Andrés Vicente Gómez

Andrés Vicente Gómez (Madrid, 16 September 1943) is a Spanish film producer, head of Lolafilms, with more than 100 films to his credit.

Gómez is the winner of an Oscar in the category of Best Foreign Language film for Belle Époque. Together with the prizes won at festivals like Berlin, Venice, Montreal and San Sebastian, Gomez´s near annual presence at the Spanish Goya Film Awards make him the Spanish producer with most national and international awards to his name.[citation needed ]

Many of Spain´s most successful box-office hits have been produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, who has worked with directors such as Fernando Trueba, Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura, Bigas Luna, Vicente Aranda, Álex de la Iglesia, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, Pilar Miró, Santiago Segura, Jose Luis García Sánchez, John Malkovich, and Ray Loriga, amongst others. In recognition for his work as one of the producers most contributing to cinema, in 1998 the Cannes Film Festival paid tribute to Gómez with a special homage.

As a film distributor from the early 1970s onwards, Andrés Vicente Gómez has brought an eclectic selection of international films to Spanish audiences, with classics from directors like Buster Keaton, Charles Chaplin, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Akira Kurosawa, as well as Oscar scooping titles like "The Last Emperor", "Dances With Wolves", "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Henry V". Gómez has distributed the work of numerous cult directors like Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Bresson, Claude Chabrol, Peter Greenaway, Shoei Imamura, Krzysztof Kieslovski, Alain Resnais, François Truffaut, Bertrand Tavernier, as well as introducing the independent voices of directors like Hal Hartley, Neil Jordan, Paul Morrisey, Tim Robbins and Alan Rudolph.

Early in his career, Gómez served as a producer on John Hough's 1972 production of Treasure Island, starring Orson Welles. Gómez and Welles hired houses adjacent to one another, and struck up a friendship. Welles was then trying to raise funds for a string of uncompleted films of his own, and Gómez agreed to produce his next film, F for Fake (1973). Gómez recalls, "Treasure Island and [F for] Fake consolidated my relationship with Welles and we signed a three-year agreement of mutual exclusivity through which we expressed our intention to complete all of Orson's unfinished projects. We worked together in 1972 and 1973." Projects worked on as part of this agreement included Don Quixote (filmed intermittently from 1957-72, but released), The Deep (filmed from 1967-9, but unreleased), the TV special Orson's Bag (filmed 1968-71, but never completed), Filming Othello (1978), and the project that Welles considered his major "comeback" film, The Other Side of the Wind (filmed sporadically from 1970-6, but unreleased until 2018). It was this latter project which embroiled Gómez in controversy, after he became the go-between in its complex and unorthodox funding. Barbara Leaming described the situation in her biography of Welles, based on extensive interviews with Welles:

The film's producer Dominique Antoine subsequently endorsed the above account from Barbara Leaming as being "entirely accurate." A July 1986 article in American Cinematographer also corroborates this story, describing Antoine's arrival in Arizona on the set at Southwestern Studios late at night. This story is further corroborated by Peter Bogdanovich, who wrote in November 1997 of the production, "another producer ran back to Europe with $250,000 of Orson's money and never was heard from again (although I recently saw the person on TV accepting an Oscar for coproducing the Best Foreign Film of the year.)" In 2008, film scholars Jean-Pierre Berthomé and François Thomas identified Gómez (who collected a Best Foreign Picture Oscar in 1994) as the alleged embezzler, and they date his withdrawal from the project to 1974. Gómez first met Welles in Spain in 1972, during the making of Treasure Island, in which they were both involved. Gómez then negotiated Welles' deal with the Iranian-owned, Paris-based "Les Films de l'Astrophore", the first product of which was the 1973 film F for Fake, followed by The Other Side of the Wind. As well as the accusation of embezzlement, Welles also had this to say of Gómez: "My Spanish producer never paid my hotel bill for the three months that he kept me waiting in Madrid for the money for The Other Side of the Wind. So I'm scared to death to be in Madrid. I know they're going to come after me with that bill."

Gómez responded to these accusations in a 2001 memoir, subsequently reproduced on his company website:

Gómez was later interviewed for a 2018 documentary on the making of the film, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, in which he said, "I read he blamed me because of the finance fiasco, which is totally untrue. I made a settlement with him, there was no complaint, there was no anything. If it was true, why didn't they make any claim from me, you know?"[10]

Josh Karp's 2015 book on the making of the film cited several pieces of documentary proof which support the allegation:

Karp's 2015 book also reproduces contemporary (May 2, 1974) correspondence from one of the film's creditors Jim Hines to Frank Marshall, in which Hines claims that "The Maricopa County, Arizona prosecutor's office has filed Criminal charges" against Gómez, and that "They have completed their initial investigation and will issue a warrant for his incarceration should he return to the United States. Grand Larceny is an extraditable offense and, as of May 5th (I believe) he will be considered a fugitive by both the State of Arizona and the United States. His Federal Offense will be interstate flight to avoid Prosecution."[11]: 125  Gómez's 2001 memoir notes that after leaving the set in Arizona, he travelled to California to get a flight to New Mexico, where he spent three days drinking and smoking marijuana with Dennis Hopper, before returning to Spain, where "an office awaited me in Madrid that served the purpose of a production-distribution company" which kick-started his new career as a distributor of arthouse films in Spain in the mid-1970s. Karp nonetheless notes that Gómez "has never been charged with a crime, nor been the subject to a civil suit in connection with the accusation."[11]: 161 

In recent years, Andrés Vicente Gómez has carried producing on a constant stream of Spanish and English language films, such as "Rain", co-produced with Martin Scorsese, "The Dance Upstairs" starring Javier Bardem and directed by John Malkovich; "Nearest to Heaven" starring Catherine Deneuve; "Navidad en el Nilo" and "Navidad en Nueva York" in co-production with Aurelio di Laurentiis; "Soldados de Salamina" by David Trueba, and "La Fiesta del Chivo" by Vargas Llosa, starring Isabella Rosellini; "Isi Disi" starring Santiago Segura and "Manolete", starring Adrien Brody and Penélope Cruz; "Lolita´s Club" by Vicente Aranda, and "Io don Giovanni" by Carlos Saura; "El Consul de Sodoma" starring Jordi Mollá; and "La Chispa de la Vida" directed by Álex de la Iglesia.

Gómez also produced the stage musicals "The Last Horseman" and "Ay, Carmela!"

In addition to his extensive work as producer and distributor, Andrés Vicente Gómez is President of the Media Business School, a prestigious development and training centre of the European Union, founded in 1990. He is in possession of the honor of France's Cavalier de les Arts. In 2003, was chosen as President of the FIAPF, a post he held until 2008.[citation needed ]

Since 2010 he works in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia, participating in the creation of the country's audiovisual industry and producing in 2014 the first international film shot in the country, Born King (Born a King).