The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo

APPENDIX

A Collection of Anecdotes

“I never surrendered, because the more you struggle, the more possibilities you have of winning and receiving help. It has always been in the last minutes, when everything seemed lost that someone came to help me go beyond my limits.”

SILVER KANE, DISPARA, DISPARA, DISPARA

(SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT)

Some readers may wonder what practical purpose koans serve. Granted, they express deep metaphysical questions — but what use are they in everyday life? Can a correct response to “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” ever help us find our place in contemporary society? I would answer yes. These seemingly insoluble enigmas that I spent countless hours struggling against and working with under Ejo Takata’s guidance have gradually forged my character. Years later, I was able to apply them to many occasions in life, especially when I was confronted with a crucial choice. Reality repeatedly put me in situations where I was faced with seemingly insoluble problems. I was forced to allow myself to be guided by some kind of incomprehensible intelligence so that I became like a famished hunter on the alert for game: a solution that would emerge suddenly from the depths of my being. There have been countless such occasions. Here are a few examples.

In 1967, in a Paris café, I met my friend Jorge Edwards. He was with Pablo Neruda, a genius poet, yet also a devoted worshipper of his own ego. Jorge later wrote this about our encounter in his book Adios, Poeta:

Once, in the Coupole Café in Montparnasse, around midnight, we were having a bite to eat and some wine. Sitting nearby was Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of the most interesting figures of my generation of Chileans. He had emigrated early and never returned. . I invited him to our table, and introduced him to Neruda.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Neruda said, with the best of intentions.

“And I’ve also heard a lot about you,” replied Alejandro.

This terse exchange was utterly cold. As you might expect, the conversation never got off the ground.

As Ejo Takata had told me: “If you meet a Buddha on the road, cut off his head.”

As I was finishing the shooting of El Topo and beginning the editing process, I discovered that an essential scene had a serious flaw: a yellow scratch ran through the image from top to bottom. Federico Landeros, the editor, exclaimed: “It’s a disaster — we can’t use this shot.” But I had neither the time nor the money to do it over. What could I do? Edit it out? Instead, I answered him: “If what I am saying in this scene is really important, no one will notice this scratch. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist and keep the take.” Which we did.

Thirty years have passed, and no one has ever noticed this terrible flaw.

At the premiere of El Topo in England, I was summoned to the department of film censorship. It was a hypocritical office, and people were barely aware that it even existed. Some very polite bureaucrats informed me: “In this country, there are many depraved people. We cannot allow the scene where you wipe your bloody hands on the naked breasts of the actress. We need your authorization to cut it, and also your promise to keep this cut a secret. If you refuse, El Topo will not be shown in England.”

I wondered if I should I accept this mutilation, which violated all my principles. But then I exclaimed to myself: “The Venus de Milo had her arms cut off, but she is still a great work of art!” So I agreed, but only on condition that I be allowed to make the cut myself so that it would be properly done. This was granted, and they lent me a moviola editing machine.

When George Harrison learned that his company, Apple, was going to produce my film The Holy Mountain on John Lennon’s recommendation, he asked to read the script. Then he expressed a desire to play the lead role, that of the thief. Dressed completely in white, he received me in his elegant suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York. He offered me some melon juice with cinnamon and congratulated me on the script. He said that he was prepared to play the role on condition that we cut one scene, which he read aloud: “At an octagonal sink, next to a veritable hippopotamus, the alchemist bathes the thief, turns him over on his back, his buttocks facing the camera, and rubs soap over his anus.”

With an amiable grin, he said, “It’s quite out of the question for me to expose my anus in public.”

I felt as if the sky had fallen in. In those days, for me, a film was not a commercial or merely a work of art. I wanted this film to be the record of a sacred experience capable of enlightening an audience. For this, I needed actors — but only those who were prepared to put aside their egos. If Harrison played the lead role, it was important that he provide an example of total humility, exposing himself with the innocence of a child. This shot lasted only ten seconds, but it was vital to the work. It was obvious that if George Harrison played the role, the film would be assured of worldwide success, making millions — but this success would weaken the film, catering to the squeamishness of a famous musician. What a difficult koan!

Abruptly, and in total defiance of my own rationality, I rejected Harrison and hired a modest, young Mexican comedian to play the role of the thief. It was a choice between self-honesty and money and fame.

