Speaker 1: Oh it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want clod sodas,
Speaker 3: pop popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: As I'm actually I'm with with Alison Volton. My name
Speaker 4: is Norman Forrester.
Speaker 5: H you're not on the list?
Speaker 4: Oh well it should be right there under.
Speaker 2: F Oh, I don't suppose you'd be lying. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: so you're not on the guests. Everybody's ignoring you are
Speaker 2: You're a to her? Your girlfriend's father doesn't like you
Speaker 2: at all?
Speaker 4: What do you do? I work in a Patriots fantastic
Speaker 4: Wait a second, what that wouldn't be the end of
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 2: As long as your girlfriend doesn't turn her back on you.
Speaker 3: I can't be holding your hand all the time.
Speaker 4: Hi, you seem like a nice guy. Why don't delight
Speaker 4: all the kind of goddamn it?
Speaker 1: It's my fault for making things.
Speaker 4: Hard for you.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, something's not quite right. The
Speaker 2: royal folks feel the way from you. Allison and her
Speaker 2: family aren't the worst of everybody working at this hotel.
Speaker 2: The waiters, the.
Speaker 4: Manager, everybody was acting a little weird.
Speaker 2: Look in the hell is going on?
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, kid, but you're gonna have to help me understand. Huh,
Speaker 4: what are you looking at? You're not what?
Speaker 2: We're all going to die hidden. I think.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get any wish well, Norman, Definitely that's a problem.
Speaker 4: Watch out you got? Is that good?
Speaker 3: You like that?
Speaker 4: Oh? My god, that's awful.
Speaker 5: Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth.
Speaker 5: I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I am
Speaker 5: talking with you Jenny Omeira. He is the director and
Speaker 5: co writer of the film The Birthday from two thousand
Speaker 5: and four. The film has recently been quote unquote rediscovered
Speaker 5: and is currently playing at Alamo Draft Houses, and we'll
Speaker 5: be having a brief theatrical run as well as having
Speaker 5: a home video release. Thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 5: and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Let's talk about you,
Speaker 5: and let's talk about The Birthday for a little bit.
Speaker 5: This is very unusual to talk about a film that's
Speaker 5: twenty years old. Usually I talk about movies from the thirties, forties, fifties,
Speaker 5: but yeah, one from two thousand and four that was
Speaker 5: getting revitalized here. So tell me a little bit about
Speaker 5: where you were at in your career at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was actually I was joining six when I
Speaker 1: made it, And I was a beneficiary of having this
Speaker 1: kind of English speaking pop culture like the UK and
Speaker 1: the US sin because I've been raised in an air
Speaker 1: in Spain where all my friends we were combining Spanish
Speaker 1: and English and even if we didn't what, I had
Speaker 1: a band and it was but my reference was Faith
Speaker 1: No More or mister Bungle all up. We didn't have
Speaker 1: reference or inspirations directly from Spanish bands or Spanish film directors,
Speaker 1: because there was like it felt like it was lacking
Speaker 1: and the exploding of the late eighties early nineties, you
Speaker 1: cannot combit with all of the sudden that was happening.
Speaker 1: So being raised in the seventies, I think that the
Speaker 1: fact that people like especially as a producer, Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 1: was making these films that had and I say films
Speaker 1: because I think that when you see a film, even
Speaker 1: like The Goodies that is whimsical and apparently for kids,
Speaker 1: the fact that's directed by an adult man, Richard Donner,
Speaker 1: and then you see the film and sometimes it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the weight that it has, the gravitask
Speaker 1: here in there is surprises, especially when you grow Well,
Speaker 1: these films are better than what they needed to be.
Speaker 1: And that's why I find out that era all these
Speaker 1: guys could give the New Hollywood. They were so desperate
Speaker 1: about using every single film as a vessel for their
Speaker 1: ideas that they are like they have this metastasism of
Speaker 1: ideas that are bigger than the films themselves. That's why
Speaker 1: they pass teste of time. Well, we look back to
Speaker 1: those movies. It's not just the stuff that we saw,
Speaker 1: but we were kids and that we had film nostalgia
Speaker 1: to it. There's so much to discover and unveil, especially
Speaker 1: Zum becoming an adult. Then the fact that Lucas and
Speaker 1: Spielberg were always very open about sharing the secrets of
Speaker 1: how films were made. They were always trying to nurture
Speaker 1: future filmmakers and craftsmen. And in Spain we had this
Speaker 1: in the video store. You could read the making of
Speaker 1: Star Wars and the special effects of bar Strikes Back.
