The Sentimental Engine Slayer, film by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Omar Rodríguez-López has been a busy, busy man. After releasing half a dozen solo albums in 2009, he's kicking off 2010 with a worldwide directorial debut in February at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Even more impressive, not only did The Mars Volta member direct the film The Sentimental Engine Slayer, but he also wrote it and played the lead role. The transition from musician to filmmaker is growing in popularity (RZA's doing it, reports the Los Angeles Times), but it's still not the most common one in show biz. Unsurprisingly, the trailer (available at the Chocolate Grinder) feels more like the start of a music video than a preview for a feature film. Beginning with a false calm, it becomes an erratic mélange of vaguely violent scenes full of splattered blood, sweaty faces, and a lifeless youth on the side of the road. It says very little in terms of synopsis, but rather sets the tone for an hour and a half of stylized abjection and helplessness.

The story is not really a new one: a troubled boy struggles to grow into manhood in a protracted coming-of-age tale (the character is already in his 20s). Set and filmed in El Paso, TX, Slayer writhes with angst as Barlam (Rodríguez-López) trudges through the banality of life: divorced parents, an addict sister (with whom he has an incestuous relationship?) — you get the picture. In search of that ever-elusive answer to post-adolescent disillusionment, Barlam's world degenerates into a base nightmare of drugs and sex, finally confusing what is real and what isn't.

The Sentimental Engine Slayer is part of the "Bright Future" section of the IFFR, which purportedly showcases "the most important, idiosyncratic and adventurous new work" from first- and second-time directors. However, Slayer -- while Rodríguez-López's first public release -- is his third work as a director. In 2001 and 2003, he directed A Manual Dexterity and Letters from Dystopia, respectively. Moreover, since filming Slayer in 2007, the obscenely prolific Rodríguez-López has finished shooting two more: El Divino Influjo De Los Secretos in 2008 and Boiling Death Request (2009). What's next on the list of mediums to explore? Interpretive dance?

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, tireless sonic architect of The Mars Volta, will watch his new film The Sentimental Engine Slayer premiere Thursday at the Rotterdam Film Festival. So what does it feel like when a guitar god tunes up his career as an indie film auteur?

Wired.com chatted with the philosophical Rodriguez-Lopez (pictured) about his cinematic transition, dangerous technology, masterful cinema and much more in the following e-mail Q&A. (Don’t miss Rodriguez-Lopez’s international list of must-see movies.)


Wired.com: Congratulations on the premiere. Are you nervous at all?

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: Thank you very much! Of course I am nervous! Like my beginnings in music, I never intended to do anything with this film besides go through the process, learn from it and then move on to the next. It was only through the desires of others, who saw the film and thought it was worth putting out and sharing, that this project began to have its current life. I have them to thank for taking the initiative and doing the work of submitting it to the film festivals!

Wired.com: How did they make it happen?

Rodriguez-Lopez: They submitted my work through the normal channels, like anyone else sending in a film. There was no calling in favors or use of my name; most people in film circles don’t know my work with The Mars Volta anyhow! So I figured their enthusiasm would just wear off. Now that I’m dealing with the reality that it is getting invited to these festivals, and that the film is no longer ‘mine,’ I am nervous as all hell! Like sending your child away on its first day of school.

Wired.com: You’re a born performer behind a guitar, but were you nervous in front of the camera?

Rodriguez-Lopez: I didn’t have the opportunity to be nervous in front of the camera. It was basically sink or swim. My lead actor pulled out a week before filming began. Understandably, as he was offered another job that could actually pay him! And I was forced to take on the role or cancel the film.

Wired.com: Did simultaneously acting and directing present any difficulties for you?

Rodriguez-Lopez: What at first seemed like a distraction from my duties as a filmmaker quickly became my ally in realizing the film. Again, this sink-or-swim situation forced me to overcome my fears and actually enjoy living the film in such a profound way with the other actors. It also gave me a deep respect for actors and their vulnerabilities, as well as a practical understanding of how to manipulate them. We all lived in the house together for five weeks being these characters, and in the end we were sad and relieved to let them go.

