Raphael Bob-Waksberg is not just any creator. It has made thousands of people identify with a talkative, alcoholic and depressed horse. It's a cartoon, but for many BoJack Horseman is more than that. This anthropomorphic horse, who does not stop talking about his feelings and vital failures, is perhaps one of the beings in North American fiction with whom it is easiest to have an emotional connection, to the point of understanding the character as if he were a friend or family member, in the manner of what happened years ago with other television characters such as Tony Soprano (
The Sopranos
), Don Draper (
Mad Men
) or Alicia Florrick (
The Good Wife
).
Since 2014, Bob-Waksberg has been the main screenwriter behind
Bojack Horseman,
one of America's most critically acclaimed series and one of Netflix's top bets for six seasons. Now, this 37-year-old writer and comedian has published his first book,
Someone who loves you with all your wounds
(Círculo de Tiza, 2021). “I don't remember ever deciding to write it. You would probably be a lot more productive if you could decide things like that. Sometimes I would write things that really didn't fit anywhere else, and over time I realized that I was being written for this book. So they really sneaked up on me and ended up taking this shape, ”explains Bob-Waksberg from Los Angeles.
Someone who loves you with all your wounds
is a set of stories that, as in the series that has placed him in the spotlight of half Hollywood, delves into the troubles of existence through lonely and incomplete characters, who seek a place and a certain identity in the middle of an overly voracious modern society. And, as in
Bojack Horseman
, they develop full of humor.
It is easy for the reader to get a smile on the face of it while saying to himself that damn the grace that everything has on that date through an application, at that meal with an ex or the day after a hangover.
“I don't know how to express sadness, except through humor.
There may be other ways to do it, but I never learned them.
Once, when I was breaking up with a girlfriend, he yelled at me because he was smiling too much, ”says its author.
Still from the series 'BoJack Horseman'.
Skilled at dissecting anxiety or depression, Bob-Waksberg assures that "loneliness" of the narrative writer is the main difference that has been found with respect to being a screenwriter. "Television is much more collaborative. I had a whole writer's room to tell me if my idea was good or not. On the other hand, for the stories, I had to be the one to tell myself if my ideas were cool. Fortunately, I'm very good at it! ” For everything else, he says, there aren't many differences between writing a chapter in an adult animation series or a short story. “I'm not much of a visual thinker. Even my television scripts are very focused on dialogue, although I like to think that I have become more visual through my time in animation.I'm still a bit allergic to describing images just to set a scene or introduce a character. I am interested in what is happening ”.
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Goodbye to 'BoJack Horseman', the horse who taught us what it hurts to be human
Raised in Palo Alto (California), Bob-Waksberg first devoted himself to the theater until he did a master's degree in screenwriting in New York and began
sketching
on the Internet with a comedy group.
There he met Lisa Hanawalt, a talented illustrator who drew for
The New York Times
or
Vanity Fair.
His drawings were the inspiration for Bob-Waksberg to create
BoJack Horseman
, the great project of both that convinced the directors of Netflix. In the television series, its creator used a surreal world, where anthropomorphic animals coexist with people, one of those crazy ideas that end up adding more spices to humorous situations. And now, in his book, Bob-Waksberg also resorts to surrealism, although he refuses to explain a specific reason for his style. “Unfortunately, every time I try to describe my work, a big crab comes out of my mouth instead of the right words. Eventually I find that my whole room fills up with crabs and I haven't made any progress explaining anything about my work. "
In this way, in one of the stories, the narrator places himself in the vision of a dog, as other writers such as Paul Auster did before. “I was never a person who was very fond of animals until I met the woman who is now my wife and her dog, who is now my dog. People might be surprised to find out about me because, after all, I'm the guy who did an entire television show about animals. But I would say that this television series is about how all animals are idiots, including humans ", explains the Californian writer, adding:" When I started taking my dog to work I was fascinated to try to understand his thinking. I feel like the standard version of dogs is that they are dumb, but I don't think that's entirely correct. Dogs can be very intelligent and observant,but their context for understanding the world is completely different from ours ”.