· Pedro Almodóvar Caballero was born on September 25, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Castile-La Mancha, Spain.
· La Mancha is the windswept region of flat lands. In Volver there is a great reference to ‘La Mancha’ where they go and shoot scenes where Almodovar grew up.
· His parents were called Francisca Caballero and Antonio Almodóvar and they lived in great poverty. They aspired much more for their son Pedro.
· When Pedro was 8, his parents sent him to a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura.
· The whole family then moved to Extremadura and his dad bought and managed a gas station and his mother sold wine at a bodega at Caceres.
· In 1967 Pedro moved to Madrid rebelling against his parents’ wishes to find a good job in Caceres.
· He has always dreamed of becoming a film director, but at the beginning he was not financially stable to do so. Another setback was that there was no training available for this dream due to Franco closing the National School of Cinema.
· Almodovar used to sell used items in the famous Madrid flea market ‘El Rastro’ to make himself enough money to live on.
· He finally found full-time employment with Spain's national phone company, Telefonica, where he worked to save money for a super-8 camera.
· La Mancha is the windswept region of flat lands. In Volver there is a great reference to ‘La Mancha’ where they go and shoot scenes where Almodovar grew up.
· His parents were called Francisca Caballero and Antonio Almodóvar and they lived in great poverty. They aspired much more for their son Pedro.
· When Pedro was 8, his parents sent him to a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura.
· The whole family then moved to Extremadura and his dad bought and managed a gas station and his mother sold wine at a bodega at Caceres.
· In 1967 Pedro moved to Madrid rebelling against his parents’ wishes to find a good job in Caceres.
· He has always dreamed of becoming a film director, but at the beginning he was not financially stable to do so. Another setback was that there was no training available for this dream due to Franco closing the National School of Cinema.
· Almodovar used to sell used items in the famous Madrid flea market ‘El Rastro’ to make himself enough money to live on.
· He finally found full-time employment with Spain's national phone company, Telefonica, where he worked to save money for a super-8 camera.
· To practise his passion for writing and acting he joined the group called "Los Goliardos" where he shot several Super 8 Movies with his new camera. He collaborated on various underground magazines. He wrote stories and some of them were published. He was a member of a parodistic Punk-Rock-Band called ‘Almodóvar y McNamara.’
· Following Franco’s death in 1975, Spain’s cultural life flourished once the dictator’s oppressive regime was gone from power. Almodovar thrived during the vibrant explosion of wild behavior and hedonism that quickly swept Madrid and other areas, as he continued making films while writing scripts, performing in a glam punk band and joining a theater group that introduced him to several emerging actors with whom he would later work, including Antonio Banderas.
· He began making numerous short films, including “Two Whores, or a Love Story Which Ends in Marriage” (1974).
· Shortly after this film Almodovar directed his first feature length film using his super-8, “Folle, Folle, Folleme, Tim (F*ck, F*ck, F*ck Me, Tim)” (1978).
· Almodóvar was influenced by directors such as Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alfred Hitchcock, John Waters, Ingmar Bergman, Edgar Neville, Federico Fellini, George Cukor, Luis García Berlanga and neorealist Marco Ferreri.
· With his brother and producer of his films – Agustin Almodovar, they opened El Deseo S.A a film production company that has become known as ‘The Almodovar phenomenon’ all around the world.
· Following Franco’s death in 1975, Spain’s cultural life flourished once the dictator’s oppressive regime was gone from power. Almodovar thrived during the vibrant explosion of wild behavior and hedonism that quickly swept Madrid and other areas, as he continued making films while writing scripts, performing in a glam punk band and joining a theater group that introduced him to several emerging actors with whom he would later work, including Antonio Banderas.
· He began making numerous short films, including “Two Whores, or a Love Story Which Ends in Marriage” (1974).
· Shortly after this film Almodovar directed his first feature length film using his super-8, “Folle, Folle, Folleme, Tim (F*ck, F*ck, F*ck Me, Tim)” (1978).
· Almodóvar was influenced by directors such as Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alfred Hitchcock, John Waters, Ingmar Bergman, Edgar Neville, Federico Fellini, George Cukor, Luis García Berlanga and neorealist Marco Ferreri.
· With his brother and producer of his films – Agustin Almodovar, they opened El Deseo S.A a film production company that has become known as ‘The Almodovar phenomenon’ all around the world.