Wired.com: How much of this film is autobiographical?

Rodriguez-Lopez: I think that everything we do as expressive people is autobiographical, no matter how far-fetched the material may be. If we’ve dreamed about it, then we have lived it. But the film is definitely filled with situations that had happened to me while growing up [in El Paso, Texas,] acted out through different personalities that surrounded me at the time.

Wired.com: How does this film communicate for you the anxieties and dangers of coming of age at the turn of our heavily mediated, perhaps overly sedated, century?

Rodriguez-Lopez: I’m not sure what was communicated, or if it’s even any good or not. I only know that I made it. But I am full of anxiety, and hope for our society. I am also terrified and in awe of what will happen next in our evolution. And I’m repulsed and attracted to technology’s double-edged sword. What in one way is bringing us all together like never before is also separating us in so many different ways. We are losing myth, which is, as Carl Jung, Octavio Paz and so many others say, the very thread of what holds a society, and all its wonders, together. And we’re trading it in for an exclusively scientific, corporate and globalized culture of convenience. As Jello Biafra predicted, “Give me convenience or give me death!” is our new American slogan.

Wired.com: Do you feel that we’re out of touch with each other, and ourselves, in the 21st century?

Rodriguez-Lopez: We have our first generation of young people that are not wilder and more adventurous, but instead much more passive and boring than the ones before it. Choosing virtual life over living. People alone in the squares and rectangles that are their homes, TVs or computer screens, rarely venturing out to do the things that are so readily available online. (Which again, also has its benefits!)

As one of my little brother’s friends once asked me, “Why play guitar when Guitar Hero is easier and so much fun?” How many times have we seen people at a table together, but each alone on their iPhone or BlackBerry? But I guess, in the end, we are together in our solitude.

Wired.com: You’re a film buff. What are some movies you would make the world watch, if you could? And why?

Rodriguez-Lopez: I would love for people to watch the works of the great masters from each country and see how all themes are intertwined, that the core of human emotions and desires are all connected. That, in the end, despite culture and geography, we are all the same. It would also help wean some off of the sugar-coated high that is modern cinema, and find joy in seeing internal conflict unravel, where there is no tangible antagonist. Or CGI explosions, car chases or sex scenes holding your hand every step of the way, explaining every fucking plot point, movement or inner emotion through dialogue narration. Or roller-coaster event film tantrums saying, “This is what you should think and feel when you leave the theater.”

There are many more movies, but this is a good start:

Africa: Guimba the Tyrant by Cheick Oumar Sissoko
Japan: Gate of Flesh, by Seijun Suzuki
Poland: A Short Film About Killing, by Krzysztof Kieslowski
Russia: Andrei Rublev, by Andrei Tarkovsky
India: The Adversary, by Satyajit Ray
Germany: Fear of Fear, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Italy: Accatone, by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Spain: High Heels, by Pedro Almodovar
France: Pickpocket, by Robert Bresson
Netherlands: Turkish Delight, by Paul Verhoeven
Sweden: Through a Glass Darkly, by Ingmar Bergman
USA: Husbands, by John Cassavetes
Mexico: Los Olvidados, by Luis Buñuel. A Mexican classic, although the director is actually from Spain.
Wired.com: Given your insanely productive solo work, your efforts with The Mars Volta and your films, when do you ever sleep? Do you live in your studio?

Rodriguez-Lopez: My studio is in my home. My sleep is wonderful and loaded with sounds and images, and when I awake, I have the pleasure of passing through my tracking and control room every morning in order to get to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Before I’ve even had a bite to eat, I am consciously and unconsciously inspired and motivated by the fortunate life I’ve been blessed with!

