LOS ANGELES—Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu needed trusted voices to check out his first foray into dark comedy. The Mexican filmmaker was well-known for his serious dramas, such as 21 Grams and Biutiful. The satirical Birdman, however, was new territory.
So he did what he’s done dozens of times over his 20-year career. He called his old friends, fellow Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth).
The three came up as aspiring filmmakers in Mexico, each breaking cultural and language barriers with fiercely independent styles. Now in their early 50s, their astonishing success has informed the growing international culture of Hollywood, as well as the search for bold, original voices in cinema.
Del Toro is the master of special effects and fairy-tale horror in films, such as Pacific Rim and Hellboy. Iñárritu is known for complicated emotional and political tales, often told through multiple stories as in Babel. Cuarón made his name with big-picture storytelling in Hollywood films like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and edgy independent fare, such as Y Tu Mama Tambien.
The three directors discussed Iñárritu’s Birdman idea. His story about an aging film-star superhero who tries to make his comeback on Broadway was tricky at best, thanks to its blend of psychological tension, stark realism and the supernatural.
But they spoke in the sort of shorthand that old friends use—a language built on trust, respect and brutal honesty.
“Guillermo is the master of cursing,” Iñárritu said. “But with just one bad word, he can convey more to me than most people can in an entire conversation.”
“I’ll tell him if it’s [garbage],” del Toro said. “That’s what friends do.”
The directors offered their input, as Iñárritu had done many times for them over the years.
“There’s no film I do that doesn’t go through them, their eyes and their hands,” Cuarón said.
Cuarón and del Toro agreed there wasn’t much to do this time around. Del Toro calls the film’s finished product—a riveting performance by Michael Keaton, scenes rolling out in long unbroken shots, a soundtrack made almost entirely of free-form jazz drumming—“miraculous.” Cuarón says it’s impressive “in its complexity.”
Birdman earned nine Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture and Director, where it was locked in a close race with Boyhood and its director, Richard Linklater, to win Oscars. By the end of 87th Academy Awards on Sunday, Iñárritu won the Director honors, becoming the second Latin American and Mexican in Oscar history to do so—right behind Cuarón, who won last year for Gravity. In 2007 del Toro won three Oscars for Pan’s Labyrinth. Iñárritu was previously nominated for Babel.
“When Alfonso won, we wanted so much for the Oscar to reach a Mexican filmmaker,” del Toro said by phone from Toronto, where he is in postproduction on his artfully creepy Crimson Peak. “It was extremely important, especially since we are living in a time when Mexico is in dire need of good news. I’ve said it [before], but you really know who is your friend when you actually forgive success.”
United in a visual and moral aesthetic that was born in Mexico, they’ve long been referred to as cinema’s Three Amigos. But each has his own clearly defined style.
Today Iñárritu lives in Los Angeles, Cuarón in London and del Toro “wherever the exchange rate” takes him. Yet, they are always connected.
Del Toro said that Cuarón recently spent three 12-hour sessions with him on Skype to help shave 11 minutes off Crimson Peak.
They’ve all been mentioned in various credits on one another’s films, but, more often than not, the work they do for each other is a labor of love. “It’s not about ego or yourself,” says Iñárritu from a recent shoot in Alberta, Canada, for his forthcoming film, The Revenant. “It’s about how to make the film better.” Their alliance dates back to the 1980s, when Cuarón met del Toro working on the Mexican TV series La Hora Marcada. Del Toro was a special-effects and makeup guy from Guadalajara, Cuarón an assistant director from Mexico City. Cuarón recalled directing his first project on the series, a segment that “everybody really liked.” Then “this big guy” walked in the room.
“He said, ‘Hey, you’re Alfonso, right?’” Cuarón said by phone from Paris. “‘You made that show inspired by the Stephen King story?’ Yeah, that was me. We started raving about the King story, then he said, ‘Let me ask you something. That story was so great, so how come your show sucks so much?’ That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship.”
Iñárritu, already a well-known, eclectic music radio DJ in Mexico City, entered the picture in the mid-1990s, connecting with Cuarón through their mutual cinematographer friend, Emmanuel Lubezki (a.k.a. Chivo). Lubezki won an Oscar for Gravity and again for Birdman.
Iñárritu eventually brought Cuarón early cuts of his gritty and ambitious film Amores Perros, about an accident in Mexico City that connects three very different groups of people. Cuarón recognized its brilliance, helped Iñárritu refine his ideas and then called in del Toro.
“Alfonso said there’s this really stubborn guy who needs someone to wrestle with him in the editing room,” del Toro recalled. “‘The only other person who is stubborn enough to do this with him is you.’”
He added: “Alejandro says we removed about three or four minutes of the film. We removed between 17 to 21 minutes, and reorganized the way things happened. I have the VHS tape to prove I’m right.”
That kind of no-holds-barred feedback, they say, makes films better. “Originally, Gravity was way more silent, less dialogue, more of an abstract experience,” Cuarón said. “Alejandro said, ‘I understand you’re taking a very conceptual approach, but I always go for emotion on top of concept. So some of the rules you’re setting for yourself are working against that emotion.’ Then Guillermo sat with me in the cutting room to find ways of pumping up the tension, so there was this tension all the time.”
Cuarón, del Toro and Iñárritu were part of a Mexican cinema revival that began in the 1990s as a new wave of films, such as Like Water for Chocolate, made its way into American art-house cinemas.
By the time Amores Perros opened in 2000, del Toro said, “it seemed to finally catalyze every effort that came before and then surpassed them. It opened the flood gates.”
Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama Tambien and del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone followed, becoming their breakthrough Spanish-language films. By the time del Toro reached Cannes for the premiere of Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, he did so with Cuarón and Iñárritu in the same room.
After the credits rolled, the crowd roared its approval. Del Toro recalled being strangely absent in the moment.
“I was not allowing it to sink in. I was not enjoying it,” he said. “Alfonso hit me on the back and said, ‘Relax, man. Enjoy it. Let yourself be loved.’”
Lorraine Ali / Los Angeles Times