Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

about it, if you really want to know, but somehow I can't get it outof my mind. So let me offer you a deal. You go to Hollywood andlearn some good American technical skills. I pay your way, you staysix months, you make two hundred and fifty dollars a month, andall you do is learn how to make a movie. When you get it, we'll seewhat we can do with you."Dumbfounded, I asked for forty-eight hours to think it over.That evening, I was supposed to go to a meeting at Breton's todiscuss my trip to Kharkov with Aragon and Sadoul for the Congressof Intellectuals for the Revolution; but when I told everyone aboutthe MGM proposal, they had no objections. And so in December19301 said goodbye to France and boarded the Leviathan in Le Havre.The trip was marvelous, partly because of a Spanish comediannamed Tono and his wife, Leonor, who were making the crossingwith me. Tono had been hired by Hollywood to work on Spanishversions of American films. When talkies first appeared in 1927, themovies instantly lost their international character; in a silent film allyou had to do was change the titles, but with talkies you had toshoot the same scenes with the same lighting, but in different languagesand with actors from different countries. This, in fact, is oneof the reasons so many writers and actors began their hegiras toHollywood; they'd all been hired to write scripts and play them intheir own languages.Long before I arrived, I was in love with America. I loved everything-thestyles and customs, the movies, the skyscrapers, eventhe policemen's uniforms. I spent five dazzling days at the Algonquinin New York, followed everywhere I went by an Argentine interpreter,since I still didn't speak a word of English. Then I took thetrain for Los Angeles with Tono and Leonor. As we sped across thecountry, America seemed to me to be the most beautiful place inthe world. When we finally reached L.A., we were met by threeSpanish writers who'd already been hired by the studios-EdgarNeville, Lopez Rubio, and Ugarte~and were immediately hustledinto a waiting car and driven to the Nevilles'.