Speaker 1: And that's something that I saw when I was six
Speaker 1: seven years old and I saw all these skinny guys
Speaker 1: with beards when board band get like exploring little models
Speaker 1: and stuff that blew my mind the fact that films
Speaker 1: were made by people and you could make this for
Speaker 1: a living.
Speaker 2: So that's my origin story. Basically.
Speaker 1: In ninety five, I went to Madrid to attend to
Speaker 1: the film school that I could afford because I'm from
Speaker 1: the south east of Spain, the Blanching community, and I
Speaker 1: stopped across Mikkelbanni. Knew that my best friend, and we
Speaker 1: started co writing and playing with ideas. Not unlike Ed
Speaker 1: Solomon and Chris Mathison when they created a billion Tip, we.
Speaker 2: Had plenty of characters. It wasn't scripts.
Speaker 1: It was more kind of sketches and ideas and what
Speaker 1: if it is like The Godfather with a but with
Speaker 1: a time travel overhit blah blah blah. And when I
Speaker 1: made my first short film, Fade, when I was straytune
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, there's this product producer who saw
Speaker 1: it and said, how do you do this? And shut
Speaker 1: you got said it's an English to tell me about
Speaker 1: you where you're coming from, And I said, explained what
Speaker 1: I just told you, And he asked me, hey, do
Speaker 1: you think that if you had six weeks and send
Speaker 1: the amount of money, you could make a film that
Speaker 1: is confined but with good cinematography and you can have
Speaker 1: English speaking actors.
Speaker 2: And I said, yeah, So Michael.
Speaker 1: And I started writing the script that we had all
Speaker 1: this restraints and really comes to the budget, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to the ideas, we could go as crazy
Speaker 1: and ambitious and insane as we went as you can
Speaker 1: see it in the Birthday. So that's I think the
Speaker 1: beautiful I always say that the big protina ist of
Speaker 1: the of the film is not Corey film, and it's
Speaker 1: not myself as a direct make it as a core writer.
Speaker 1: This is the opportunity of a film happened to be
Speaker 1: because it's very hard to make even a decent movie,
Speaker 1: even mediocre movies are insanely difficult to put together. Imagine
Speaker 1: something this insane. So I will always be grateful for
Speaker 1: that opportunity. And I think it was a moment in
Speaker 1: the industry in Spain that it was allowed to There
Speaker 1: were subsidies the industry of culture and supporting new voice.
Speaker 1: As that lasted like three four years. It was a
Speaker 1: small window. And I'm twenty six years old. I was
Speaker 1: a brat and my word is now.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the reason why this movie.
Speaker 1: The best thing that we can take, all the credit
Speaker 1: that we can take is that we use that opportunity
Speaker 1: to do something special. But that doesn't mean that it
Speaker 1: was a good or bad movie. But at least we're
Speaker 1: trying to do something that it felt like distinct and
Speaker 1: that's what I'm most proud of.
Speaker 5: You mentioned some of the American filmmakers that influenced you.
Speaker 5: Were there Spanish filmmakers that influenced you as well.
Speaker 1: The Spanish filmmakers start to influenced me when I was
Speaker 1: fully formed by the great American craft. That's a little
Speaker 1: sub despect. The first film that I remember seeing on
Speaker 1: a silver screen Damn into Spanish in eighty two was
Speaker 1: Annie John Houston's movie. And a lot of musicals that
Speaker 1: come from about my family. My parents they met a
Speaker 1: studying art. My sister and I went to study piano,
Speaker 1: so music and the plastic art. It's always been part
Speaker 1: of our kind of environment. So my mother's song and
Speaker 1: played the guitar, so.
