The Circuit

by Emilio Mayorga
The highlight of this year’s Cinema Jove, in Spain’s Valencia, a festival famed for celebrating young talent, were a bunch of card-carrying pensioners.

Cinema Jove jury president Jerzy Skolimowski, has been written off, regularly and wrongly, as retired. Richard Lester ("A Hard Day's Night") writes himself off as retired, maybe not so wrongly.  Joined by Jiri Menzel and Michael Sarne they were all brought into Cinema Jove for the “Cann(es)celled” showcase - pics which never got to screen in Cannes Competition in 1968.

Forty years later they swapped anecdotes and proved life - and movie-making problems - go on after 60.

Better known as an actor ("Eastern Promises"), Sarne talked about a Barcelona-set Bukowski adaptation he’s trying to make. "The main role’s for a skinny, haggard and ugly woman. I can't find the actress," he explained.

Spanish director Bigas Luna ("I Am Juani," "Golden Balls"), who has a rep as a talent discoverer; having given Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz their big breaks in “Jamon, Jamon,” brought an actress to him.

"Jesus, she was the most voluptuous and stunning girl I've ever seen," Sarne said. "I need a new producer," he concluded.

Menzel ("I Served the King of England"), a Jove habitue, said he had “more and more doubts about new projects. It's so difficult to find an exceptional script.”

Also recently back in the limelight, after "Four Nights with Anna" opened Directors’ Fortnight, Skolimowski told Variety he’d definitely abandoned, “America,” a long-mooted adaptation of a Susan Sontag's novel. The producers couldn't raise the budget, he said.

Skolimowski soon dispatched Cannes 1968, then told a story about Lee Marvin and John Boorman getting smashed at a party in Hollywood. Boorman, slightly the better for wear, offered to drive Marvin home. Marvin accepted, but only if he could lie on his roof of his car.

A policeman soon flagged them down.

"Sir, you have actor Lee Marvin on the roof of your car…," he told Boorman.

"Yes, I know. But… Is it illegal?" Boorman asked.

40 years after Cannes, Valencia’s Cinema Jove allowed the directors the sweet taste, if not of success, at least of Iberic jam.

“It’s over,” Richard Lester said of his career, talking at the Hotel Las Arenas, giving on to that most aristocratic now of Valencian beaches, the Malvarrosa. 

Then he tasted the jam, looked at the horizon, and his smile deepened into happiness.
Photo: fest director Rafael Maluenda, Richard Lester, Michael Sarne and Blighty film critic Philippe Bergson.