Raphael Azcona

Although his works tended to be acid and corrosive, the figure of Rafael Azcona stands out for his great humility. He did not like to monopolize the limelight, and for a long time he refused to attend public events and tributes. So much so that, since no one had seen him and he had too many notable films to his credit, for a time the rumor circulated that Rafael Azcona did not exist. It was even said that Luis García Berlanga , José Luis García Sánchez , Marco Ferreri , José Luis Cuerda and Fernando Truebathey had conspired to make it up and to put his name as the person responsible for the scripts of his films. This urban legend was very funny to Azcona himself, who let it circulate until the end of his life, when he began to dare to give lectures and go to receive the odd award.

Born on October 24, 1926 in Logroño, since he was little he already faced life with a lot of humor. “I was short since I was a child. I remember those days of my childhood with sadness… All the children were taller than me, and the older people, always so sensible, said when they saw me: this kid looks stupid… Why doesn’t he get fat like everyone else? ”, Azcona commented in his memoirs, precisely titled Memoirs of a short man . During the postwar period, he decided to leave his homeland to go to the capital of Spain in search of his fortune. There he tried to earn a living as a novelist, and became friends with the comedian Antonio Mingote ., who sponsored him to work in the magazine ‘La Codorniz’. In that legendary publication, he began to portray the hardships of Spain at the time with humor, since he always defended the therapeutic value of laughter. “It’s not good to laugh at everything, but not laughing at anything is terrible,” explained Azcona.

The Italian Marco Ferreri noticed one of his novels, El pisito , and hired him to co-write the adaptation together. Azcona always commented that it was Ferreri who taught him the tricks of the trade, because at that time he didn’t know how to write a script. He “He explained to me that I should draw a line to divide the page from top to bottom. On the left he had to write the action, and on the right the dialogues”, recalled the veteran Azcona. “He told me that the secret of the profession was that he wrote it in such a way that reading what was on the right would not understand what was on the left.”

The experience was so satisfactory for both of them that they would repeat it shortly after with El cochecito , another classic of Spanish comedy. Their most scandalous joint film was La gran comilona , ​​due to its shocking plot –four friends lock themselves in a mansion to eat until they die–, which was interpreted in many different ways, from a criticism of wild consumerism, to a confirmation of the nihilism that emerged after The events of May 1968.

Luis García Berlanga, with whom he had co-written A tram for sale , by Juan Estelrich , asked him to co-write Plácido with him , an ingenious satire of the Christmas customs of the time. Without a doubt, Berlanga was the director with whom Azcona best complemented himself. His union gave rise to memorable titles such as The Executioner , probably his best film script, because despite dealing with a subject as thorny as the death penalty, he did it with elegance and humor. Together they also collaborated on Las piranhas , Long live the boyfriends! , Natural size , Moors and Christians , The heifer , an episode of the collective filmThe four truths and also in The National Shotgun and its two sequels: National Heritage and National III . “We have a rather curious working method. Berlanga and I met, we chatted a lot in a bar, around a few beers, about all possible topics except the film. And then I go home and start writing the script.”

He was in great demand in Italy, where he was known for his work with Ferreri. In addition, several Spanish directors were so aware of Azcona’s talent that they almost always turned to him. For example, José Luis García Sánchez ( The Pharaoh’s Court , Franky Banderas , The King of the River , Tranvía a la Malvarrosa , etc.), José Luis Cuerda ( The Animated Forest , The Language of the Butterflies ) and Fernando Trueba ( The Year of lights , Belle Epoque , The Apple of Your Eyes), although his filmography is quite long. He always gave the directors the leading role, he placed himself in the background, and he commented that a screenwriter should be aware that his work was so that last-minute changes could be made later. “The author of a film is always the director. For me that is so clear that I do not understand the eagerness of some to proclaim it, ”said Azcona, who always joked about his profession. “They said about a Hollywood actress that she was so stupid that she slept with the writers,” she once said. She always liked to give advice to young screenwriters. “If you meet with a producer and he asks if you have a project in mind, say yes, but you better shut up. Don’t even think about telling him any ideas. Because he will always have in mind to make a movie with the fashionable actor or something like that, And if your idea doesn’t work for him, he’ll call another scriptwriter.” And it is that he spoke with great humor of the producers. “They always say that the most important thing in a movie is the script, but if you ask them why we writers are paid so little, they just laugh.”