David Trueba does not like films that try to recreate the life of a character from his first babbling in the crib until his death. Faithful to that taste, he has chosen what is perhaps the most luminous stage of Eugenio’s life, his years as a singer alongside his wife, Conchita Alcaide, with whom he formed the duo ‘Els dos’, and the beginning of his career. as a comedian. ‘They Know That’ is the title of the film that premieres this Wednesday in theaters and in which Trueba avoids portraying the most tormented part of this character. For the cast he has chosen David Verdaguer, who blends in with the comedian, and Carolina Yuste, who plays his first wife, the wife of a deeply sad man.
-Why did you limit yourself to telling only the first section of Eugenio’s career, the one that refers to the beginning of his career?
-Because I don’t like the ‘biopic’ as a genre. When they approached me with the assignment at first I rejected it; I only know how to make fiction films, which choose an essential fragment of a life and recreate it. I am not at all interested in Eugenio’s decadence and self-destruction. The character was destroyed long before his success. I see Eugenio as a person who floats in a pool. While Conchita, his first wife, holds him, he does not drown, but the moment she disappears he sinks.
-He makes an ellipsis of the most morbid aspects of the comedian’s career, those referring to the night, sex and alcohol.
-Acting and working at night is incompatible with family life, even when you have a very patient woman at home. The lives of many people in the show are catastrophic for that reason. Eugenio was immersed in tobacco and alcohol. If you lose that connection to home, you are disarmed.
«I am not at all interested in the decline of the comedian. “He stayed afloat while his wife held him down.”
-What do you think was the key to Eugenio’s success?
-Knowing how to invent a character whose traits were very close to his personality, although he extremes them. Eugenio on stage accentuates his shyness, his austerity, exacerbates the serious rictus and the Catalan accent; He dispenses with the gesture and the laugh and puts on glasses. What happen? People even liked to hear the jokes he already knew again.
The character’s silences
-He knew very well how to measure times and silences.
-David Verdaguer and I were very surprised that if you changed a command word in a joke, or simply deleted it because it seemed repetitive, the joke no longer worked. David is very fond of saying that this film takes place in silence. And that silence sums up Eugenio’s entire life.
-Eugenio was a great comedian, but a bad singer.
-Some older friend from Barcelona who saw them perform at the Sausalito pub in Barcelona told me that when they finished a song, he would speak and people would immediately shut up to pay attention to him. It must have been a bit devastating for the duo, because clearly the comedian was eating everything up.
-And how do you manage to make a movie about a joke teller appeal to those who hate them?
-If we are having dinner and someone starts telling jokes, it makes my night bitter. Rafael Azcona always said that the most beautiful humor is the one that arises from an everyday situation. And that is what I have practiced all my life, in my books and movies. On the other hand, telling a joke is like shooting an arrow. If it hits the target, good; If not, it is a catastrophe. And that generates a lot of anguish for the artist who dedicates himself to that. But I love hearing a good joke.
«David Verdaguer really likes to say that the film takes place in silence»
-Did you always think of David Verdaguer and Carolina Yuste to lead the cast?
-I thought about them when I already had the script finished. To play Eugenio I looked for Catalan actors of a certain age and the name of David Verdaguer appeared very quickly. He had already seen him do things as a comedian, he knew that he had tempo and a deep voice that was very suitable for the character. It gives his work a certain comic neurosis. For Conchita, I was looking for a woman from the south who was a singer and there was Carolina, with an appearance typical of the 70s. She is not a contemporary beauty, but she has something racial. I put the two together and they were completely different, like Eugenio and Conchita.
-It is striking that Eugenio, with so many tables, was so insecure before going on stage.
-It happens a lot. Some vomit and are nervous; others take a tranquilizer pill, even though they may have the auditorium full and excited.
–Why have you filmed ‘They Know That’ in Catalan?
-Because Eugenio’s environment was very Catalan. His parents spoke in Catalan with him and Eugenio addressed his children in Catalan. Even Conchita, when she arrived in Barcelona from Aracena (Huelva) at the age of 17, she sang in that language, without any accent.
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