In the early days of the filming of The Holy Mountain, a young American named Robert Taicher approached me, expressed admiration for my previous film, and offered to work for free as my assistant. It turned out that I needed someone to run errands, bring me an occasional sandwich or drink, and help me learn English, a language that I spoke poorly but was obliged to use for economic reasons. He proved to be an exemplary assistant — modest, intelligent, dependable, hardworking, friendly, and understanding. He followed me like my shadow, immensely lightening the heavy work of shooting. When I insisted on paying him a salary, he refused. He said that because he was himself an aspiring filmmaker, this was the best school he could have hoped to find.

Suddenly, without any indication, my executive producer, Roberto Viskin, fled with his family to Israel, taking with him three hundred thousand dollars of our money. This theft paralyzed us. It was impossible to continue shooting, and the actors waited idly at the hotel, the costs continuing to mount.

“What are you going to do now?” Robert Taicher asked me.

“Nothing,” I answered. “Miracles happen. In order to find his successor in China, Bodhidharma sat in front of a wall for years, waiting for the disciple to come to him. I shall do the same — I’m going to stay at home and wait for someone to come and bring me three hundred thousand dollars in cash wrapped up in a newspaper.”

My assistant stared at me with such wide eyes that they seemed like two shining wheels. “Robert, your expression suggests that you think I’m mad — but in my view, real madness is to refuse to believe in miracles.”

And I did as I said. I did not lift a finger in an attempt to obtain this money — and, in any case, my financial situation was such that no bank would agree to lend it to me. A week passed, during which Taicher disappeared. I learned that he had flown to Miami. Then he reappeared, knocking at my door. Happy to see him, I welcomed him in. In his hands, he held a newspaper, which he handed to me. Opening it, I found three hundred thousand dollars in cash! It turned out that Robert’s father was extremely rich — the largest shoe manufacturer in the United States. Robert had asked for an advance on his inheritance. From unpaid assistant he had become my executive producer!

When my son Brontis was eight years old, I enrolled him in a modern private school in Mexico City called La Ferrie. All seemed to be going well until one day, when Brontis came home earlier than usual.

“They’ve suspended me for three days.”

“Did you do something bad?”

“Well, the toilets were recently painted white, and I found a can of black paint in there. I wet my hand in it and made my handprint on the wall. The principal called me to his office, told me I was a bad boy, and sent me home. He says you will have to pay the costs of repainting.”

I sat right down and wrote a letter to the principal.

Toilets are less important than the mind of a child. If toilets are damaged, they can be repaired easily, but when the mind of a child is hurt, the damage is not repaired so easily. When you told Brontis he was “bad” because he put his handprint on the wall, you committed an error. What do you mean by a “bad” child? When we label others in this way, it is because we are afraid to look reality in the face. No child is “bad.” A child may have problems, may lack vitamins, may dislike their study material, or may be trying to test the limits of an outdated form of education. Perhaps Brontis was attempting to express himself artistically. I can well understand how tiresome it is for children always to have to relieve themselves surrounded by pure white walls. (If you have ever read the works of Jung on the creative significance of defecation in children, you can agree that children’s rest room walls should instead be covered with colors and designs.) A hand wet with paint and used to imprint a wall or a cloth is an expression of one of the purest and most ancient forms of the pictorial instinct. We find such handprints in many prehistoric cave paintings as well as in paintings by artists of the stature of Miro, Picasso, and many others.

Frankly, I admire such an impulse in a child, whatever the color of the handprint or the wall. The black color of the print no doubt unconsciously suggests “filth,” which places it in a system of mental associations that make it seem worse than it is: white = cleanliness, milk, virginity, a bride, and so forth, and black = stain, filth, poverty, sickness, and death. For Taoists — who accept death as something beautiful rather than horrible — a bit of black upon a vast white expanse represents a manifestation of life.

In summary, I propose a solution. If you accept my solution, I will not withdraw my son from your school: Instead of paying for a new coat of paint, I will instead purchase for your school an entire collection of cans of paint of different colors. Then you can have your children use this material to cover the walls of the toilet with handprints in all sorts of beautiful colors.

As might be expected, I had to find a different school for Brontis.

How I loved Teo, my departed son! Perhaps because I had a premonition of his early death, I did everything possible to offer him a happy childhood. On his seventh birthday, he asked to go alone with me to a Chinese restaurant, which we did. His mouth watered when he saw that the menu contained twelve different kinds of soup. All of them sounded delicious to him, and he became distressed when faced with having to choose only one. He asked me to decide for him, but I sensed that no matter what I chose, he would feel frustrated. Then I remembered an old joke.

