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Ben Sachs: We don’t have that in the U.S. either—our network television also skews towards entertainment during primetime. Speaking of which, I’m curious as to how U.S. movies are received in Brazil. You say that they’re unavoidable, but which ones are most popular with Brazilian moviegoers? And are these the same ones admired by Brazilian critics and historians?
The public and the critics have completely different tastes when it comes to American movies. The public in general loves whatever you guys show us. Like, if you have a multiplex with four screens and three of them are showing The Hobbit, most people will go to The Hobbit. The popular opinion is if it’s playing on 75 percent of the screens, then it must be good.
When I say “popular,” I mean for a retrospective of older films. The general public wants new comedies and action films.
We don’t have pressure from our editors. I had the freedom to write about what I wanted, even if I wanted to criticize the government. We have a free press. The strongest pressure I ever felt was from American distributors. I’ll tell you a story about that. In 2005, I was invited to do an exclusive phone interview with the director of V for Vendetta [James McTeigue], and I did. But instead of publishing this interview on the Friday the film was released, I published a review that day and published the interview on Sunday. Because of that, I was put on “standby” for three months. I was not allowed to interview anyone associated with a new Warner Brothers release.
I’m glad I had the freedom not to sign certain reports I wrote for the newspaper. If my editors rearranged the information in a way I would not want to publish it, I could take my name off the article. So I loved working for this newspaper.
