Charm sometimes has to do with the unexpected and Diego Peretti It is never protected by the foreseeable. These days he breaks it in the theater with “The boss of the boss”an unexpected comedy by Lars Von Trier, awaits the premiere of “We Leave It Here” alongside Ricardo Darín and two other films with Joaquín Furriel, “Risa” and “Consumidor Final” where he reunites with the screenwriter of “Los Simuladores”, Patricio Vega.
But first it will hit theaters “The death of a comedian”his long-awaited directorial debut alongside Javier Beltramino, where Peretti gives himself over to the ultimate fantasy: shooting a film produced by the Orsai Community thanks to the contribution of 10,190 members, starring in it, filming in Brussels and Buenos Aires, paying tribute to “Tintín” by creating the character of Bombín, loving the journalists who pursue the truth in addition to paying tribute to the comic, to Amelie and, why not, to “Taxi Driver”. There he is Juan Debré, an actor who, faced with the imminent end of his life, will decide to check if he is capable of a real heroic act. We have faith in him, the same as in this note, because we sat down to talk about cinema with Peretti and the interview sells itself.
News: A curiosity, why does a reference to Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro’s character in “Taxi Driver” appear in the Bombín cartoon, which is the center of the film?
Diego Peretti: Did you realize (laughs) It’s a date. I’m not at all original, but “Taxi Driver” has marked me very deeply since I was young. The fact that the hyperrealistic, urban tone that Scorsese’s film has bursts into another universe with more comic overtones, playful, almost childlike, is also an existential way of telling the story.
News: His character is someone who does not know if he is going to be capable of committing a heroic act and at some point Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” also pursues the same thing. When do we say to an actor “today you become a hero”?
Peretti: (Laughs) I think that being an actor is playing a little with the notion of the heroic, of twisting the destiny of everyday life without really putting in your body or sacrificing yourself to achieve the good of another person. It seems to me that the theme of fear of death or suffering makes heroism seem like a utopia and sometimes we don’t realize how heroic we can be in everyday life. My character in “The Death of a Comedian” always dreamed of being a hero in epic terms and that is why he became an actor, to live that fantasy, I think I came up with telling this story because as a child I envied actors who were reflected as heroes in the cinema…
News: we need names
Peretti: Ugh, there are several! Rodolfo Beban in “Juan Moreira”, for example. When I saw the movie I was 12 years old and it really impressed me, even without understanding much of the western-like plot. That noble thing that Moreira emanates, even though he is a quarrelsome person, the personal ethics that he has and maintains without betraying himself moved me. Something similar also happens to me with Federico Luppi’s characters in “Time for Revenge”, “Last Days of the Victim”, “The Arrangement” or “A Place in the World”, when I saw those films he was already older, but his creatures have a folksy nobility, they don’t compromise, they maintain the values that they instilled in their family. In certain things I see my father reflected, he had that in a more anonymous and covert way, my mother too.
News: Does it take courage to fight for what you feel?
Peretti: Yes, because you suffer, do you know who embodied that extraordinarily well? Ulysses Dumont. That intransigent suffering of characters who cannot handle their soul was an art in him. Some had the moral limit pushed further, like the one he did in “The Enemies.” Do you remember that scene where he gets a small role in a Sergio Renán film and has to drink alcohol in a bar, but he makes a mistake and repeats it ten times, increasingly drunk, out of touch? It’s masterful! Its characters also pose a very noble personal and moral struggle. Like my Yankee cinema idols: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro have that quality in their performances.
News: Now there is less room for contradiction, everything is money, winning or losing. Even those who work for a more just society are questioned, do you see it that way?
Peretti: Well, unlike that general perception, I believe that what is heroic happens through the social, through the people who are in charge of improving or increasing the rights of the poorest people. Since I was a doctor, I was able to see truly anonymous professionals in the hospital who possessed epic greatness. I also taught and the same thing happened to me. I can attest because I experienced it firsthand and there is no ulterior goal. When I was in university politics accompanying the Intransigent Party, I am talking to you about the democratic opening in the Faculty of Medicine, there were political militants of genuine strength and conviction, I want to believe that they continue to exist. They are not visible characters because unfortunately they do not reach decision-making positions, or if they do arrive they are disrupted.
News: Does this happen because power ends up controlling whoever exercises it?
Peretti: Yes, because even though democracy is the best system we have, power intoxicates, defocuses, and runs away from you. Power is an unresolved issue; there we see the ceiling of the human capacity to progress historically. It has transmuted into different forms, but the way human beings exercise power is predatory, expansionist and has no colors. There is no memory either, the new generations live attached to the changes, but it seems that they do not store with a historical and critical sense, we are heading towards self-destruction as a society. For this reason today, moral and ethical acts acquire a very great value.
News: The other day I saw a Wim Wenders story on Instagram, he had a version of the “Don’t feed the animals” sign that said “Don’t feed the narcissists”, do we need that?
Peretti: (Laughs) And how, how big! It is a symptom of the times, there is something overflowing from the ego, from the material, from not understanding what it means to live in accordance with the context and at the same time there is a kind of vital resignation. They do not realize that we are not going to get much further from here, the dialogue with death is taking place in a non-spiritual, absolutely material way and dying inevitably means losing. I get skeptical sometimes because the world generates a lot of uncertainty in me, it has always happened to me, but now with hypercommunication you can see many threads.
News: When reality seems like a dystopia, is fiction resignified?
Peretti: I think so, and now that I think about it, perhaps it is one of the reasons why I became passionate about being an actor, I am not a person who has exploited the topic of success vainly, it never happened there. It seems to me that the irresistible attraction that this profession has on me is that I love telling stories, I am fascinated by the emotion that a well-told story provokes in the audience. I also experience it from the other side, I like nothing more than spending 10 blocks thinking about what I just saw as a spectator, that’s why I dreamed of being the architect of that effect on people. To make a fiction as an actor or as a director is to live within a story that does not exist, that is not material, that is abstract and subjective. It separates you from reality, but at the same time it will stay with the viewer forever, it is a nice responsibility because someone paid a ticket to see you and enter that other world that you propose. I am lucky to live it every day, I leave the theater better than I entered, it’s like having a facelift! (laughs)
News: In “The Death of a Comedian” he is seen driving a Vespa and I was thinking about the one used by the Italian director Nanni Moretti. Moretti… Peretti… was there a tribute there?
Peretti: (Laughs) Maybe, I really like Moretti! I confess that I saw less Italian cinema than Yankee cinema, but I love its great actors.
News: I thought that in the movie “Aprile”, Nanni Moretti discusses with the couple whether their future son will be named Roberto after De Niro or Alfredo after Pacino. The last question is Pacino or de Niro?
Peretti: Well, what a problem! They tell me that I look like Al Pacino in some photos, in the imprint, what do I know. It’s a dilemma between Pacino or De Niro, I would tell you that it depends on the film, both are enormous, I think that De Niro is more of a characterizer and Pacino puts everything in the personality, but both prioritize the profession and I take that very seriously. I’m going to tell you something, I like to listen to their voices, but the subtitling distracts me, so since I was a child, before I knew I was going to be an actor, I was amazed watching the gesticulation, the tones, I avoided reading because I don’t want anything to distract me. They are banners of discipline and sacred fire, no matter how much fame they have or how much money they earn. To continue wanting a dialogue to have truth, to be available to history and poetics, that is the school for me.
