At the time, Argentina was breaking “diesel-mad” records. That year the statistics proved it half of the vehicles in our country were diesels. The pockets of drivers and pedestrians were half empty. 1998. The President was Carlos Saúl Menem, the economy suffered from the boom in imports, privatizations and the closure of industries and In Polka there was a plan – to reflect what was happening within any neighborhood.
The magnifying glass in the wallet and the feelings of ordinary people. that’s how it was born gas carrier: Adrián Suar’s first foray as a producer of a daily strip that reached nearly two million viewers every day.
25 years after the first issue (January 5, 1998, on the old Channel 13), the program it resignifies itself as a cornerstone of fiction on many points of view.
Youtube allows us to rewind and destroy that first chapter of the recognizable curtain: the disdainful and affected voice of Vicentico announced “Gamboniere/there’s no money/only one soul wandering around the city/don’t leave me in a gang of petrol stations/if it rains tomorrow I have to go to work”…
“To think it was a cycle to spend the summer, to fill a space and became what it has become,” analyzed the man who will be Panigassi on the street until the last day, Juan Leyrado. “I remember that the first conversation with Adrián was in a small bar in Palermo. He told me the story with passion and motivated me a lot. Polka was a small office and Adrián saw that there was a space for fiction to occupy,” he evoked the 20-year story, now five years ago.
“I knew that philosophy of the man of the neighborhood from my childhood in Barracas. Gasoleros gave us the opportunity to see the workings and nobility of a neighborhoodwhere what matters most is the relationship with the other,” he acknowledged at the time.
mercedes moranoprotagonist of that success that has measured an average of 20 points newspapers, he also made a mobilizing journey into the past: “I hesitated to do it. I felt I wasn’t the right actress to direct a conventional novelbut Suar told me she wanted to do something else, she wanted a real guy she recognized in one of my works and we decided to move on.
“Roxi was an unforgettable character for me. Installing myself in that character – he confessed in 2018 – was one of the most relaxed experiences I’ve had on television. I filled her with imperfections in order to humanize her. She was a little woman who, deep down, didn’t give up and didn’t even give up, a transgressive, she raised her son, Had a lover, ran a fleet of taxis…”.
And he completed the profile of his creature: “He had a maid who was his friend. He met almost none of the requirements of typical protagonists”.
A cool way
History posed two seemingly irreconcilable worlds: bus drivers versus taxi drivers. On the first side, Héctor (former bus driver, turned mechanic in whose workshop taxis were forbidden to enter). In the other, Roxana Presutti. Upward mobility was no longer for them, but the characters “broke their backs” so that the opportunities belonged to their children.
That storyline was one part that explained the boom. The other side was supported by the visual and the technical. Panigassi’s home of chorizo, Emilia’s bar (Silvia Montanari), Roxi’s house. In the kitchens the artifacts were real: the water came out of the taps and the stove worked.
And many scenes felt like they were shot on location, despite being shot in the studio. The effect was achieved thanks to a complex lighting system. Fifty 100w bulbs, for example, simulated the sun.
The writer Jorge Göttling was able to masterfully specify the reason for the phenomenon of listening: “The neighborhood, more than a cadastral notion, is an inner landscape, a code of behavior. A warehouse light, the idealized romance of the woman who has returned, gullible merchants who still trust with numbers in red make up a good neighborhood draw. And they can evoke the shameful wetness of the tear.
For screenwriters Gustavo Barrios and Ernesto Korovsky, hypnosis in the Argentine eye was in a simple formula: “People out of work who don’t lose their joy for that reason. Y simple realism. No outlandish or supernatural twists”.
Fifty workers behind the camera, four fixed sets, two mobile. The gasoleromania It was so profound that the archives represent the parade of visits from outside the artistic world. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo also had lunch with Roxi and Panigassi on set.
“We ate melon with ham with them. And we talked about the Pinochet case,” explained Berta Schubaroff, together with Estela de Carlotto. Later, Diego Maradona took Roxi’s cab in a wink that turned into a concert.
“Suar made a great mix: he mixed a Midachi with a Rubén Rada and a Manuel Callau. In the program I learned everything to then put my chest to the Soder of my life He came from a theater background where he had to raise his voice and energy and in the first scene Leyrado taught me not to scream”, Dady Brieva enthusiastically conjured.
