THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Gregg Shapiro: Why were you compelled to bring Reinaldo Arenas' story to the screen?

Julian Schnabel: We're talking about 50 years of Cuban history in one person's life. By the nature of his mere existence, he's a stain on Castro's shirt. There was a kid crucified in Wyoming not long ago and all these dormant pogroms towards homosexuals, and AIDS-phobic kinds of lingerings in the atmosphere. It's a Schindler's List for Cuban people who were ripped away from their roots and had to keep beginning again all of the time.

I think it tells the story of the artist as a free man, under whatever circumstance or adversarial obstacle comes up, rather than give the gift of what this person ... where he found his salvation in writing. He accepted the consequences which were very, very harsh. But at the same time there was a great feeling of a will to live, but he always had one foot in the grave, in a funny way, or ( was ) being chased. Aside from the fact that he had a palate that was so wide and large. He's a man who wrote 20 books, published one book in his own country. Really like the Walt Whitman of Cuba; one of the great Latin writers. He was humble, he was funny. He had a very eventful life that was filled with conflict and that makes an interesting film. I think it was about so many issues. About freedom and censorship, but not in some novelistic or superficial way.

GS: It was real. It has biographical overtones.

JS: On the other hand, it's his life, but his life has supernatural elements to it, because his body of work is really his body. He turned everything into literature. Sometimes there are fictitious characters, characters he's imagining, but there's no difference between his imagination and what happened to him, so in that sense it's a novel. But hey, these events occurred, there were homosexuals put into camps in the 1960s in Cuba. This country's a mess. They put Japanese people into concentration camps, they did hang Black people, and ( Leonard ) Peltier is still in jail, and all these things are happening. At least we can criticize the government.

GS: And not run the risk of being thrown into prison ourselves for speaking out.

JS: Let's see how I end up. [ Flipping through Arenas's book The Color Of Summer ] . You should read this book, there's some great stuff in here. [ Reading aloud ] "Society condemns a man not for his defects but for his virtues." "Every day we learn something new, but we never put it into practice. True intellectuals are too intelligent to believe, too intelligent to doubt, but wise enough to deny. That's why great intelligence comes at last, not to power, but to prison."

GS: In addition to directing the film, you co-wrote the screenplay. Can you please say something about that process?

JS: Images come to me from Reinaldo's writing. It's really interesting, that book ( The Color Of Summer ) , which I had not read when I wrote the script ... there are things that come out of that book that are in the movie. Reinaldo wrote, "Everything comes to me with this incessant tap tap." When he said, "Climbing plant, faces, cathedrals, trees ... I'm floating, I'm saved, all because of that incessant tap tap of the typewriter" ... and so immediately I thought of this balloon going out of the Convent of Santa Clara ( a scene from his film ) ... it was not in the book ( Before Night Falls ) … I open this thing ( The Color Of Summer ) , and then I start reading about these impossible dreams, and he ( Arenas ) wrote, "I dreamed I had a balloon that sailed away from the grackles in Lenin Park, and sailed, with me in it, farther and farther and farther away." There were many things, like that, that came up out of my … what attracts somebody to something? He opened up a world of images for me. When he wrote, "the splendor of my childhood was unique because of its absolute poverty and absolute freedom. Surrounded by trees, animals, and people who were indifferent towards me" ... I immediately saw that shot of the kid in the hole set up in my head. I don't need the DP to show me what he's going to do. I know what I'm seeing and I want him to help me to functionalize my desire.

GS: Another element of the movie that is especially compelling is the music on soundtrack, composed by Carter Burwell, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.

JS: Lou Reed is one of my best friends. Lou and Laurie live across the street from me. Laurie's brilliant, she's adorable and modest and serious and inspired. And Lou is just Lou. I fixed their house for them. Carter, I've always admired his work. I didn't know him before this project. I had very specific ideas about the music. There were things by Popul Vuh and Ennio Morricone I wanted Carter to think about and bring into this thing. We kind of worked together to make this ... aside from the fact that we have this encyclopedia of Cuban music going through it.

GS: Some recognizable actors play roles in the film which they are almost unrecognizable. Sean Penn plays Cuco Sanchez, a peasant who give young Arenas a ride along his route, and Johnny Depp is in a dual role as Bon Bon and Lieutenant Victor. What can you tell me about working with those actors and how you cast them?

