest could live." "And we built some sets, some huts and we put them here in Los Angeles." "I think that the power of Hollywood is unlimited." "This method of being able to show the way people are, and be inaccurate, will then forever stamp on the people that have seen it that this is the way they were." "GROSS BOX office RETURNS IN THE US $4,263,112" "In Hollywood, you can write a story that is set in Alaska on Sunday, and Monday morning you find it's actually set in South Africa." "GROSS BOX office RETURNS IN THE US $18,644,570" "The reasons they have the Americans as the heroes in these films?" "They're looking to get money from the American people, so that they'll see the films." "It's real simple, I mean..." "They just think American movie stars..." "They want American stars 'cause they are a bigger draw." "That's economical." "Like, if all the movie stars were coming from Manaus, then all the people from Manaus would be the heroes in the stories." "Then people in Los Angeles'd say, "Wait, why can't we be the heroes?"" "But that's the way it is, it's just Economics." "GROSS BOX office RETURNS IN THE US $65,885,767" "My image about Brazil?" "Is that the world banks screwed it up for you." "And it's amazing how many people sit there and just go..." "So I'm in favor of people power." "I hope the Brazilians take concern and say, "Hey, enough is enough!" "We are human beings, we wanna live in dignity."" "Well, Brazil is a place where human beings live and strive." "It has every kind of complication in every kind of aspect." "And just to have this say, "Go to Brazil, it's paradise!"" "Wait a minute, fellows, you know." "There's lot of other things as well." "We have a game... a word game." "Word game?" "What, you say something and I tell you what I think?" " Exotical?" " Exotical?" " Association?" " Do you want me to say Brazilians?" "Related to Brazil?" "Okay, Carmem Miranda." "Was she Brazilian, Carmem Miranda?" "I didn't know that." "I thought she was Hollywood, just South America." "You could blame it on her in a way, the fact that this was our only look at a Brazilian, and they kept perpetuating the fruit on the head, the bananas, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly... and the very fast way of speaking." "People thought she was making it up." "No one really believed it." "It didn't sound Spanish." "It sounded like... nonsense." "Carmem Miranda, Dolores del Rio personified these Brazilian stereotypes." "Everybody thinks Brazilians are super sexy, always a bit naked with fruits on their heads." "I met the producer of all Carmem Miranda's movies." "I asked about Carmem Miranda, because I was really interested." "He said, "She was a hard worker."" "The only thing he ever said, "Good lady, she worked hard."" "I'm not saying she is the reason, but certainly for a moviegoer..." "I grew up, when I saw Carmem Miranda, that was Brazil, you know." "When I saw fernandel, that was france, etc, etc, etc." "And Cantinfas was Mexico." "So, you know, so much of our education, that we don't seek, but we're influenced by the cinematic messengers of their countries." "The stereotype is based on the reality, but it can't represent the Latino in general." "The tragedy is that with the repetition of the stereotype the perception of the Latino is that all of them are gardeners, uneducated or criminals or prostitutes or maids." "This is the bad thing about stereotypes." "On the one hand, people are pleased that their country is represented in some way." "On the other hand, when it becomes cliché, when it becomes a one note, you see the same role:" "The frenchman is always the head waiter, this one is always the Nazi officer, it's detrimental to the actor and to the culture that they represent." "Carmem Miranda, our tireless worker, went to the United States, in part, due to a proposal coming from the American government to integrate Latin America into its foreign policy." "It went both ways." "From over there various artists came, like Walt Disney, who created José Carioca back in those days." "But not all of them behaved as anticipated." "Not all of them accepted reproducing clichés, during a time Brazil was living the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship." "The intention of shooting some sequences of the Carioca carnival for his next production brings the famous cinematographer Orson Welles to Rio." "We were there making a documentary film, partly for the government, but mostly for a Hollywood studio." "This was at the time of the good-neighbor policy." "And it was my task to make a large, technical documentary on the carnival." "RKO was under a new government." "And they asked to see the rushes of what I'm doing in South America." "And they see a lot of people, black people, and the reaction is," ""He's just shooting a lot of gigaboos jumping up and down."" "With Orson Welles, there's an asterisk all the time, because his situations were always unique, from the beginning." "Whatever happened with Orson Welles never happened with anybody else." "Other men or women might have been influenced or prohibited from doing a more accurate