Ricardo Fort was a character that everyone thought they knew, in some way. Those five years of media whirlwind aroused love and hate in those who saw it waste energy and money to be famous. But they were just the tip of the iceberg a complex life full of lights and shadows.
Strong Commanderthe documentary series that Star+ premieres this Wednesday, tells the rise and fall of the entrepreneur and singer, trying to answer an essential question: How is it that an eccentric millionaire became a popular character and ten years after his death, he is still valid in the new generations through memes and kitsch icons?
“The series is as contradictory as the character was. It has no genre, no identification with a format. Each chapter is a unitIt tries to be a story, it has different directors, different writers. It moves and changes like Ricardo”Explain Patricio Alvarez Marriedcreator, producer and director of the docuseries.
The four episodes Of Strong Commander mix previously unseen archive images and testimonials from his inner circleand adds some fiction through the protagonist’s impersonators, his children, Philip and MarthaY Juan José Muscari. “Fiction was the key to being able to live as he lived, partly in reality and partly in fiction,” adds Alvarez Casado.
“Nothing was done for Ricardo”, says Eddie Fitte, journalist and writer in charge of the journalistic investigation of the docuseries. “He was the best known person after Maradona or Messiand a boy who had decided, in the last five years of his life, to register 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he justifies himself.
“And he had put it on YouTube, he had created a channel where he hosted everything he generated 24 hours a day; He had his own TV show and he had participated in at least three of the most popular airline programs. And so and it all felt like a story being told. There was a rare plug – this one from ‘Hey, crazy, why does everyone love Ricardo Fort?’. And there was no answer.”
-How come?
-Suited: Obviously because there was something we didn’t know. There was something that Ricardo conveyed with his attitudes, with his feelings, with his actions. He was starting to lift stone by stone to see what generated that sympathy and try to understand because such a different and exotic person served as a mirror for the majority.
-Married: What I I wanted to discover that person behind the character. Because Ricardo was someone he hid as much as he showed. We try hard to try and figure out who Ricardo Fort really was. Why he was so popular, but at the same time how he felt. There we put all our narrative and visual resources they offer an authorial, emotional, fun lookthat everyone can enjoy.
Fort and the path of the hero
each of four episodes of Commander Fort addresses one aspect of her story: it begins with her more media-ready side, followed by her unknown love record, then bonding with her children and family; and ends with her senior year and his surprise death.
“It was crucial that he found everything he had been looking for in that hero path that he did. Because in the series itself you see it in su most of the media state, with its arrogance and its struggle with the media. And as we go along, it’s like peeling back the layers and finding the whole history of family conflicts, the struggle for one’s sexuality, the need for affection, for recognition. It seemed very important to us to understand what he had been through in order to become who he was. That was the motivation,” explains Casado.
-And do you think the series answers the fundamental question?
-Married: I think so. You start seeing Ricardo in one state and end up in another. I think we managed to capture the sensibility that he had. And why people feel reflected in it: why His life is half fairy tale and half reality, and I think a little is what helps to survive.. The series shows that behind that character there was someone who felt, suffered and worked hard to be who he was.
“Now it seems trivial to us, but he was the first influencer, which is very valuable to us. Today it seems like something within the reach of any teenager and it didn’t exist then. So -explains Casado- we concentrated on making the most of everything he has done. We didn’t stay in the media part, in the quilombos, but we gave a lot of importance to what he did.
-Suited: I don’t know if we give an answer to what Ricardo was like or why Ricardo did what he did, because eventually he will know. But I think so The value of the series is precisely that it makes us all ask the same questions. This enriches the debate.
-Married: Sure, you may or may not be a millionaire, you may or may not have gone to Miami, but everyone needs to be recognized, to be loved. I think Ricardo’s greatest work is himself. The way he lived, how he communicated, the place he wanted to occupy, to be a different person. And who doesn’t want to be?
The appearance of the unpublished intimate diary
After acquiring the rights to tell the story, Alvarez Casado and Fitte tell it the family gave them free access to everything Ricardo had filmed and recordedas well as hundreds of unchecked suitcases filled with items Fort acquired on his travels in Miami and around the world.
In one of those suitcases, they found a messy and mismatched intimate diary who after a tiring reconstruction work, has finished completing the docuseries.
“It was crazy. When he dies, Ricardo, with all his way of being, leaves a huge quilombo. Suitcases full of what you can imagine. It was journalistic pornography: credit card statements, document letters, lawsuits, emails (because I printed everything), scripts of things I wish I could publish, book drafts, tickets, family photos,” Fitte shares.
“And there appear these torn pages mixed between scripts and requests, a mess of 200 interspersed and chronologically cluttered pages that they fixed on issues that Ricardo hasn’t even cracked on television,” she completes.
-Married: When we found that manuscript, I heard him say so “This is how my series should be”. Because it was his own voice that told his story. What I didn’t want was to speak for him. And when we find all the secrets of his youth, the stage of him less known than him, firsthand stories about their sexuality, their boyfriends, their fearswe had to change all the scripts, all the structures and go back.
“Because the process of creating this series was alive, it was in constant flux. And to be able to construct Ricardo’s story in his own words was something surreal, something that maybe programmed him,” he suggests.
-What appreciation or position did you have on Ricardo Fort and how much has it changed after making the series? What do you hope will happen to the audience when they see it?
– Stitches: I hope they follow the same path as Pato, me and all of us who made the series. The (path) from not understanding it to trying to understand it: why the hell a fur coat, why a Rolls-Royce in Constitution, why four personal insurances, why stay with a couple who were invisible behind facades that were coming together, because personal fears.
“I think the goal we set for ourselves was to show all the sticks that he stepped on, tripped with and got back up. And there I think it’s hard not to understand. I get to understand it: I understood that he has always been a free person and I think I admire him for the exercise of freedom that he has made”hires Fitte.
-Married: I think the answer inevitably lies in the series. You start in one emotional state and end up in another. The most important result was crossing the dark side of Ricardo, without avoiding it, to tell how this person was born. And it’s inevitable not to get excited and don’t end up wanting it more than you did When did you start seeing it?
The song of the heirs
episode three of Strong Commander has Marta and Felipe as protagonists. Ricardo’s children remember their father and the -little- bond they had with him. The chapter ends with a song and a video clip original where Ricardo’s heirs actively participated.
“We went to hell… but that was the mess Ricardo lived in,” explains Casado. “It is the contradiction and the flash in which he lived. We proposed to Marta to promote her interests, singing and dancing. He had more than two months of rehearsals and created his song. In Feli’s case, you developed a video gamesomething that drives every day”, comments the director.
“I think the whole experience in that episode would have wanted Ricardo to happen: visual effects, pop art and constant contradictions,” he summarizes.
-Suited: There is something that has a lot to do with the Fort family… business on one side and music as a hobby on the other. This can be seen in Carlos Sr., who was very fond of music in his spare time; Marta with the Columbus piano, the opera singer and her three jazz-loving children. And Ricardo says: “It will be full time”.
“The interesting thing about its progeny is that you have it a guy who seems absolutely set on the business world, investments, finance and games; Y Marta which seems to be that purely artistic thing. There is always that black and white that all Forti have. And in the chapter -go ahead Fitte- you can clearly see the differences that exist between the heirs».
Source: Clarin
