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