The Sentimental Engine Slayer, film by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

On 4th February 2010, The Sentimental Engine Slayer was unleashed upon this world at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

This film comes from the mind of chief creator, Omar Rodriguez Lopez. Perhaps you are more familiar with his other work as guitarist of At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta. He did not feel that this full-length feature was worth releasing until his colleagues encouraged him to do so. Independent films like this tend to take a while to travel but with a world full of Mars Volta fans and lovers of the strange and unusual, the hype will surely ignite a blazing trail of cinematic glory to the nations. The original lead actor pulled out at the last minute and the character of Barlam was replaced by none other than Rodriguez Lopez - giving him credit as writer-producer-director-composer-star of this picture. One other big-name credit goes to executive producer, John Frusciante (formerly of Red Hot Chili Peppers).

The core of the story revolves around Barlam, a confused individual who involves himself with drugs, incest and dangerous people whilst trying to grow up and become a man. Barlam’s family, friends, enemies and total strangers surround and pollute his suffocated mind in the US-Mexico border town. The unusual characters are portrayed in a realistic and abrasively human way - sharing some stylistic similarities to Jodorowsky’s work. Omar says some of the content and ideas were drawn from real experiences in his own life. To stray from the unrealistic ways of modern American cinema, mixtures of the Spanish and English languages are intentionally used as an honest portrayal of lingual and cultural barriers in El Paso, Texas — where it was shot on location.

“I think that everything we do as expressive people is autobiographical, no matter how far-fetched the material may be.” – Omar Rodriguez Lopez

This is not the first time Rodrigez Lopez has worked in cinema. He composed the ambient guitar soundtrack for Jorge Hernandez Aldana’s adaptation of El búfalo de la noche and worked alongside Hans Zimmer for Guillermo Arriaga’s The Burning Plain. Adding to this, he has claimed to have two other feature-length films in storage — one of which has a soundtrack released - with two more to come. Rodriguez Lopez has been known to lock away and dump projects in the can but this one managed to survive and see the light of day… well, rather, the dark of the cinema. It is quite an ambitious endeavour to switch from music to a major film. Let’s hope it pays off.


Accompanying the film is the great promotional poster — double unbroken highway lines transform into bloody scalpels as they loom over a Plymouth Barracuda. It would stand out alone as a great work even if there was no film. It portrays aged celluloid psychedelia so well. It has distorted fonts, the grain, the wear, an old car, comic book-styled imagery and all.

If the insanity of his music has translated to the style of his film work, it is sure to be one chaotic and psychologically-numbing experience clocking in at ninety-seven minutes. See you on the other side.

Credits:

Author: Liam O’Shea

Images: All images by Michael Rizzi, Sonny Kay and Omar Rodriguez Lopez

The Sentimental Engine Slayer Will be announcing a number of Film Festivals all over the world that TSES will be screening soon.

The Sentimental Engines Slayer will premiere in April in America details coming once we are allowed to announce them

Omar Rodriguez Lopez, the poofy-haired, three-piece-suit wearing, multi-instrumentalist of the Mars Volta, can now add actor, writer, and director to his extensive inventory of careers. His debut film, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival back in February, is a coming-of-age story that follows Barlam (Lopez), an awkward twentysomething El Paso grocery-bagger virgin who haphazardly has a semi-incestuous relationship with his sister (Tatian Velazquez). Engine Slayer, which lists John Frusciante as executive producer, has its New York debut at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. Recently, we called up Lopez to ask about his new career.

When did you first decide you wanted to do a film?

I've always been making films. It's what I've always wanted to do since I was little. You know, I was never conscious of wanting to play music, because I come from a very musical culture and a very musical family. So everyone plays music--my dad plays music, and all the family gatherings center around music. So when I'm asked about my music, I try to make it clear that it was never a conscious decision, it was always something that happened. But I remember when my dad got our first VHS--I would write stories and have my brothers act out the stories and stuff and have my dad be the camera man. So yeah: it was always what I wanted to do.

When did you get the idea for The Sentimental Engine Slayer?

