María Alonso I Málaga, (EFE).- The writer and poet Alejandro Simón was an exceptional witness to the filming of ‘Segundo Premio’, the film by Isaki Lacuesta inspired by the indie group Los Planetas, and now he has captured his experiences and impressions in the book ‘Floor Floor’, a personal diary that aims to be “honest” about the reality he experienced during the filming of the film.
“When you tell what happens, it is your vision, which does not have to coincide with that of others. That balance so that no one feels offended has subsequently worried me,” she says in an interview with EFE.
Simón (Estepona, 1983) details that ‘La Planta Baja’ – the name of an iconic concert hall in Granada linked to Los Planetas – is a personal fiction, an intimate diary that transcends beyond the film and the group in which he He goes through those days with all the “vulnerabilities that inhabited that time.”
It is a book that can be read like a novel and, according to the author, everyone can like it, regardless of whether they have seen the movie or know the music of Los Planetas.
An almost reckless exercise
The book begins with a call from his friend and filmmaker Jonás Trueba, who told him about the film he had planned to make and invited him to make this filming diary.
Almost two years later, and after Trueba abandoned the project, Isaki Lacuesta began recording the feature film and the writer moved to Granada to write the book.
The fact that Jonás Trueba left the film behind made Alejandro Simón wonder if it was really worth continuing on, but he finally decided to write it and face the diary as an “almost reckless” exercise as it had a very personal imprint and was not, according to he himself indicates what the admirers of The Planets and ‘Second Prize’ perhaps expect.
“It seemed to me that the only way I could face this work was beyond the film, from my inner listening and from paying attention to what was happening to me during those days in Granada,” he comments.
Asked if he is glad to have written the book, he reflects for a few moments: “I don’t know. I’m glad I did because it makes for a healing exercise for me. “I had a great time writing this book.”
Find your place
For the author of ‘La Plot’ and collections of poems such as ‘La Fuerza Viva’, the greatest difficulty he had when writing this book was finding his place and feeling involved in a project in which he was truly an external person.
“Of course I have felt welcomed, but I have not stopped being a person who had nothing to do with the film even though I was in the film. So the balance between being and not being, between being and not invading, and the balance between proposing myself as a part of the team without imposing what I could intuit has been the most delicate thing,” Simón acknowledges.
However, he remembers with joy those days of filming in Granada, in which, as he details, he enjoyed with friends in a city that for him has “a lot of charm” and about which its musical and literary level stands out.
“Honestly, the happiest thing has been the routine in Granada, living day to day life in Granada as a city worker in spring, which is the most beautiful time in Granada,” he says.
The ‘teaser’ celebration
One of the moments that Alejandro Simón remembers most fondly from the filming – and which directly links the book to the film, since he records it in his diary – is when the entire team met for the first time at the Lemon Rock bar in Granada. .
There they screened the first ‘teaser’ of the film that the producer had just made and the entire team was able to see the first images of the film.
“They celebrated those images as if to say: ‘Finally everyone is certain that there is going to be a film, this is not going to be thrown overboard,’” he explains before adding that at that moment they also felt that the film was going to be to be important.
As Simón admits, he was certain even before that moment that ‘Second Prize’ would win the Biznaga de Oro for best Spanish feature film at the 27th Malaga Festival, something that finally happened last March. EFE
