When he made his stage debut, he had Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro sitting in the audience as spectators. He is remembered for titles such as “Fierce Tango”, “Summer of 98”, “Buenos Aires viceversa”, “Dare”, “Risk zone”, “The mark of desire” and “Argentina, land of love and revenge”, within of a trajectory that exceeds three decades.
In October 2021 life gave him a second chance and boy is he taking advantage of it. Actor, director and screenwriter, Fernan Miras shares the stage with Mike Amigorena and Pablo Echarri in “ART”where he plays Iván, the mediator in the trio of friends, a role played in the original version by Ricardo Darín, now the director of the play together with Germán Palacios.
This 2023 finds him in the middle of the edition of “Almost Dead”, his second film as a director in which he managed to put together a true dream team, with figures such as Natalia Oreiro, Alberto Ajaka, Diego Velázquez and Paola Barrientos, among others. In the midst of busy days, Mirás converses with NEWS and takes a break in the midst of so much maelstrom.
News: Let’s talk about “ART”, today it is not usual for a work to go through its third season
Fernan Miras: And yes, reaching the third year of a play happened to me only four times, it’s not easy for that to happen. The other day we said: “Hey, it’s already three years” and it seems little…compared to the other cast that did fourteen seasons (laughs).
News: What do you think is the secret of “ART”?
You look: It seems to me that in a certain aspect it is a classic, a work that is done all over the world, I was fascinated when I saw it and I feel that I always had it in mind as a parameter. Within the commercial theater for me it is the most profound work there is, but it does not allow it to be very funny and I think it gets deep into the friendship between those three guys. The white box as an excuse to talk is a great metaphor, they are friends discussing something that cannot be seen, because in reality they are questioning themselves. On the other hand, the work delves deeply into the bond and leads one to think how many times in human relationships we apparently argue about something but in reality we fight over something else.
News: These three men are friends despite their differences and have known each other for a long time. What is more difficult for you, acting out a lifelong friendship or creating the illusion of romantic love with a partner you may barely know?
Miras: It’s always strange how you build those relationships. Many times at work you ask yourself “What do I do to make him believe that this man is my father? How do I give truth to a bond? That is always present, looking for things that give the pattern that this bond exists between people. I am not much of a rabble (he laughs), but I am very interested in seeing how a group of people reacts when there is a romance, to see how they perceive it, the way they look at each other, for example. In “ART” we have been wondering where the relationship between friends can be seen, when the author of it, Yasmina Reza, saw it, she said that she had thought it was the version where friendship was more present. I don’t know if it has to do with the bond or with the language of trust between the bodies. There is something particular, because Pablo has been a friend of mine for years and I practically met Mike here, the good thing is that we get along very well and we laugh at many similar things, that also generates complicity on stage.
News: Speaking of complicity, do you guys actually eat on stage?
You look: At the end we eat some olives, it’s true. Even those olives sometimes come with a different flavor so we can have a little fun with that routine (laughs).
News: In 2023 it will be thirty years of “Tango feroz”, are you going to prepare something special?
You look: Oops, I hadn’t realized that it was already 30 years… All I know is that they are filming a documentary. There I am going to do an interview about the film, but I don’t know what else we will do, we will get together to eat a barbecue, I suppose. We had a scene with Leo Sbaraglia in “Tango feroz” where we said: “We have to see each other in 20 years”, so when they were over we got together, we also saw it again with the whole team when Piñeyro remastered the terrific copy that is being seen on the platforms. Before, if you watched the movie in Back you could see practically nothing, I only recognized the shirt he was wearing when I saw the remastered version!
News: Now that so many years have passed, do you still believe that “Love is stronger”?
Miras: I believe that love is a very powerful force. I have ever heard it said that within dramaturgy or literature, life, death and love were the three great themes. It remains a mystery what makes two people feel love, and that inexplicable chemistry has a strange power.
News: You are editing your second film, “Casi muerta”, is it a remake of a Basque film?
You look: What actually happened is that with the producer Rodrigo Vila, whom I met while filming a film with Harvey Keitel that was made here, we were looking for original scripts and we couldn’t find any that convinced us, until we saw the Basque film. We were interested in taking up the anecdote a bit and making a totally free version. It’s very different from the original movie, there are four friends and one of them is sick, that triggers a series of entanglements.
News: Did this issue, with the stroke you suffered, have a personal impact on you?
You look: Look, it was strange, first we laughed a lot about the circumstance, it was field work, because I had been receiving medical advice and when I was hospitalized I found out more things (he laughs). This happened, the script is by Rodrigo Vila, Beatriz Carbajales and me, we must have spent two years thinking about it, exchanging ideas about people’s fantasies about death, what philosophy and psychology say on the subject… to discover what happened. The only sure thing is that it happens (we laugh). When what happened to me happened to me, I felt that in some way it confirmed the film. After I got sick and got well, I had to wait at least a year to be able to go back to work and during that time I assumed that something was going to change, that surely something would come up based on what had happened to me. and the best thing that happened to me was feeling that I couldn’t find anything to modify. But I understood much more in depth certain things that the character of Natalia Oreiro goes through, who is the one who is sick. The thing about friends is also connected with what happened to my environment, although in a different way, Because I was sick, but I had been cured miraculously, they operated on me almost immediately and I got away. But as a result of that, it was easier for me to tell Natalia what things she was thinking, which topics are relevant and which are not, as well as to tell her about the very great cyclothymia that one suffers from, added to a significant degree of acceptance, not only in relation to the death but to many other issues.
News: Do priorities change?
Mirás: Yes, your priorities change, you change the lens. Suddenly you are half isolated observing things, you see everything differently. And that’s very similar to what happens to the character of Natalia, so many examples that I gave her came from the script, but also from my own experience.
News: Last year Julio Chávez directed his first film, now Dolores Fonzi has also directed it and soon Diego Peretti will do it. You are now on your second experience behind the camera. Do the actors ever need to take control and allow themselves to be seduced by the direction?
You look: It seems to me that there is an aspect that could be called… authorship, I know it sounds a bit pretentious, but you are the one who decides everything and the fact of putting yourself to the test, something I felt with my first film, is important. It’s an apprenticeship, the same thing happened to me with the second, I’m going to know much more about how to make movies if I get to the fifth, it’s a trade that is known by doing it. As for what leads you to be a director, it seems to me that it depends on each case, there are people who enjoy directing and others in which it is a natural progression, one realizes that some have had an idea of how to do it for a long time. a while. In my case, it’s something I always wanted to do, for a decade I didn’t dare, I started writing scripts thinking that I was never going to take the plunge. I’m happy that many pushed me to shoot my first movie and now I think, oh why didn’t I do it sooner!
Acknowledgment: Four Seasons.
by Leonardo Martinelli
