Continued from p. 1
what I’m doing,”*
Brazil is also free of political repression
today, Babenco says, as is Argentina, the
country where he and Puig were born and
where two of Puig’s books, including Spider
Woman, are banned. While the novelist’s
story was meant to reflect conditions in
Argentina a decade ago, the film is not
intended to be specific as to time and place.
Portuguese writing in the prison would seem
to indicate Brazil, but Babenco insists, “I
shoot it in Brazil because I live in Brazil.... I
could write in Esperanto, okay? and everyone
would believe the movie was in a non
country.”
The Kiss of the Spider Woman project came
about almost by accident, the director reveals.
Although an avid reader — “It’s just part of
my life, it’s not a job” — he doesn’t think of
one in terms of the other: “The emotional
process of reading a book and being involved
in a movie is like oil and vinegar....
“My first impulse about making the movie
was a very irresponsible one,” he relates. In
1981 he was in L. A. to receive an award for
Pixote and happened to pick up a copy of Kiss
of the Spider Woman, which he had first read
in 1978. “I was reading the novel when I gave
an interview and one of the journalists asked
me if this is your next movie and I said yes.”
Soon after this self-fulfilling prophecy was
uttered, Leonard Schrader was engaged to
write the screenplay. The process, which took
a year and a half, Babenco calls “a very
fascinating and enchanted act of life. You
don’t need more that black coffee and a quiet,
silent room, and time — and a good place to sit
down.”
Babenco asked Burt Lancaster to play
Molina, he says, because “I always had a lot of
admiration for his work, since 1 was young....
I always had the strong feeling that he was a
special man, someone who accept big risk and
is not doing the same character all his life and
is this kind of old Hollywood great actors, you
know, like William Holden. How forget
Picnic or Trapezio or Vera Cruz? films that are
in my memory — I’m going to die having these
memories of these movies.”
After Lancaster’s 1983 heart attack the
project went through changes. Raul Julia, not
wanting to abandon it, came up with the idea
of casting fellow New York stage actor
William Hurt as Molina. Babenco flew to New
York to hear Hurt read in Julia’s apartment,
and made up his mind after the first page. “It
was really incredible,” he recalls. “It was such
a shock that I received when he started to
read.. .. He gave such a tender performance in
the first reading that I discover a new
dimension of the character that was very
imnortant.”
Substituting Hurt for Lancaster did not
require major script revisions, just what
Babenco calls “mechanical changes to adapt
the age of ... the character. In some way
Leonard changes some expressions that a
young character would never allow himself to
say — like old-fashioned words.”
More drastic changes were required a few
days before shooting started, when word came
that Universal might not give them the rights
to remake scenes from Cat Peoplelfll, which
was the principal movie Molina narrated in
the book and the play. The Nazi propaganda
film was expanded to fill the gap.
They rehearsed for two weeks, first in New
York and then in Sao Paulo, before filming
began in the Brazilian city In the fall of 1983.
The cell was a studio set, the rest of the prison
an actual abandoned prison, and scenes from
the films-within-the- film were done at a
combination of sets and real locations.
In the director’s absence the actors
- exchanged roles for a rehearsal, and Hurt
offered to give Molina to Julia, who had
wanted to play him all along. Babenco would
hear none of it, but since then there has been
intermittent talk of the three of them
mounting a stage production with Julia as the
queen and Hurt the revolutionary. “Nothing
in terms of production is going on,” the
director says. “It’s just talk.” He doesn’t rule
out the possibility, but with so many busy
schedules involved, don’t hold your breath.
Babenco and his actors will be lucky to find
time to pick up all their awards for the film, let
alone stage it.
What follows reveals some plot points
about the ending of Kiss of the Spider
Woman. You may not want to read it until
you’ve seen the film.
The most difficult scene to shoot was the
four-minute sequence that ends with the
cellmates making love. “We did 37 times for
two days,” Babenco says. “And I remember
that the 36th time Bill came to me and said,
‘Listen, an actor is like a lake and I’m dry. I
can’t give any more for you. I put everything
out of me, I don’t have more energy.’ He said,
‘What are you looking for from us?’
“And I said, ‘Listen, I’m looking to feel that
you would like to fucked (by) this other man
and thus far I don’t have this feeling. We’re
going to try it. (I’m not) in a hurry. It could be
one more day, two more days, three more days
— here I am.’ And they were a little bit
shocked about my reaction. ‘Sorry, it’s a
crucial moment of the movie. If I don’t feel
that Raul really accept to play the male role
and if I don’t feel that you really are giving
yourself in a total way—’ And then we did one
more time and this is the shot that is in the
movie.”
On the other hand, the scene in the warden’s
office where Molina the collaborator extorts
groceries from the authorities was shot in one
take, actually a filmed rehearsal. “When we
ended Bill said, ‘We did it. It’s done.’” They
shot it twice more as a precaution, but only the
first was printed.
Perhaps Babenco takes a bit too much
credit for using what was already in Puig’s
novel in the final scene, as Valentin dreams his
way to death through the sort of movie fantasy
he had learned from Molina:
“We faced three strong problems in this
moment. One, how to show that Valentin
could escape for the kingdom of dreams and
show then, this was something he learned from
Molina, that it was Molina who opened (for
him the doors of the perception, the doors of
the fantasy, the capacity to relax you rational
system and just fly.... On the other hand we
were taking the risk (that the audience would)
believe the end of the movie (was) just another
Molina story....
“This is why we establish so clear when they
are running in the corridor, Raul is stopped
and he says ‘What about Molina?’ and then
Sonia Braga says, ‘Don’t worry, my love, only
he knows if he died sad or happy.’ In this
moment you establish that Molina was dead
already and what comes next is just Raul’s
imagination. And then we are carried on
Raul’s imagination — Valentin’s imagination
— until the end of the movie, in a moment in
which I decided then the movie is more
important than the two characters; and this is
the moment in which I make the
transformation (from) black and white to
color again.... let’s end the movie like a real
movie used to end... (on) a very corny picture
postal card (of) a tropical island... and at least
to have the feeling that Raul died happy — he
died in the middle of his fantasy.”
Although death is the somewhat ambiguous
by-product of this dream sequence, Babenco
says that is undoubtedly the outcome: “For me
he is already dead when he receives the shot of
morphine. It’s just a question of seconds, of
minutes.”
Whatever the self-styled censors of the “gay
community” may think, Babenco is proud of
the men he has put on the screen. He was
impressed by their presence in the book, “like
two strong icons, the subversive and the gay.
They were for me like two cliches, two
prototypes.... They are characters that are
starting to exist in the last ten years. You never
had a gay character like Molina 25 years
ago....
“There was never that I remember a gay of
such poetic courage (on) the screen, because
always the gays are portrayed as a caricature.
Look at this movie with Pacino, Cruising-,
Cage aux Folles — plenty of examples.
Always you have the transvestites for funny,
okay? Always exploring the pathetic side, the
grotesque, always exploring this — cheap
opera side of the man who would like to be a
woman.”
The subject has subtly shifted to Molina as
Babenco continues, “The man would like to be
a woman because he believed that, he was
taught that men cannot be sensitive, that men
cannot express and show their own feelings.
Men must be taught and know everything
Continued On P. 7
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