I guess early on. It was all done very quickly. In actuality, it's my third film. It's the first one that has actually left the nest and gone and had a life of its own, but it's the third film that I've made.

Were your other films prior to this made for public release?

No, no, no. None of them were intended to have a public release. What happened was-- it was like a mutiny of my crew. Because I've made three films to date, but it was hard for them at first to understand that I don't make films for any other reason than besides going through the process. So we would make these pictures, and it would be great, and then I would edit it, and then I would show it to them, and they'd be like 'great, now what are we going to do?' And I'd say 'Now we make the next one!' And they'd say, 'Yeah but what are we going to do about this first one?' And I'd say 'No, we made the film, that's the most important part.' So all these films ended up in my closet, just like a lot of other records and a lot of other projects that I make.

And finally on the third one they had this idea, they said, 'No, we work too hard on these films. We understand and we respect that you have this philosophy of doing things for the sake of doing them, but you know you have to respect us and at least, at least allow us to have this last one that we made. Let us take this last one and let us--you don't have to do anything. We'll send it out, but if something happens, will you go to the festival?' And I said, 'Fine, do it,' thinking that it would never be in a festival or anything. And then so little by little they'd say, 'Oh, you have to sign this paper because we're turning it in." Okay, I'd sign the paper. And then they'd say 'Are you available?' and I'd say 'Yes, yes,' and before I knew it we were at Rotterdam and all these other incredible places.

Is there a reason why you wanted to keep the work to yourself?

When you make something for yourself, you're creating therapy, you create art, you create whatever word you want to attach to it--you create an outlet. When you make something with the intention of releasing it, you make a product, and so there's a big difference there. And art is constantly--it sort of rides this line between the outlet, therapy, art, or product. I never intended to do anything with the records I was making, and eventually someone said, 'You should really let me put this out.' And I said, 'Okay, put this out' and then it changes it all.

Like this interview, now I have to speak about the film. It just changes the intention behind it. And so now as I make films--now we're working on a production that will be the sixth one that will hopefully get shot in October--my point of view is changed. Now I think, 'Oh yes, we will send this to the festival.' I think 'Oh, we have to make back the money.' So there are a different set of priorities that are being mixed in with the original intention, which was just to love and to learn about myself. That time it was mine; from this time on, it becomes ours.

What is it like to finally have the film out in public?

I don't know you, and you live in New York, and you've seen the film, you know? And we might have two completely different backgrounds, but you connected to the film, you know there's something really exciting about knowing that at our core we're all the same, and we all have the same worries, we all have the same anxiety. And that's so exciting.

The thing that was most striking to me was that I was able to feel nervous again. I don't feel nervous playing music. I go and I play music, and I can play music in front of thirty thousand people, and I can play in front of ten people, and it's the same. I had this awakening of nervousness and it was so beautiful to feel it. It was beautiful to feel butterflies in my stomach and to feel sick--I'd go to the bathroom three times before the first screening. And so it's still part of my therapy, because here I am and now I get to another part of it where the film keeps teaching me things. And I think I said to the director of the Rotterdam festival, I said, 'I haven't been this nervous since the first time I played music in front of people and that was in 1988.' I would have paid any amount of money for that feeling!

Will you be attending the Tribeca Film Festival?

Yes, of course. Now I am addicted to this feeling of being nervous because I haven't had it in so long. Now I want it all the time. You know it's like if you were raised without sugar, and then somebody gives you a treat or a soda pop, you want it again.

This was your first time acting, right?

I was not supposed to be in this film. The lead actor leaves a week before we start filming--and since, of course, I can't pay most of these people he tells me 'I got offered this paying gig and I have to take it,' and of course I have to understand. So at that point either the film doesn't happen or the person who wrote the film plays a character that he knows well.

This is a semi-autobiographical film. Was it strange to play yourself--in the town you grew up in, no less?

Oh it was incredible! It was everything it used to be and completely therapeutic. Everything has to be personal to me; if it's not personal, it's not worth doing. Whether it's music, poetry, painting, loving someone, or cooking. It all has to be personal.