Speaker 2: Anything the idea of Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Like was singing in The Ring Problem is the film
Speaker 1: that my sister and I saw on VHS more than
Speaker 1: any other thing like insane, like reading, like the two
Speaker 1: hundred times mark or something. So yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: I started to preciate more Spase filmmakers, especially going to
Speaker 1: the seventies and sixties when I was eighteen nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: and I third Avalanchian filmmaker from my area I just
Speaker 1: called Gaia Blanga who made all this incredible satirical kind
Speaker 1: of black comedies in the fashion of what in the
Speaker 1: US will be something like Being There or Network. Those
Speaker 1: two films are some of my favorite. That combined with
Speaker 1: the end of a Robert Allman approach to having I
Speaker 1: don't know twelve actors on a white shot and interacting
Speaker 1: to it, it has that from a very Spanish European
Speaker 1: perspective in a way it felt very Italian's almost like Fellini,
Speaker 1: and I remember appreciating that from a different perspective. And
Speaker 1: Petro Amldover as well in nineteen eighty nine when he
Speaker 1: made Women on the Verge of a Nervous Attack Sorry,
Speaker 1: and it was omitted to the Oscars and all that
Speaker 1: was the thing that meaning I was twelve, they do
Speaker 1: you have a Spanish director who made our John Waters
Speaker 1: make it his staining and mean nominated. I thought, how
Speaker 1: John Waters is going to film saying that this Spaniard
Speaker 1: making this thing, when Pedro always been very vocal how
Speaker 1: much he admired Joe Waters and I know he's nominated
Speaker 1: to an Oscar, all those things.
Speaker 2: I always had these things.
Speaker 1: In the back of my hand, always compensating with how
Speaker 1: much I love American cinema and of course the great
Speaker 1: classes like John us some stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's it was.
Speaker 1: I think that I was more impressive again in my toyes.
Speaker 1: It is when I decided to say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I went for the best kind of Spanish, Italian and
Speaker 1: French cinema. But because at the same time I've noticed
Speaker 1: that spirit but William Fred Kay Norris or Sesse they
Speaker 1: love European cinema.
Speaker 2: So it was very.
Speaker 1: Deffinent to fill the gamps and stuff that the people
Speaker 1: who inspired.
Speaker 5: Me tell me about the making of the Birthday? What
Speaker 5: was that experience like for you?
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that again, this is my story. I
Speaker 1: cannot split for others my case. I considered myself first
Speaker 1: of first and foremost. I don't think that I'm a
Speaker 1: storyteller in the way that I come from a family
Speaker 1: who storyteller's big bounce. Imagine that the Southeast of Spain
Speaker 1: is very similar to what I would say that the
Speaker 1: Avalanchian is opposed to an Italian American of the East
Speaker 1: Coast than an Italian. That is insane.
Speaker 2: But it's like a big dreams, big mouths, like a
Speaker 2: lot of projection and charm.
Speaker 1: And extroverted and always getting a little bit of even
Speaker 1: aggressive with your path and the way you're this guy
Speaker 1: is passionate or is just crazy. That has been like
Speaker 1: how I've been raised Christmas time saying uncle Uncle Pempe
Speaker 1: getting a little bit tipsy, that that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So I never the storytelling aspect has been always very
Speaker 1: natural to this tent that that to me writing or
Speaker 1: all that they feel very natural. That disconnected saw him
Speaker 1: to what my biggest passion for cinema was that is
Speaker 1: film directing, and by film directing, when the director is
Speaker 1: the voice and everybody else, the heads of the departments
Speaker 1: are supporting a vision and they collaborate in the execution
Speaker 1: of a plan. But let's figure out what this film
Speaker 1: is to get. In that regard, I was very impressed,
Speaker 1: obviously as a kid seeing Danna Jones and understanding that
Speaker 1: it airs the opening of Rangers of the Lost Art.
Speaker 1: It was clearly storyboarded and conceived by a mind and
Speaker 1: executed by incredible craftsmen I got. I was obsessed with ILM.
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with John.
Speaker 2: Williams, of course, and the editing, but I never see this.
Speaker 1: To me, is Pielberg was that thing that made the difference.
Speaker 2: The same with Jows.
Speaker 1: I'm not the kid who was terified of shark in
Speaker 1: the water. To me, it was like, how did he
Speaker 1: do it? I was thinking about the illusionist kind of
Speaker 1: traig that the adme region. I knew that it wasn't magic,
Speaker 1: that it was a trick, but I said this with
Speaker 1: the most pure sense of fascination. So my background. When
Speaker 1: I was fifteen sixteen, I felt that I was getting
Speaker 1: behind because I wanted to direct film so badly. I
Speaker 1: wasn't saying and I'm so unrealistic.
Speaker 2: So when I got to attend.
