Editor's Note: Alberto Fuguet is a writer, a Guggenheim fellow, and, according to Newsweek, one of the “50 most important Latin Americans for the new millennia.” And he credits Francis Ford Coppola’s film Rumble Fish, based on S.E. Hinton’s book by the same name, for his inspiration. Fuguet made a documentary, Locations: Looking for Rusty James, about the film’s influence on him and other writers, artists, and filmmakers in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, and he discusses it in this essay. Translated to English by Beatriz Peréz. (The original Spanish version follows the English.) Originally published in This Land Volume 5, Issue 6, March 15, 2014.
Which is the film of my life?
I am asked this from time to time. If one grants interviews (I used to grant more, anyway) to help promote a book that has a lot to do with cinema, or if one just has a new film one is supporting, the question comes up once in a while. It’s inevitable: What’s your favorite film?
I was once asked to write extensively about this. I think—I think—that the request came fromSoho, the Colombian magazine, but this time it was more than to simply respond to the question of which is my favorite film: I had to write 10,000 characters on the topic. At that time I was already making films. When the petition came I was in preproduction of one, actually. I tried to put in writing what I thought was the film of my life. In this case, La ley de la calle, as it’s called in Latin America: The Law of the Street by Francis Ford Coppola.
Also known as Rumble Fish.
But something happened.
Not a minor thing.
I couldn’t.