from the archives of: www.newyorkcool.com

Wendy R. Williams Talks To
 Luna, The Director of "Whore"

2004 Tribeca Film Festival

Luna at the Marriot Financial Center

I had reviewed the docudrama Whore during the Tribeca Film Festival and was very curious about the director, the Spanish actress-turned-director Maria "Luna" Lidon, known simply as Luna. Who was the woman behind this story? Why did she choose prostitution as the subject of her work? What did this topic mean to her personally? I have always believed that writers and directors reveal a lot about themselves by the stories they choose to tell. There was a tiny photo of Luna on the Tribeca website. She appeared to be an attractive young girl, which made her choice of subject matter even more interesting. So when I received an email asking me if I would like to interview Luna, I jumped at the chance. I met Luna at the Marriott Financial Center on Saturday, May 8th, 2004. She appeared to be a lovely young woman from what must be an upper-middle-class-background. The adjective that came quickly to mind was "aristocratic." She was soft-spoken and nicely, but conservatively, dressed. There was absolutely nothing about her outward appearance or manner that would lead anyone to think she had ever met a prostitute - or for that matter, that she had ever been in the part of town where prostitutes congregate. I was even more intrigued.

Luna working on the set of Whore

So we began to talk. Asking how she had become interested in the story she told me that she had read an article in Marie Claire magazine about the book Yo Puta, on which her movie Whore is based. Yo Puta, a best seller in both Spain and Italy, was written by a Isabel Pisano, a journalist who did extensive research in the field of prostitution. Luna's interest was so instantaneous that she felt it was a story that needed to be told so she had to acquire the rights to the book. Okay.

Denise Richard and Daryl Hannah in Whore

I then asked her what effect dealing with such a prurient subject had on her life. I prefaced the question by telling her that in one of my many lives, I write, direct and produce plays, and have been producing an Off-Off-Broadway play called Hopscotch: The New York Sex Comedy for about five years. And I told her how nothing shocks me anymore. Some one comes up with a funny idea in rehearsal, and where before I would have said, "Oh, no, we can't do that." Now it is just, "Hey, that's really hysterical, let's do it!" And I slip further and further down the slippery slope. I have become like an emergency room nurse, I see and hear the most bizarre things and I am like, "So?"Luna said it was the same with her. When she first got the rights to Yo Puta and started working on her film, she interviewed her first subject, a high class call girl. She talked about how she was very nervous about meeting with this woman and was not sure she could do the interview. Now, she says, after working on her film for five years, nothing bothers her. As she said, three, four, five people could be going at in on the floor and it would be no big deal to her. Naked people are nothing to her now. She then told some fascinating anecdotes about the making of her film - e.g., how all the prostitutes in the film are real prostitutes, and how they are talking about their actual lives. The only part of the film that is fictional is a story set in Los Angeles, with characters played by Denise Richards, Daryl Hannah and Joaquin De Almeida. This fictional part of the story was only created after all the interviews were completed, to help tie the story together.

Luna directing Denise Richards in Whore

Luna then spoke about how the casting director for her film was a real porn producer, and how he introduced her to the whores she cast in her film. She told how she traveled Europe to do some interviews, and how some were done on a sound stage in Spain. And how after she had been working with the porn producer for a while, he suggested that she be his camerawoman on a porn shoot. As I said before, you can get to where nothing shocks you. We then spoke about her work process when she made the film. She told me that when she first started working on this film, a producer she was working with gave her an old 35mm camera, two lights and one mike; she then filmed one weekend a month for one year to get her footage. Afterwards she began to edit, using an old computer system. She said that her suggestion to all new filmmakers is to learn how to edit immediately, and to start the editing process simultaneous with the filming. She told us that it is only through editing that she learned how to be a filmmaker, seeing the takes she had - and envisioning the takes she wished she had shot but did not have

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Daryl Hannah in Whore

There were many more questions that I would have liked to ask, but out time was up - she had to go to her screening, and I had another appointment. But according to recent press releases, Screen Media Films has picked up the North American theatrical rights to Whore, so it should be in theaters soon. And this is a good thing because Whore, the movie, is very stylish and cool, just like it's director, Luna. For more information on the film, go to www.dolorespictures.com and/or read the review in the film section of www.NewYorkCool.com.