picture of Brazil, but that wasn't the case with him." "It was usually money." "Everything about American films is money, everything about America is money!" "And when I'd nearly finished the film," "I just received a word, from Hollywood, that the president of the film studio had been removed." "That happens not only in South American governments, but also in film studios." "Had been rather abruptly removed, a new president was in his place, and the entire project was offed." "After 40 years, these images with some of the most beautiful shots of Brazil were found in a dusty warehouse in Los Angeles." "In spite of the dictators and studio owners." "The first one to make a movie about Brazil in such an extraordinary way was Orson Welles." "I went to Brazil because I was making a film for an American studio, 20th Century fox, and I had prepared everything to be shot in the Canary Islands." "A few days before the shooting, they decided they had money blocked in Brazil and for this reason we would make a film down there." "There were a lot of clichés in the script." "We improvised a lot, and I had to add lots of things." "I didn't do it in an exotic way." "I did it the way it really was." "People lived in prisons and used to play capoeira in the corridors." "BRAZIL" " PLEASURE" ""...extremely violent adventure."" ""..." "long, unusual and marvelous dream..."" "I shot it in May of '68." "Obviously I added things from that time, like the riot of the youth against society." "And they didn't like it." "The producer saw the film." "He was one of the latest big bosses, who controlled everything, judged everything." "He wanted to change the film, to do another version." "I didn't want to." "There was a big trial that I won, but that was a tragedy for me, because I won the suit that says a producer can't change a film, but that stopped me from making films for a long time." "In the library of Motion Pictures, in LA, where information about all films produced in the US are kept and where we were forbidden to shoot," "Edouard Luntz archives still exist, but inside only this story about the shooting of "Le Grabuge."" "There are no other stories about the completed film." "Luntz won the battle but lost the war." "Samba, Sugar Loaf, jungle, piranha." "Don't you see?" "There's no way out." ""In more than 40 foreign films, the bad guys escape to Brazil."" " Brazil?" " They have no extradition laws." "We'll be perfectly safe there." "We take our million bucks, we fly to Rio de Janeiro!" "Rio!" "I could be sitting on a sandy, white beach in Brazil right now, drinking piña colada and fornicating my way straight to heaven." "Instead of changing at Charing Cross, I came straight on to Rio de Janeiro." ""Gay, sprightly, land of mirth and social ease."" " Ready?" " Ready." ""Based on the book 'O Brasil dos Gringos', by Tunico Amâncio."" "Paradise?" "Caipirinhas on the topless non-existing beaches in Brazil." "I don't know enough about Brazil to be able to do this properly." " It's not right." "But go ahead." " But the idea is to make it, well..." " Playful?" " Playful." " I can do that." " Okay?" " Sex?" " Charlton Heston." "The reason... what I'm doing is..." "When I say... if you say sex..." "When I said Charlton Heston, I was thinking," ""I'm gonna say Charlton Heston to everything you say, because Heston's a representation of how you miss so much about Brazil."" "Mixed races?" "Oh, this is wonderful, it stops prejudice." "I had the impression, back in those days, however, that when I saw a black guy driving a nice car, he was more likely to be the driver than the owner of the car." "The only thing about Brazil that I didn't like was the tremendous difference between the rich and the poor." "You know, I'm not exactly a communist, but I felt those disparities were very, very severe." "You know, and that displeased me." "I got into trouble a couple of times talking to rich people about that," ""If you don't start sharing what you have, they'll come and take it."" "My film seemed to have offended a lot of people." "I think that's part of the charm." "The stereotypes are ridiculous, especially when they try to represent a nation or a culture." "The only problem for me was that as a Swede, specially in the film business here in Sweden, we're very punctual." "That's why I was joking with you," ""2 o'clock Brazilian time or Swedish time?" for us, 2 o'clock is 2." "There are the clichés created by Hollywood, then there are some very beautiful and fine pieces of work which surpass the cliché." "If you go deep into the Brazilian life, showing it the way it is, then it should be a Brazilian film." "Of course we can show a different image of Brazil, if it exists, but in this case, one should make another kind of film." "Anyway, my way of seeing it is my way." "Another person that makes the film, with the same theme, will make another film." "I filmed Brazil and showed Brazil the way I felt it, the way I saw it." "Is this film gonna be shown to a judge?" "Am I ever gonna be allowed to come back to Brazil?" "AFTER ALL, WHO ARE WE?" "TO ALL WHO LOOK FOR THEIR IDENTITY." "RIO, 2005."