A family sits down in a restaurant, the waitress arrives, writes down the orders of the adults, and then asks the little boy what he would like. Looking timidly at his parents, he says: “A hamburger.”

But the mother protests: “Out of the question! Bring him a steak with mashed potatoes and carrots.”

The waitress, however, seems not to have heard: “How would you like your hamburger? With ketchup or mustard?” she asks the boy.

“With ketchup.”

“I’ll bring your order right away!” the waitress answers, leaving before the mother can say anything else.

There is a stunned silence around the table. Finally, the little boy looks at everyone and says: “Wow! The waitress thinks I’m a real person.”

This joke gave me the solution to the koan: I was there to satisfy my son’s desires, not my own. I called the waiter and ordered all twelve soups at once. When Teo saw the table covered with these bowls filled with exotic soups, he was in ecstasy. He ate only a few spoonfuls of each, but he was happy.

While I was working on The Holy Mountain, I had just finished shooting at the revered Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Some groups of fanatic Catholics had spread the rumor that I had performed a black Mass inside the sacred place, and suddenly I was greeted by a parade of a thousand believers whipped into a frenzy by right-wing extremists. They shouted insults, comparing me to the murderer Charles Manson and demanding I be expelled from the country. This whole business was so baseless and absurd that I didn’t worry about it, thinking that the rumor would soon die down of its own accord. But it only grew worse. Newspapers seized on the situation to create a scandal, writing articles in which I appeared as the Antichrist.

One morning, there was a loud knock at my door. Three huge detectives, looking like professional killers, said roughly: “Come with us!” Without even allowing me to get my coat, they dragged me in my shirtsleeves into a black car and shoved me into the backseat, crushed between two of them.

They refused to say where we were going. After an anxious half hour of biting my lips, the car stopped in front of the Ministry of the Interior. Just as I feared, I was about to be deported from Mexico. I was led through numberless offices and waiting rooms full of solicitors, secretaries, bureaucrats, and policemen until I arrived finally before an imposing door. It opened.

Smiling broadly, Mario Moy Palencia received me. He offered me an armchair and then began (with no excuse or explanation for the violent nature of my summons).

“Jodorowsky — our president, the most honorable Luis Etcheverría, knows your work well and is one of your admirers. For example, this very year in his presidential report, he quoted one of your Panic Movement fables — the one in which the archer who has decided to hunt the moon shoots hundreds of arrows at it and is ridiculed by everyone. He never hits the moon, but he does become the best archer in the world.

“Do you see my point? The government is your friend — a very useful friend — but it can also become a dangerous enemy.”

As he said this, I felt a tremor, remembering the brutal assassination — with the complicity of the Mexican government — of a crowd of young students by paramilitary Falcon troops on June 10, 1971. The government claimed that only twenty-five were killed, but the people counted two thousand of their dead.

“Now listen carefully. A large number of complaints have been lodged against you. You cannot get away with attacking our institutions or our religion or army. If you don’t want something unpleasant to happen to you or to your family, then you must remove every religious image and every military or other official uniform from your film. I don’t want to see even a fireman’s uniform in that film! Now you may leave.”

I had to walk all the way home, because I had left without a penny in my pocket. That night, we were treated to raucous shouts at our windows: “We’re going to kill you!”

It was a very serious koan. If I obeyed and mutilated my film, I would kill it. If I disobeyed, I was risking my family’s lives as well as my own. I spent a sleepless night.

Very early the next morning, I took all the negatives, representing thirty-six hours of filming, and sent them secretly to the United States in an express truck via Tijuana. In two days, I withdrew all funds from my bank accounts, settled my rental contracts and telephone bills, sent a ton of boxes of books out of the country, and generally pulled up stakes. On the third day, I flew to New York with my wife, children, and our cat, Mandrake. This was before Roberto Viskin had decided to abscond to Israel, and he proved to be a good friend. I was able to finish the montage and editing of my film without censoring any scenes.