“I was still living in Santa Fe. It was only in August 1999 that I moved to Buenos Aires and when I worked here I was retired. We ended up being a group of oiled commandos, a perfect tetris, a Selection. Me, Tucho, my character, sabalero, Peronist, I was a boy who had a parrot, Sanguinetti, with whom he spoke and with whom we made scenes Fellinisque like the day the parrot died.
The pearls of the phenomenon
- at the start of the strip Jimena Barón was just ten years old.
- The program won nine of the ten finalists that made up the 1999 Martín Fierro.
- The first sex scene between the protagonists he broke with all the romantic schemes seen up to then: Panigassi grabbed the telephone directory and dialed the number of a temporary hostel. He asked for two rooms and the couple entered the club in Roxi’s taxi, she at the wheel and him as a passenger. Everyone in his room of him, until he did the nice job: he put on a suit and knocked on the door of room 403, with a bouquet of flowers.
- The salary of a leading actor barely exceeded 25 thousand pesos.
- The days of recording lasted 12 hours and the cast was waiting for the World Cup in France.
- “I come from the success of Roller coaster, but he was very young, he was 21 years old. And the world was another: We didn’t have a cell phone and they left me a box of corn on my answering machine with the schedule for the next day’s scenes. Some time later I bought a radio called”, laughs Malena Solda (Luciana).
And the actress adds: “There was a romantic line for adults and another for the younger ones, and I was part of the latter, as a rookie. Gasoleros has struck a chord. And it revolutionized the way of lighting, something that used to belong to the cinema”.
Matías Santoianni, son of Panigassi, adds other traces: “gas carrier it marked the end times of several extinct customs. The autograph, having to use the VCR to record and not miss the chapter. Today they can also watch us on the bus and from the mobile screen. But that universe was different.
The most captivating presence was that of Cecilia Milone, with whom she shared the dressing room “the myth” that was added in the second season, China Zorrilla. “I lived with her and her dog Flor. It was the big prize of life that streak gave me,” she judged after 20 successful years.
“A large percentage of that cast came from theater, then there was a theatrical way of working, which marked a style: if a bottle spilled, we cleaned the table and followed the scene. It gave the feeling of TV made theater,” recalls Panigassi’s sister, Isabel.
Is it crazy to think about a remake? “It’s not a law that sequels aren’t good. Just remember that I’m married to Nito Artaza. I think it’s worth it if the story is that good,” Milone understands.
ADRIANO SUAR:
“I came from making unitarians, Poliladron, Consequence of truth, RRDT, and I didn’t want to make a streak. At that time the channel convinced me that Polka was going to do its first strip. that’s how he was born gas carrier“Sura said.
“When the story came out, I started processing it in my head like a family comedy. I remember I had the concept of the show, I was sleeping and woke up one night with the title. At two in the morning I said it’s called gas carrier. It was a comedy that ended up defining Polka as a producer of fiction,” considers the creator of the plant.
“Also, at that moment bringing together Juan Leyrado and Mercedes Morán was rare for the time. And it ended up becoming an iconic couple,” he qualifies without hesitation.
gassy curiosities
The first cover of gas carrier in clarion was released on December 20, 1997 and featured the clan that would make history days later. “street children”, the note was entitled. Suar predicted: “It will be a success. I like to start when everyone is on vacation”.
The program started with an average of 18.6 points and faced Son or were made on January 5, Canale 9 comedy with Julieta Ortega, Carolina Fal, Rodrigo de la Serna and Walter Quiroz. In April of that year, he returned to the screen VideoMatchat that moment on Telefe, and immediately both cycles collided, exceeding 20 points each.
The most successful couple on TV at that time moved into commercials. A supermarket chain had them seduced among the gondolas to the rhythm of Penumbras, a theme sung by Sandro. And thanks to them, sales have skyrocketed.
Pablo RagoNicolás Cabré, Alejandro Fiore, Héctor Bidonde, Nicolás Pauls, Pamela Rodríguez, Valeria Bertucelli, María Fiorentino, Favio Posca and many others have left their mark.
Panigassi has left memorable phrases such as “one thing is one thing and another thing is another”. The strip ended on December 30, 1999.
Source: Clarin
