He is a fan of Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch. And every summer he releases a comedy with a few invariable elements: a family plot, a good group of kids, Leo Harlem, a few jokes that are not too bad and a hit with the audience. For all this we can already talk about the Segura touch, and that is that Santiago Segura – who also acts (this is another of the invariable elements) – is a gold mine for the box office.
This July he did not miss his annual appointment. The director and actor opens today Vacaciones de verano, in which he plays Óscar, the classic swindler who thinks his life is ideal until his wife (Patricia Conde) leaves him for a handsome therapist and is fired from his job . Desperate, he seeks the support of his friend, Félix, a Murri also separated and unemployed who, through his brother-in-law, gets a summer job for both of them. Óscar and Félix go to a hotel in the Canary Islands as children’s entertainers. His mission is more impossible than Tom Cruise’s: to entertain twenty children, including his own, who have gotten into trouble at the hotel.
How was the filming?
Imagine, twenty children, Patricia Conde, Cristina Gallego, Leo Harlem… I was happy. It was like playing with the best toys in the world. This film is made with the best human material that was available. In the end, a director is a manager who has to put a story in pictures, but without actors he is nobody.
Your daughter Sirena is already a regular in your movies, but where did you get 19 more child actors?
My daughter has left a little of my relationship with my wife, and the other children I think each of the relationship of their parents. I was in charge of picking them up, taming them a little, being very patient, giving them a lot of affection, getting them to make friends with each other and the other things went smoothly, because when you say ‘cut’ and you see that the children continue to play, you think ‘what a wonder, it goes on its own’.
And it also has Leo Harlem, who is like another kid…
I suffer because I’m very responsible and Harlem because he’s not prone, but when he goes on stage it’s funny, because he has very internalized the role of a stickler, hard face, baliga-balaga or whatever. Leo is a crack and he is like another child because we adopted him. He’s part of the family like Antonio Resines, Flo, David Guapo… they’re people I like, they’re funny and I think: ‘I’ll take advantage of them’.
And pay them?
They are friends, but they are not stupid. I pay them They have to live on something. It’s true that when I made Torrente, the producer told me: “I can’t pay all these people you’re bringing, they’re your friends, you’ll see what you do”. They were Javier Bardem, Fernando Trueba… and in the end we found the solution: we gave them a ham.
Just like in those classic comedies you love, in Vacaciones de verano there is a love story…
I was excited to put some romance in the film. Although I had a problem, because, how will anyone fall in love with me? And I thought maybe to have hobbies in common. So I introduced the interest in classic comedy that my character and Cristina Gallego share. I admit that in my life I have tied in the same way as this character. He saw that women liked bad guys, those who treated them badly; I turned it around and discovered that by treating a woman very well you can have opportunities.
His films are the highest grossers year after year. Has he saved Spanish cinema?
I wouldn’t say that much, but five years ago the exhibitors thanked me that my film collected 12 million euros. That’s seven for theaters. Last year, the owner of a cinema gave me a bottle of wine, because it was about to close and he avoided it thanks to my film. It’s very nice, but I don’t feel savior of anything.
Before these family films, the Torrente saga was already very successful. When a new delivery?
An idea has been floating around in my head for two years. Torrente would be president. I would start with members of an ultra-right party who see Torrente in a bar handing out the can – like some taxi drivers who give you a rally in the taxi – and think: ‘This man seems very convincing’. They approach him and suggest that he go with them. And then the guy gets excited and gets power, power, power…
Artificial intelligence has already arrived in cinema. Do you plan to use it?
Imagine there is a robbery trial and the security cameras have recorded it, but the judge can’t accept it as evidence because he doesn’t know which footage is real and which isn’t. I’m not afraid of artificial intelligence, but it’s going to be a whore.
