Alfonso Cuarón: ‘Mainstream TV Is Not Really a Director’s Medium’

Alfonso Cuarón brought his Apple TV+ limited series “Disclaimer” to the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, September 9. The five-time Oscar winner writes, directs, and executive produces the buzzy psychological thriller series based on Renée Knight’s bestselling 2015 novel. Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lesley Manville, Kevin Kline, Louis Partridge, Leila George, and Kodi Smit-McPhee star.

In Ben Travers’ review of the series, he called “Disclaimer” Cuarón’s “most provocative project since ‘Y tu mamá también.'” In the opening scene in the very first episode, Partridge is having wild, exuberant sex on a train as he travels to Italy. “Well, it is interesting because everything goes in waves,” Cuarón told IndieWire on how sex on screen has changed in the last 20 years.

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“Also, it’s interesting that every time that there is a [time] period in which the sex is portrayed on screens, particularly if it is portrayed in a frank way, there’s always the discussion of ‘if we’re ready.’ But then I read interviews in the sixties and they were asking those questions,” he continued. “So it’s like, I think that speaks more about how our moral approaches look in societies more than about films themselves.”

The series marks the director’s first foray into television. “In terms of this approach of motion pictures, it’s been known as film. I don’t know how to direct TV. Probably at this stage of my life, it’s too late to learn how to direct TV,” he said in Venice. “We approached this whole thing as a film. There was never a conversation where we were doing something different.”

At the TIFF premiere, Cuarón says that “the thing about most of mainstream TV is that it is not really a director’s medium.”

“I mean, there are cases,” Cuarón said. “[There] are amazing examples of ‘Twin Peaks,’ David Lynch, you know that in reality, I would consider that a film and I think he approached it like the way that he approaches his films. [It] is just like he approached it in a long format in of length and then he split it in two different parts. I think that that’s one that comes to my mind. There was also, of course, ‘Fanny and Alexander,’ which was originally for television and then decided to go theatrical.”

“Disclaimer” premieres October 11 on Apple TV+. Check out the teaser here.

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