As I was preparing the casting for my film Dune (based on the science-fiction novel by Frank Herbert — a project that was never to see the light of day), Salvador Dali put me through a moment of trial. I wanted the famous painter to play the role of the mad galactic emperor, and the idea appealed to him. In order to take the measure of this young upstart talent who presumed to be capable of directing the great Dali, he invited me to dine in a luxurious restaurant in Paris. I found myself seated directly across the table from him, surrounded by a dozen of his hangers-on.

With no preamble, he asked me: “When Picasso and I were young, we would go to the beach together. Every time, we would find a watch there simply by pushing the sand around with our feet. Have you ever found a watch at the beach?”

The artist’s groupies watched me with contemptuous smirks. I had only a few seconds to reply. If I claimed to have found a watch at the beach, I’d pass for a liar. If I confessed I’d never found one, I’d be labeled as mediocre. But I didn’t even have to think about my answer; it came to me by itself:

“I’ve never found a watch in my life, but I’ve lost a great many!”

Dali coughed, paid no more attention to me, and began to occupy himself with his retinue — but at the end of the meal, he said to me: “Very well. I’ll sign the contract.” And then he added: “But I want to be the best-paid actor in the world: a hundred thousand dollars per hour.”

I changed the script so that the emperor possesses a wax-faced robot that looks like him, then I engaged Dali for only one hour. He appeared only in the scene where he was pushing the buttons on his robot in the laboratory.

For the role of the baron Harkonnen, a vulgar, cruel giant, I thought of Orson Welles. I knew he was in France but that he had become embittered at the lack of producers interested in his own work, and it was said that he wanted nothing more to do with film. Where could I find him? No one seemed to know. I had heard that the master had a passion for gourmet food and drink. I got an assistant to telephone all the best restaurants in Paris and find out if Orson Welles was a customer.

After countless calls, a small restaurant, Chez le Loup, told us that he came there once a week, though not on any specific day. I decided to dine there every night beginning on Monday. It was a discreetly elegant place with a fine menu and a superb wine selection. The owner himself took orders. Almost all the walls were decorated with Renoir reproductions. The one exception was a wall with a window. In front of it there was a broken chair. When I asked the owner about it, he said: “We are very proud of that piece of litter. One evening, Orson Welles sat in that chair and he ate so much that it broke.”

I returned every night. Finally, on Friday, the great man arrived, wrapped in an enormous black cape. I watched him with the same fascination as a child at the zoo. His appetite and his thirst were stupendous. I saw him devour nine different dishes and drink six bottles of wine. For dessert, I sent him a bottle of cognac that the owner had assured me was his favorite brand. When it came, he looked around and amiably invited me to his table. For a half hour, I listened to his monologue before daring to speak of the role. No sooner did I bring up the subject than he answered: “Acting doesn’t interest me. I detest contemporary cinema. It’s not an art; it’s a nauseating industry, a vast mirage born of prostitution.” My disappointment was immense, and I swallowed with difficulty. How could I inspire enthusiasm in him so that he would agree to work with me?

I was tense and seemingly at a total loss for words when suddenly I heard myself say: “Mr. Welles, during the entire month that the filming of your role will require, I promise you to hire the head cook of this very restaurant. Every evening, he will prepare all the dishes you desire accompanied by any wines and liquors that please you.”

With a big smile, he agreed to sign the contract.

For the combat scenes in Dune, I hired the karate master Jean-Pierre Vigneau, a huge man with muscles of steel. He was teaching martial arts to my son Brontis, who had the lead role of the young Paul Atreides. One day, in front of my son and other students, he decided to challenge me.

“You are an artist, which is an admirable profession. But I wonder — would that wonderful intellect of yours that you rely on so much be of the slightest use to you in surviving a direct attack by a dangerous enemy?” And then he stepped up to me and assumed a position of attack.

To me, this man was invincible. I had watched him demolish several karate champions. I decided to accept the playful duel, knowing that I was bound to lose. Suddenly, I leaped into the air and hung upon him, holding on to him like a baby holding on to its mother’s breast. I let him shake me violently, offering no resistance. Then he set me down and used all his weight and strength to put me in a stranglehold. Impulsively, having no idea why I was doing it, I made a delicate movement with my hand and inserted my little finger into his ear. Immediately, Jean-Pierre slapped the floor in the classic signal of surrender!

He arose and announced to everyone: “That’s the first time I’ve lost a fight. I’m sure my adversary didn’t realize it, but he found a fatal point with his finger. By shoving your little finger with enough force into an enemy’s ear, you can pierce through the eardrum and kill him.”

