This (not) is the story of The Planets. Nor is it the portrait of how one of the most important groups in the country almost dissolved. This could have happened or notbut that’s what usually happens with legends. ‘Second prize’the new film by Isaki Lacuesta (‘One Year, One Night’) is a tribute to friendship, music and an entire generation.
With live sound and in 4:3 format, the film places us in Granada (“the only city with a bomb name”, as the drummer Eric Jimenez) at the end of the 90s. A group is experiencing its most delicate moment: ‘the bassist’ breaks up with the band and ‘the guitarist’ finds himself in a spiral of self-destruction. Meanwhile, ‘the singer’ faces the writing process of what will be his third album: ‘A week in the engine of a bus’, an album that will transform the country’s music scene. But this film is not just about The Planets. It is a story “of love, of vampires, of ghosts; a horror story (with a lot of drugs) and science fiction.”
After sweeping the Malaga Festival (Biznaga de Oro for best film) and days after its theatrical release, laSexta speaks with the director about Los Planetas, about everything that was and what never happened.
Ask: What is a guy from Girona doing writing and directing a story about Granada and The Planets?
Isaki Lacuesta: Almost all my films are about places and lives different from mine. I have never been interested in making autobiographical films. Cinema allows you to live with people you were not destined to meet. Thus, once I started the project, I looked for what we had in common, what the intersection was. ‘Second Prize’ is also our autobiography. The way my computer makes movies is similar to the process of burning a disc. Is a love relationship that is always on the verge of catastrophe. The protagonists have an addictive relationship, of absolute necessity. As in ‘Lady Halcón’, they are condemned to be eternally together and always apart. This is what happens to them and what happened to Pol Rodríguez (co-director of the film) and me.
Ask: The story then is an amalgamation of legends about The Planets, of what was and what was not…
Isaki Lacuesta: The film tells things that really happened, things that happened and we have modified, and things that are completely invented. The Planets are the first to have fueled their legend through his songs. I like to think that those things really happened, that Jota and Eric were together until six… as the song says.
Ask: ‘The singer’, ‘the guitarist’, ‘the drummer’… None of the protagonists of this story have a name, none except May Oliver, why?
I. Lacuesta: When I wrote the script with Fernando Navarro we liked the idea that they were mythological characters. That ‘spaghetti western’ mythology in which the gunman has no name. For her part, May starts the movie saying: ‘I’m the one who’s not there,’ and that’s not true. She is the one who sees everything from the outside. The story begins when she leaves and breaks his relationship with Los Planetasand I It seems like the most rock and avant-garde gesture. that there may be.
May played with her back to the audience because she was very embarrassing, even in the recording studio she turned her back to the technicians. Therefore, she always saw what others did not see. The film is made up of characters who look at different places and it is the viewer who has to decide which version they stick with… or whether they opt for a sum of all those stories.
All the music from the moviethe songs from Los Planetas and their third studio album, It is recorded live. In fact, all the members of the band are actually professional musicians from the Granada scene. All, except Dani Ibáñez (‘the singer’), an actor with a family in Granada and musical knowledge. Cristalino gets into the shoes of the ‘guitarist’ and Mario Fernández (Mafo), who has played with Eric and Los Planetas, plays the ‘drummer’. An original idea, that the actors were musicians, which came from director Jonás Trueba (who was going to take charge of the project initially), and which Lacuesta decided to keep when he finally kept the film.
Ask: Why did you decide to overwrite the lyrics of the songs on the screen?
Isaki Lacuesta: We decided that the songs would have subtitles when we started writing the script. One of the obvious difficulties of musical cinema is ensuring that the music does not stop the story, that the narrative continues to advance while the songs appear. While they play they are fighting, they are loving each other… It would be a fantasy for the audience to sing in the room, for it to be like a great concert. The things we do together have a special value, a different energy. Listening to an album at home is not the same as going to a concert.
Ask: How has your relationship with Los Planetas been?
Isaki Lacuesta: I got together with Jota and Florent after accepting the project and I explained to them that I wanted to make a film about a vampire and a ghost. I didn’t want to make a movie about his true story because it’s impossible to know what it was. I wanted to make a film about the legend of the group. I told them that I would make a film with all the love and admiration, but that I had to do it as if they were dead. If I had to make a movie that everyone agreed on, this story wouldn’t exist. They accepted it.
“It’s a movie with distorted memories”
Ask: Have you been part of the creative process of the film?
I. Lacuesta: Jota told me to call him if I had any questions, and that’s what I’ve been doing. It is a film with distorted memories, a polyphony of voices. The Planets are the least official group in history, it made no sense to make an official film. It is the great advantage we have had, there has been no right to veto. As Eric says: “I’m not going to lie about what happened, I just don’t remember.”
Ask: And the final result… do you know if they liked the movie?
I. Lacuesta: We went down to Granada to show them the film. Florent preferred not to see her, May didn’t see her either.although he sent a very affectionate message to the leading actress. Jota has seen her twice and it is very interesting to see what he recognizes and what things are still in an area that he has to process.
The filmmaker talks about Lorca and his ‘Poet in New York’, about Morente and his ‘Omega’, about Holy Week, about the caves of Sacromonte. He shows a city in which, at that time, people did not sleep at night and whose music scene was concentrated in clubs and clandestine clubs. The level of reproduction is such (at least what did happen) that Lacuesta has rebuilt the legendary Ground Floorthe concert venue where Los Planetas began playing and which years ago was devoured by a fire.
Ask: But, if you don’t know Los Planetas or have never heard their music, why should you see ‘Segundo Premio’?
I. Lacuesta: I am incapable of asking anyone to go see one of my movies, everyone to do what they want with their life.
Ask: Well…, but a little promotion, what does the story have to like it so much?
I. Lacuesta: The film can be seen and enjoyed without knowing that The Planets exist. My parents saw it as a fiction film and it was only after the fact that they discovered that the band existed. It’s a movie about love, about vampires, about ghosts. It is a film with points of comedy and drama. It’s a horror, science fiction, disaster movie.like ‘The Burning Colossus’, in which everything falls, collapses… No, It’s not a movie about The Planets.
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Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
