Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro play with the models from “Pinocchio”. MICHAEL TRAN (AFP)
A young man asked what all the fuss was about Friday night at Fanny’s Bar, the bar of the Film Academy Museum. “It’s a Netflix event. Three Mexican directors are coming,” the waitress replied while preparing a cocktail. These three filmmakers were Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, colleagues who share a homeland, an obsession with death and recent years of success. With seven Oscars under the three’s belts, the gathering made Friday night a major Hollywood event.
The evening started with a little nostalgia. Del Toro remembered the first photo of the three that went around the world. It was taken 16 years ago on the Oscars red carpet in February 2007. The Guadalajara-born filmmaker was nominated for Pan’s Labyrinth and Iñárritu received his first Best Director nomination for Babel. Both posed alongside Cuarón. The friends’ careers took off. They also did it as entrepreneurs with Cha Cha Chá, a company with which they helped produce and distribute five films. Ten years later, in 2017, the family photo grew as the directors posed with Salma Hayek, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Emmanuel Lubezki in Cannes.
A lot has happened in these years. “Two weddings and 200 pounds later,” joked Del Toro, who is returning for a new awards season alongside Iñárritu. Both do it with films that highlight their maturity as storytellers. The Guadalajara filmmaker presents his adaptation of Pinocchio, a stop-motion animated film that explores fatherhood, a subject he has pondered following the loss of both his parents since the premiere of The Shape of Water and his latest film has.
Mexicans Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro, left to right, arriving at the ceremony.Portal
“There are a lot of people going to their bios. We’re in a moment of self-reflection and where we’re going,” said Del Toro, who will find out Tuesday if he wins one of the three Golden Globes he’s nominated for. The director cited some recent films that his peers looked back on. These include Steven Spielberg in The Fabelmans, Sam Mendes in The Empire of Light and James Gray’s The Time of Armageddon.
Iñárritu also promotes his most personal work. Bardo has proven challenging for viewers following his work ever since he surprised with Amores Perros in the early 21st century. Iñárritu once told the director of Roma that after making Babel he felt the need to renew his cinematic language. “I knew I had to reinvent myself. I was fed up with myself,” said the Oscar-winner for Birdman. The search for this new means of communication began with Biutiful, a film starring Javier Bardem that took him to Spain and back to Spanish after filming 21 Grams and Babel in English. “My films are an x-ray of an emotional moment. Even if you deny or suppress it. That’s why I can’t watch these films. I can’t see things I can’t remember because they represent a time in life. They have an intensity that you sometimes don’t recognize,” he said in an interview.
Focused on making his streaming TV debut and with no film to promote in the current cycle, Alfonso Cuarón has limited himself to just hosting. This much to the frustration of del Toro, who tried to ask a few questions that the Children of Man director avoided at all costs. “I didn’t get the memo or what… Here are the three friends and this bastard isn’t speaking,” Del Toro joked to the laughter of the packed David Geffen Auditorium.
Cuarón has been the gravitational center of the threesome’s friendship for decades. A few decades later, he and del Toro discovered they were watching the same movies at the same theater. Originally from Mexico City, Cuarón’s family spent the summers at Lake Chapala, a resort town near Guadalajara. In these summer lands, the minors, without knowing each other, marveled at El Santo vs. the vampire women, the werewolf, and Melody.
Del Toro also recalled visiting Cuarón at his home to tell him the storyline of Pan’s Labyrinth from start to finish in front of a chicken broth. “We both ended up crying,” said the Hellboy creator, who admitted to audiences this Friday that he gives his voice to all the monsters that inhabit his filmography. From those that appear in the Pacific Rim to the Faun himself. “I’ve identified with them since I first saw Frankenstein. I thought, “This is my Jesus. That’s my saint,'” he added.
On another occasion, Cuarón, who had been making films for years before Solo con tu pareja, one day called his friend to recommend him to see Amores Perros. This was the first film by an advertising executive. Del Toro listened and believed then-González Iñárritu’s debut was “a masterpiece” with 20 minutes remaining. So she called him to tell him. Trust soon grew in the relationship, and del Toro flew from Austin, Texas to Mexico to convince him to pull out the scissors and cut out much of the second story that makes up the plot.
The ‘dream team’ of Mexican cinema pose on the red carpet at Cannes.GETTY
Despite the trajectories achieved, there was also talk of failure at night. “A movie got rejected for me this morning,” revealed Del Toro, who will find out on Jan. 24 if his Pinocchio is nominated for an Oscar. Bardo has not been nominated for any Golden Globes, Netflix is in the final stretch of the campaign for the nomination.
Iñárritu reiterated that the experience gave him enough courage “to speak out in the face of rejection.” As an example, he cited Birdman, a film that studios rejected for two years before it was finally made (and won four Oscars in 2015). Bardo’s process was also uphill. He heard some nos, but the need to do it was greater, so he started financing it and thought of putting his house up for sale to achieve it. Before that, the streaming giant appeared, which has already given the three friends shelter.
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