Efraín Aguilar: "I Want To Make Movies, I'm Desperate To Make Movies"

The promoter of testimonial television capable of portraying Peru through “Rare taxi driver”, “Mil oficios”, “Así es la vida” and “Al fondo hay sitio” wants to replicate his power on the big screen.

Before being the notable producer of 78 years, Efrain Aguilar Pardave He was the child soccer player, the narrator of gloomy jokes in late-night conversations, the reader of “Thumbnail”, the line guard for the acquisition of coal, the nut cleaner, the greengrocer, the neighborhood skillful – from the alley with a single pipe — who got up at 5.30 am to inaugurate the shower. He was also, for three years, the fourth and fifth grade teacher at 3047 La Balanza, in Comas. Here he gathered talent and sowed perspective: “I formed a theater group. We campaigned with them (the students) and we took it to all the schools”.

Efraín Aguilar: from blackboards to curtains

He gave up the classroom because “it was impossible to combine teaching in the State with theatrical activity.” And despite the fact that she had found comfort in the democratic relationship —because that is how she cemented it— between educator and student, she prioritized the tables: “I left them with great sadness, but artistic activity attracted me more.”

He was also attracted by a justice without anger, rather with sarcasm: he was already at the Leguía theater when he took with him the minutes of all the students because the school owed him their salary. “The parents protested, but they went with the check later. I handed over the minutes.”

Resolving with cunning helped him for his role as a stagehand —“with my hammer and my saw”, recalls the also called ‘Betito’— in the times when Pepe Vilar It was his boss, the acclaimed theater producer of the 60s, 70s and 80s. “Pepe Vilar did not exploit you.” To his salary of 11 dollars —in international currency because the tour was international currency—, Efraín could add a dollar each time he entered as an extra, played a leading role or maneuvered the shell of the prompter. He earned, thus, up to 21 dollars.

The theater in Nicaragua, an unfinished phase

In addition to Pepe Vilar, the Somozas, the dictatorial family of Nicaragua, highlighted his multidisciplinary spirit. The daughter of the then president Anastasio Somozaand to whom Efraín corrected the “usted” for “tú” —”Efraín my name is, not ‘señor Aguilar'”—, he proposed to work at the Rubén Darío theater.

“He offered me $5,000 a month plus an apartment and a car. I said: ‘I’m staying’. We sign the contract. I had to start working on January 1, 1973, but on December 24, 1972, the famous Managua earthquake destroyed everything. Then came the overthrow of the Somozas and that was over. It remains a beautiful anecdote ”.

He also left his mark in Colombia. He left her on the sands of Popayán when, in the middle of a blackout, she fell and her figure fell on the ground. “I did not see that there was a wire and I flew. The next day, when I went to the theater to see the theme of the lights, he made me laugh. My entire body was drawn on the dead earth.

Efraín Aguilar: 11 years out of national television

And in Peru a television space was drawn for him. A space that suffered an interruption of almost 11 years after it declined, in 1982, a request from the manager: “Don Alberto Terry comes one day and tells me: ‘You have to put calatas on it.’ That was his term. And I said: ‘But why? If you want, we can see another program at 10 at night and make a magazine’. ‘No’, he told me, ‘you have to put girls in very tiny clothes’. I’m not going to do that, I’m very sorry. I went out, I slammed the door. The door was made of glass, one of those that says ‘Management’. It broke”.

“And that cost me 11 years of television. (…) I dedicated myself to what is production, production, production”. His practice in theater production bolstered his indifference to a laugh-out-loud format. For this reason, when he returned to the air, in 1993, she confidently told Ernesto Schutz, then owner of Panamericana Televisión: “Ernestillo, the day you do what I have here, you are going to become a millionaire.”

“He heard the term soap opera for the first time. It’s not a soap opera. (…) The soap opera is a daily and family program. The child, the youth and the adult together. Fun and testimonial”.

—You forged your own concept of testimonial television. How did it come about?

—From the first production I did, I thought about what happens in our country: the sweetheart who wanted to enter the house, and the grandfather or father who wouldn’t let him; Dr. Chantada, the paperwork that was delayed for fun. (…) When people see that, he says: “This is how people lived in the year 80, then in 2000, in 2005.” And one is leaving testimony.

