With the documentary ‘Hearts in Darkness’ (1991) Eleanor Coppola broke down the filming of ‘Apocalypse Now’ during 286 days in 1976 and 1977 and the descent into madness of its director, Francis Ford Coppola. Eleanor captured her husband’s obsession, devastating the team and her own family. Decades later, comedian Jorge Ponce has found the comic side of that non-fiction masterpiece. His series ‘Medina: the celebrity scammer’ (Prime) focuses on Ponce’s fixation with a scammer: Antonio Medina. Descended from that Spanish picaresque that we can’t get rid of even with Lagarto soap, Antonio introduces himself to celebrities as a television cameraman and assures them that he has worked with them. They, faced with such plausibility, usually believe it. Soon, he tells them an invented personal tragedy—my daughter has ALS, my daughter has died—and asks them for money, with unequal returns. Ponce came across it and decided that there was a story in Medina. You see Gila in her speech and linguistics, you see Tip in her way of scrutinizing the world…And the truth: there was much more. ‘Medina’ overcomes the search for the jeta, dressed in ‘true crime’ forms, and becomes a synchronized amalgam of ‘sketches’, tributes to ‘The Office’, Ponce monologues and the deconstruction of the documentary genre in the style of ‘ Fraud’ (1973) by Orson Welles. A genius, in short. The six, sorry, five chapters of the series give a good shake to the comedy and surroundings. As Ponce has shown in ‘La Revuelta’, things can be done differently. And with his daily appearances the comedian remains committed to it. Because he lives in Ponce, although he does not notice it – it does not matter if he notices it or not, only the result matters – the drive of the great innovators of comedy in Spanish. You see Gila in her speech and linguistics, you see Tip in his way of scrutinizing the world, you see Millán Salcedo in his physique sacrificed to humor and you see the chanantes in their absurdity. In that tumult –dramatic, Coppola; comedian, Ponce – worthwhile creators live. ‘Medina’ reconfirms that Jorge Ponce is one of them.
#Galán #Jorge #Ponce
