Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. El cineasta chileno Albert Hamilton presenta su más reciente obra, Fletcher, película latinoamericana que forma parte del prestigioso programa Dollar Baby del afamado escritor estadounidense Stephen King. Este programa ha sido una plataforma de lanzamiento para muchos talentos emergentes en el mundo del cine, permitiendo a cineastas independientes adquirir los derechos de algunos cuentos de King por solo un dólar. En esta entrevista, Albert Hamilton nos habla del reto que ha supuesto adaptar al escritor Stephen King, de las estrategias que utilizó para maximizar los recursos y lograr la calidad cinematográfica que quería. El director también nos habla de lo que ha aprendido en este proyecto. La presentación de Fletcher marca un hito en la carrera de Albert Hamilton y en la historia del cine latinoamericano. Al formar parte del programa Dollar Baby de Stephen King, Hamilton no solo ha demostrado su talento y dedicación, sino que también ha abierto puertas para otros cineastas de la región. En FLETCHER, un ex reportero del New York Times se encuentra en un país de Sudamérica investigando el brutal crimen de tres mujeres ocurrido a orillas del Río Caya. Se trata de Fletcher, quien pronto se reunirá con los hermanos Motoa para conseguir más información sobre lo sucedido. Pero Fletcher es secuestrado por un grupo de narco guerrilleros, quienes le torturan y le interrogan por su supuesta relación con un insurgente comunista llamado Tomás. Fletcher sabe que ha llegado a lo que él mismo denomina “La habitación de la muerte”. Sabe que muy pocos viven para contar esa experiencia, y que sus posibilidades de salir con vida son mínimas. De la debilidad y desesperación, surgirá la fuerza y el plan más increíble para lograr salvarse. ¿Conseguirá sobrevivir por fantástico que suene?...
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00:00It was very impressive, because it was one more proposal than the ones you present.
00:05At that time, I didn't know this was going to end, nor did I know that it had been almost four decades.
00:12I found out later.
00:14So when I received that the proposal was accepted,
00:18and that they were going to send me the contract to review the conditions,
00:22to be able to sign it, in short, and start the process,
00:25it was very exciting, especially because I managed to have contact with the secretary of many years,
00:30Mrs. Margaret Morehouse,
00:33whose retirement also contributed, to a certain extent, to making the decision to close the program.
00:38So, yes, it was quite exciting,
00:41and in shock at first, because one says, well, what did I get myself into?
00:45Now we have to do it.
00:47When I read a little about other Dollar Babies later,
00:51I realized that, at first, I made a decision that had to do with economic and management capacity,
00:58a main location, four or five characters,
01:02ah, come on, that's something I could do, I think.
01:05The mistake, why a mistake?
01:07Because it turns out that Stephen King has an exquisite writing in details,
01:12and I think that he, like very few authors,
01:17a page of Stephen King is not worth a minute, it is impossible.
01:21So that was my first mistake.
01:24About the pre-production march, one sees, hey, to see some detail.
01:29I commented at some point, X scene of the story,
01:34and the protagonist defends himself and takes a cigarette,
01:37and he throws it in the eye of the guard,
01:40and he comes out of the basin, etc.
01:44It is so descriptive that you say, come on, sign that, how do you do it?
01:49Then one realizes that it was complicated.
01:53So I mentioned that that is one thing,
01:58and the other has to do with adapting things according to what one has,
02:03and not to lose sight of the fact that if we go to a commercial order proposal,
02:07it has to do with something much more altruistic,
02:10pay forward, as the Americans say,
02:14that feeling so altruistic, you have to be up to it.
02:18So I said, hey, here you have to have a huge respect for every word,
02:22every thing that has come from your being,
02:25and see how one can tell it in the best possible way.
02:28It attracts me, in terms of what you ask,
02:31to do this in Latin America was valuable,
02:34because the story, which I read about 14,
02:37of what was on the list, 12, 14, if I remember correctly,
02:40but this one mentioned that the protagonist,
02:44this American citizen, former reporter of the New York Times,
02:48goes to a country in South America.
02:51There I said, I am South American, I like this,
02:55and it also caught my attention that I had not had access to see adaptations
02:59that were precisely made by South Americans,
03:02as the writer thought.
03:04I said, here is a point in favor,
03:07it seems to me that this is something that has not been done,
03:10to have South Americans, who are the ones who take hostage,
03:13or kidnap to a certain extent the protagonist,
03:16and there everything begins to develop.
03:19That for the rest they speak to him in English,
03:22which does not have to be perfect, with a very marked Latin accent.
03:25That is what I visualized that the writer thought,
03:28and that had given us to see it.
