A still from El Topo

PREMIERE: Why is El Topo finally being released again?

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY:After almost 25 years of conflict with Allen Klein, we made a friendly arrangement. I went, some months ago, to New York to remaster El Topo, arranging the color. I made wonderful work with the daughter of Allen Klein, Robin. The DVD includes three of my best pictures Fando & Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain, with two hours of bonus features including the first film I made when I was 24 years old, which was lost. The picture was a tale of Thomas Mann, a pantomime called The Tide. There are interviews, commentaries.

What was the conflict with Allen Klein?

He wanted me to make a picture and I didn't want to do it so I escaped. So he said, "If you escape like this, no one will see your picture [El Topo] anymore." We fought for a lot of years, and I gave away videos of the film. But after all these years, we talked on the telephone and realized we were spending a lot of money because we don't hate each other. We made peace. So I went there to see my old enemy. When he opened the door, he said to me, "You are beautiful. You are not a monster." I say to him, "You are also not a monster, you are like a spiritual master." We are old now. It is 30 years later. So now we are friends... Your best friend is your worst enemy always.

What kind of work did you have to do to remaster the pictures?

They have a new machine [to make] the colors I wanted. At that time [I made the film], the technique was not so perfect. Also, some shots that were dark are clear and shots that were static, I gave them movement. It's perfect now. For the first time in my life I have the picture as I like it. I did this with all three pictures. The first picture was black and white, so it was not a problem, but El Topo was a problem because the color was not good. And The Holy Mountain is like a painting.

A still from El Topo

I owe a big thank you to him because when I came to the United States with El Topo the big companies said, "We don't know how to open that. It's so different." It was impossible to show. Then one person showed it to John Lennon and he liked it. So he showed it with his picture with Yoko Ono [and] the public saw my picture. It began to show at midnight, the first time a picture was shown at midnight, which started midnight movies, pictures like Pink Flamingos. They called that "Midnight Mass." After a year, Allen Klein bought the picture. John Lennon recommended it to [him] and said, "Why don't you give him money to do whatever he wants." Klein gave me a million dollars. For me it was enormous, for you Americans it was nothing. I made an enormous picture in Mexico with that money, Holy Mountain. At the time, no one understood it and it never opened. Now that picture is admired by Marilyn Manson. He was inspired by this picture and included clips of it in his video ["The Dope Show"].

Didn't you conduct Marilyn Manson's marriage ceremony?

Yes he wanted me to conduct the ceremony in the character of the Alchemist in The Holy Mountain. I said, "Listen, Mr. Manson, 20 or more years have passed. I don't have the costume. He said, "Give me your measurements and we'll find it." So when I came to Ireland to marry him, the costume was waiting for me. That was his dream. Now the picture can be understood.

What was the movie Allen Klein wanted you to make?

He wanted me to make The Story of O. I didn't want to make something sexual. I am a feminist. I didn't want to make a picture about a woman who is a slave. When I made El Topo I was a South American machista. In The Holy Mountain I started to advance with the women in the picture. I realized we can't treat women like that. I was advanced for my time. Allen said why don't you want to make that picture so I escaped. He had reason to be angry from his point of view as producer because he put a lot of money in El Topo and Holy Mountain and when he wanted to make very big business with me, I escaped.

A still from The Holy Mountain

I am an artist. Now the pictures are not made by artists. They are made by companies and produced by multinationals. The art in the picture is lost. Now when artists make pictures, they make them for museums. But museums, for me, are cemeteries. El Topo is a western and Holy Mountain is an alpinist, about climbing mountains. El Topo is a modern picture. It doesn't get old. And Holy Mountain will be in its time in ten years.

What is your next project?

It's called King Shots. It's a gangster movie. There are a lot of actors who want to play in the picture. Marilyn Manson will play the role of a 300-year-old Pope. Nick Nolte called me and said he saw a picture I did called Santa Sangre. He said, "I want to work with you." I said, "How can I pay you." And he said, "That is not important." I want to shoot in Romania and in the desert in Spain where Leone shot his pictures. It's set at a casino in the middle of the desert and all the gangsters come to gamble. In the desert they find the skeleton of a giant man as big as King Kong. I wanted to make a film called Abel Cain which was the Son of El Topo but I could not raise the money. Too expensive. You know, I am a poor poet trying to make artistic, individual pictures. I am not a multinational. I think my pictures are some kind of an elixir that can change the mind for the better. I hate pictures where you go in silly and you come out silly, not changed. With my pictures I want to change the way you see the world. That is for me is the meaning of cinema.

Al Weisel is a contributor to PREMIERE magazine and the co-author of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause.