The first film to benefit from Cuarón’s rising profile is Duck Season, the first feature from Fernando Eimbcke, which draws on early Jim Jarmusch with its droll comedic sensibility as it casually depicts a day in the life of two bored teenagers, Flama (Danile Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño), as they play video games, order a pizza, refuse to pay for said pizza, and get stuck with the disgruntled deliveryman, Ulises (Enrique Arreola), who resolves to hang around until they cough up the cash.  Also butting in on their day of do-nothing bliss is their teenage neighbor Rita (the excellent Danny Perea), who makes a mess of the kitchen whilst ineptly trying to bake a cake.  As in Stranger Than Paradise or Down by Law, it’s not so much what happens as how it happens, and Eimbcke proves a witty and interested observer of his characters foibles as they exist in the same cramped space over the course of a long, ultimately eventful day.

In the interest of exposing Duck Season to as wide an audience as possible, Cuarón sat for a roundtable interview extolling the craft of the young Eimbcke, who certainly has talent, but, unfortunately, the kind of talent that’s going to make financing for his future films relatively hard to come by.  But with Cuarón in his corner, he’s at least got a chance at gaining a foothold in the all-important American market, which would’ve been absolutely impossible a year ago.

Cuarón began the interview in advocate mode.

First of all, thanks for being here.  This is a kind of film that I’m sure whoever sees the film at least five more people are going to see it, because it’s a contagious film.  But we need the first step, and the first step is to get five people into the theaters.  And that’s only going to happen thanks to you, so I’m very thankful that you guys are here.

You saw the film in Cannes.  What made you latch on to it.

I fell in love with it… well, not immediately, because for the first ten or fifteen minutes, I was just so jealous about it.  I was just hating [Fernando]; “I should’ve done this movie.  Look at that!  It’s amazing!”  And then the good thing is that god gave us admiration,… so I changed envy to admiration.  And then something happens; your heart opens, and you just enjoy the whole thing.  I finished watching the movie loving the film, and became a huge fan of the film and a huge fan of Fernando Eimbcke.  I find the film very deceptive.  It could seem like something very simple, but it is a very complex film.  It could look like ninety minutes where not much happens, and, thematically, I think everything happens.  And it’s rare when you find a film like that.  I think that obviously there are directors that think in those senses that, at the end, [Fernando] acknowledges:  [Jim] Jarmusch, [Aki] Kaurismäki, and definitely [Yasujiro] Ozu.  What he has together with Ozu is this amazing compassion for his characters.  So, I saw the film and I thought it was a film that all audiences deserve to see.

It’s very different for American audiences in that it’s very deliberately paced by our standards.  How difficult do you think that will be to overcome?

I don’t think that there’s any problem there.  I’m just basing it upon my experience of having seen the film in different countries abroad.  People just connect with this thing.  On one hand, there is the pleasure of the specificity of Mexico City, but it’s a very universal story.  This movie could’ve been set in L.A., New York, Paris, London – it would’ve been the same story.  Because I think you’re dealing with very universal themes.  And what I admired most is how he deals with these themes.  It’s not that he’s pondering about them; he’s just very generous and shows them as matter-of-fact.  He’s generous enough to trust that audiences will pick up the pieces, and rather for him to give answers, he’s raising questions.  And I think that’s the value of the film.  If you connect with any of the themes, it’s not that he gave you answers about them; he’s just raising issues.  I don’t think you can expect anything better from films than that.

In terms of the pacing, I don’t find it [a problem].  The deliberate pacing is something that is so engaging with this film, because time is one more thing this film deals with.  In that sense, it’s a very Chekhovian film; time is a constant element.  From the get-go they are telling you that mom says she is going to be away for “x” number of hours, and then the pizza delivery has to be there in one hour and he’s one minute late.  And then there’s the constant drip-dropping of the water that reminds you that time keeps on going, that time is not going to stop for you to sort things out.  In that sense, time is merciless, and the only thing that you can do is take control of your actions, which the deliveryman does at the very end – [he] regains his own identity.  I think this is a movie about characters that are seeking for their own identity.

Fernando does to compose in long takes, which is becoming a lost art.  Somebody who’s that skilled with shot composition and has the bravery to let a take go and trust that they’ll be able to keep it interesting.

