ELÍAS QUEREJETA
Elías Querejeta is a boy from Hernani who used to direct his brothers’ games and dream about Fu Manchu. Although not of athletic build, he proved an able footballer and actually played for Real Sociedad. Long-time fans of the club recall him scoring a historic goal against Real Madrid. In the early 1960’s he moved to Madrid, not to play at the Bernabeu stadium but to frequent the offices of film producers and roam the cafes of Calle Génova with friends from Donosti who were studying at the Official College of Film Studies. It turns out that this successful footballer wanted to make films. And he did.
I first met Elias when I visited his sets to interview Saura and Geraldine Chaplin. By then he was already untouchable: a young producer wha was all the rage, the only one who had dared stand up to the authorities of the Franco regime and the man who had turned the old-fashioned production systems of more senior film-makers on their heads. His films were produced with the resources that their scripts required and with a concern for form that was unusual in the late ’60s. They represented Spain in Berlin and Cannes and began to win important awards. Soon he was to make a film with three first-time directors who graduated from the College of Film Studies round the time when I started studying there. Like all my classmates, I dreamed that one day Querejeta would produce one of my films. He never did, and I never asked him t0, but against all the odds we became friends.
At first he would call me to ask my permission to publish an extract from one of my critiques in the advertising material for his films. Then we would bump into each other at festivals. I interviewed him several times and, together with Manolo Matji. I suggested writing a book about his films. He turned me down. We began to meet for lunch at Alcalde in Madrid and at Aldanondo in San Sebastián. He was probably influential in my appointment as General Director for Films in 1986 and also, I fear, in my resignation three years later. In any event, in those times we saw each other almost every day and I used to take his advice and suggestions, jokingly calling him my “schoolroom adviser”, and I urged him to produce more and more quickly. He toak no notice. My friendship with Querejeta was not viewed favourably.
I have spent many hours of my lite talking to Elias about every subject under the sun, and I do not regret doing so. Our lunches almost always went on until very late. I would eaT. He wouldn’t: he just pushed frugal amounts of food about with his fork. He drank whiskey, then gave it up for white wine and has recently switched to mint tea, which he says is “a great discovery”. He takes it with biscuits, really good ones, and talks until the cows come home. He never measures how long a conversation lasts and never seems to be in a hurry, as if he had nothing better to do. It comes as no surprise that one fine day he called his friends Clemente Auger and Javier Pradera to set up a tertulia (a circie of friends who meet to discuss a particular subject) which he brings up in all his conversations, whatever they may be about. This tertulia is still going strong, and I believe he is prouder of it than of his films.
When the Film Academy awarded him its gold medal I risked making a halt-joking, half-serious speech suggesting 1hat Elias was an impostor who didn’t deserve such an award. Playing at paradoxes, I tried to demonstrate this, knowing that no-one would believe me. Part of the audience thought I was serios, but no-one understood my wicked irony better than Querejeta himself. I’ve always laughed a great deal with him because whenever we meet he brings my sense of humour to the fore, a sort of caustic wit that I probably use as a shield against the darts that he fires at me, fully aware of his superiority which, in spile of the years for which we have known each other, continues to inspire me.
ElÍas never speaks ill of others. It’s hard to get him to say anything bad at all, though some say he’s a man to be wary of. Could he really be a manipulator, a plotter in restaurants, passages and ministries? I know that he likes to be influential and that the doors of the high and mighty are open to him, whoever is in government. This is surely due to his gifts as a seducer, but also to his consistency and to the fact that he has earned an incontestable prestige by producing serious films, always seeking the best quality results, coming at reality on a tangent and working with excellent directors and technical staff. The earliest films of some of our best directors were produced by Querejeta. There can be no doubt that he has a good eye and a proven love of risk-taking.
I’m not saying that Elías is a “man of a thousand faces”, but the truth is that he has always been a controversial personality, loved by some and feared by others. Still others bear grudges against him that have not faded although many years have passed since the allegad offence was caused.
Fernando Méndez-Leite.
Filmmaker
