A Second Interview with Alan Parker On the Set of Evita in Budapest

Q: Alan, tell us about moving to Budapest and then mounting this extraordinary funeral scene -- numbers and scale. ALAN PARKER: Well, it was hard. I mean, we left Buenos Aires on a high, having done the Casa Rosada [balcony scene], and that was pretty nice. To have to then come to a different country and start all over again from a standing start is always hard -- in any production -- especially when you have to start with something as big as this. So it's pretty extraordinary, really, how everyone has managed to put it all together. Q: Can you tell us something about the scale of this whole scene, putting it together, the numbers and everything? ALAN PARKER: Well, we had lots of documentary footage of the actual funeral, and as a film director you greedily have to re-create that. To replicate it exactly would be impossible because I can't have two million people here, but we have 4,000 extras and goodness knows what else. It's all there and it's all on the screen, and hopefully it'll be pretty impressive. Q: You took over the middle of Buenos Aires and now you've taken over the middle of Budapest. Tell me about making Budapest into Buenos Aires. ALAN PARKER: Well, the reason I decided to come here about eight months ago was that Buenos Aires has now been completely modernized. In Budapest, as in most Eastern European countries, the architecture is still intact and is very similar to Buenos Aires in the thirties and forties, which is what I'm trying to re-create. So it sounds kind of odd that we're here, but actually if you look at the photographs of Buenos Aires of the period, it's very close to what you see behind me.