On Friday I was lucky enough to get tickets for a screening of the new print of El Topo followed by an extensive, almost 2 hours long interview with the great man himself.
Now a lot of stuff was said in those two hours so it's going to be hard for me to remember it all now. A lot of it was about the history of his films, his relationship with John Lennon and that dude who stopped El Topo and Holy Mountain from getting proper releases until now.
He was asked about his proposed Dune project and admitted that he hadn't even read the book when he secured the rights, just knew that one of his friends loved it and got asked by a studio if there were any projects he was interested in so that popped into his head, he was shocked at how complex the book and world of the book was when he did get around to reading it, his version would have been something like 8 hours long, Udo Kier would have played Feyd-Rautha, David Carradine was going to be in it (Playing Duke Leto or Duncan presumably), Welles was going to be Baron Harkonnen (which I'm sure we all knew) and Dali wanted $100,000 an hour to play the Emperor, he was going to pay him and use him for 1 hour of filming where it would have been set up that the Emperor talks to others with a replica puppet which he operates through a curtain off screen. Music would have been by Pink Floyd and some other band I can't remember.
When asked about whether or not he watches many films he replied that he on average watches 2 films a day, he had just watched the latest episode of The Shield (no doubt obtained legally

) and although I think it was brought up at a different time he said that he loved the modern way of telling a story over many hours and series, something he couldn't have done with Dune at the time.
He also mentioned that he thought David Lynch was one of the only true artist working in Films at the moment and that he's seen most of Takashi Miike's films, to paraphrase he said something like "The man makes a lot of shit but in amongst it all are some truly genius moments which makes watching everything he does worthwhile".
When asked by some silly cow Who he'd want to play him in the film of the story of his life he said that he hates the idea of working with all NAME actors except Nick Nolte, he loves Nick Nolte (Star of King Shot if it gets made), and that he'd have his family and unknowns play the characters in that film.
He is planning on shooting a film next January, he doesn't know which one yet, either King Shot, Sons of El Topo some other one that deals with his Depression Therapy (can't find the name easily online) or maybe even an adaptation of his Comic Bouncer, he also said that he was going to make his next film available to the public for free via the internet, whether or not that is going to be the film he shoots in January or not was not clear, I got the feeling that it would be something smaller and cheaper but still he doesn't want to make any money from his craft.
Much much more was said, he was a true legend, I'm sure he is a madman but he didn't come across as one, maybe we got him on a good evening but for a 78 year old (who claims is going to live to be 150 years old) he was still pretty damn sharp, he had the audience in fits of laughter many times and it was one of the greatest film related experiences of my lifetime.
I'll post some more stuff if I can remember it later.