After two years of intense work in Paris, just when it seemed that Dune was finally about to be completed, the producer abruptly aborted the project. It was a dreadful blow to all of us. Dan O’Bannon, the future special effects director, returned to Los Angeles so stressed he had to spend two years being treated in a psychiatric clinic. Giger, the painter hired to design the sets, raged angrily at me about this “failure.” I refused to let myself be brought down by this assault of reality.

As I told my friend, the artist Moebius who had worked on costume designs and also designed the three thousand images used in the film: “Failure does not exist. It is a concept of the mind. Instead, let us call this a change of path.”

And then, because we could no longer express our visions in cinematic form, I proposed we work together on graphic novels. Thus was born the success of The Incal.

Shortly after his twelfth birthday, my son Cristobal told me he didn’t want to return to his school at St. Mandé. I asked him whether he was bored with the studies or with the teachers.

“No, it’s not that. It’s that I’ve been humiliated.”

Then, between two sobs, he told me the story. The biggest and strongest kid in the school, Albert, was jealous because a girl he liked preferred the company of my son. This Albert had pasted photocopies of a sort of poster on the walls of the school and courtyard: it displayed Cristobal’s photo and the words dwarf, jew, and thief. Now the other students were laughing at him.

“This is a koan,” I told him. “Don’t run away from the situation; instead, solve it. You must find a way to punish your enemy and restore your dignity with the other students.”

“But how? He’s a lot stronger than I am. If I fight him, he’ll smash my face in. It’s just the excuse he’s looking for.”

“Cristobal, not all fights are equal. That’s why strategy is important. You must strike him at a time and in such a way that he can’t defend himself.”

I helped him work out a plan. The next day, Cristobal returned to school. He waited until Albert, who was in a more advanced class, had entered a classroom with his fellow students. When he knew they were all seated, he opened the door without permission, ignored the teacher, walked straight over to where Albert was sitting, and began to administer a flurry of violent slaps to his face. The sheer surprise of this paralyzed Albert. By the time he started to react, the scandal already had the class in an uproar. He and Cristobal were held immobile by the other boys, and the teacher, who was both very angry and intrigued, led both boys to the principal’s office.

Cristobal showed the principal a copy of the poster and complained of being publicly humiliated and racially slandered. He stated that he had slapped Albert in order to regain his self-esteem. The principal reacted by summoning Albert’s parents and threatening to expel him from the school. Still following our strategy, Cristobal said that he would be willing to forgive Albert on condition that the boy apologize in public. Albert offered his apology before an assembly of the student body in the courtyard.

At the Cannes Film Festival, the producer Claudio Argento organized a press conference for me to present the project of my next film, Santa Sangre. More than ten years had passed since The Holy Mountain. The journalists there regarded me as a has-been filmmaker. One of them opened the discussion with a nasty remark:

“Do you think you can still shoot a film? After all, you’re a little rusty.”

“A rusty knife has a double power,” I replied. “At the same time it cuts, it poisons.”

I was shooting Santa Sangre right in the middle of Garibaldi Plaza in Mexico City when the idea came to me to have a blind choir sing a religious hymn in the scene we were going to film the next day inside the church. My casting director told me it was impossible to find a blind choir on such short notice. At the end of the day’s work, I decided to walk back to my hotel. A blind man carrying a guitar walked toward me, and his cane tapped against my leg. He excused himself and went on. Suddenly, I realized that this was an example of what I have always believed: accidents are miracles in disguise. I ran after the man, stopped him, and asked him if he knew any religious songs.

“Of course I do,” he answered. “I’ve even composed one. I belong to a choir of blind musicians. There are thirty of us, and we are all Protestants. Right now, I’m going to a rehearsal.”

I went with him. The thirty blind people, each playing a guitar, sang a hymn that began, “The end of the world is almost here. .” The next day, my casting director was flabbergasted to see them arrive at the church for the filming.

When Santa Sangre premiered in Rome, some journalists asked me which film director had most influenced me.

“Fellini,” I answered without hesitation. When I was very young, it was his film La Strada that first made me feel I wanted to be a film director someday.

This homage appeared in the press, and one of the master’s secretaries telephoned me to say Fellini would like to meet me. I was invited to come that very evening to watch the shooting of a scene from La voce della luna. A car arrived to pick me up and take me to a huge vacant lot outside the city. Very shyly, I walked toward a group of technicians working in the shadows and getting ready to plug in the projectors. Then a shadow that seemed huge headed toward me with open arms. I recognized Fellini.