The house that's in the movie, it belongs to my brother. Two weeks before we start filming, I said to him 'we need your house--your house is a perfect house because you're my brother and I love you and you live here and this must be the house.'

What films inspired your style of filmmaking?

I love anything from Airplane and these silly comedies to Luis Buñuel to documentary films. My parents were big, big Hitchcock fans. I grew up on a steady diet of Hitchcock and Perry Mason.

Your film is called The Sentimental Engine Slayer. Are you worried people might mistake your art movie for a slasher flick?

Wow, I never even thought of it that way. I don't know, I guess that's always been an attractive part for younger people, and why there's always been such a market for horror movies. I never thought of the film as a horror movie, and didn't realize how much of a slant or a perspective it would give someone to have 'slayer' in the title. I mean the title, it sounded interesting, you know, "engine"-- the very fiber of what makes us tick. For me it was coming from a much more psychological level.

Tribeca Film Festival Interview:
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. The Sentimental Engine Slayer



Photo by Leslie Hassler

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez hits the Festival with his third feature, The Sentimental Engine Slayer. He wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the film. With all of his gifts, his primary career is in music. Lopez is respected by musicians all over the world. He is the producer and guitarist for the progressive rock group, The Mars Volta, and has had an incredibly prolific solo career. The number of records he has made for someone his age (35) is staggering. After his band-mate and close friend Jeremy Ward was found dead of a heroin overdose, Lopez was persuaded to pursue a clean life style.

Lopez speaks quickly, in a stream of ideas and thoughts. The Sentimental Engine Slayer director talks to us about his creativity, the very nature of identity, and why the collaborative nature of film has changed who he is as a filmmaker, and as a man.

You're listed as an actor, musician, producer, director... is there anything you don't do?

I'm most known for being a musician. That's what makes me a living, if that's how you want to put it. The Senitmental Engine Slayer is my third film, but it's the first one that I've released. What I love is the creative process. I don't consider myself a musician. I don't consider myself a director. I love to cook, but I don't consider myself a chef, do you know what I'm saying? I have no background training in music or film or in anything else that I do. It's the process itself that calls to me.

What about the creative process inspires you?

Any form of expression that lacks therapeutic value or doesn't teach you something about yourself, or doesn't help you to rid yourself of some kind of neuroses, is completely useless to me. Then, it's just entertainment.

Is music a kind of therapy?

Yes, everything. This conversation, if I make love to my woman, cook dinner for my friends. Every relationship becomes a mirror for ourselves. It's why we get into a relationship with a person. They challenge us, if you're in a healthy relationship, no? (smiles) You start to see things about yourself that maybe you don't like. You see things about yourself that could be better. I think this is the only true point of anything we do in life. To evolve.

You say that each creative project teaches us something. What did this film teach you?

One of my neuroses, is the need to control everything. This movie taught me about letting go. When you make a record, you can control everything. If you're in a studio, and if you're an engineer [he is] and you can play every instrument [he can] you can then do everything by yourself and you don't need anyone else. Film isn't like this. You have to collaborate, you have to let go.

Did you learn to play well with others?

In a deeper sense, my relationship with my brothers changed. My brothers are in this film. When I got to El Paso, I didn't have a house. I saw his house where he was living with his partner and my other brother and his partner and their cats and animal friends. I got there, and I said, "You need to move out. I need this house for my film." They didn't talk to me for two months after making this film. And so I learned a huge valuable lesson, which is, I can no longer treat them as I have been treating them. I left home at seventeen years of age, so my relationship psychologically was stuck at that age. In my mind, I was sixteen and they were nine years old. I must realize now that they are adults. So much has happened since then. We have all grown up. I have learned that in my life of creating and searching, I have walked over other people. I must not do this. We have to do this process together. We have to find it together. Because he who finds it alone can share it with no one.

That's really something. What do you think this film is about?

