Daniel Giménez Cacho and Nacho Pérez Click on the photo to extend it.

Shooting a film is like being at home -just the same as writing a book, painting a picture or processing any other form of artwork.
For over two months now, mi home bears the name "Bad Education" and ever since I stepped in I have hardly had the occasion to peep outdoors. All I do is film, think about the shooting and try to get enough sleep to be fresh the next morning. I hardly ever read these days, neither do I go out, watch films, listen to music nor switch the TV on.
One's life is minimized during the shooting of a film, but it is also focused and intensified -although in one way only. The few feelings that manage to brush one's senses do so in an extremely lively manner.
Despite the thickness of the walls in this home -which make it look rather like a bunker- there are always stories, anecdotes light as a breeze that somehow go through and touch me.

Nacho Pérez and Raúl García Click on the photo to extend it.

In Valencia, for example, we restored the Tyris Theatre, an aesthetic gem of the 70s, with a doubly obscure Zola feature ("Thérèse Raquin" and "The Human Beast") turned into master thrillers by Marcel Carné and Jean Renoir, respectively. I chose these not only to bring light into the excellence of European noir, but also because both contain situations identical to those undergone by the two characters sitting in the stalls (Lluis Homar and Gael, in his male role).
Many of the pedestrians walking by the newly-restored façade walked to the box to buy tickets. An elderly woman even phoned her friend excited to tell her that the Tyris doors were open again. This set my mind free and I pictured the excited woman and her friend experiencing life in that theatre, but also considered the possibility of both films being closely and extraordinarily related to their lives.
Sometimes, the surroundings of a shot become more thought-provoking than the shot itself.

Like every night during this shooting, that was a terribly hot night (never have I fanned myself as much as I do here). Valencia as one breathed through its balconies, and our work became a complimentary show to those in the street where we were shooting.
We were preparing a rain scene when out of a sudden I saw, in the monitors I use to control what's before the camera, a 10-year old boy showering under the rain poles with a joy only children can express to celebrate natural phenomena -even though this was not so natural.

The head cameraman Jose Luis Alcaine Click on the photo to extend it.

The boy lived next door and had run from home. After weeks of stifling heat, from bed he heard the sound of rain and ran out bursting with excitement while his parents stood on the balcony. In his quest for refreshing water he ended up in the middle of our shot.
I like to think that, to this kid, movies will always link to the idea of something as miraculous and longed for as our fake rain. Nobody asked him to leave the shooting area -in fact, he looked so natural among us I thought he was a relative of someone from the crew.
That rainy night the character of Lluis Homar plunged into the lips of Gael's after learning they must part for some time. This is a very dramatic scene which, given its nature, I would have liked to shoot without witnesses, but that was not possible -despite being 3 am the balconies were stuffed. When the kiss was produced a general sigh was heard followed by applause. I turned my eyes for the boy in the hope that he would not be there, but he was, grave, contemplating for the first time maybe two men kissing desperately in the rain.

Fele Martínez and Gael García Bernal Click on the photo to extend it.

In his "Interview" Fellini speaks of what he enjoys the most (so do I): the works of a shooting, all the things no one gets to see except for us privileged dedicated to this. I saw "Interview" one of these Saturdays, and I admit here I cried when Mastroianni and Fellini pay a visit to Anita Ekberg, twenty years older than in "La Dolce Vita" and twenty kilos wider. Together they contemplate in the screen the scenes in the Fontana de Trevi. When Anita gets in and under the cascades with her head back, her infinite neck, her perfect lower jaw, her long blonde hair, her boundless breasts hardly covered in a wide neck.
It is so moving to watch the mascara run down her lids as she contemplates her former splendour.
The water, Rome's eternal night and Anita's beauty immortalized by Fellini's spirit.