“Jodorowsky!” he exclaimed, with a great smile.

On the verge of tears, I answered, “Papa!” and we embraced.

At that instant, a torrential rain began to fall. Amid the great disorder and consternation of this, we both ran for shelter along with all the actors and technicians. I lost sight of him and never saw him again, but that brief exchange of two words is one of my most treasured memories.

In the year 2000, the Chilean film and TV actor Bastian Bodenholfer was appointed as cultural attaché at the Chilean embassy in Paris. Full of enthusiasm, he was determined to teach the French about the culture of his own country, but he ran up against the barrier of insufficient funding. He was being asked to engage in many activities without spending a penny. He had heard about my Cabaret Mystique, conferences that I held every Wednesday in a very uncomfortable karate dojo with a large audience that had no problem with sitting on a hard wooden floor. He offered me instead a comfortable room at the Chilean embassy.

Wanting to collaborate with my amiable compatriot, I accepted his suggestion that I give a free conference there every two weeks. We set up a meeting to have a look at the auditorium. It was very comfortable and could hold at least five hundred people, the usual size of my audience. Then he told me, with an embarrassed look, that the wife of the ambassador wanted to meet me right away, and he asked if I would mind.

“Of course not, Bastian, let’s go.”

He led me into a smaller reception room. Now I understood his look of embarrassment. With foreboding and resignation I submitted to a tedious process of being interrogated by this woman who saw herself as a representative of Chilean “aristocracy.” She treated me as though I were some indigent asking for a favor rather than offering one. Summoning all my patience, I recited a curriculum vitae, but this did not stop her from wanting to know full details about the content of my conferences and warning me: “As you know, this embassy cannot allow people to take whatever liberties they please.” My attaché friend was red with shame and anger. I took a deep breath. Then Bastian arose and, inventing a pretext that we were late for an important meeting, took leave of her, thus extracting me from her claws.

As we walked toward a nearby café, he apologized profusely for her behavior. “That woman is always meddling in things that are none of her business. She is not the cultural attaché—I am! I never thought it would be like this. I can well understand if you’re having second thoughts about running your conferences here. .”

“You’re right, Bastian. With that woman on my back, it would be impossible.”

My friend was now so angry that his hands were shaking as he drank his coffee. “How can I hope to get any decent work done in such conditions?”

He was so distressed that I offered to give him a tarot reading. He accepted gladly, but as I shuffled the cards, taking my time, I had the intuition that I should take advantage of his distracted state of mind and try to speak directly to his unconscious. Still shuffling the cards, I asked, in a very soft, calm, casual voice: “When a turtle is swimming deep under the sea and needs to breathe, what does it do?”

Still distracted, he answered without thinking: “I don’t know — what does it do?”

In the same soft tone of voice, but speaking very slowly, I told him: “It returns to land.”

He forgot this hypnotic conversation immediately. I gave him a tarot reading, but it was only superficial. I felt the real work had already been done, and we said good-bye.

A week later, he resigned his post and returned to Chile to resume what he should never have interrupted: his real career as an artist. The turtle had resolved the koan.

For obscure reasons, the graphic novel editor of Casterman Publications got into a quarrel with my friend, the artist François Boucq. We were working on a series called Face de lune, and it was suspended because of the quarrel. François could not forgive the editor for having made a public threat: “I’ll have Boucq’s skin!” Now a lawsuit was being threatened in return.

I took it as a koan, and went to see this director. I brought him a tanned goatskin.^*35 When he received me, I spread out the skin on his desk and said: “You wanted the skin of a goat? Here it is!”

He burst out laughing. I suggested he send a bottle of champagne to my friend, which he did. The koan was resolved, and we completed the series.

In 1997, I had just had my sixty-seventh birthday. Divorced for the past fifteen years, I lived in a large apartment with my son Adan. I had mistresses stay there with me from time to time, but never for more than a week. Most of the time, the atmosphere was one of emotional peace and solitude. I was giving a tarot course to twenty students in the library when Marianne Costa arrived, slightly late.

