Gonzalo García Pelayo has done it all. Or almost everything. Through his record label, Gong, he produced more than 130 albums by artists such as Lole and Manuel, Triana, José Mercé, Silvio Fernández, María Jiménez, Luis Pastor, Hilario Camacho, Camarón and Paco de Lucía, and in the meantime he became one of the fathers of Andalusian rock. He has been a writer, host, radio host, editor, and cultural activist. He dedicated himself professionally to poker and invented a legal method with which to win at roulette, thanks to which he and his family they swept casinos around the world; the film ‘Los Pelayos’, by Eduard Cortés, told everything about that incident. Recently, too, he has made a lot of money from cryptocurrencies. And now, too, he is the only filmmaker in history to have directed 10 films in just 12 months; there were going to be 11, but finally in ‘Arde!’ -approach to the figure of the muse of Argentine B-series cinema Isabel Sarli- she has only worked as a screenwriter and producer; Considering that each one of them has its own ‘making of’, the project as a whole consists of almost two dozen works.
My fourth wife left me, and I felt I had to do something special with my life.
“My fourth wife left me, and I felt I had to do something special with my life,” the director born in Madrid and raised in Andalusia tells us about the genesis of such an ambitious company. “During the six years we spent together we traveled a lot and often the places we visited made us wonder, ‘How come there’s never been a movie made here?'”
Among the settings in which he filmed between April 2021 and April 2022 are the Cáceres town of Hervás, a Cantabrian beach, Nursultán – the capital of Kazakhstan – and southern India. These days two of the films are presented at the Seville Festival. Directed by Paco Campano, ‘Burn!’ was shot in Argentina, and in ‘Siete Jereles’ García Pelayo and co-director Pedro García Romero explore the city of Jerez and its intense relationship with flamenco.
Quantity before quality
The project is but the latest demonstration of what the filmmaker recognizes as an obsession with accumulation, be it adventures and experiences or artistic collaborations or even wives. “Quantity is more important to me than quality,” he says. “Most of the great artists had a very large production; there are Lope de Vega, Picasso, Bach, John Ford… There are exceptions, but it is very difficult for a creator lacking in talent to manage to generate an abundant work”.
Thanks to his 10 new films, he already has 24 to his credit. “There are few Spanish directors who have so many. I do not intend to compare myself with my teacher Luis García Berlanga, who made less than 20, but at least I now feel part of the history of cinema.”
The disdain of critics
The road to feel that recognition has been long and suffered. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, García Pelayo made five films that should be understood as product of the countercultural energy of the time -‘Manuela’ (1976), ‘Frente al mar’ (1978), ‘Vivir en Sevilla’ (1978), ‘Corridas de Alegría’ (1982) and ‘Rocío y José’ (1983)-, and whose mistreatment by criticism kept the director away from the cameras for the next three decades, until they began to be claimed mainly from abroad. “That disdain hurt me very, very much. Cinema has always been my great passion, and I felt as if the woman of my life had cheated on me and abandoned me.”
I am very proud of my life time in roulette, we won around a million euros and we had a great time
That said, he confesses, he doesn’t mind being known by the vast majority of people for his adventures at the casino tables. “I am very proud of that stage of my life, we won around a million euros and we had a great time. Like all artists, I want the love and appreciation of others, and that part of my life is the one that It has earned me more love and appreciation.”
no grudge
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Otherwise, accepts without rancor the inability of his cinema to connect with the general public; in fact, at various times in ‘Siete Jereles’ we see him on the screen, walking backwards, going against the current and opening his own path. “Among my new works there is one called ‘Your pussy’, and there are not many artists who dare to create a work with that name and that theme. The mere fact of being able to say that I have made a film with that title already fills me the mouth of joy, and hair too”.
And, in case more proof is needed of the anti-establishment personality by García Pelayo, suffice it to mention the title of another of his most recent works: ‘Stop prohibiting, I can’t disobey everything’. “We live more and more surrounded by prohibitions, because the State is obsessed with controlling civil society more and more tightly,” he says, convinced that citizens have a moral obligation to fail to comply with these orders. “It seems terrible to me that today’s youth is so meek, and that it fits in so perfectly with what power dictates. Political correctness is having an effect similar to that of religion in the Middle Ages; nobody dares to question it. That nobody expect that kind of attitude from me.”