Wired.com: Finally, Wired.com picked The Mars Volta as one of the ’00s finest bands. Any thoughts on what you and the band have accomplished so far?

Rodriguez-Lopez: First off, thank you very much for this flattering gesture. I can only say that, from my point of view, we have accomplished, by way of our records and travel, a thorough celebration of and meditation on the absurd. And all its treasures, which were hidden only by our own shadows.

Texas-based Rodriguez Lopez is a well-regarded singer/composer/performer/producer, formerly with At the Drive-In and now with The Mars Volta. He has begun to don several hats as well in film production. Here he produces, writes, directs, and stars - an admirably ambitious renaissance cinemaniac wannabe. Unfortunately, The Sentimental Engine Slayer’s busy script delivers little more than a middling student film, world premiered at Rotterdam.

The Sentimental Engine Slayer supposedly charts the downfall of a young man named Barlam (Rodriguez Lopez) into a world of degeneracy. As we meet him, he is barely hanging onto the line between fantasy and reality. His frustrations, mostly sexual, are manifest in a tendency to choke his friends as well as, possibly, a young prostitute.

Barlam’s obsession with his parents’ divorce years before is undeveloped, yet he is positive that one of his neighbours is his half-brother, the product of some indiscretion by his mother.

Engine Slayer’s busy narrative is predicated on Barlam being a near-complete social maladroit, possibly a virgin, even though he may be involved with his drug-addicted sister (Velazquez). But Rodriguez Lopez is a strikingly handsome young man whose casting himself as a nerd who would rather make plastic models of the popular ’67 Mercury Cougar automobile than date comes off as false, almost an inverse self-indulgence.

Barlam’s home is loaded with kitschy Mexican Catholic iconography and ephemera, and he surrounds himself with countless saints. It appears that overkill is a trope here, but it doesn’t work. What rings true are his homeboys, the “friends” who make fun of his awkwardness. They are valid depictions of young Latino males full of machismo and trapped between two worlds.

Naturally, the music is good. Even some of the reverberating sound effects have an abstract resonance that works with the plotline.

The Sentimental Engine Slayer supposedly charts Barlam’s downfall into a world of degeneracy, but even the hookers and transvestites are lame. On the plus side, he consciously makes the film bilingual, driven to make audiences realize that America is a polyglot culture with millions of Spanish speakers.

I just saw The Sentimental Engine Slayer debut feature from Omar Rodriguez Lopez. It had a jumbled narrative, with reality and dreams crossed over, and a lot of drug use made for some surreal sequences. At the moment I’m still trying to come to terms with what I just saw. Lopez is definitely a creative person and hopefully I will be able to ask him about that tomorrow when I interview him. Following this perhaps I will have a better idea of where he was coming from. I think there is a video library on the 4th floor of this building where I can watch the film again–maybe I’ll understand it more the second time? Off to seeing another film in 45 minutes called My Daughter; it’s in competition so it should be a good’un.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez is an unusual debut director, even by Rotterdam's eclectic standards, as Ben Walters finds out

It's not just that he's already world famous as a musician – he's the guitarist with band The Mars Volta – but the film he's premiering in the Bright Future strand, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, is only one of five features he has already shot. Clearly, the prodigiously prolific production rate for which he is renowned as a musician applies to his interest in filmmaking as well.

“This is the first film I showed to anybody,” Rodriguez Lopez says, “the first to go outside the womb or the nest. I've always got a film project on the go. I've made a lot of shorts, just for the process of it. The process is everything, the experience is everything. It's a form of therapy.”

Shoestring
Dating from 2007, The Sentimental Engine Slayer was produced on a shoestring with collaborators “sleeping on the floor for a month” and follows Barlam, a young Texan struggling to make sense of family, sex, drugs, work and the world in general. Expressive and increasingly psychedelic, it's a heady, empathetic piece, moving but not sentimental in any conventional sense. Rodriguez Lopez is compelling as Barlam but, he says, playing the role was an entirely contingent decision. “It was not something I wanted to do. I hate being the centre of attention – like with the band, my friend is at the front, let everyone focus on him while I concentrate on the music! But my main actor walked away a week before shooting. He was offered a paying job. So it was a question of whether to let the project die or step into something I already knew so well.”

