Silvina Lamazares
05/31/2020 - 0:05
- Clarín.com
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- TV
A Jorge Lanata would like to ask you to answer, not because avoid giving answers, but because you feel better as interviewer and interviewee. But, when he accepts a note, he becomes the easiest interlocutor to get off the hook , despite the rhythm that he gives to the talk: when he starts a sentence he knows which port he is going to arrive at, he has a command of the language that we are not going to find out now ... It has all the virtues that someone should have who, among other things, founded a newspaper at age 26 . So, on the other end of the phone line, return all the walls, the deep and the colorful ones . Uploaded to the double meaning of "wall", it is a great builder of notes. And of the collective game.
While he is in his quarantine in his Retiro department -from where Lanata leads without a filter , at 10, on Radio Miter-, he has already entered discount time towards the premiere of the ninth season of PPT , the program that this Sunday 31, at 22, will return to the screen of El Trece, with the word box added to the title.
-Are there nerves in front of a premiere, at this point in your profession?
-I have no nerves in the sense that I don't know what to do . I am very expectant, because it will be a very different PPT , we are all like starting to do some things that we had not been able to do. We did it as a strategy of impossibility , as happened to us at the time on Page / 12 (it began to appear on May 26, '87), that we had no paper money and so we made a short newspaper. Well, the short newspaper led us to choose the news better . We realized that a hundred-page journal was not necessary and that worked at the time. Now, in that sense, it is the same: I cannot do the program with the public, which for me is quite a topic ... Maybe it is the most complicated thing that is happening to us this year: because I need to see people when I speak to them . It is a limitation of mine, I assume it.
At 59, Lanata understands that you have to reinvent yourself to work in the midst of the pandemic. And he takes as a reference his challenge from '87, when he founded Página / 12: "The strategy of impossibility", he says.
-Are you going to be more alone in the studio?
-It is that you can not do anything with the actors. So there will be no skits, which was a part of the program that we relied on a lot. What occurred to me is: ok, we are inside a box that we can't get out of, because we all feel a little bit of that all these months . What we did, then, is reproduce the idea of the box in everything . When the zenith plane is there, at the opening and at the closing you will see that I am inside a box built by four huge LED screens. And the screen are squares: in one I do my editorial and then there is a rectangle to my right where the Hangman game with the idiot of the week will be, which will increase the number of letters as the program progresses. And below is a title of what will be the strong research note of the program. They are squares that are playing and are changing.
-In other words, a box concept in everything to fix the idea.
-Yes, and all the time we talk to the camera, we don't talk to each other anymore, we talk directly to people. Another new thing that I am going to put in is an upper shoulder : it is literally a little screen over the shoulder, which uses a lot the Yankee TV, and, while I am talking, suddenly there may be a contrast with funny photos of what I am saying.
-A permanent mix of what and how.
-It's how I conceive things. I think the form and the content are always super linked. That was a constant in everything I did. In the last months this program had a sheet and a pencil . 'What I want to do is this ' and I would draw it. What we are seeing now is how to do it, because technically it is much more complex than how we did it historically. So, having a lot of post production award, I have to get recorded. I hate recording , but this year there is no other.
-And there is no risk of being "old" with the information?
-No, because we will do it a few hours before, nothing more. And we are going to do it in real time: even when I am wrong, I continue . I do not stop or crazy. The recording will last for the duration of the program, no more. What time? Set it at 7 pm on the same Sunday. Perhaps this time we will do it a little earlier because, in addition, we are covered in material and very strong material. We ask the channel for half an hour more and this Sunday it will go from 22 to 23.20.
In the midst of quarantine, Lanata will do her TV program on the channel, but from Monday to Friday morning she conducts "Lanata without filter" from her home.
-What "we are covered in material" is because you have things that nobody has?
- I do not want to be pejorative towards other programs, but there are not many people who are saying much. There are approaches that are not going out, there are ways to tell things that are not being seen and that favors us. In other words, when no one speaks we enter .
-Why do you think that happens?
-I was saying the other day that, with Alberto (Fernández), the press was as fascinated as it was with Néstor (Kirchner) in the first period. And that, even today, continues to happen. And I think a little favored by having a kind of unified command. I really think it was necessary at the beginning, which was fine, but now they are turning to many things, because they are starting to use the pandemic as an excuse . Let's say there is a mud that at the beginning they did not have.
