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A Mexican triptych

Staying true to your vision and your voice can be the key to writing successful screenplays, two award-winning writers told film enthusiasts yesterday.

Guillermo Arriaga, who recently penned the critically-acclaimed ?21 Grams? and Carlos Cuaron, writer of ?Y Tu Mama Tambien?, spoke at the Bermuda International Film Festival?s BIFF) Chat series.

Both Mexican writers are serving on BIFF?s jury this year and their presence is a real coup for the festival.

Arriaga, who was a successful novelist before diving into screenwriting, has a career which is white hot following his collaborations with director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.

Before ?21 Grams?, the two worked on ?Amores Perros? ? a unique, spell-binding tale which weaves together three storylines about dog-fighting, an injured supermodel and an ex-revolutionary.

The film won a number of awards and brought Hollywood to their door. Mr. Arriaga is currently working on screenplays for Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones.

He said that when Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu approached him about making ?Amores Perros? ? which was based on two of his stories ? he knew immediately that their collaboration would be a successful one.

?I asked him two very personal questions,? Mr. Arriaga said of the meeting.

?He had been through a very powerful moment. He had lost a child, which is a very powerful experience for any father. I knew he would direct ?Amores Perros? very well.?

Carlos Cuaron, whose Oscar-nominated film ?Y Tu Mama Tambien? tells the story of two teenage boys who go on a cross-country road adventure with an older woman, tends to work with his brother Alfonso, a director whose past credits include ?Great Expectations?.

Mr. Cuaron said he and his brother have been working together since they were young teenagers and ?Y Tu Mama Tambien? was actually something they developed many years ago.

?I am really happy that we didn?t make it then,? he said. ?It would have been a shallow teenage movie like a ?Porky?s? kind of thing.?

Mr. Cuaron said that he and his brother considered adapting the story for an American audience by resetting it in the United States and that they had funding for the film from the US as well but they chose to stay true to the Mexican storyline.

?It was a story for Mexico,? he said. ?We wanted to make a Mexican movie.? So the two eventually found a Mexican backer who allowed them to realize their vision without watering it down.

?We wanted to make the movie feel like it was from a hidden camera that we?d see the lives of these two teenagers, without adding theatre,? Mr. Cuaron said. Staying true to his vision has also worked for Mr. Arriaga. He does not write linear or chronological stories, he said, and does not want to. ?That is for other people to worry about,? he said.

But writing the screenplay for ?21 Grams? and then just a few months later seeing three of the most powerful actors of our time ? Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro ? act it out on a set was mind-blowing, he added. ?That is the dream of every writer.?

Inspiration for Mr. Arriaga often comes from personal experiences. A poignant question from his five-year-old son spurred on the creation of ?21 Grams? for example. He said he knew a woman whose son had died, and a few years later his son saw the woman laughing and happy and wondered how that could happen.

?He asked me, ?if I died, would you every smile again??,? said Mr. Arriaga. ?That?s why I wrote ?21 Grams?, trying to answer that question. Of course, you never would.? A car accident he suffered also spawned portions of his movies.

?I was obsessed with what happened the moment before and the moment after the crash,? he said. In ?Amores Perros? he uses these moments to weave together the three storylines.

While Mr. Arriaga said he never saw the disturbing world of dog-fighting up close, a personal experience from his own childhood probably spurred his writing about the bloody past-time in ?Amores Perros?.

When he was nine years old, some neighbours used to fight dogs and one day decided to sic their vicious canines on Mr. Arriaga?s dog. But the dog fought back and killed the others. ?The dog became very vicious,? he said. ?And after that they used to steal the dog to fight him.?

The two writers hope that their work will change common misperceptions about Mexico, which Hollywood tends to perpetuate. Mr. Cuaron used the example of Steven Soderbergh?s film ?Traffic?. ?When it shows Mexico it is brown, dirty and corrupt,? he said. ?But then you cut to America and it is blue and beautiful and shiny. That is how Americans see Mexico.?

He added: ?We are not going to try and fight. We are just going to make some movies that tell real stories.?

@EDITRULE:

The Chats With series continues today at the BIFF Front Room in Number One Passenger Terminal, Hamilton. At 12.15 p.m. writer-director Jim Sheridan (?My Left Foot?, ?In the Name of the Father?, ?The Boxer?, ?In America?) will give an informal chat discussing his life and career.