There are people whose biographies are uninteresting, just like their autopsies. On the contrary, there are other biographies that awaken taste and affinity from the first cries, as soon as the world opens up, when they begin to suck the black colostrum of ruin. The biography of José Luis Manzano belongs to this restricted class.
He comes from Vallecas and works as a scammer in the city center, at the Victoria billiards, a place of vice and forbidden love where he meets Eloy de la Iglesia, the filmmaker who will make him the protagonist of his films. This story and others like it are told by Eduardo Fuembuena in his book Far from herethe most comprehensive work to date on José Luis Manzano and his relationship with Eloy de la Iglesia.
Between its pages we find a world where even shit has its own rules. Because for people on the other side of the stream, like Manzano, death is a fucking way to be. And Eloy de la Iglesia captured the same thing in his street films where he depicted not only an era, but also the characters who inhabited it.
In these days of mud and political misery, another book dedicated to Eloy de la Iglesia hits the stores. It is published by the Dos Bigotes publishing house and is coordinated by Carlos Barea. This is an choral book and notable voices include those of Vicente Monroy and the good Eduardo Bravo. It is curious to see how a filmmaker vilified in his time by the people of the guild himself turns out to be more alive today than any of the directors of the time. Time gave Eloy de la Iglesia an advantage. Certainly.
Vicente Monroy takes a tour of his lesser-known filmography, that devoted to horror; a genre that Eloy would use to address certain topics that otherwise would not have been possible. Thus, the aesthetic of the underwear of the so-called quinqui cinema will give way to the visual elegance of a Victorian mansion on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea in the adaptation of Another twist, the ghost novel written by Henry James.
For the part that belongs to Eduardo Bravo, it should be noted that in a few pages there is a review of the cinema of Eloy de la Iglesia and its relationship with political, ecclesiastical and social structures; all punctuated with that very personal sense of humor that Bravo uses when it comes to writing. The tension between morality and desire firmly maintains the rope on which Eloy’s characters walk, and which turns out to be made of the same fiber as that used by Lazarillo de Tormes or Buscón de Don Pablos or El Pijoaparte de Marsé, characters whose the autopsy would have turned out to be as interesting as that of José Luis Manzano.
His body appeared at the home of Eloy de la Iglesia. He was covered in wounds made with a sharp utensil. According to the forensic report, the cause of death “was violent in nature, with early heroin and other toxic substances found in his blood, urine and vital organs.” At the end.
