There comes a film in the unusual world, real and imaginary, of Doctor Tangalanga. Like it or not, it’s like this: the day he died, ten years ago, the phone died. Inimitable, unmistakable, unique. Julio Victorio de Rissio, popularly known as Doctor Tangalanga or Tarufetti, he took improvisation’s greatest secret to his grave.
Tangalanga has united generations, made people laugh regardless of social class. they followed them Louis Alberto Spinetta (he gave him a white phone from which he made dozens of calls), Ricardos Mollo and Darín. Mirta Legrand. For some, the laughter their practical jokes provoked was the product of prostitution, since prostitution was frowned upon. For others, the genius of his craft lay in the work in progress before the auction.
He died at the age of 97 in 2013. If you are a beardless person who doesn’t know who the true genius of transversality was, you can also go and see The Talgalanga method (premiering Thursday, January 19) as the interchangeable story of a rather strange man, a sort of anti-Marvel superhero who, when he answered the phone (line), suffered from a personality disorder somewhere between the satirical and the piquant.
Tangalanga deserves to be in the list of great geniuses that Argentina has given. He is at the level of Borges and Piazzolla, in the sense that he has created an absolutely personal language. Diego Recalde, director of Victims of Tangalangafast-paced documentary based on the greatest flash artist of all time.
“He created a form of expression where the bad word stops being bad and becomes just another word. He saved her, elevated her, and gave her a legitimacy she didn’t have. He was the first to naturally mix civilized language with barbaric expression and create a unique language,” added Recalde.
Julio De Rissio had started recording risqué phone calls in the mid-1960s, for a friend who was hospitalized for health problems.
Now, Martin Piroyansky arrives at the cinema playing the Doctor The Tangalanga method. It’s not just another role, kid: you’ve had the honor of composing a true icon of humor. Argentina just did it. There are no imitators or successors or heirs of Tangalanga.
It used to be that you didn’t know who the guy making the calls was. He was like Zorro or Batman in an unexpected category. Tangalanga has participated in his shows, radio cycles and on TV. He lived nearly 100 years and had a boom before the zombie consensus of the last decade.
His artistic stature lay in doing what he would have done without an audience anyway.
“Here is a very brief example of verbal surrealism that repeats itself in the most unusual ways, when we listen to the tapes of this underground genius of Argentine humor. The important thing here is the laughter it generates in us, that sense of wanting to repeat the laughter and, above all, having the pleasure of seeing the wonderful human being that it hides…”, Spinetta highlighted.
The film isn’t exactly a biopic about the champion prank caller. It’s the story of Jorge, a somewhat shy employee who stutters when he speaks in public and doesn’t know how to approach the girl he likes (Julieta Zylberberg). Such was the rarity of Tangalanga that Mateo Bendesky’s play introduces fantastical elements to try to explain the superpower of calling the phone and becoming the irreverent Doctor Tangalanga.
The interview
-Martín, are you aware of the posterity of the character?
-By posterity you mean what Tangalanga was in the 80s or if I think about what happened to Jorge’s character in fiction…?
-An interesting topic is the impunity given by the old and dear landline, right?
-What caught my attention the most during the character study was the particular talent that Tangalanga had in making the victims answer without interrupting the phone…
-In the film that almost manifests itself in a duality in the best Jeckyll and Hyde style…
-He confused them with absurd ideas and then maybe he insulted them. It was a time when phone calls were more valuable than now. And as for this thing you say about Dr. Jeckyll and Hyde, it’s something that touches me deeply, because my favorite childhood movie was The mask, with Jim Carrey. Seeing that film changed my life because it made me realize that acting could go beyond certain limits. In the The Tangalanga method I was able to allow myself the pleasure of acting out a similar story.
-It’s amazing how someone who barely deserved a mention in the media when he died, today is the material of books and more than a film…
-He’s still a cult character. At every meeting where I said I would play it, people would get excited and ask me what jokes would appear, as well as what era the film would be set in. Susana Giménez, when I told you, she told me that her father had been a friend of Tangalanga and gave me some information that I didn’t know.
-Judging by what you were taking from the character, what do you think Tangalanga meant to Argentine humor?
Tangalanga is best remembered for being a great whore, but I think the most interesting thing about the character was her absurd humor. The images and ideas she created were very ingenious, ridiculous…
-In the film he appears as the cult humorist he never stopped being. The story is installed at the beginning of the legend, the first phone of him charges for the hospitalized friend …
-This was the approach given by Mateo Bendesky, the director and one of the screenwriters of the film. I found it very interesting that instead of showing him as a big guy, since we all knew him popularly, he preferred to show why he started making prank calls. Taking the true story as a basis, Mateo created a fantastic story and took all kinds of licenses to make the story even more interesting.
-What kind of work did you have to do to recreate it? What inspired you?
-Actually I had to do two jobs, because in the film I play two characters: one is Jorge, a shy employee who through hypnosis transforms into Doctor Tangalanga every time he talks on the phone. So, on the one hand, Jorge, and on the other, I’ve been studying the prank calls that are available on YouTube and Spotify to mimic the tone…
-It was good?
-Yes, it was a lot of fun, really. And I composed this shy Jorge who is the exact opposite of the uninhibited Dr. Tangalanga. I was inspired by the tone of 60s Argentine cinema and with Mateo we found the different nuances that the character has throughout the film.
And as for Dr. Tangalanga, I’ve been working on finding his physicality, because he’s always been a voice on the phone to me. In the film, on the other hand, we see him walking and interacting with the rest of the characters… Going back to the beginning, I’ve always felt the responsibility that it meant to play a real character and, above all, one so loved by Argentines. I hope people enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.
POS
Source: Clarin
