Photo: RRSS
Text: Cuba News 360 Writing
If each chapter of the stellar humorous Vivir del Cuento seems like an X-ray of the Cuban reality, it is essentially because its writing staff has always had its feet firmly planted on the ground.
From family conflicts, from a conversation with a friend, from chicken or bread, from some reference to books and novels, even from the suggestions made by the public, the scriptwriters have been drawing the ideas that they take care of after translating. in a plot peppered with jokes and tangles.
Although it has maintained the same plot and stylistic line, during its almost 15 years on the screen, the program has had the occurrences of various writers, to whose talent the director Ignacio Hernández attributes most of the success of the space.
One of the first to join the team and who has remained for many years is Antonio Berazaín, who recognizes everyone’s contribution to the final result of each episode.
“People don’t know it, but the scripts are being built little by little in a group that includes the writers, but also the director and the actors,” he told the press. We must recognize the joint work because that guarantees the quality of the program, and differentiates it from others in which the script is the exclusive work of one person. There is no doubt that collective processes surpass what is done individually”.
Other writers who participate in the project insist on the relevance of group creation, among them Jorge Bacallao and Daniel Burguet, both recently incorporated into the team, and the already emblematic Jaime Fort, who usually writes his texts from Spain without losing even an iota of current affairs and Cubanness.
“The first thing I do when I get up is read the news from Cuba, talk to the people of Cuba and think about Cuba. And oddly enough, from Spain I find out more about what is happening in Cuba than when I am there,” Fort revealed in an interview in which he also gave his views on the limits of humor on the small screen.
“Today’s viewers would not support a Cuban humorous program that does not honestly touch the reality of the country. And hence the popularity achieved; but it is not about seeking popularity by making a program that publicly criticizes what other spaces do not criticize. It’s not looking for an easy joke,” he says. We try to make a situation comedy, where the humor is in the situation itself, and in how the characters react to the entanglements and mistakes in which they get involved. All these situations take place in the social, economic and political context of the country, and that is where this context must be shown honestly”.
Regarding censorship, that sword of Damocles that constantly threatens Vivir del Cuento, Jaime Fort has confessed: “There are limits to everything. It would be absurd to go over the limit because you know that it will not be accepted and you waste time and work. So you focus on what you can say and try to take it as far as possible. Sometimes I get out of hand and that’s what the rest of the team is for, the advisers or the director, who are in charge of cutting things. And other times it is the other way around, because of my self-censorship I stop saying something about a subject, which the director or the actors later add to it”.
None of the scriptwriters dares to say outright how the censorship mechanism works, but they suspect that the programs are reviewed by someone “from above” before going on the air and that they have sometimes called the director to cut out a phrase or to suspend entire programs.
It can then happen that, given the subjectivity of the individual reviewing the show, some minor nonsense is cut out and something much stronger is left to pass.
This would explain the ovations provoked by certain dialogues in Vivir del Cuento and the bewilderment of ordinary Cubans who, accustomed to the fact that the media does not reflect their very difficult circumstances, usually comment after a particularly critical chapter: “They went crazy, now they do.” that suspend them”.