51 Facts About Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker.

Best known for his 1970s films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his work which "is filled with violently surreal images and a hybrid blend of mysticism and religious provocation".

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a comic book writer, most notably penning the science fiction series The Incal throughout the 1980s, which has been described as having a claim to be "the best comic book" ever written.

Alejandro Jodorowsky has extensively written and lectured about his own spiritual system, which he calls "psychomagic" and "psychoshamanism", which borrows from alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism and shamanism.

Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in the coastal town of Tocopilla, Chile, to parents who were Jewish immigrants from Yekaterinoslav, Elisavetgrad and other cities of the Russian Empire.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's father, Jaime Jodorowsky Groismann, was a merchant, who was largely abusive to his wife Sara Felicidad Prullansky Arcavi, and at one time accused her of flirting with a customer.

Alejandro Jodorowsky immersed himself in reading, and began writing poetry, having his first poem published when he was sixteen years old, alongside associating with such Chilean poets as Nicanor Parra, Stella Diaz Varin and Enrique Lihn.

Nonetheless, Alejandro Jodorowsky felt that there was little for him left in Chile, and so that year he moved to Paris.

In 1957, Alejandro Jodorowsky turned his hand to filmmaking, creating Les tetes interverties, a 20-minute adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella.

In 1960, Alejandro Jodorowsky moved to Mexico, where he settled down in Mexico City.

Alejandro Jodorowsky became a disciple of Takata and offered his own house to be turned into a zendo.

In 1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky released the film El Topo, which sometimes is known in English as The Mole, which he had both directed and starred in.

Around the same time, Alejandro Jodorowsky participated in an isolation tank experiment conducted by John Lilly.

Shortly thereafter, Allen Klein demanded that Alejandro Jodorowsky create a film adaptation of Pauline Reage's classic novel of female masochism, Story of O Klein had promised this adaptation to various investors.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had discovered feminism during the filming of The Holy Mountain, refused to make the film, going so far as to leave the country to escape directing duties.

Alejandro Jodorowsky planned to cast the Surrealist artist Salvador Dali, in what would have been his only speaking role as a film actor, in the role of Emperor Shaddam IV.

Dali agreed when Alejandro Jodorowsky offered to pay him a fee of $100,000 per hour.

Alejandro Jodorowsky planned to cast Orson Welles as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen; Welles only agreed when Jodorowsky offered to get his favourite gourmet chef to prepare his meals for him throughout the filming.

Alejandro Jodorowsky took creative liberties with the source material, but Herbert said that he and Alejandro Jodorowsky had an amicable relationship.

The aborted production was chronicled in the documentary Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, directed by Frank Pavich.

In 1989, Alejandro Jodorowsky completed the Mexican-Italian production Santa Sangre.

Alejandro Jodorowsky followed in 1990 with a very different film, The Rainbow Thief.

In 2000, Alejandro Jodorowsky won the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Alejandro Jodorowsky attended the festival and his films were shown, including El Topo and The Holy Mountain, which at the time had grey legal status.

In 2010, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City staged the first American cinema retrospective of Alejandro Jodorowsky entitled Blood into Gold: The Cinematic Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Alejandro Jodorowsky would attend the retrospective and hold a master class on art as a way of transformation.

On 31 October 2011, Halloween night, the Museum of Modern Art honored Alejandro Jodorowsky by showing The Holy Mountain.

Alejandro Jodorowsky attended and spoke about his work and life.

Alejandro Jodorowsky has stated that after finishing The Dance of Reality he was preparing to shoot his long-gestating El Topo sequel, Abel Cain.

In 2015, Alejandro Jodorowsky began a new film entitled Endless Poetry, the sequel to his last "auto-biopic", The Dance of Reality.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's Paris-based production company, Satori Films, launched two successful crowdfunding campaigns to finance the film.

The film was shot between June and August 2015, in the streets of Matucana in Santiago, Chile, where Alejandro Jodorowsky lived for a period in his life.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a weekly contributor of "good news" to the nightly "author news report" of his friend, Fernando Sanchez Drago in Telemadrid.

Alejandro Jodorowsky started his comic career in Mexico with the creation of Anibal 5 series in mid-1966 with illustrations by Manuel Moro.

Alejandro Jodorowsky drew his own comic strip in the weekly series Fabulas panicas that appeared in the Mexican newspaper, El Heraldo de Mexico.

Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote original stories for at least two or three other comic books in Mexico during those days: Los insoportables Borbolla was one of them.

Many ideas and concepts derived from Alejandro Jodorowsky's planned adaptation of Dune are featured in this universe.

For more than a decade, Alejandro Jodorowsky pressured his publisher Les Humanoides Associes to sue Luc Besson for plagiarism, but the publisher refused, fearing the inevitability of the outcome.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is currently working on a new graphic novel for the US market.

Alejandro Jodorowsky collaborated with Milo Manara in Borgia, a graphic novel about the history of the House of Borgia.

Alejandro Jodorowsky spent almost a decade reconstructing the original form of the Tarot de Marseille.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's books are widely read in Spanish and French, but are for the most part unknown to English-speaking audiences.

Alejandro Jodorowsky has cited the filmmaker Federico Fellini as his primary cinematic influence; other artistic influences included Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, Erich von Stroheim, Buster Keaton, George Gurdjieff, Antonin Artaud, and Luis Bunuel.

Alejandro Jodorowsky appeared in the documentary My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, directed by Refn's wife Liv, giving the couple a tarot reading.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is currently married to the artist and costume designer Pascale Montandon.

The fashion model Alma Jodorowsky is the granddaughter of Alejandro.

On his religious views, Alejandro Jodorowsky has called himself an "atheist mystic".

In 2005, Alejandro Jodorowsky officiated at the wedding of Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese.

Alejandro Jodorowsky had to leave the theatre by sneaking outside to a waiting limousine, and when the crowd outside the theatre recognized him, the car was pelted with rocks.

Alejandro Jodorowsky himself was nearly deported and the controversy provided a great deal of fodder for the Mexican newspapers.

In regard to the making of El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky allegedly stated in the early 1970s:.