Guillermo Arriaga has an established reputation as a novelist and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. But he always wanted to direct.

The 51-year-old Mexican writer has now directed his first film, The Burning Plain, for which he also wrote the screenplay.

When the film played earlier this year at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, Arriaga and Joaquim de Almeida, one of the film’s co-stars, paused from their hectic festival schedule for a few words about the writer’s directing debut. Arriaga had been in the area recently to speak at a screenwriting seminar at the University of North Texas.

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Mexican writer Guillermo Arriaga is making his directorial debut with The Burning Plain, starring Kim Bassinger and Charlize Theron as two women whose lives intersect.

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Although he found success as a writer, Arriaga said, “I always wanted to be a director.”

When he was 13, he said, “I told a girl I was going to direct a film one day. She laughed so much, I knew I had to do it someday.”

But despite wanting to rid himself of childhood demons, Arriaga said, “I always felt like I was better with words.”

He collaborated with director Alejandro González Iñárritu on Amores Perros, 21 Grams and ultimately on the epic ensemble drama Babel, which earned Arriaga an Oscar nomination. He also wrote the script for the acclaimed Tommy Lee Jones drama The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Arriaga’s scripts are always dense, multilayered narratives, complex labyrinths somewhat similar to Charles Dickens’ interwoven plots.

Asked if he strived to equal such Dickensian complexity, Arriaga said, “I have been trying to bring literary structure to the cinema. … My three biggest influences are William Shakespeare, William Faulkner and Juan Rulfo, a Mexican author everyone should know.”

When pressed on whether he read Shakespeare in English or Spanish, Arriaga said with a serious mien: “In English. It’s hard, but I try to do it because it’s worth it.”

In the shocking opening scene of The Burning Plain, a trailer burns out of control, and it is not until later that the viewers learn two people were inside.

Arriaga said the scene was inspired by a childhood memory.

“When I was 10 years old, I saw a fire and people said someone was inside. This stayed in my mind for many years. This idea of someone being buried alive stays in your mind,” the director said, equating several characters in the film to the five elements.

Although The Burning Plain sometimes has the look and feel of a low-budget film, high-profile Oscar-winning actresses Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger co-star.

Arriaga was asked how they joined the project.

On Theron, he said, “She’s one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. She tries to make films of good taste, many of which are never seen by the general public. She has no ego. I only have good words for her.”

To comment on Kim Basinger, de Almeida, who had been mostly silent during the interview, described what it was like when the time came for the scene in which they share a bed.

De Almeida said he saw the notoriously shy Basinger on the set the day before and she blushed before saying, “Let’s not talk about it, but let’s just wait and do it,” and then walked away.

But Almeida added that filming on the set was not always serious.

“Remember the scene in the supermarket?” he asked. “Well, he,” Almeida said, pointing to Arriaga, “starts picking up grapefruit and throwing them at everyone.”

DR. BOO ALLEN is an award-winning film critic for the Denton Record-Chronicle.