It is not often that an actor, director, producer and screenwriter of pornographic films receives a phone call from the Catalan Parliament. Which is why, when the voice on the other end of the line identified itself as a representative of the legislative chamber, Conrad Son (Barcelona, 1966) was more than a little annoyed. “If you get a call from the Treasury, don’t think they’re going to give you money,” he points out. The fear at the time was unfounded. Conrad Son’s desire to promote porn in Catalan caught the attention of the then ERC leader, Josep Lluís Carud Rovira, who came in time to pay great tribute (and some support) to the Barcelona director. All this had happened two decades earlier. “Now it would be completely impossible,” says Son. The impetus was Les eXXcursionistes calentes, which has just turned 25 and has gone down in history as the first – and so far only – major milestone in adult cinema in Catalan.
The silver wedding anniversary of this moving film was the subject of one of the editions of the Cerdanya Film Festival, which is taking place these days in Puigcerda (August 1-11). The fair also hosted the premiere of Konrad Sonn’s latest film, “Everything I Never Told You”, a drama focusing on mental health and unrelated to the director’s work in adult entertainment. The director’s relationship with Cerdanya is close, as the film to which he owes its fame was shot entirely in locations in the region.
“Damn him, he’s from Rios.”
The plot of Les eXXcursionistes calentes was quickly dispatched: several couples and trios indulge in various Dionysian practices in a rural setting that always involved undressing. The film’s great success lies in the dubbing in Catalan, the responsibility of Agustí Díaz Balanza, full of expressions and references to toponyms that seem to have been taken from Costumare by Joan Amadis. Expressions like “This is a tunnel and not the tunnel from Cadí”, “Damn it, it’s from Reus”, “I’m going to fuck you because of the big tap”, “Do you want sausages with dried fruits?” and “xarrupa, que vessa”, together with funny scenes, such as the one in which the nest flirts with girls singing the song L’estaca by the singer Lluís Llach (“If you pull me so hard here …”), have increased the film’s popularity far beyond the world of porn.
“There was no double intention other than to have fun and laugh – points out Konrad Son -. It was all sailor slang, a joke from Catalans to Catalans. That’s why we included such exaggerated voices in the dubbing, like there were no bad roles or rare things in the film, and the fact that it became a media, political and social phenomenon surprised us a little, as people dealt with the whole thing with a lot of intelligence and humor, today it might be different because the skins have softened.”
Apart from the blessing of the language card and the use of locales in Catalonia, Les eXXcursionistes calentes has managed to cross borders and succeed in other markets and languages as well. The film has been translated into English (Hot trippers), French, Italian and German. “Here the association was about the language,” Son comments, “but outside it it attracted attention because it was one of the few films of its kind that was made outdoors, because 25 years ago porn films were recorded in apartments and hotels, where it was easier to control the temperature and the presence of people outside the shooting.”
To avoid disturbing the family’s day in the mountains, the team always filmed very early in the morning, forcing the actors to stay in the balls in temperatures below 10 degrees. “It was cold, but I don’t remember there being any problems,” the director explains.
Conrad Sonn quit making porn in 2012. “I quit because I was asked to do things I didn’t feel like doing. For me, anything that doesn’t make people feel like they’re having a good time, I don’t do.” They don’t make movies anymore, they make content. Plus, it’s not a business anymore, because you take your partner and record yourself online and that’s it. I’m not being dramatic, eh?
He adds that society’s relationship with porn has also changed, and that it unfortunately no longer seems to be a cinema for adults. “The black curtain in the video club may have had a bad reputation, but it was a decisive factor. The problem is that now a 12-year-old boy can watch Korean porn on the social network, and it seems to me that this is abnormal. Is it wrong that if a child buys a bottle of wine and gets drunk, the culprit is not the one who makes the wine, but the one who sells it?”
Among other projects, the Barcelona-based filmmaker is making a documentary about Les eXXcursionistes calentes. “I want to talk about the phenomenon that was and I want to try to explain how things have changed in these 25 years.” Son says he doesn’t mind becoming a one-hit wonder and being remembered by one title after a lifetime of work. “George Dunne composed hundreds of songs and was an extraordinary saxophonist, but people remember him for El Chiringuito. Well, that’s the same. But I’m not sorry, thank you for remembering me.”
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Mediterranean Tragedy
Now it’s his turn to present Everything I Didn’t Tell You, an intimate drama shot in the natural settings of Blanes and Malgrat de Mar “with the budget that other films spend on cafés”. It is, he says, “a Mediterranean tragedy”, like the invisible sea backdrop in the Estrella commercials (an aesthetic he deliberately copies in a few shots). “In the end, I would like to think that people have laughed and laughed with one of my films, and that they have cried with another – declares Conrad Sonn -. That would be great, because in life there should be moments for everything.”
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