03:31My interest then to shoot the film in English and not in Spanish,
03:34the most attached to the book in that sense.
03:37I have some of the protagonists, or co-protagonists,
03:40who actually had a well-developed English.
03:43For example, my Escobar, one of the leaders,
03:47lived more than a decade in New York,
03:50so he had an accent, or several accents that he could make.
03:53My torturer lived in Washington,
03:56so I was selecting people who had learned the language
04:00in good terms and we could play with those accents.
04:03There are more people who are all fans,
04:06in some way or another, of the writer,
04:09and it generated an additional motivation,
04:12something much stronger, that went beyond a budget or a job,
04:15but it was something much more, I would say, visionary in that sense.
04:18The desire to do something, to give your life a different meaning
04:21for the next few months.
04:24And that worked very well.
04:27The truth is that when they say that less is more,
04:30I don't agree. The truth is that with more budget it's always better.
04:33You're going to have other problems, of course.
04:36But, going back to the beginning,
04:39when I speak a little about the details
04:42that this author has,
04:45I would love to recreate things that are so specific,
04:48but at the same time they are so explicit,
04:51and there is a line between what could be even grotesque
04:54or very sensitive to other people,
04:57that is to play a little with the theater of the mind.
05:00How far can I show? And maybe if I don't show this,
05:03because I don't have a way to do it, but it can turn out better.
05:06It's like a trap that you fall into.
05:09I think you have to do several functions,
05:12develop yourself as much as you can,
05:15if necessary.
05:18In this type of rehearsal, I think it is valid
05:21that one can play a little with different fronts
05:24of the technical aspects, the direction of the photograph,
05:27the lighting, the sound, the editing, the voice production,
05:30etc., each of the stages of the organization.
05:33There is one thing that can allow you to achieve certain things
05:36and naturally you have to have the support of the whole team.
05:39How do I deal with the little budget
05:42with the human resource? What I do is look with
05:45tweezers, which is not easy,
05:48each person who participates in the process.
05:51The human quality and respect of the people
05:54who work on a bi-visual project are the key
05:57to counteract the lack of budget.
06:00On the contrary, sometimes when there is a good budget,
06:03the human resource fails a bit and other problems begin.
06:06In the Dollar Baby you have to take advantage
06:09of manufacturing human teams that are highly motivated,
06:12beyond economic resources,
06:15with a mutual sense of respect, admiration
06:18and a sense of body. It is very teamwork.
06:21It is the way that, at least for me in recent years,
06:24has served me to work with reduced budgets
06:27and have results that seem to be worth much more
06:30or that in other places you cannot do it
06:33because you have very little budget.
06:36Look, I have reflected a little on
06:39scripts that are very well detailed.
06:42Maybe it is the reason,
06:45reading a little here and there,
06:48I agree with many articles that mention
06:51why Stephen King is so sought after
06:54or so required to adapt his works.
06:57Precisely because he is so detail-oriented
07:00that you practically have to enter to produce only.
07:03He describes things a lot,
07:06in great depth, the details.
07:09That is something that must be rescued.
07:12It seems to me that personally
07:15I should try to write just like that,
07:18to give more depth to the characters,
07:21to the situations, to the details
07:24and that makes it much easier for the future
07:27audiovisual product.
07:30I don't know if it's a teaching, but at least a reflection.
07:33And the other thing is that it stays for you
07:36forever.
07:39No one can deny,
07:42regardless of whether we like it more or less,
07:45depending on the person of this author,
07:48that he is the most important living,
07:51not only of the last century, but of what goes on today.
07:54It is indisputable and there are already
07:57a lot of people who follow him.
08:00And a deep learning.
08:03The characters of Stephen King are not free.
08:06When the drama is unleashed,
08:09it is the consequence of a deep development of what happens.
08:12In this same story, Fletcher does not reach
08:15extreme violence out of nowhere.
08:18When we get to the outcome of Fletcher,
08:21or in the room of death, if we keep the original name of the story,
08:24it is because the man has already been vulnerable
08:27in his rights to the extreme.
08:30This need arises,
08:33or this that is intrinsic in the background of every human being,
08:36that goes beyond survival.
08:39It is not a visceral feeling of revenge or free fury.
08:42That made me reflect a lot
08:45about a deep sense of terror.
08:48When I was much younger, I thought that terror was light,
08:51even cheap, or you could underestimate it.
08:54Today I realize that there is a much deeper terror
08:57that has to do with the development, I would say,
09:00of the soul of each character.
09:03It is very different, it is not free violence.
09:06When we reach a degree of violence,
09:09it is because it is the inevitable consequence of a lot of abuses that happened before.
09:12That was what fascinated me the most,
09:15to inculcate a little bit in this huge writer.