Many are the references to grab to present the writer Nicolás Giacobone. Grandson of the legendary Armando Bó, nephew of the super agent Víctor Bó and cousin of the filmmaker Armando Bó; Husband of actress Mariana Genesio Peña and screenwriter of successful Argentine films such as “The Last Elvis”, “Animal” and “Hail”. However, what leaves in the background everything described is the Oscar who won in 2014 for being the film’s screenwriter “Birdman”work that opened all the doors of Hollywood and made it the ideologist behind the talented director Alejandro González Iñárritu, with whom he has been working more than a decade. He currently edited his third and new book “The impotent”where he challenges the reader with the approach of whether he is well to separate the artist from his work when his murky life becomes public for a complaint. Just arrived in the country after a month in Europe working with Tom Cruise in the new film of its fetish director Iñárritu, he spoke with news about his unbeatable present.
News: His book “The helpless” has as its axis the dilemma of separating the artist from his work.
Nicolás Giacobone: The artist’s cancellation when his personal life comes to light and is marginal is the basis of the book and I thought it a lot. Writing something so of the moment is difficult. It is not a solid opinion, it does not have a conclusion, it is to raise a point of view and generate many questions. The artists are going to say that you can separate. Before if the author appeared in the work was a bad writer, the author had to be a ghost and that disappeared in the 21st century completely because today people buy more authors than titles. The reader is looking for authors to be life partners. The author seeks to get into the work and that his obsessions and perversions enter the work. Then I understand that when they find out that this person did something against his morals stop reading him. I try to continue focusing on the work.
News: They are all very dark characters in their novel.
Giacobone: It is a premise of mine when writing. If I do not go to the end of discomfort, what I am going to write for. When I think a story I need absolute freedom to go to the end of the end. And there is proof and error. Sometimes common sense makes me moral as a writer and when I read it I realize that it is not interesting or that it ends there, that I would not close the story. Then I go back, delete and see that the opposite version to what I had written is the way to follow. If it bothers me, it motivates me. Comfort does not have anything new.
News: What is it like to write a novel when you work to write scripts?
Giacobone: It is a more internal job. The cinema is a job where it is planned a lot, it is conversed with the producing house, with the director, you have to reach many agreements and be very clear who the characters are, what you want to tell and everything before writing the first word. Literature for me is the opposite. Simply find a character, a situation or a prayer and start writing.
News: Does writing your novel generate less stress than writing a script for third parties?
Giacobone: When writing becomes a job you have to be effective. Of course I do not know what is right or wrong, but I have to identify when I am not telling anything and it is only a pretty prayer. Nor is it so partitioned because I work many things in parallel, I start a book, I continue with a script, I return, I’m going on a job. Then I have several projects simultaneously. What I can say is that when I write my novel is the only thing that exists. And when I am reaching the end and I have no idea how it will end and it happens, there is the magic. It is a revealing moment.
News: His grandfather was Armando Bó, therefore his political grandmother was Isabel Sarli.
Giacobone: Exact. My mother is Armando’s daughter, Víctor Bó is my mother’s brother and Armando Bó son, my cousin. But my grandfather died when I was six years old, so the great reference of the cinema was my uncle, with whom he went to the filming sets of the super agents’ films. My uncle was James Bond for me. When he was a boy, he said he wanted to be a tennis player or director. But my paternal grandmother, Chola, my dad’s mother closer to literature and was the one who marked me because for me the cinema was an industrial quilombo of gigantic magnitudes, extras, first figures. Reading and writing were more intimate acts, more related to my introverted personality.
News: However, he managed to join the two worlds and arrived at the cinema with the script of “The Last Elvis”.
Giacobone: “The last Elvis” was my first written script, but the second realized. I studied lyrics when I finished the secondary and just my cousin opened the producer and needed someone to help you write commercials and added. We had made an advertising with an imitator of Elvis and that idea arose. Armando had worked in advertising with Alejandro González Iñárritu in Mexico and sent the script to see if he gave us a hand. A month he calls us because he had liked and proposes to write “Biutify”, a movie that Javier Bardem was waiting to read and accept it. It was not easy and I admire Iñárritu’s courage to summon two beginners almost for such a film. He came from “Babel” with seven Oscar nominations.
News: His Hollywood career was meteoric.
Giacobone: Simply because working with Alejandro is very easy. He is a consecrated director who participates little in the scripts because he has a very clear idea of the film he wants to do before starting and that speeds up the entire process. With “Birdman” something similar happened, he introduced me to the playwright Alexander Dinelaris, we glued a very good vibes and we started writing the script. Alex came from the world of theater in Broadway, I from cinema and mixed everything a little and that story arose. The pressure of making a movie at Hollywood and Oscar is always in whom you feel to write a movie.
News: Michael Keaton owes him to resurface his career.
Giacobone: In the stage of throwing names and ideas, the name of Michael Keaton arose and they said that they no longer work, that they will not give us guita, even other actors said no and were renowned, but today that movie is inconceivable without him and yes and yes , that work was placed again at the top of American cinema.
News: He is one of the few Argentines who won an Oscar.
Giacobone: “Birdman” had a strange tour because in Venice we didn’t win anything, people were not going to see her to the movies, but we won the Golden Globe for best script. Then in the BAFTA we did not win anything and then a River Boca was made with “Boyhood”, the film that was filmed for 12 years, because the intellectual world wanted “Boyhood” to win and that of the actors swelled for “Birdman.” They sat next to us in the delivery and looked at each other.
News: What generated the Oscar?
Giacobone: Job. They begin to get proposals everywhere. The problem was that before its premiere and knowing what was going to happen, I had arranged to make a television series with Iñárritu and it was hard because very good proposals came to me and I had to write 10 episodes of a big series. I went to Los Angeles to live two years and did not end up doing because it was very expensive. I also charged very well but living in the United States lasts much less and although I cannot complain, it was rare to be caught in that project when very interesting things came to me. Another movie that opened many doors was “Bardo.” For example, last year I was living in Cate Blanchett’s house working on a project that I can’t say anything for now.
News: What is it to be at a private party with the Hollywood stars?
Giacobone: Shocking. They are all smaller than I imagined, well I measure almost two meters, but they have tics, they talk with their forms, it is fun. The Ego of the Argentine puts you along and one says erroneously: “We are partners and I do not have to approach Brad Pitt”, but the truth is that we are not equal at all. I was a month with Tom Cruise and when you see it in person it affects you because there is an abyss between them and us. They have another aura. And as they are very professional, when you see that you serve them, they treat you as a couple and when it doesn’t work, they let you know clearly.
News: Was being introverted played for or against the industry?
Giacobone: Mariana, my wife, tells me that I am very shy and therefore waste all the opportunities to establish important links, but well, I am like that. It is my personality. If it were more channel and file dialogue with anyone, maybe today I would be on vacation with DiCaprio on their yacht. What gratifies me as a professional is to know that if I hit a door, whatever, they open it to me.
