"Iām obsessed with 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Iām not jealous of the director who directed it because it was so much work. Iām sure he was working 20 hours a day for five years, with the very best people he could find on this planet to create a cathedral of cinema. The movie is a cathedral itself. And also when you read about how the reception to the movie was, how much he suffered, everybody was picking on the movie besides the young audience, that you donāt envy Kubrick. You envy his talent. But if thereās one director that I really envy, itās BuƱuel.
I wish I was in his head when he had shown the movie he co-directed with Salvador Dali, because itās just a short movie, a 17-minute movie, but that still is his most famous movie after a huge career of fabulous movies. And itās the first movie that I know that really used the language of dreams and nightmares.
The opening scene of the movie, of the short film, with Bunuel cutting the eye of a woman ā even if the close-up, they replaced the eye of the woman by the eye of a cow ā is so shocking that I wish I could have been in the audience, if I could not be behind Bunuel. If I could see the reaction, Iām sure thereās never people turning more crazy in the history of cinema, than the first audience that that movie had.
Really it was not as banned as his first feature, LāAge dāOr, that was more anti-religious than this one. But yeah, thereās so many documentaries about the Second World War, about the First World War, about the things that happened in the trench, but why didnāt anybody film the opening day, or that first premiere of Un Chien Andelou? Iām sure that it was a general state of shock.
And the movie is so beautiful, so political, that itās a real piece of art. Thereās not many directors you can consider as artists. Of course, Kubrickās like an architect, the most famous architect in the history of cinema, but as a poet or painter, Bunuel is an artist. Also, he was co-directing a movie with Salvador Dali, which makes sense. You can say Kennith Anger is an artist. But there are not many filmmakers that you can consider artists."
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