But that’s part of the stuff that I admire about the film.  He’s not telling you where to look or what to look at.  He allows you to [draw] your own conclusions.  And I agree; it’s so brave!  When you see this kind of filmmaking, it is filmmaking without a safety net.  You shoot a conventional movie with coverage and stuff that you can always move things around to make it entertaining.  The way he shot this film is the way it is.  But the way he shot is, also, is pure cinema.  And that’s something I admire about this film.  It’s not, you know, a nice story that was nicely illustrated with nice visuals.  This is a movie that was conceived as a film, and has such a self-awareness of being a film.  That’s why I think the choice of black-and-white is so great, because a film that is attempting to do pure cinema is taking the form that conveys pure cinema the most.  And that is black-and-white.  And it’s so fantastic that it’s so timely.  It’s happening in a moment when black-and-white is starting to be cool again.  Audiences are losing the fear for black-and-white.  More important, people like Warner Independent, that we’re so thankful with, that embraced the film, understood the film and went for it… I think they are showing with [Good Night, and Good Luck] that black-and-white is not an issue. 

And that relates a little bit to the pacing aspect, for instance.  Pacing in cinema has changed.  People are accepting different kinds of pacing.  If you see Brokeback Mountain, the pacing is very deliberate.  And, nevertheless, it’s touching a chord with mainstream audiences.  [Beaks note: just not rank-and-file Academy voters.]

Now that you’re in a position to bring attention to these other filmmakers, how much responsibility do you feel to find these new voices?

I don’t feel any responsibility!  (Laughing)  There’s no responsibility.  For me, it’s a completely selfish act.  It’s pure selfishness.  I’m reaching an age at which… for as long as I can remember, I’ve been following the masters – the big masters, the old masters.  And I’m trying to emulate the old masters.  But, at the same time, studying the filmography of the masters, you tend to see that most of them, even the great masters, they have an amazing window of a decade in which they did the best movies ever, but, then after, things happen.  Then, you see other filmmakers where they happen to have a longer spread of life, and they happen to be filmmakers who don’t only look forward, but they look back to… see how people are perceiving things.  For me, right now it’s as important to look forward to the old masters as it is to look back to the young masters that are going to push you and question and [develop] new ways of doing things.  It’s about keeping myself relevant. 

It’s not unlike politicians.  I was in London, and Tony Blair had this rant against young people, because young people don’t have respect for older people.  You always see that when politicians start talking about and attacking young people, you know that something is going really wrong with them.  In a way, that happens with some filmmakers.  There’s a moment in which they feel “these young people don’t respect that I’ve done all these movies!”  (Laughing)  You know?  And just because [these young directors] aren’t in books doesn’t mean that a lot of these filmmakers aren’t amazing.  And they are doing a lot of novel things [like] those old masters that we admire so much.  And, definitely, you can see in [Duck Season] that Fernando has an awareness of those old masters.  I don’t think he considers himself a young master, but I think he’s on the way to being one.

Could you talk about how doing a big franchise movie affected you?

I’m not interested in talking Harry Potter now because my whole purpose in coming here was to talk Duck Season.  These big movies, what they have helped in a lot of ways is to open doors.  That has been an amazing byproduct of doing Harry Potter, for instance.  In a lot of ways, it’s about establishing relationships with people.

This falls under your deal with Warner Brothers, right?

Yeah, but, actually, I never thought about releasing a film.  This whole thing of doing this deal with Warner Independent about releasing films, the reason we created the whole thing was because of Duck Season.  If there’s a continuing of this, it’s going to be because of Duck Season.  It’s not that I planned to do a distribution company – not at all.  But, at the same time, [it will be nice] if this becomes a window for other great films that, for once reason or another, don’t find [distribution].  It’s amazing.  Now that I’ve been spending time in London, you get way more what is called “foreign cinema”.  And you see this amount of amazing cinema that you know is not going to see the light in America because of whichever reason.  A big reason is how busy the market is.  It’s not that people don’t want to show good films; it’s about how busy the market is.  And some of these films just need a bit of branding to push them forward.  So, we’ll see what happens.