The search for identity. Who am I? The questions we all ask, no? The film takes place in El Paso, Texas. Which is a border town of Juarez, Mexico. But if you go there, anyone will tell you that El Paso is not Texas. And that Juarez is not Mexico. And it's a no man's land that has a whole surreal feeling to it. It has no identity because it has some other identity, that doesn't pertain to either country.

Surely you have fought with feelings of confused identity after being born in Puerto Rico and then moving to Texas as a young boy. Did you choose El Paso for this very reason?

Yes. This location was so personal to me and so rich in culture. This particular film had to be made there because the city itself is a metaphor for my film. Am I my culture? Am I my roots? Am I my family who surrounds me? Am I nothing? And how can I be closer to God? How can I get back to who I was in my mother's womb before any of this affected me?

Your creativity is so ferocious, it seems like nothing can contain it. I heard you switched from the bass to the guitar because you simply 'needed more strings.' What does it feel like when you play?

It's a form of meditation. In the same way we experience a high through watching a sunset or through sex, or through any of these ways where the world seems to disappear. To play when you truly play through the heart and through the spirit, instead of to impress or say, "Look how good I am". Then it's something that takes you to another place. It's something incredible.

Musicians are renown for succumbing to the temptations of the road. You have lost true friends to drugs and you yourself have fought a serious struggle. What does your life look like now in this respect?

I think life is a gigantic miracle. Life is so beautiful. Once you get past the great lie of drugs.

What is the lie of drugs?

The great lie is that you need this. It's the lie we're told in school, in society, and unfortunately for creative people, the one they latch on to is, "This makes you interesting. This gives you stories." And they completely overlook that the story comes from you. You put a pile of heroin or cocaine or pot there, and it just sits there! It cannot tell a story. It takes the individual to tell a story. We are born perfect before society comes along and tells us we're not and that we need something else to be better and perfect. Some of us are lucky enough to be told by our families that we can do anything.

What did your family tell you?

If you imagine it, it is real.

You have released so many albums, by such a young age. It is staggering. What would you like listeners to hear first?

I would say, a record called Ciencia de Los Inutiles (The Science of the Useless). I've been making records for 17 years and it's taken me all this time to make a record like this. In the end, it's the simplest record I've ever made. A guitar, a stand-up base and a voice. All this time to go back to the beginning!

You've paired down to the basics!

Yes definitely! Most people start there, no? But I went off into space, and I came back into my body. This is beautiful. It is essential and raw. Done in one take. This is what I love about that record.

The Sentimental Engine Slayer – Q & A
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Omar The Sentimental Engine Slayer, Question and Answer, The Mars Volta, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, The Sentimental Engine Slayer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Tribeca Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival 2010 — admin @ 7:49 pm

Recently we went to a screening of The Sentimental Engine Slayer at The Tribeca Film Festival in lower Manhattan. This film stars rock group ”The Mars Volta” co-founder Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, who also wrote, produced, scored and directed the movie.

The Sentimental Engine Slayer is an enchantingly eccentric tale of Barlam, a twenty-something misfit surrounded by lovable deadbeats. The audience is treated to Barlam’s perspective, a fantastical reality, as he journeys from boy to man in a world of sex, drugs, betrayal, and misguided revenge.

At the end of the movie Omar fielded some questions from the (somewhat befuddled) audience. What follows is a transcript of these interactions.

Q: The film seems to have dark elements. Does this stem from personal dark times in your own life?

A: This is a perception you know. To decide that something is dark is a judgment. It’s a part of life. Violence is a part of life. The birth of a child is violent for a woman and she bleeds and the child comes out and it’s painful. The explosion… the creation of the universe was violent and so to me it’s beautiful exploring that aspect of it. The more we judge things the more we suffer. And so this in the film was just a part to carry out the film. And to carry out these desires. I get to live out my secret desires through writing, through cooking, through expressing myself through poetry, through the film. We have all felt at some point or another “I want to kill that guy, I want to beat him to beat himself to death with his own shoe”. And so in this film I can do that. In this film I can kill everyone I wanted to kill, I make fun of everyone I wanted to make fun of and I can beat myself and I can do it in a way that is constructive and positive and it’s again exposing something about myself.

