This article is part of the January ‘TintaLibre’ magazine. Readers who wish to subscribe to EL PAÍS together with ‘TintaLibre’ can do so through this link. Existing subscribers should consult the offer at [email protected] o 914 400 135.
If only for such a disturbing and perfect series as To want and a film so calculatedly ambiguous as House in flamesdirected the first by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa and the second by Dani de la Orden, Eduard Sola has established himself as one of the biggest names in Spanish cinema in recent times. His enigmatic narrative tempo, his verbal subtlety, his gift for ellipsis and his aptitude for allusion without pointing out invited us to ask him about some of his secrets as a professional, and this splendid and frank story is what the screenwriter has told us.
They ask me how I do what I do and I have no answer to offer. I’ve been writing scripts for film and television for years and I still don’t know how it’s done. Maybe I’ll never know. Apparently, when I was a child they didn’t tell me stories to go to sleep, but to wake me up. The difference is interesting. The stories did not accompany me in dreams but in life. My father says that doing it like everyone else—to put me to sleep—achieved the opposite, keeping me awake. He says that, when he started the story at seven or so in the morning, he noticed how my ears woke up first and I followed them, almost like a victim of my own interest in what was being told. My father believed that I had “something special”, but the truth is that that “something” is found in stories. We were not yet humans who already told them and here we are still, thousands of years later, fascinated by them. Given such unquestionable evidence, I wonder when we discovered that lies also counted as stories, that fantasy also tells us, that fiction is also a way of telling us the truth.
We were not yet humans who already told them and here we are still, thousands of years later, fascinated by them. Given such unquestionable evidence, I wonder when we discovered that lies also counted as stories, that fantasy also tells us, that fiction is also a way of telling us the truth.
For years I have been obsessed with the concept of fictionality. The fictionality It is the relationship between fiction and reality and the wonderful thing about this relationship is that it is bidirectional: fiction lives off reality to build itself, but reality is also built through fiction. Would European monarchies be so accepted among the people if Disney princesses did not exist? Fiction teaches us to look at the world, to understand it, to interpret it. It works as a guide. That’s why, in my opinion, this story-telling thing has a certain significance. It is true that those of us who tell them do not save lives, but we do have to be careful with what we say and stop saying. In one of the latest ODA reports from the Observatory of Diversity in Audiovisual Media, it is indicated that 92.4% of the characters in Spanish fiction are white. It seems that from movies and TV we are stubborn in telling the world that the normal and usual thing is to be white. When I go out, however, I see a lot more diversity. The fact that there are almost only whites in our fiction has a direct impact on the lives of racialized people, who are automatically interpreted as an anomaly, despite this not being the case—nor—on a quantitative level. I think it is necessary for creators to generate their stories free of any responsibility towards the world, but it seems foolish to me to create with our backs to it, thinking that what we do has no impact on anything. Let’s do whatever we want with our lies, but let’s admit that with them we are articulating the truths that surround us. A server this year has released the series To want (directed by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa, co-written with her and Júlia de Paz) and I know that with her we have motivated hundreds of conversations about consent. I don’t know exactly what will happen with these conversations, but it’s not crazy to think that they will have changed the way that—at least—some couples I know relate to each other sexually. In a very different area, after the premiere of House in flames (directed by Dani de la Orden) many people have written to me saying that, when leaving the cinema, they have called their mothers to ask them how they are. Montse, played by Emma Vilarasau, is a fictional character, she does not exist, she is not real… but those calls to those mothers are.
I know that with To want we have motivated hundreds of conversations about consent. I don’t know exactly what will happen with these conversations, but it’s not crazy to think that they will have changed the way that—at least—some couples I know relate to each other sexually. In a very different area, after the premiere of House in flames Many people have written to me saying that, when leaving the cinema, they have called their mothers to ask them how they are.
Being aware of my responsibility as a screenwriter in building the world is just as sensible as knowing the limits of my reduced influence. The fiction that I can write affects reality, but let’s not forget that, at the end of the day, the story in question that I have in my hands is nothing more than a grain of sand in the desert. The script itself is also important in the construction of a film. Any audiovisual is made from infinite decisions that transcend the script. Also from hundreds of people who take them. Of dozens of alarm clocks that ring at six in the morning to be able to execute. It is important, in my opinion, to vindicate the scriptwriters, but let’s not go too far. Cinema—and series—are collective or they are not.
These last few months I have gotten tired of actively and passively saying that I am just a craftsman. I really believe it. I am far from being an artist. I don’t have the slightest intention of being one. They call me, tell me an idea, maybe lend me a book, and ask me if I would like to develop or adapt it. And what a wonderful job. Like a carpenter, with his wood and his saws, I work with actions and dialogues, with plots, with characters, with emotions, after all. I especially like the simile with the carpenter because of making tables: everyone eats at a table and everyone feels capable of making their own. At the end of the day it is not that difficult; a board and four legs. People go to Leroy Merlin, buy four pieces of wood and make their table for the terrace without too much difficulty. The problems come later, when after three days the table dances, when the sun frosts the board, when the rain rots each of the legs. And this does not happen to a carpenter. Everyone thinks they know how to make tables, just like everyone thinks they know how to write scripts. We are surrounded by so many fictions that it shouldn’t be that difficult to write one, right? I don’t know if a server knows how to write a good script, but I strive to know my craft and my tools to make the best table possible.
Some think that this condition of craftsman, scriptwriter, commissioned, distances me from what I write. It may seem that the carpenter makes his decisions based solely and exclusively on the needs of his client, but that carpenter is inseparable from his own taste, his values, his experience… and that is something undeniably subjective. Each and every one of the scripts I have written are crossed by my own existence. It is absurd to think otherwise. I wouldn’t know how to do it to build a mother like that of House in flames without it being my mother. Nor a mother like the one played by Najwa Nimri in The red virginalthough they are very distant from each other.
This inescapable relationship between the stories we write and the people who write them is also transferred to the form of the writings. It is known that scripts have a very specific form (I invite you to look for one online if you don’t know it). The writing of scripts is governed by formulas that try to make production easier. With this objective, there are headings that indicate night or day or, for example, we put the names of the characters in capital letters (this way it is easier to know which characters are in each scene with a simple glance). Even so, and recovering the idea that I previously defended, it is interesting to see how—despite the rigid conventions—each script emanates the spirit of its author. There are some that are more poetic, more rational, more progressive, more classic… When I was studying screenwriting I believed that hiding our personality was part of our job. Today, I know that it is impossible.
I said at the beginning of these lines that I don’t know how I do what I do. What I do know is that I still want to fall asleep in silence and wake up to stories.