JS: I love those actors. They're great actors and they're people who are renegades and they don't break their autonomy for anyone. The fact that they were both working, Sean and Johnny, on different things, and showed up to do this for me because, that's one way of making it possible for Javier ( Bardem ) to be the star of this film. He's a big star in Spain, but people don't really know who he is here, but they will after this. Johnny, I think, was just so generous with his insights, his imagination, and his willingness to do whatever I wanted to do.

GS: How did you get him to do the dual roles?

JS: Reinaldo wrote many books where one character could be three different people. I love that vision of beauty and freedom, because Bon Bon is going to smuggle his novel to the other side of the walls of the prison and the same guy that is the instrument of his torture and repression is the same character. Reinaldo had this concept that the whole island was a penitentiary and that the state security would go to such Byzantine lengths to undermine the stability of the prisoners—it's kind of an interesting poetic. I thought it was very in keeping, even though Reinaldo didn't write that these two people were the same ( person ) .

GS: It's amazing that you were able to discover The Color Of Summer at this time.

JS: They're redistributing his books and I'm going around signing his books. I don't care what I have to do to sell his books so that people will have access to this information. [ On the subject of a reading from the previous night ] : I had a wonderful time talking to the people over there. It was the first time I talked to people that hadn't seen the movie. They know who I am, and I'm coming to a bookstore, and they want to see me because I'm an artist, and I'm talking about this other guy, and reading from things and explaining things. It's an interesting process to get involved in somebody else's life and to sort of become responsible for somebody else's life.

GS: Did you ever have any contact with him when he was in New York?

JS: I never met him. Lazaro ( Gomez Carilles, who is played by Olivier Martinez in the movie ) , who was his best friend, works for me. He wrote the script with me. He is my studio assistant. He's working on other scripts. He writes sonnets. He was an immeasurable help to me. My wife ( Olatz Lopez Garmendia ) , who plays Arenas's mother ( in the movie ) has been directing the Cuban Spanish dub of this movie. We didn't send it to the Spanish distributor. We're doing it in New York. Everybody's speaking Cuban Spanish and Javier did his own Cuban Spanish dub and it looks like it's version original. It hasn't been done before.

GS: I'm glad that you brought up your wife. Are those your parents—Jack and Esther Schnabel—as The Greenbergs?

JS: They are. My whole family's in the movie. My five children are in the movie. I always liked the idea that Marty Scorcese put his mother and father in his movies. I love his parents. My mother is like a Jewish version of Marty's mother. My mother was in Basquiat. When Jean-Michel offered her the joint, she said, "No, thank you, I don't indulge," which was like the funniest line in the movie. When people asked her about it, she said that she ad libbed it. I asked my mother to read this book and she said "What kind of book is this? This guy's having sex every five minutes. You're going to have an argument with Fidel Castro. What are you looking for trouble for?" I said, "Mother, this is about freedom. This is about something that you taught me, about being responsible for other people. This is worth doing. She read the book, 87 years old, and she said "Can we be in the movie?" I said, "Of course, you're going to be in the movie." After they saw the film, they loved the movie. She actually gave the book to her sister Mary, who's 90 years old, and Mary said "This is a dirty book." She ( my mother ) said, "It's not a dirty book, it's a good book. You're not his audience!" It's interesting to get an 87-year-old lady to read the book and see the film and go, "This is really important to do."

GS: Both of your films, as a director ( including your previous film, Basquiat, which was based on the life of the painter ) , have been biographical in nature. What is it about true stories that make you want to tell them on screen?

JS: Truth is sometimes more radical than fiction. More unbelievable than fiction, in a way, and also the fact is that this is not just a bio-pic.

This movie is more of an accumulation of all of these writings and my impressions of a guy's life's work. It's a character study. It doesn't have to be a real person, if I could have written it and invented the guy ... I wish I could have. I guess he invented himself.

GS: Do you think that it's a natural progression for a visual artist to become a filmmaker?

JS: I'm the only one that ever did it. I mean there were other artists that did it, but have you seen a movie that they made that wasn't just a movie? I'm in a singular position in a weird way. People didn't know me as a filmmaker, they knew me as a painter. I didn't stop painting. My life is the life of a painter. Some people know me as "the guy that made Basquiat" or somebody didn't even know I was a painter and I thought it was fantastic. I just had the privilege or luck to use this part of my sensibility. I guess it came out of writing. I did write Cvj: Nicknames Of Maitre D's and Other Excerpts from Life. I think that different art is like a different instrument or tool to be used for a different reason.