Q: Anxiety seems to really play a major role in the film. Have you had to deal with that in any capacity in any point throughout your career, and how have you dealt with it?

A: I think anxiety and tension is there for all of us all of the time. I don’t feel it in terms of… maybe I do feel it in terms of career. I don’t even know. I feel it now. I feel it being here and the lights are on me and you know I can’t see your face and yet I try and speak to you. I feel that tension, my family is here and so I feel the anxiety and tension of knowing that they’re here and they see the film and they will perceive something else about me. So everything is extremely personal all the time. So coming to Tribeca or going to Rotterdam and thinking this is a completely different culture and they don’t speak Spanish, and the English they do speak- the English in this film- is very particular to that region. How will they understand my film? And so there’s that type of anxiety… but this is a GOOD thing is what I want to say. It’s not a negative thing I am feeling now. I am feeling nervous now, I can feel nervous and I can thank this film for feeling nervous. I haven’t felt nervous since 1988 when I played my first concert. I felt nervous again when I met the woman that I’m in love with. And so these moments of being nervous, they’re small gifts. So now I can be nervous trying to explain my film to you and it makes me feel alive and it makes me feel good about myself. I don’t want you to think that the anxiety is a negative thing. It’s something to be examined. Once something makes us feel, once something makes us angry, once something makes us sad it’s something to probe into because we are only seeing one part of ourselves that we don’t want to look at.

Q: Where did you come up with the concept for this film? Do you watch many other films, etcetera, and what is your inspiration?

A: When coming up with the concept of films I don’t watch films. It’s the same when I make records- I don’t listen to music. Because already as it is, the films that I love and the music that I love is already so embedded in me that it’s very easy to put it in your pocket and, you know, go “Here’s my idea!”, and it comes out of your pocket. So that’s when I’m writing the films and making the films, you know, we don’t watch films. We listen to music… we do anything else but watch a film. Because it’s already too easy to unconsciously borrow, as everyone does.

Q: In the movie you have the scenes with the black garbage bags full of body parts, and the fact that the movie is set in El Paso. Is this a reference to the female murders of Ciudad Juárez?

A: I think a little bit of everything in the reference there is coincidence. That is a very big part of the reality growing up in the city of El Paso. For those of you who don’t know, they stopped the count back 1994 of over 700 woman that were murdered and buried in the desert. And the police in Mexico were doing nothing about it, and it seemed like a big cover-up and there are all these theories about who was doing all these murders. And it’s still going on. It’s still going on. And now they have made a few films about it, but it’s still going on. And now we have all these things going on with the military in Ciudad Juárez, and the drug war that is happening. It was definitely in the subconscious, of course. At the time years ago when I was in the band we made a video over there. The video we wanted to make, they had just played our first video on MTV and blah blah blah and they wanted another one and so we went and it was all about the woman. As we are making it, the second night we are there we get death threats at the hotel and so the director who was Anton Corbijn who some of you may know, he said “I’m out of here!!” and so he left. Then we turned the video over to MTV and they said “We don’t want this! No one wants to know about this, about missing people. We want something nice. Give us something nice. Give us smiles”. So the video was never aired. So it was something of the unconscious. I don’t know if in the conscious mind I thought of it.

Q: Thanks very much for making this film…

A: Thank the rest of the cast also! You know! Because they will make this film alone you know. These are all people who worked very hard; we worked 16 hours a day. Some people weren’t paid. The rest were paid very little. We all lived in the house in the film together, that was my brother’s house. If my brother was here I would thank him because we kicked him and my other brother and their girlfriends and their dogs and their cats out of the home so I could make the film. And I… slept outside of my editor’s house for a month in a van, there in Los Angeles, editing the film. And it’s their fault; it’s my family’s fault that we are here. Because at the time I made it like the two films before it and the film after it, I made it only to make it. I made it only to go through the process of it. Never thinking that one day.. you would perceive it, or that myself and maybe a couple others of us would see it.

Q: When was this film made?

A: This film was made at the end 2007. And at the end in 2008 we made another in Juárez. And hopefully if luck permits we will keep making more.