For example, “Mil oficios”, in Fujimori’s time nobody had a job and you had to work whatever. “Así es la vida” began the vertical growth of the city. And “Al fondo hay sitio”, the meeting of two social classes. I have always looked for that, I like the show to be familiar. I wasn’t a puritan or anything, but it bothered me that at 8 pm on Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Mexican soap operas you would see ‘pachamanqueadas’. (…) Well, I feel proud when I see everyone sit in front of the television.

—Tell me about the venting dynamic that was once a month in “Al fondo hay sitio”

“First Monday of every month. And we were already doing it in “Así es la vida” and in “Mil oficios”. Whenever there is a family group, there are divisive tendencies, there are low criticisms, which is normal. But if you don’t put a stop to that, factions begin to form, and what I avoid is forming factions. So on Mondays we criticized each other. (…) I am speaking to you in very soft terms, but sometimes there were high-sounding voices to defend their position. (…) It is that it is a great human group. That is very important to me. Sometimes the press has wanted to break it, but we have managed to overcome that. I don’t care what they do outside the studio. What interests me is what they do in the studio.

—There were complaints of harassment and bullying. How did you handle them?

—I have already said it many times: the doors of my office have always been open, always. And they have come to tell me about problems. In the eight years that I was with them, not once, not once, did Wiese or Mayra come to tell me: “This is happening.” I would have taken action on the matter. (…) I was one of the big surprises when that went on the air. I didn’t have to drive if the problem hadn’t come to me. The problem was seen when we were already off the air and I answered… And if it had been true, I would have stopped it immediately.

—Many times it is said that you have a visionary formula because all these products achieve success. Do you agree? How you do?

“No, no, no, no, that would be too vain.” I am lucky to know how to put my eye on someone and tell him that he is going to do it. Sometimes I have also been wrong. They just go unnoticed.

—You have affirmed that you are going to be a theater director until the end of your days…

—I was born a theater man and I will die a theater man. Anyway! It would be at this age to pretend to do something else. There are two things in my life that I still need to do.

-Which is it?

—First, I want to make movies. I’m desperate to make movies. And secondly, having my own theatre, which I think I’m not going to achieve (…) It would have been nice if the Canout had become. But, that’s life and in the background there is room and there are a thousand trades.

With the arrival of the pandemic, “Betito” evacuated the red seats of the Miraflores theater and looked like an assistant at what he resurrected over the years and later branded bankrupt: “I made the stage with acoustic material, I gave it a special inclination . I made him dressing rooms. But it is like this. The good thing is to get out of the hole, and I hope to get out of the hole. I’m on it”.

Now he dusts off the green seats of the Jade theater, in Lince, and repeats to himself: “Efraín, forget it, we’ll have to start all over again.”

—And can you live from acting?

—No, not at this time, but there were great times when you could make a living from the theater. From the theater, not from television, from the theater. There were private companies (…) Now you can count on the fingers of one hand the theaters that are working and that are profitable. The theater is expensive, that is definitive, but if the influx is low, it will be more expensive.

—Would you recommend studying Theater now?

—It’s just that the lean times pass and the fat cows inexorably come. And I see the future of those of acting and of the actor in the networks. For me, theater will continue to be theater. (…) The advancement of technology is so fast that it gives you the possibility of everything. Now you can make a novel with four high-quality phones.

Efraín trusts the networks, even though he is not a persistent user. He says he doesn’t like noticing misspellings — “I’m sure they spell boom with a v” —. He doesn’t have Twitter or instagramand his son drives his Facebook. He puts play on Antonín Dvořák’s “Sinfonía del Nuevo Mundo” and enjoys it as much as when he read “The Blue Hour” by Alonso Cueto, or when he affirms that his wife, Isabel Elena, is the most important person in his life .

His intervention in politics is a separate story. However, he underlines what his objective is now as metropolitan councilor of Lima: “The councilors are not executives, we are normal people who audit. What I am going to give is great support to the Department of Education and Culture, that is my commitment”. It also promotes national campaigns against hearing loss: “Having deficiencies should not be a reason for shame.”

Shame isn’t part of your vocabulary either…

—I am daring sometimes with my vocabulary, and very daring, but off camera. (laughs)