A few days after twenty years of the Cro-Magnon massacre, Armando Bo receives NOTICIAS in the offices of his production company “Rebolucion”, still shocked by the impact of the series broadcast by Prime Video for which the filmmaker is one of the main people responsible in his capacity as executive producer. The meeting adds an unexpected fact: Armando remembers that it was his father, Víctor Bo, who, following a note published in NOTICIAS, suggested that he do the series about Cro-Magnon.
Heir to a cinematographic dynasty, winner of an Oscar Award, with a great career in the world of advertising, showrunner of “The President”, screenwriter and director at the helm of titles as diverse as “The Last Elvis”, a lucid story about the limits of idolatry, and “Animal”, where that maxim that necessity has the face of a heretic was taken to the extreme, Armando Bo is a true one-man band.
Close to two meters tall, an Independiente fan, he has a variety of interests that are reflected in the wide range of films and series that he has ahead of him and range from Moria Casán to Luca Prodan, passing through the multiple femicide Ricardo Barreda, “Las malas”, adaptation of the famous novel by Camila Sosa Villada, and the exciting story of the British journalist Robert Cox and the Buenos Aires Herald during the last dictatorship.
News: The last thing he directed in film was “Animal” (2018), and he has been dedicating himself to series for several years. Did you have to adapt to the prevailing format?
Armando Bo: The truth is that everything changed a lot from 2010 onwards, with the same team from “Birdman” we had a very important project in the United States that was ultimately not filmed. I had already been aiming for the idea of making series and since I am a fifth generation of filmmakers, I know that the world of cinema is complex. Series have a way of being produced and a number of hours of content that make them an interesting format. On the other hand, they allow you to deepen characters, dwell on the details, and sometimes you find certain artistic advantages to get involved with some stories that require other development.
News: However, is cinema always in your head?
Bob: Yes, because there are other stories that I like more like movies, because of how they close. I would like to be able to play in different places, leave a fixed category, make series, movies, documentaries. Today I even believe that we have to look closely at technology and expand our ways of telling. It is true that from the seasons of “The President” and now “Cromañón” we positioned About, which is our content producer with series, and we are opening the range, we have several films in mind, cinema is something that I passionate.
News: Can we say that “Cro-Mañón” is your debut as a producer?
Bob: Formally yes, it is the first time that I only produce without writing or directing as well. You learn and grow and at some point develop your own content, become independent, it’s like going to live alone (laughs). “Cro-Magnon” was a big step for me, the first of others to come.
News: What attracted you to Cro-Magnon to become that first step?
Bob: It is a topic that needed to be looked at in a different way. Already released and being seen by many people, the series generates a lot of conversation, positive opinions and some negative ones as well, but what no one can say is that we have not made it with great love, dedication and respect. As a producer I felt that there was a world of characters and stories that asked to be explored. When you produce you look for themes that interest the public, that are debated and bring the topic to the table, in this case I felt that there was a wound that had not been seen in fiction.
News: Does fiction have a plus when it comes to telling stories?
Bob: Yes, because fiction is a tool to get excited again. Many times, no matter how much documentaries inform us, they do not hit in the same way. We saw an artistic opportunity to say something and open the debate to new generations who perhaps were unaware of the facts.
News: When you were a child, also during the time of your father and grandfather, Thursday reviews were very important. Today the networks took over opinion a little. Is it from reading the comments?
Bob: Yeah! From a very young age my family sent me to the door of the cinema to listen to what the audience was saying at the exit, that was the time to know if we were doing well or poorly. I went into the bathroom to listen to what they were saying (laughs). Curiosity and word of mouth is increasingly important since it is powered by social networks, so it is super important to follow the debates, read what people think. It is very interesting to measure certain things and it is also nice to see how people are moved by a drama that refreshes things stored in their memory as happened with “Cro-Mañón”. I still respect critics, I read them because I am interested in their opinions, one can say that one does not care about criticism, but that is a lie.
News: Will “The Bad Ones” mark your return to the cinema?
Bob: I can’t say much because we haven’t announced it yet… but yeah. We recently had lunch with Camila Sosa Villada in Córdoba and we are excited. “The Bad Ones” is one of the great Argentine books of all time and I think it is going to be a great movie.
News: The series about Moria Casán for Netflix was also recently announced. Are Moria and Sofía Gala involved in any way?
Bob: We are still closing the project, the Moria thing has already been installed, I still don’t know about Sofia because the development needs to be worked on a lot in a lot of aspects. There’s something very interesting about Moria, how it always transcended everything, right? He is someone who risked his whole life and had a fresh look at society. Through him the Argentine history of several decades could be told. She has so many anecdotes and experiences that it seemed like a spectacular idea to do this series, she is one of the great Argentine characters, we are super motivated.
News: Continuing with the life stories, what’s up with Luca Prodan’s film that Peter Lanzani will direct and star in? Are you the scriptwriter there?
Bob: Yes, we are working with Peter and producing with Luis Ortega together with his company “El Despacho”. We continue in that time-consuming process of scripting and seeing how to do it the way we want, with a great production and a great casting for a huge project. It’s rowing and rowing until we achieve it, we try to finish the script and move on to the financing process.
News: And the series about Ricardo Barreda is made?
Bob: You are following in my footsteps (laughs), we are there with Florencia Etcheves and Soledad Vallejos. I sound like a parrot repeating the same thing, but I swear it’s true! It is very close to being realized. Something very strong has to happen for me to abandon something I want to tell. I don’t know if I’d call it a virtue, but there’s some of that determination that it takes to make things happen. That desire always accompanies me, I think I learned it from my family, there is an idea that projects are not abandoned. They evolve, change, update, until at some point they become reality.