Speaker 1: Film school in Matririd i was eighteen again I felt
Speaker 1: I can I have to shoot something I wanted to direct.
Speaker 1: And my problem was because in Europe it's more about filmmaking.
Speaker 1: It's about we use film to tell a story and
Speaker 1: talk about the topic or think. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you are a birdman or you're it all about the
Speaker 1: approach and then maybe you're a great director or not.
Speaker 1: But the credit for directing is more about telling the
Speaker 1: story and then the secondary joy is the craft around it.
Speaker 2: And to me it was more about the craft.
Speaker 1: I need to choose a project that allows me to
Speaker 1: explore the language of Sinum. That was my idea. So
Speaker 1: I made a short film the year twenty when I
Speaker 1: was twenty two, that was shot in English and it
Speaker 1: was like a fantasy horror shot awed thirty five million
Speaker 1: mirrors and with sets. We spent a week shooting it.
Speaker 2: It looked really well.
Speaker 1: The crafted in terms of a production value. And this
Speaker 1: producer Ivon Cormanzana saw it and said, hey, how did
Speaker 1: you do it? How long you took? And he said,
Speaker 1: do you think that you could do something confined like
Speaker 1: you did in the short? Room had a hole, wavy
Speaker 1: doors like little rooms. It wasn't a hotel per se,
Speaker 1: but it had a similar approach to it and a
Speaker 1: failed to it. So I said, let me think about it.
Speaker 1: And then when I collaborated with Mikael Albaninho, the co
Speaker 1: writor of the film, who I met in film school,
Speaker 1: and said, Miguel, we have this opportunity here too, give
Speaker 1: everything we have as long as we keep it in
Speaker 1: the boundaries of the budget this producer is offering to us.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: The Birthday is as crazy, insane, ambitious, bold, insane or
Speaker 1: even I can say it flauded if you want, as
Speaker 1: we could afford it inscribed on those limitations. But it
Speaker 1: was fantastic because it's a movie where I always say
Speaker 1: to the biggest pertality is me as a director, of
Speaker 1: the fact that we wrote the script, or the producer
Speaker 1: or even Grey Filman's performance, that is amazing. I think
Speaker 1: the biggest protagogies is the opportunity. Especially as you were
Speaker 1: world you realized how close you were to saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, films are really hard to put together. And
Speaker 1: suddenly these twenty six are all kids in Spain of
Speaker 1: says with Americans am I with the choir brothers and
Speaker 1: David Lee into and stuff, and Joel Land is suddenly
Speaker 1: having the opportunity to make a thing. So the only
Speaker 1: thing I can take credit for is that I put
Speaker 1: it all the hubrews and all the energy of a
Speaker 1: twenty year old guy into doing something that at least
Speaker 1: it felt different and special.
Speaker 5: We are twenty years later and talking about this movie.
Speaker 5: Why now, why has this gotten quote unquote rediscovered.
Speaker 2: Intercombination of things?
Speaker 1: The problem is ten years ago, maybe twelve years ago,
Speaker 1: I realized that one of the reasons why my producer,
Speaker 1: who owned the film and that I'm the good terms with,
Speaker 1: is just that we don't assemble across the We have
Speaker 1: different lives and there's like this royality that you see
Speaker 1: every two Christmas. I mean that we are in good terms,
Speaker 1: but we're not com up reading together. I realized that
Speaker 1: the problem is that we had other offers before to
Speaker 1: disimbul the film, sometimes soon even theoratically or in blu
Speaker 1: rays stuff in different countries, but the US and the UK,
Speaker 1: and I realized that the reason why he said no
Speaker 1: is because he never had the proper materials. He ran
Speaker 1: out of the money basically to make a long story short.
Speaker 1: There was no strategy for distribution, and that means like
Speaker 1: the movie wasn't financed using pre sales. Nobody knew that
Speaker 1: this movie existed until it was done and ready to serve.
Speaker 1: We showed it for the first time mirror days after
Speaker 1: the sound mix was finished a Just Film festival, and
Speaker 1: December two thousand and four that meant that people is
Speaker 1: where's this movie coming from? That sounds amazing if it's
Speaker 1: part of a strategy, but believe me, it's not where
Speaker 1: you want to be if you're a producer, sir, have
Speaker 1: no there's to be some plan at all.
Speaker 2: So year after year.
