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'31 Minutos', the Latin American star puppet newscast turns 20

2023-03-28T10:38:26.247Z


The program was shown for the first time in Chile in March 2003. Today it is a company and a musical band that adds fans in Latin America


On March 15, 2003, the first episode of

31 Minutos

was broadcast in Chile by the public channel Televisión Nacional (TVN) , a children's program that also enchants adults, with a newscast format conducted only by puppets and puppets.

That day, his self-centered driver, a

striped wool-headed

monkey who drives a Mercedes Benz, ripped off with the space: “What's up?

I am Tulio Triviño and this is

31 Minutes

, ”he said, and presented the first news, including the strange case of a toilet that had a life of its own.

Its creators will commemorate their anniversary this Thursday, with the launch on their social networks of a surprise that will summarize their story in two minutes, which has been followed in their country and by thousands of fans in Latin America.

This is because what started as a program on Saturdays at one in the afternoon also became a traveling show and a musical band that has performed at massive events such as

Lolapalloza

, the most important festival in Santiago;

the Viña del Mar International Festival;

Rock al Parque in Colombia and Vive Latino, in Mexico, a country to which they travel to perform at least once a year since 2014.

The program had three seasons of 72 episodes in Chile, between 2003 and 2005, and a fourth in 2014. Its humor and its songs crossed borders, when part of its episodes was acquired by Nickelodeon and Canal Once in

Mexico

.

But it has been through its social networks that the word spread in Latin America, and today its first episode alone has more than four million views on YouTube.

UNICEF, the UN agency for children, also noticed their popularity and signed their characters as ambassadors.

The last campaign was launched on March 22, with the song

Do not miss

, to support the in-person return to school for students after the pandemic.

In Chile, meanwhile, even the President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, and his partner, Irina Karamanos, have interacted with his puppets.

In December 2022, Tulio Triviño made a dispatch from La Moneda Palace, which he mistook for Buckingham Palace.

And Juan Carlos Bodoque, a red rabbit, star reporter in charge of the news story's green note, sat down at the president's desk to write his Christmas speech for him.

"But Bodoque, here it only says

blah, blah, blah, blah,"

Boric told him.

"That's how the speeches are, right?" Bodoque replied.

Its creators are three journalists from the University of Chile, Álvaro Díaz (50), Pedro Peirano (51) and Juan Manuel Egaña (51).

Díaz and Peirano as scriptwriters and voices of several of the characters, while Egaña has been mainly in management.

Its name,

31 Minutes,

was not only chosen for being a rarity.

It is also due to

60 minutes

, the newscast of the public channel that was shown during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

“We do a lot of parody with that.

It has to do with its aesthetics, but also in the world there are many news programs called

60 minutes

.

It is a relatively direct reference”, says Díaz to EL PAÍS.

“We didn't try to take away his fame either, because he had a very bad press.

It was despicable and one of the most visible things about the dictatorship, ”he adds with humor.

It was in 2002, through Aplaplac, the production company of Díaz, Peirano and Egaña, that TVN ordered them to apply with a project for a children's program to a state fund of the National Television Council.

Díaz, at that time, was the most distant with the idea.

“I thought I was going to get into a ghetto of very boring things,” he says.

This, despite the fact that they came from a previous experience in the genre with

Mira Tú

, an educational television space “but that already had a lot of humor”.

"Anything could be a puppet"

Álvaro Díaz remembers that when they won the fund, they didn't even know how to make puppets.

“But we have always arrived at places without knowing much,” he says.

So, they put together a team that has been fundamental because of its diversity, "with people you knew from your previous life on television, but above all with new people who came from the art world."

Nueva Gráfica Chilena -Rodrigo Salinas, Daniel Castro and Matías Iglesis-, and the actress Jani Dueñas, the voice of Patana, Tulio Triviño's niece, joined a large part of the group in the group.

“It was an absolutely rare team for a television program, which worked freely, without the need for their knowledge,” recalls Díaz.

Attendees at a 31 Minutes concert in Mexico City, in March 2022.Medios y Media (Getty Images)

When leaving they were not clear about the format of the program.

But they did advance on a first commission, which was the seed of what would come later.

“Pedro and Juan Manuel asked me to do something related to the environment, because the state fund had to do with environmental education.

And it had to be about water treatment, something very fome [boring]”, says Díaz.

“Then, it occurred to me to write a journalistic note with the traditional format, which was very poor, such as audiovisual newscasts that say exactly what they are showing.

But if he did the same thing with puppets, it could be fun."

This is how Juan Carlos Bodoque was born, who debuted in the first episode with

La ruta de la caca

.

That note caught the attention immediately, because it was serious journalism, and nowhere did it have the joke.

But the fact that he was a puppet, plus certain exaggerations like saying poop, already made him very attractive.

Shortly before, Sock with Rhombos Man was born, a superhero who defends boys and girls and disseminates their rights.

It was an idea of ​​Pedro Peirano based on reality.

“I had a sock with rhombuses in my house, which was alone in the drawer, with the hope that one day the other would appear.

That's why I refused to throw it away, ”he recounts from Los Angeles, United States, where he works as a writer for HBO.

“A sock was the most basic, hand puppet,” he adds.

Precisely, in that experimental invoice is one of the various keys to the characters.

Since we weren't puppeteers, we discovered that anything could be a puppet.

We would buy lots of eyes and put them on a mug, a sock, or a phone.

The materials were endless.

And everything that worked on the camera lens was welcome”, recalls Díaz.

“The only thing that had a broader concept of making puppets were the encyclopedias of

The Muppets

and all the

making offs

that I had.

I was even ashamed to admit that I had those books, but I told them: 'Let's see them, because from here we are going to learn how they are made,'” adds Peirano, who is also a cartoonist.

While they advanced in the characters, the musician Pablo Ilabaca joined the team, who came from

funk

, from the Chilean group Chancho en Piedra.

“We started making melodies with him and then writing the lyrics ourselves and singing them.

Then to compose together and also on our own”, says Díaz.

Those songs were part of the

Top Top Top Ranking

of

31 Minutes

, by the entertainment commentator, Policarpo Avendaño.

Some time later they would become four albums, and those albums plus his new creations, in the invitation to get on the big stages of Latin America.

“We have been consistent in not living on nostalgia, and being

always inventing and testing different formats, with new songs and new stories”, he adds.

But before fame came, a lot happened.

Even the pilot of the first chapter of

31 Minutes

, as it was, almost did not pass the first filter on TVN.

“It was terrifying.

Something like, what is this?” recalls Pedro Peirano.

“The programming director at the time said that these horrible monkeys appeared on his corpse.

And I understand it, because they were very untidy on a television that wanted to be impeccable”, says Álvaro Díaz.

And he adds: “On the screen they were entertaining, but the monkeys were very homemade.

Reaching that minimum of neatness cost us.

Maybe that was the most difficult, but we had a lot of confidence”.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-28

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