It was a brilliant late awards-season marketing move by Netflix, putting together three of the greatest directing talents of our time together on stage at the Motion Picture Academy Museum in Los Angeles and billing it as the Three Amigos in Conversation.
As a veteran of many events at the museum since it opened in September 2021 I have never seen crowds like this. It was like a rock concert as people clambered to check in to see and hear Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón.
Iñárritu and del Toro currently have awards contention films – ”Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” and “Pinocchio,” respectively, running on Netflix and Cuarón was the first to bring Netflix into the best picture game with his “Roma” in 2019.
After an introduction by Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Cuarón acted as a moderator of the 90-minute conversation which was filled with humor and emotion as the long time friends and colleagues, all born and bred in Mexico, regaled the audience with anecdotes about their careers, relationships and of course, their movies.
It was in 2007 that all three of them broke out into what would become acclaim and fame – del Toro was Oscar-nominated for “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Iñárritu was nominated for “Babel” and Cuarón for “Children of Men.”
Yet none of them were trangers to film aficionados starting from the first few years of the 21st century, Cuarón for “Y tu mama tambien,” Iñárritu for “Amores perros” and del Toro for “The Devil’s Backbone.”
Looking back to 2007, del Toro couldn’t resist joking, “I was on my first marriage and my New Year’s commitment was to lose 20 pounds — I gained 200 pounds and I’m on my second marriage. So it’s extremely important to say, what did happen in those 16 years?”
Iñárritu said that during the awards campaign for “Babel,” “I knew that it was a good moment to end something that I have, in a way, explored to the end of what I could explore… It was a paradox moment, in a way, that the film got attention and nominations, but deep inside me, I knew that it was the end of the story.”
He also admitted that it’s hard for him to watch scenes from his past films, saying “emotionally they have some intensity that sometimes I don’t recognize,” to which del Toro quickly cut in, “I recognize that intensity. Everything he says is intense.” This led Iñárritu to jokingly scream, “Shut up!”
Del Toro followed up by accusing Iñárritu of being intense even when he was making guacamole. He then admitted his own intensity, saying that after “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape of Water,” he felt like he was going to quit making films. Meanwhile, he has three new projects in the works.
The men discussed their Catholicism, with del Toro admitted that when he saw “Frankenstein,” the monster was like Jesus to him. He also revealed two themes that run through his body of work.
“One of them is the virtue of disobedience, which I think is vital. To be disobedient is to be a thinking person. And I think the other one is the absolute inalienable right to be fucked up, to be imperfect, which I defend.” He explained that like Iñárritu, he’s been fixated on death his entire life, even calling himself “a death groupie.”
“It’s like everybody waits for David Bowie to come to town, and I’m waiting for death,” del Toro added, saying, “It makes life makes sense, I really believe that.”
In what became a running joke, del Toro repeatedly tried to bring the conversation around to some of Cuarón’s films, but was stymied in his attempts.
“Did I not get the memo, ‘Three Amigos’ and this fucker hasn’t said anything,” del Toro remarked and rechristened the evening as The Two Amigos.
Darn, it would have been great to hear more about “Y tu mama tambien,” “Roma” and “Gravity.” Hopefully for the next installment of The Three Amigos.