Language
Engine Slayer's characters frequently slip between English and Spanish in a way that is a daily reality for millions of Americans, but is rarely seen on screen. This, the filmmaker says, is “something I don't like about American cinema, especially underground or independent cinema. They look down their nose at Hollywood but they give us the same version of America. It doesn't reflect reality, and when it does, it's sad stereotypes that border on racism. They just show white life in America, and even white life is not untouched by all the peoples that made the country.”

Music
As well as writing, directing, designing and starring in the film, Rodriguez Lopez, who has scored other people's features in the past, also wrote the music for Engine Slayer. “That's the easiest part for me,” he says, unsurprisingly. “I don't have to communicate ideas or translate things. With other people's movies it can take hours to get three notes – the director says 'I want the three notes of travel.' What the fuck is that?!”

Rodriguez Lopez is keen to question conventional categories. He rejects the term 'artist' as bourgeois, preferring to find evidence of being expressive in a range of activities. “We each find our way. The guy who kicks the ball at the goal or shoots the gun at the 'enemy' is also trying to figure out who he is.” He has a similarly permeable take on what forms his work. “Watching films shaped my music. People ask who my biggest influence playing guitar is and I say Margrit Carstensen in Fassbinder films – that's how I want to play! If I make music and my influence is music, then I'm just copying. If I like a character and want to capture that feeling, then I have to dig and dig and dig – but when I find water, it's the sweetest.”

Joined-up
Rodriguez Lopez, who lived in Amsterdam for a while – “It was great but it's too cold for my blood. I need a blue sky” – has been enjoying his first visit to IFFR. “It's great that this festival supports expression rather than glamour,” he says. After Rotterdam, he's returning to his current home, near Guadalajara, Mexico, to finish off his latest feature, which he will be submitting to festivals. “I'm finishing a cut on another film too, and there are five or six records that have to be mixed, a dog that needs to be fed, a mother who needs to be called...” His, then, is a joined-up life. “My music is not different from my film is not different from my cooking is not different from this conversation. It's all part of the project.”

I've been to the screening today and I have to say it was a crazy and interesting movie.

The story has been cut up in a non-lineair order, something which definitely makes this movie more interesting!
Omar's acting skills were really great too, I didn't expected him to do such a convincing job.
There's a lot of crazy psychedelic sound effects and noises throughout the whole film on the most unexpected moments. Which give an extra emotion to certain scenes, emotions you wouldn't have without these sounds.

That's all I will tell about the movie though, I wouldn't want to give out any spoilers. If you've got the chance to see the movie do so!


About the screening:
Today I saw the 2nd screening and Omar and friends/family were sitting in the audience which was very cool. Omar did a little speech at the beginning of the movie and afterwards he took the time to answer questions from an interviewer and the whole audience in the room. He has been answering questions for at least half an hour which was really interesting and fun, because he was very enthusiastic and talked very fast, giving a lot of information in that timespan. He talked about how this film was an autobiography in a way, how his life as a child was in El Paso, how he begin making this movie, how he scraped money together to even film it etc. He didn't even intend to send this movie to film festivals, but only did because his friends and family insisted he did because they liked the movie so much. Something which he was happy he did after all. (Omar already made 2 previous movies before this one,some of you probably already knew but I didn't. And he already has plans to make a 4th movie.)

Regarding music in this movie:
Aside from a little snippet of a TMV song which can be heard from a tv, there's no music at all in this movie. A decision he made on purpose, he literally said that he didn't want to turn this movie into a music video.

It was really inspiring to hear him talk so long and enthusiastic in real-life for once. I thought it was really special to be there on the 2nd screening of an Omar film.



The International Film Festival Rotterdam isn't meant only for invited people from media who for example write reviews. Every normal citizen can just buy a ticket. This means there will probably be less reviewers than on the average film festival. Nonetheless more reviews will come out after tomorrow's screening.

Hey gang I was at the last screening last night and thought I‘d share some of my experience and thoughts:

Zwaff put things REALLY WELL. I felt very, VERY honored and lucky to be there. I made sure to be there early in the hopes of getting to meet our leader biggrin.gif My dream came true when Omar and Ximena strolled to the theater a bit on the early side too. I was absolutely star-struck: I was paralyzed yet my heart was racing! When they meandered away I mustered my courage and approached him from behind... ninja.gif ... "Omar!", I called him by his name (!!!) and then I very nervously thanked him for releasing the film and for all his records. Then I told Ximena I thought her voice was beautiful and that I look forward to hearing her on more records. I was so nervous but I didn‘t forget to get a photo with him smile.gif

Enough about my BS, onto the movie! Without ruining too much it‘s kinda exactly what we would expect - disjointed story-line, with sudden WTF dream sequences, and lots of scenes designed to evoke discomfort. For me, the most amazing thing about the film was, unsurprisingly, the use of audio. Zwaff said there is little music in the film, and he‘s right, aside from an Old Money track (Private Fortunes) and barrage snippets of Cryptomnesia (no vocals), there is only a little bit of actual music (which is quite awesome, but could hardly constitute songs or even a soundtrack). But what I mean by audio is the things in the film‘s environment that get prominence and the incredible psychadelic effects that randomly show up and override the sensory experience of the "real world" in the movie. Omar‘s experience as a producer really shined through in a massive way. I should also say that the editing was just genious too (I got to meet the editor, Adam too). There are some truly spell-binding moments in this movie and I feel that I really MUST see it again someday!

About the acting & script: Omar was absolutely phenomenal, and his male side-kicks (Oscar, and another character played by Kim something) were also really great and extremely compelling. Omar‘s sister in the film was also really great. The script was really nice. It had many original, uncontrived ideas wrapped in realistic interactions, beautiful and cryptic (but insightful) poetic voice-overs, and COMEDY (I laughed pretty hard more than once). So basically Omar is a fucking king of artistic creation: musician, composer, producer, writer, and film-maker!

After the screening a pretentious and annoying chick took the floor with 2 semi-questions that I thought were pretty boring. Then she turned it over to the audience who was just frozen in confusion so I jumped up with a question: "Is there gonna be a sequel?" ... pause ... "I‘m just kidding, (*laughter of relief*) my real question is: you‘ve described your music as being ‘a celebration of the absurd‘ - and I find this quite apt - do you approach your films in the same way...?" I admit it was not a great one, but I really could not think of anything to ask about the film itself... the answer wasn't surprising: he basically said that everything in his life comes from that same place "my music, my films, making love to my woman..."

After one more question we got booted from the theater for the next screening. On the way out I grabbed some posters (designed by Sonny Kay who was present) and spoke to Cathy. That woman is the greatest!!! I told her I use Coma and that we appreciate her dedication and communication with the fans. I then spoke for a while with the editor Adam. He was really nice and was very glad to discuss the film and the parts that left an impression on us. I said the editing reminded me of the Xenophanes music video and he said that was his doing too wink.gif He said they were all happy and very surprised with the positive reception this movie had over the last 3 days. He also said that working for Omar is crazy because he will randomly call him up and ask for him to fly out to Mexico or any other random place to do some work for 3 weeks all the while he is juggling three other projects of Omar‘s. So there is definitely more stuff in the pipeline.

I quickly complimented the 2 other actors from the film and then Cathy struck up a quick convo with me. Did I say that she‘s the greatest??? She also said that the very positive reception has made them all happy and that the film will probably go on tour... and with some luck State-side, so be wise and GO SEE IT!