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Spanish directors Paco Cabezas and Javier Ruiz Caldera compared notes on demanding shoots and creative risk at this year’s South International Series Festival in Cádiz.
Their Nov. 2 conversation, “No Holds Barred,” was
part of the festival’s Creative Talks program, moderated by South Boost coordinator Alejandro Ávila. South’s fourth edition ran Oct. 30-Nov. 4.
Cabezas, whose credits range from Netflix’s “Wednesday” to AMC’s “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” summed up the pressure of the job: “I’ve always compared shooting to painting a picture during a fire or writing a poem on a roller coaster.”
Before each shoot, he assembles a thick book of drawings, photographs and shot breakdowns. By the time he gets to set, he knows it so well he barely opens it.
“To create under pressure, you have to be very relaxed,” Cabezas said.
Ruiz Caldera favors leaving some things to chance: “Leave the window open so the air can come in and things can happen.”
He has carved out a career from taking comedy into unfamiliar territory, from spy caper “Anacleto: Agente Secreto” to superhero romp “Superlópez.” Horror, he confessed, is actually his favorite genre. “As soon as I run out of adjectives to put before comedy, I’ll make a big drama,” he joked.
After last year’s family drama “Wolfgang,” Ruiz Caldera changed direction again. “5 More Minutes” (“5 Minutos Más”), written by Berto Romero and starring Romero, Belén Cuesta and Javier Cámara, is a time-loop thriller shot in continuous takes of exactly five minutes.
Even a take running six seconds over meant starting again. Finishing early required finding a pause to fill the remaining time.
“I think it’s been the wildest technical challenge of my life,” said Ruiz Caldera, who came to filmmaking through editing. “Editing is possibly my favorite filmmaking tool,” he added. For this film, “I took that tool away from myself.”
Produced by El Terrat and Ikiru Films as a Movistar Plus original, “5 More Minutes” premiered in competition at San Sebastián, where Cámara won the Silver Shell for best supporting performance. The film also earned the coveted Audience Award and a Special Jury Mention at Austin’s Fantastic Fest. Filmax handles international sales and will release the movie in Spain Jan. 22.
Ruiz Caldera wanted Romero in the lead, although the comedian worried that viewers would expect jokes from a screenplay containing almost none. The director felt Romero’s presence would bring humor to the film even without conventional comic dialogue.
“I think humor is an essential ingredient if you want to move people more, or scare them more,” he said.
Cabezas put it another way. “If you laugh with someone, you love them more,” he said. “So when you put them in danger, you suffer more.”
Ruiz Caldera sees a similar connection between comedy and horror, provided the frightening moments are played straight. “The key is to take horror seriously,” he said. There is also a danger in pushing the humor too far: “A bad joke can ruin a film.”
When Ávila brought up action choreography, Cabezas grinned. “I’ve killed a lot of people in fiction,” he said.
His example came from “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” where a catapult launches a giant flaming ball made of zombies toward the heroes. Reading the script, Cabezas wondered: “How do I make a giant meatball of burning zombies explode against the heroes?”
The solution involved a van rigged to jolt on cue, a drone carrying a light to trace the incoming fireball and stunt performers attached to a constructed ball who broke away on impact.
“If I’ve already done a giant flaming meatball made of zombies, what else can I do?” he asked, laughing.
Cabezas said he had shot equally “crazy” material for the upcoming third season of “Wednesday,” though spoilers were off-limits.
His Spanish TV work has featured Atresplayer’s admired “La Novia Gitana” crime saga, most recently “La Nena,” a co-production between Banijay Iberia’s Diagonal and Buendía Estudios Canarias for Atresmedia. Cabezas described the “total freedom” he enjoyed on that project, compared with the established visual parameters of a show such as “Wednesday.”
Asked about working in Spain and the U.S., he acknowledged the differences in resources without drawing a wider cultural divide. “There are differences in budgets, but in the end the heart is the same.”
The directors first worked together on the 2009 spoof “Spanish Movie,” written by Cabezas and directed by Ruiz Caldera in his feature debut.
“Possibly the best day I’ve ever had on a shoot was on ‘Spanish Movie,’” Ruiz Caldera recalled. That was when he brought Leslie Nielsen and Spanish comedy star Chiquito de la Calzada together in front of two hidden cameras for the Telecinco Cinema–Think Studio production.
Ruiz Caldera asked Nielsen to imitate Chiquito, then let the two comedians improvise. Watching them was “like a National Geographic of comedy,” he said.
Cabezas’ Hollywood career began after his thriller “Neon Flesh” (“Carne de Neón”) reached Tribeca. Meetings in Los Angeles led to Nicolas Cage film “Rage” and U.S. TV assignments.
Yet when an audience member asked about the biggest challenge of his career, Cabezas went further back, to the short film that preceded “Neon Flesh.”
At a private screening, a producer declared it unfunny and refused to pay to transfer the digitally shot film to celluloid for festival screenings. Cabezas raised €10,000 ($11,200) from relatives, became a co-producer and financed the transfer himself.
At its first festival screening, the audience laughed. The short went on to win 60 awards, he recalled.
The hardest part, Cabezas said, had been “believing in yourself and taking that risk.”