Absorbed in my explanations, I didn’t even look at her. On the other hand, my large, reddish cat Moiche was so fascinated by her that for the entire hour and a half that the lesson lasted, he pawed unceasingly inside her purse. Perhaps my unconscious was influenced by the sensuality of this feline assault. At the end of the lesson, as was my custom, I embraced my students good-bye, French style. When Marianne’s turn came, I somehow placed my hand on her waist, something I would never permit myself to do normally. An electric shock coursed through my entire body, from head to foot. Suddenly, I felt the beauty of her nudity and the intensity of her soul. She murmured: “It must be wonderful to be a cat in your house.”

Giving her a kiss on the cheek and heedless of the risk involved (with a thirty-seven year age difference between us), I replied: “Then I adopt you!”

Thus began a strange, marvelous, and difficult couple relationship. If I had followed my reason instead of my intuition, I never would have dared to take such a step and would have missed the most beautiful experience of my life.

“Between doing and not doing, always choose doing.”

The monstrous egotism of movie stars is disgusting to me — but unfortunately, if you want a producer to invest the millions that are necessary to realize a work in this industrial art, you have to present a cast with at least two or three stars. Because of this disgust, for years I lost all desire to turn my stories into films. One evening, tired of reading too much, I turned on the TV and zapped rapidly through the channels, protecting my soul from many of them instinctively, not unlike the way I avoid instinctively all dog excrement on the sidewalks of Paris.

Suddenly, in the midst of this stinking wasteland, a perfumed ego manifested itself. I had stumbled on an interview with the rock star Marilyn Manson. His whitened face, reddened lips, Goth style, and sincere statements followed no script or rules, and I found myself fascinated by him. I sensed genius and exclaimed to myself: “With actors like him, I’d find stories to film again!” I made inquiries in the music and film worlds as to how to get in touch with him. I was told it was impossible. He received tons of fan mail and thousands of pleas for professional meetings, but he never answered any. I gave up.

Two weeks later, I was awakened at three in the morning by a phone call.

“Mr. Jodorowsky? I’m Marilyn Manson.”

I could not believe my ears. At first I thought someone was playing a bad joke on me, but it was really him — I did not have to go the mountain; it had come to me! He had called to tell me that my films, especially The Holy Mountain, had inspired him so much that he had made a clip in which he paid homage to it by imitating the scene in which the thief wakes up amid cardboard Christs modeled in his image. He had even been inspired by the title to write a script for a film called Holy Wood, and he wanted me to direct him in it. I told him to send me the script by express mail. Two days later, I read it — a monumental, scathing attack on Hollywood. I calculated that he would need about twenty-five million dollars to realize it. It was clear to me that he had no hope of getting this money from Hollywood producers, because they would never accept the ferocity of such criticism of their world. When I told Manson this, he understood. Instead, he offered to work on one of my projects. He had heard that I wanted to make The Children of El Topo. I told him that it would be an honor and a joy to direct him in the lead role — but a legal obstacle prevented me from doing this film.

On the enthusiastic recommendation of John Lennon, El Topo was bought and distributed in the United States and the rest of the world by Allen Klein, the president of a company called Apple, which distributed records by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Also on the recommendation of John Lennon, Klein wrote me a check for a million dollars for me to make any film I wished. This allowed me to film The Holy Mountain. The success of these two films pleased the producer but also excited his greed. He made me a big offer: the filming of The Story of O, a bestselling novel of sadomasochistic pornography, depicting beautiful women being humiliated in numerous ways. Klein had already secured some notable English investors who were excited about the project and was confident it would be a record blockbuster. The temptation was enormous. I accepted the invitation to go to London with him. In a tube-shaped hotel that looked like some sort of tower, the English producers were waiting to sign the contract. Before he went to meet with them, Klein promised me that he would emerge with a contract ready for me to sign. As soon as I did, I would receive immediately two hundred thousand dollars as an advance on my salary as director.

My heart was pounding. On one side of the balance: wealth and fame. On the other side: my artistic honor. After a half hour of anxious vacillation, I resolved the koan. I left the hotel at a run, took a plane back to New York, and called Michel Seydoux in France. He was a multimillionaire who had previously offered to produce a film of mine. I proposed Dune, and he accepted. In a few hours, my wife and I packed our bags and left with our children for Paris, without even leaving an address where Klein could contact me. His reaction was one of uncontrollable rage. A friend who was one of his employees told me that he had said, “Who does this traitor think he is? His artist’s vanity has caused me to lose millions of dollars. I’m going to lock the negatives of his films in a safe as of now, and until the day he dies, no one will ever see them.”

