Page 197 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

I'm thinking that Warhol used the term 'factory in relation to his work, while the Russian avant-garde
filmmakers of the 1920s used the literal factory to make their work. So there's a particularly European
currency to this process. And it seems a lot of filmmakers feel the European dimension gives them more
control to the whole process. Have you found that?
I think so. I don't know if it's more control or it's a different attitude. There's an efficiency to the
Los Angeles/Hollywood type of movie making while there can be a sort of navel gazing quality to a lot
of the European subsidised product. But I think the politics in Europe has changed dramatically in
the last five years. These days every country in Europe is willing to try and support the movie industry
just as they would support an automobile industry or internet industry. And up until a few years ago
this wouldn't have been possible because there was a kind of resistance to the idea that movies were an
entertainment product.
Now we all know that even in the most exploitative commercial movie there is a level of artistry
involved. This is something we don't focus on and I feel that absence is to the detriment of the public.
The idea of the Fantastic Factory is to make movies for the public, but not just the public in Spain, or
Europe, but the public in Japan, Asia, North America, Latin America and to that end we have pre-sold
the movies all around the world before we have even shot one frame.
That's very encouraging. You mentioned that Spanish filmmaking will he a totally different concept to
L.A.-based productions, do you feel your American background will be a help or a hindrance?
Well, what I've tried to do in Barcelona is to take what I feel were the strong qualities of movie
development and production in Los Angeles and adapt them to a new system utilising the individual
character of Spain and Cataluna When I first arrived in Barcelona I found that Filmax didn't really
have a structured production system. They did co-productions within Spain, or with Italy or Chile,
but they didn't really sell the movies outside of those countries and they did movies more at that time
in the traditional Spanish style, in which they waited for directors to come to them with a script and
a television sale, with a yes or no if they wanted to pay for it.
So what we're doing isn't really American-style productions, but you can certainly say that we
borrowed a lot of American-style techniques. For example, we began a development department to
accept scripts, to develop scripts, to look for projects, to find directors, to find interesting creative
elements and to develop them. This is something that's not typical in Spain, I think we're the only
company that has it, we've got four or five people in this department and that wasn't there when I got
here. We started foreign sales; we have a foreign sales company that sells internationally at the markets
now, that wasn't there when I got here. We decide how many movies we're going to make and what
kind of movies we want and we control them more in the form of a studio. That said, we are certainly
not interested in telling a director how to cut his film, or whom he should have to collaborate with.
On the other hand we certainly try to give direction to the projects so this is a mix of systems, and the
ultimate aim is only to be the best producer of genre films in the world and to make Barcelona the
centre of genre filmmaking in the world.
What about your own influences as a filmmaker; do they cross over from America into Europe?
Well, I basically I grew up with American movies. But I grew up outside of America - I grew up
in Panama and Puerto Rico and Nicaragua. So to a certain degree I was always on the outside looking
in, even though I am an American. I always watched movies with subtitles when I was a kid. When I

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