Speaker 1: The movie as an asset was evaluating and very rapidly
Speaker 1: became liability for the producer. So when I understand this,
Speaker 1: oh my god, even if he had stems on offer,
Speaker 1: it's not only that he's not going to get the
Speaker 1: money back, so that he doesn't have the materials and
Speaker 1: he's not going to spend money to have the proper materials.
Speaker 1: So three years ago I started to say, look, the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary is coming. I came up with the say
Speaker 1: that I'm in good charms with them. I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask them where the materials are. They didn't know, And
Speaker 1: I started this Indemna jones squest, trying to locate the
Speaker 1: negative and the sound makes believe me. So maybe a
Speaker 1: long story short, it has been a year that it sounds.
Speaker 1: It's a great Arrtoris, it's a great story. I'm not
Speaker 1: making this up. It's been very intense. But I was
Speaker 1: putting the thing together, and thank got the production company.
Speaker 1: Despite they didn't support me financially, they said they allowed
Speaker 1: me to have access to the materials, so basically put
Speaker 1: them together, saying, now, at least with this four K restoration,
Speaker 1: if there's an interest, you're gonna say yes to it
Speaker 1: and make.
Speaker 2: Money out of it. And I'm not going to ask.
Speaker 1: For the money back though I think it's a no brainer.
Speaker 1: And that was my kind of approach to it. And concidentally,
Speaker 1: or he called me at the two thousand and threeighty
Speaker 1: thing No. Two thousand and two, he said that he
Speaker 1: was invited by Jordan Peel's company for the premiere of
Speaker 1: Milpe in La and he didn't know where that came from.
Speaker 1: So since I was working on this restoration or starting
Speaker 1: to locate the materials, we found out that Jordan is
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Corey's career and maybe he's got
Speaker 1: something in his mind for a future project.
Speaker 2: Keeping the fact that.
Speaker 1: They became friends and that the story says Corey said, Hey, Jordan,
Speaker 1: I invited him home and I wanted to show him
Speaker 1: the birthday because he got a DVD copy and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: whatever that means. It was so surreal. Okay, Corey, it's
Speaker 1: your your call, whatever it is. It took two weeks
Speaker 1: for Corey two answer back to me and said what happened,
Speaker 1: and the fingers that he loved them, loved the movie
Speaker 1: and help us to give visibility to it. And from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, I will always be be ungrateful because it,
Speaker 1: excuse me, I got accidentally supporting the film and talking
Speaker 1: about it and letting that shows in the US.
Speaker 2: It's clean, sane.
Speaker 1: Twenty years after having somebody that has become this statement,
Speaker 1: Bubble comes to independent cinema doing things on his own terms,
Speaker 1: that always shooting original material with big budgets because excuse,
Speaker 1: films are getting better, bigger and more ambitious, and it's
Speaker 1: mind blowing. I have to say that it's been a coincidence,
Speaker 1: the fact that I was working on that and the
Speaker 1: keep was supporting it, and here we are.
Speaker 5: Mister Munro, Thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 5: is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Sorry and my my apologists for jugging so enthusastically and
Speaker 1: for so on, but it aid me twenty years to
Speaker 1: summarize all that. It is not easy.
Speaker 5: It's better than pulling teeth with you, So I appreciate
Speaker 5: that thank you so much, thank your mind.
Speaker 4: This house over.
Speaker 1: A well sign it.
Speaker 3: Scrap Selia swither fingers into bows.
Speaker 2: She's fineless, so.
Speaker 3: Strets waves on the street, Jeeves Fine listen, Bucket.
Speaker 2: Connects Lives and jo.
Speaker 3: Scrab host present.
Speaker 1: It's just a.
Speaker 4: She has one friend tups in school.
Speaker 3: They listening to.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: So many friends.
Speaker 2: She's got gee gratting.
Speaker 4: She's.
Speaker 3: She's fading, huge fools.
Speaker 2: And lose them together.
Speaker 3: These big great it clans down the sky the down stands.
Speaker 3: Two days a Wesday. They're smoking siguy a sku, chain
Speaker 3: of flowers and so that birds in a lad.
Speaker 4: There's some single.
Speaker 3: They line up the buster.
Speaker 2: Stream flowers.
Speaker 3: Dum dump un dump dun dump dum dum dup dundum.
Speaker 1: Com down bum
Speaker 2: Dum dum