And this is exactly what he did — he called in all copies of my films from distributors around the world. Every time some film festival managed to get hold of a copy of El Topo or The Holy Mountain from a collector, Klein dispatched his lawyers and prevented the screening.

I was also consumed with hatred. I saw Klein as a cultural murderer, an accursed gangster, and a repugnant vulture who hoped for my death so that he could enrich himself with posthumous screenings. I was able to defend myself somewhat, because I had some video copies of my films. I gave them away for free to pirates in every country I visited. Although of poor quality, they managed to sell in Italy, Chile, Japan, Switzerland, Russia, and other countries for about thirty years. When the Internet came along, Klein used it to find the address of one of these pirates and threaten him with a lawsuit. Frightened, this man called me. I decided to assume responsibility for the “piracy” and defend myself legally. The trial began in France, and I was lucky to be accepted as a client by Maître Bitoun, a great lawyer who specializes in difficulties related to author’s rights. I felt like David challenging Goliath: Klein had already waged lawsuits against the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Phil Spector, and he won them all. Now he was suing me for millions of dollars in damages. If I lost, it would spell financial ruin for the rest of my life. I was shaking with fear when the trial began, but I reminded myself that feeling fear was normal; it didn’t mean I had to be a coward.

The discussions between my lawyer (a man afflicted with a muscular disorder that gave him a crippled walk and made it difficult for him to speak easily) and Klein’s top-notch English lawyers went on and on and on. Two years passed, and the battle was far from over. It was around this time, when it seemed it would drag on forever, that I received Marilyn Manson’s call about The Children of El Topo. Klein held all rights to this and any other prequels or sequels of El Topo. It was at this point that I realized that if I kept on fighting Klein, the project would never see the light of day. What could I do? Another koan. I picked up the telephone and called Klein’s son Jordi in New York.

“Our quarrel could drag on for ten years or more. Your family is wealthy, but your lawyers are costing you a fortune. They have an interest in dragging it out as long as possible. As for me, I’m not spending a penny, because my lawyer has agreed to work on a percentage. Wouldn’t it be better if we found a way to settle this out of court?”

“You’re right,” he answered. “Also, the younger generation is eager to see your films. Right now, I’m handling the DVD sector of our business. It would be great if we could make DVDs of your films available to a large public as soon as possible.”

“Then why don’t we try to meet and find a way out of this conflict?” I said.

“I agree — in fact, next week would be especially good, because my father and I will be in London, not far from you.”

The three hours on the Eurostar train from Paris to London seemed to last for centuries. I could not be sure of what might happen, nor could I imagine what it would be like to meet this monstrous enemy of mine. Thirty years of mutual hatred! Would we fall into insulting each other or even come to blows?

A taxi dropped me off at a centrally located hotel. Jordi came down to the lobby to meet me. He was a robust, calm gentleman with intelligence in his eyes. In silence, he led me to his father’s suite. When Allen Klein opened the door, I saw a man of my age, not at all fat, with a sensitive face and a noble forehead crowned with white hair. He could have been my brother. He looked at me for a few seconds, then exclaimed in great surprise:

“Incredible. I never imagined you as handsome!”

“And I would never have imagined you as looking like a spiritual sage,” I answered.

We embraced. The hatred fell away from my body like a tattered old overcoat.

Then we sat down, had tea, and looked at each other. Jordi had vanished discreetly. With great enthusiasm, Klein showed me photos of his two beautiful grandchildren, a boy and a girl. I described my family. After chatting for an hour as if we were old friends, we approached the subject of the lawsuit. In five minutes, we came to an agreement.

As we hugged again, saying good-bye, I told him: “If you and I can make peace, then I feel that even the Israelis and Palestinians can do it.”

The next day, in Paris, going against their grain, the lawyers drew up an agreement with two winners, instead of a winner and a loser.

I realized that one of the great joys that life offers is the experience of the transformation of enmity into friendship. I also understood the extent to which I had unconsciously obeyed a neurotic need of my own in my construction of a despicable enemy. No doubt Klein — like me, the offspring of persecuted Jewish emigrants — had also transformed me into odious scum. Each of us had projected upon the other a monster that had been implanted in our souls over centuries of persecution and pogroms. Our reconciliation was a blessing to our families, to our audiences, and to the world.