All my films have always been released in the autumn, maybe because they're more melancholy to people.
I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song and it means something different.
I just wanted to show the migrants as complex humans with flaws and weakness, with good and bad things, and show that they're parents and family men. I wanted to show them with everything, as they are.
I think the arts should get big support, but my country has a lot of needs more important than film. Medication, education, food... The poverty is overwhelming. There are simply more important things to be attended to.
I always think politicians and even my dentist have more egos than actors.
You hear about bombings in other countries, or numbers like "10,000 people died" - you hear that number and you think, "Well, I saw that yesterday in a film, and that didn't look so bad." Younger viewers, in particular, lose perspective on reality.
When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.
I personally can't handle frivolous violence. I overreact to it.
One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me.
Actually, when I think about growing up, I feel most affected by two travels that I made working in cargo boats when I was 16 and 18. One of them crossed through the Mississippi and Baton Rouge and Mobile, Alabama, and another went all the way to Europe. On the last trip, I stayed in Europe for one year with $1,000, working everywhere I could, doing everything. Those years shaped me a lot and taught me the value of exploring different things.
I understand when there's no money for the arts in the government, but it should maybe pressure private companies to support more filmmakers. These exhibition and distribution companies are huge, and there might be incentives for them to invest more in Mexican cinema.
Mexico City is very different now than when I grew up, but I was in the streets all the time - though I was born to a middle-class neighborhood where there weren't a lot of gangs and things. I was always comfortable.
I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films.
I made commercials for corporations like Volkswagen and Coca-Cola, but I was always the one to write them, too, which was a very good exercise, because I learned to tell little stories.
I don't have anything against commercials, and I really like BMWs.
I respect BMW for not interfering in these projects. They're just trying to support short films with their brand, which I think is great.
In the United States there's not a lot of people interested in foreign language films. Every time, it's more difficult for foreign language films to survive here.
The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?
Maybe next year the government might impose some immigration rules on the academy. Two Mexicans in a row is suspicious. [On Mexican immigrants in the US] I hope they can be treated with respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.