‘Sentimental Engine Slayer’: Film by Mars Volta rocker a dark psychedelic trip
By Ryan B. Martinez
Nomar Rizo, local actor and filmmaker, has stories about working as a production assistant on film shoots in and around El Paso.

There was the time when, driving home from location outside El Paso one night for the 1996 Meg Ryan flick “Courage Under Fire,” a then-unknown actor talked Rizo’s ear off about a film script he had cooking.

“He was telling me the story over and over and over again,” Rizo says. “It was about this guy who’s a genius, but he’s a janitor …”

A year later, Matt Damon made “Good Will Hunting” and went on to win an Oscar for screenwriting.

Rizo has his own acting goals, which he is beginning to realize with a high-profile collaboration: a new feature-length movie that will run for a week at Premiere Cinemas in Bassett Place Mall starting Friday.

“The Sentimental Engine Slayer” was written, produced and directed by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, better known as lead guitarist of The Mars Volta, the Grammy-winning band with roots in El Paso. He also stars.

The 97-minute movie, shot over four weeks in El Paso in 2007 and produced by Omar’s production company, Rodriguez-Lopez Productions, debuted at the International Film Fest Rotterdam in January, screened at the Tribeca Film Fest in New York and enjoyed a local premiere at the Plaza Classic Film Fest.

Given the festival clout and local-hipster appeal, the movie should enjoy a fate as a cult grower, especially in El Paso, where six local screenings are scheduled to run every day this week.

The seats should be packed with afro-rocking Mars Volta acolytes. They won’t be disappointed: From the psychedelic blurring of fantasy and reality, to the anxiety-inducing score, to an experimental flouting of storytelling conventions, the film is an acquired taste with Omar’s signature strokes all over it.

“This is a film that we want people to see and keep watching over and over again,” says Rizo, who plays two roles. “For a lot of people, films are these artifacts that you see once and it’s ‘OK, it’s over, I got it,’ as opposed to being experiences in which you grow.”

Omar – sans afro and thick-rimmed glasses – plays Barlam, a tightly wound 20-something grocery bagger with psychological problems.

His relationship with his drug-addicted sister borders on incestuous. He stalks a teenager he thinks might be his long-lost brother, commits murders that might be real or hallucinated and has encounters with transvestite prostitutes that are equally dubious.

The film, set largely in Northeast El Paso, is dense with local references: site locations include El Paso Discount Mall and Downtown bar The Tap; a character insults another while referencing Club 101; and the extras’ faces are so familiar, there should be a drinking game – a shot for every instance you see a high school classmate among the extras.

Omar’s brothers all appear in the movie. Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez plays a prostitute, middle brother Marfred (and member of local band Zechs Marquise) appears as an extra, and the youngest, Riko, plays Barlam’s potential long-lost brother.

Considering the unrated film’s dark subject matter, this is no Disney flick. Rizo says Omar, a cinephile who has made short films for years, was able to shoot his mind-bending vision thanks to time and funds bought by Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, a tourmate at the time. Frusciante is credited as executive producer.

“I felt great that I could share this experience with someone I trust so much,” says Rizo, who plays two roles: a pimp and Barlam’s creepy/funny co-worker.

Rizo is just a stage name; in real life he goes by Ramon Villa, where he plays bass for local band Frontera Bugalu and teaches film and public speaking at UTEP.

His dual roles grew out of the growing creative exchange between him and Omar. The two met in El Paso in the mid-90s, when Rizo was in a ska band called Los Deviants and Omar, in his pre-At The Drive-In days, was in a punk band called Jerk.

Over the years, in between their respective projects, they had previously gotten together for DIY-style short films. But nothing as polished or arrived as “Engine Slayer.”

“We both intuitively understood that what we are doing was an actor-director relationship,” says Rizo, of the trust that built during the shoot.

Now they have more on the production line – the already-completed “El Divino En Flujo los Secretos,” scheduled for release next year and under consideration for Sundance inclusion, and after that “Boiling Death Request,” a project set in Guadalajara, Mexico.