- it is possible to be spoken already of albertismo?
- I do not know if the albertismo is more an invention of the press, of the political columnists , than of the reality. Because I think Alberto could not form an organized group that responds to him. There is a Christianity. The others are friends of Alberto ...
After the radio program and before a meeting with his writers, Lanata talks to Clarín in no rush, as he likes. And except for putting together a selected one with his best disciples (he doesn't like, in his case, talking about disciples and the list would exceed eleven), he gets on all the topics. That's what giving a note is all about. Lanata talks about everything .
Now the interview makes a scale in the concept of " capital flight, which should be in quotation marks . That is super ideological: how are multinational companies that have their headquarters based not going to get their capital, put it? With that criterion, then, there were 6 million Argentines who fled capital when they bought the $ 200. What they did was get dollars out of the market, which is what bothers these people. The underlying discussion is what are the limits of private property . Suppose, I have an account in Uruguay, which I really have. Is it declared? Yes. Do I pay taxes for that? Yes. Tell him that one month I saved five hundred dollars and I want to send them. What is that? Capital flight? What are they saying to me? All of those things are not being raised in an open discussion on television , at least.
-When you watch TV, what do you see in the background?
-Lots of opinion and little information, and the opinion in general is quite coincident. The government does not like to be discussed. If you say 'Because for me quarantine such a thing' , you are already in favor of death or favor of life, or of the economy… Alberto is trapped by two variants that he does not control : one is the pandemic and the other is the economy. Let's see, it sounds ugly said like that, but I honestly think about it: what is coming is going to be much more horrible than we think.
- You speak of the consequences, more than of the virus?
-Yeah right. First, three months are missing here, maybe four. This comes in September or October. Let him end this in October. What remains will last for much of next year, if not all of next year. And the economic consequences of this are going to be impossible. Just think of one, which is global: in February there were 38 percent poor. Well, today there is a 50. Let's imagine Argentina with half the poor.
Radio image: the "study" mounted on your desktop. There, columnists Julio López and Maru Duffard, Lanata, an operator and a producer meet every morning.
When asked for a painting on a social stage, he explains that “ there is more fear of uncertainty than anger , the issue is that one does not know at what point that will be transformed. People talk about this as if it happened. We are behind the mountain, we have not passed it yet. After passing it, there will be a couple of months, maybe three, of rigid quarantine to cut it. The economic and social consequences of that are going to be very ugly . There it will be necessary to see how everything is handled. Today I saw that Alberto said "The fault is not the quarantine, it is the disease." What are you saying with this? That the blame is not the measures we take, but the chance of the virus. "
- Of all this is going away to speak in the program?
-Nor do I tell you about the program. Look.
-But this is going to be the tone, isn't it?
-Yes, unless I'm lobotomy and I 'm from here to Sunday is another ...
-And strictly going to the pandemic, are you afraid of the coronavirus?
-No, I have zero fear . But that's because I'm wrong in the head. Did you see the promo? I am a risk group, but I am not really afraid of the virus.
-If you have to go out for something, do you comply with all the care?
-Yes, obviously, full chinstrap. I am also doing the radio program at home and I am with four other people every morning: an operator, a producer and two columnists, Julito López and Maru Duffard . We do all the homework.
-And "PPT" could not be done from your home?
- No, because physically it is not possible. On TV I have four cameras, a crane, there is the issue of lights. Things, if you can, must be done well.
-And on Sunday you will go with a chinstrap, with the alcohol gel ...
-I was already on the channel and if you do things well, conscientiously ... Let's see, unless someone comes and spits or splashes you, you will not catch it . You need a distance and a chinstrap. The virus does not stay in the air.
-But since not much is known, an alarmism sometimes flares up ...
-What happens is that everyone speaks, I have listened to everything ...
-Among the things you hear often is what everyone learned at this time, how to make brownies with almonds, how to paint. Did you learn something in quarantine?
-You think about my life: last year, from September to the end of the year, I was lying on a bed looking up . As my oldest daughter, Barbara, used to say as a baby. After that, quarantining is bullshit for me. I couldn't sit down, do you understand me? I had a broken vertebra, I was hospitalized here, then I traveled to the United States, I had surgery, now I am in rehabilitation, I do an hour of gymnastics per day. Let's say that it was ugly. This being inside is crazy for me .
-Did you do something different, an unprecedented task?
