Luncheon with Jodorowsky: Charcoal-broiled and Medium-rare

The Branding Iron Restaurant, situated as it is in the Charles River Park, a collection of high-rise luxury apartment buildings that can only have been inspired by the public housing on Columbia Point, is not accustomed to being a noontime stopover on Boston's celebrity circuit. The two waitresses--red dresses, yellow organdy aprons, orange makeup--eye the assembly warily as they circle the three tables filling the heavy cut-glass goblets with water.

And after all why not? For isn't that foreign-speaking man in the black bell-bottoms and sweater, his greying hair pulled back in a ponytail, Alexandro Jodorowsky? The man, they say, that made that film, El Topo, that's playing down the street at the Charles Cinema? The one with all the blood? Except that he seems to be so pleasant--

And, in fact, he is. Jodorowsky, whose first feature film, El Topo, has recently emerged from underground status to become an aboveground cult, smiles in happy bemusement as the man from Allen Klein's (Beatles' manager and El Topo' distributor) summarily introduces the Chilean director to a miscast sampling of the Boston press.

In reply to their inquiries concerning the general state of his health, Jodorowsky is ecstatic: "Today, the most interesting things in my life are Pinnochio and Snow White," he proclaims. Pinnok-S. White. A half dozen pencils begin to scratch away at their notepads, then, thinking the better of it, return to position one to ready themselves for the next question. "But, no, you want I should do the interview?" Jodorowsky asks playfully, pleased that he's called their bluff.

Jodorowsky, as he himself explains to his unimaginatively curious questioners, is 42 years old, was born in Chile of Russian-Polish parents, studied mime under Marcel Marceau, has operated a theater in Mexico City where he also writes a weekly comic strip. Tired of "working with flesh" as a stage director, Jodorowsky made his first movie in order to "work with symbols." "John Wayne is a symbol, not a man," he explains. "For me, a picture must not have poetry, but epic poetry. Search for archetypes. I go it alone."

"I work in this way. I finish the script when I finish the picture. Oh, I have script to sell, but when I make the movie I go search for landscapes. When I see landscapes I like, changes script." He looks to his audience for some sort of assent. As he speaks, his hands appear to be juggling the words of his childlike English as it tumbles forth in broken rhythms.

Immediately, someone asks why the film features so much blood (for El Topo does for bloodbaths what Claudet Colbert did for milk)., Jodorowsky, who's' anticipated the attack, has practised his defense: "I will kill any animal you eat in all my pictures. I do not kill dog or cat. I can kill chicken. I cannot have 10,000 rabbits stampede they tell me, so I say I want 300 rabbits dead. How many cows do you kill a day? 80,000 a day? One million? Finish with the hamburgers and I will finish to kill animals. It is essential to show how you are criminals. First, you must live human beings. Then give food to dogs." The logic lies more in the passion of his delivery than in the sequence of words themselves.

"In Mexico, they cut out the sex and religion in the film," he continues. (His questioners seem relieved to have let him off the hook.) "They leave the violence only. But sex, sex is so beautiful for children." Jodorowsky's eyes light up in imitation of a child opening up a gift-wrapped package.

"I will do only four more movies," Jodorowsky abruptly announces. "When I finish giving the message, I become a, how you say (he gestures with his fingers), a masseur. I do more with any hands. A masseur is like a lady prostitute--he gives your body. When you caress a woman or a man you search for your own pleasure, but a masseur gives pleasure. A masseur is like a priest. One priest is needed for one person. Then you would go to church to be in assured."

El Topo he describes as "a search for enlightenment." His next film will concern itself not with another solitary quest but with the adventures of ten persons "searching for the Eight Immortals." The third is to be a pirate flick--its title, Mr. Blood--and will concern a search for love.

No one thinks to ask of the promised fourth film, because Jodorowsky is already off into an explanation of his flight from the West Coast, during which he watched the inflight movie while listening to Sly and the Family Stone on his headphones. "I prefer to film silent voices like the American spaghetti Westerns. In my pictures, I change all the voices. For me an old woman is 70 years old, has experience of life in voice. I put it with face of a young girl. She becomes a great actress. Nobody's voice is their own."

But just as suddenly Jodorowsky is bored with such explanations. "Would you give me the great pleasure of speaking of Pinocchio for five minutes?" For various reasons, all grant his request. "What is Pinocchio? Pinocchio is our life. We are like a puppet. In a certain moment we finish our primitive life and we have consciousness. We have broken the strings. We think we are then free, but we are still machines, not humans. We must go to life and suffer in search for human life. We must become animal (and here Jodorowsky braws like a donkey), accept passions. Now Pinocchio goes into the ocean. The whale is the universal mother. It eats him and he is reborn. He is a human being, beautiful, clean.

"And this is also El Topo, War is normal. Always we live with war. But El Tope thinks this is not possible. He must take revenge. Become criminal. Must search for consciousness. Becomes buddha. Middle of picture, but buddha is not the end of the road, he is middle. Now you must give the life. Love is to search, to have and then to live."

As if on cue, the waitresses, with their trays of medium rare charcoal-broiled streaks, baked potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil, and cold green peas, begin to serve the ensemble. "None for me," Jodorowsky indicates. "I'm a vegetarian."