It's not a joke: Martín Piroyansky is Tangalanga

A movie arrives around the unusual world, real and imaginary, of

.

Like it or not, this is how it is: the day he died, ten years ago, the phone charges ran out.

Inimitable, unmistakable, unique.

Julio Victorio de Rissio, popularly known as Doctor Tangalanga or Tarufetti,

.

Tangalanga united generations, made people laugh regardless of social class.

They were followed by

(he gave him a white telephone from which he made dozens of calls), the Ricardos Mollo and Darín.

Mirtha Legrand.

For some, the laughter that caused his practical jokes was the product of bitching, when bitching was frowned upon.

For others, the genius of his trade lay in the work in progress prior to the auction.

He died at the age of 97 in 2013. If you are a beardless person who does not know who the true genius of transversality was, you can also go see

 (premieres on Thursday, January 19) as the interchangeable story of a rather strange man, of a kind of anti-Marvel superhero who when he picked up the phone (line) suffered a personality disorder between satirical and piquant.

Martín Piroyansky in the film that premieres this Thursday in theaters.

Photos Press

Tangalanga deserves to be on the list of the great geniuses that Argentina has given.

He is at the level of Borges and Piazzolla, in the sense that he created an absolutely personal language.

This was told to us by Diego Recalde, director of

, a frantic documentary based on the greatest suddentaker of all time.

“He created a form of expression where the bad word stopped being bad to become just another word.

He rescued her, elevated her, and gave her a legitimacy that he did not have.

He was the first to naturally mix civilized language with barbaric expression and create a unique language, ”added Recalde.

Julio De Rissio had started recording risque phone calls in the mid-'60s, for a friend who was hospitalized with health problems.

Juliet Zylberberg is the protagonist's romantic interest.

Now,

arrives at the cinema playing the Doctor in

.

It's not just another role, boy: you've had the honor of composing a true humor icon.

Argentina just did it.

There are no imitators or successors or heirs of Tangalanga.

At one time you didn't know who the guy making the calls was.

It was like Zorro or Batman from an unexpected category.

Tangalanga participated in his own shows, radio cycles and on TV.

He lived to be almost 100 years old and had a heyday that predates the zombie consensus of the last decade.

His artistic stature consisted in doing what he would have done without an audience anyway.

Doctor Tangalanga.

He died almost ten years ago, on December 26, 2013. Photo Archive Clarín

“Here is a very brief example of verbal surrealism that is repeated in the most unusual ways, when we listen to the cassettes of this underground genius of Argentine humor.

The important thing here is the laughter that it generates in us, that sense of wanting to repeat the laugh and, above all, having the pleasure of seeing the wonderful human being that it hides...", highlighted Spinetta.

The movie isn't exactly a biopic about the champion of phone pranks.

It is the story about Jorge, a somewhat shy office worker who stutters when speaking in public and doesn't know how to approach the girl he likes (Julieta Zylberberg).

Such was the rarity of Tangalanga that Mateo Bendesky's comedy introduces fantastic elements to try to explain the superpower of dialing the phone and becoming the irreverent Doctor Tangalanga.

The interview

-Martín, are you aware of the character's posterity?

-By posterity, do you mean what Tangalanga was in the '80s or if I think about what happened to Jorge's character in fiction...?

Piroyansky tells how he prepared the character.

-An interesting topic is the impunity given by the old and dear landline telephone, right?

-What caught my attention the most while studying the character was the particular talent that Tangalanga had to keep the victims answering and without cutting the phone...

-In the movie that is manifested almost in a duality in the best Jeckyll and Hyde style...

-He entangled them with absurd ideas and then perhaps insulted them.

It was a time when phone calls had more value than now.

And as for this thing that you mention about Dr. Jeckyll and Hyde, it's something that touches me closely, because my favorite childhood movie was

, with Jim Carrey.

Seeing that movie changed my life because it made me see that acting could go beyond certain limits.

In

 I was able to give myself the pleasure of acting out a similar story.

-It is striking how someone who barely deserved a mention in the media when he died, today is the material of books and more than one movie...

-He is still a cult character.

At every meeting where I told that I was going to play him, people would get very excited and ask me what jokes were going to appear, as well as what era the film was going to be set in.

Susana Giménez, when I told her, told me that her father had been a friend of Tangalanga and she gave me some information that I did not know.

"In every meeting where I told that I was going to play him, people would get excited and ask me what jokes were going to appear," says the actor.

-Judging by what you were taking from the character, what do you think Tangalanga meant for Argentine humor?

-Tangalanga is remembered above all for having been a great whore, but I think the most interesting thing about the character was his absurd humor.

The images and ideas that he created were very ingenious, ridiculous…

-In the movie he appears as the cult humorist that he never ceased to be.

The story is installed at the beginning of the legend, the first phone calls from him to his hospitalized friend...

-That was the approach given by Mateo Bendesky, the director and one of the screenwriters of the film.

I found it very interesting that instead of showing him as a big man, as we all came to know him popularly, he preferred to show why he started making phone pranks.

Taking the true story as a basis, Mateo created a fantastic story and took all kinds of licenses making the story even more interesting.

Mateo Bendesky's film shows the character in his early days.

-What kind of work did you have to do to recreate it?

What inspired you?

-Actually I had to do two jobs, because in the film I play two characters: one is Jorge, a shy employee who through hypnosis transforms into Dr. Tangalanga every time he talks on the phone.

So, on the one hand, Jorge, and on the other hand, I studied the prank calls that are available on YouTube and Spotify to imitate the tone…

-Was that good?

-Yes, it was a very fun job, really.

And I composed this shy Jorge who is the exact opposite of the uninhibited Doctor Tangalanga.

I was inspired by the tone of the Argentine cinema of the '60s and with Mateo we found the different nuances that the character has throughout the film.

And as for Dr. Tangalanga, I worked to find his physicality, because for me he was always a voice on the phone.

In the film, on the other hand, we see him walking around and interacting with the rest of the characters... Going back to the beginning, I always felt the responsibility that it meant to play a real character and, above all, so loved by Argentines.

I hope people enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.

POS

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"Quinografía", the first biographical feature film about Mafalda's father