-No, I really like being in my house. It is a beautiful house, I read, I do the program here… It is crazy, my desk is no longer my desk, it is “the radio” . 'Where is such a thing?' 'It's over there on the radio . ' Now I'm looking at it and I describe what I see: two microphones, a long microphone with a reed, the operator's console, another reed that I don't know what it's for, some computers . Impossible not to feel accompanied or active. Besides, I'm much better.
-Sos who do not suffer from psychic confinement, then.
-And no, because it wasn't going out that much either. I do feel like I can't go out to eat with my daughters on a Saturday or Sunday.
-Do you see the girls?
-I see Lola more. He is living with Sara (his ex-wife), but sometimes he comes home. And I see Barbara less, but I saw her.
-And with the other affections do you make a video call?
-I'm not very into Skype and stuff. The other day I discovered a scientific explanation for that that proved me right. When you meet someone there are three levels of the brain that are activated. When you speak on the screen, only one is activated. It is an article that appeared in the newspaper El País .
-It is that physical closeness has no competition.
-Of course, with the screen in between there is no power. Sometimes Sara calls me on the phone for an image and I speak for a little while, but I don't like it.
-Returning the question of whether you learned a recipe or ...
-No, enough, I didn't learn anything. In my case the answer would be "I still don't know anything . "
-You go back to a sepia-tinted television, which repeats everything it finds handy. If you were given a choice, which program of yours would you like them to replace?
-Wow, I don't know. Let's see, there were some of Hora 25 that I liked, there were some very cool PPT investigations , I would put 26 people to save the world or Bric , who are still seen on YouTube , which I think are very well done and do not have that hysteria of the political information with which we live.
As she does not like Skype interviews, Lanata received the hosts of "Truth Consequence", by TN, in her second broadcast at her home. There, Luciana Geuna and Maru Duffard made the report.
-And do you like Skype TV?
-Definitely not. I can understand it as an exception, not as a rule. What is the logic of not doing home interviews with all the cares, but you do send the mobile people to the street day and night? We can all take care of ourselves. Neither Orson Welles could make a good note on screen . It's cold, it doesn't do well. We are supposed to be 'essential labor' . If you go to the guy's house and respect the measurements and the distance there is no reason not to. They announce 'Let's talk to the doctor like that' and half a face appears, poorly lit, and then all gray . Where is the doctor? Let me screw it up. TV did not find him back at this time. That the solution for Argentine television is ten Turkish cans seems to me a piece of paper . A delusion.
A man of graphics, radio and TV, he has ideas and questions going around: “I don't understand, for example, why (Marcelo) Tinelli didn't say 'Well, you know what, I better do Videomatch (his old scheme of early '90, featuring bloopers or sports videos). It would have been nice. I also don't know how he will do the fiction to return. You have to know how to reinvent yourself . I do not know how we are going to do on Sunday, but I am sure of one thing: in zapping you will stop to see it , because it is very different from everything I did ”.
Among the things he did, as I am telling of that frustrated request to arm the selected disciples, he feels that “from the newspaper here we put together a generation of journalists. Many suffered the crack, many became k ... I call all of them 'our people' , regardless of where each one is now ”.
-You go with the memory to that boy who founded Página / 12, and what do you see?
-It was so small when I made Page ... The logical thing was that I felt great, that I felt that everything had to be done, and it was all a lie. I didn't know shit, but that gave me the strength to kick the door and say 'Hi, here I am . ' There I had the types that, by age, could have been my teachers, but by the dictatorship they were not. Osvaldo Soriano, Juan Gelman, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Miguel Bonasso, Homero Alsina Thevenet . I had a newsroom with guys like Miguel Briante, a brilliant . What I see is a boy who sent himself. And he was very well accompanied.
Lanata & Susana
While Clarín interviews Lanata, television deals with Susana Giménez's trip to Punta del Este, in the midst of the pandemic. Media scandal.
-How did you take that news?
-Susana's seems to me different from Tinelli's (she hired a private plane to take a suitcase to Esquel, as a "humanitarian flight"), because she asked for permission everywhere and got them. He went to ANAC, to the Embassy of Uruguay, he has a residence there. He did nothing illegal. The only thing I didn't like about her is what she said about the villas ( "Now because they seized the villas, that's the drama. They should have closed everything because they knew it was going to explode there" ). What do I know, she has those unfortunate phrases. Susana is that clumsy and lovable .
