About 11 years ago I received a request through my agent at the time to participate in the development of a documentary series about the pale tracker. The meaning of the concept of development is that a certain broadcaster invests a limited amount, tens of thousands of shekels, to seriously examine the feasibility of a future series. That is, they are not filming yet, but they are investing in research and then in writing to show the concept of the series, the division into episodes, the content of each episode, the identity of the interviewees, etc. In this case, the person who ordered the development was Channel 1. And I still remember very well what the agent told me: it is true that it is only development, but it is completely clear to all parties that it will continue very quickly to the production of the series itself. how not? This is the most successful and important entertainment trio in Israel’s history, with a proven creative team and a channel that holds most of the relevant archival materials. The agent was absolutely right. On the face of it, this should have been a simple project. But it lasted, as mentioned, 11 years. And became the most prolonged and demanding venture I was involved in.
The reasons for the prolongation of this abnormality are not really interesting. They are related to the uncertainty surrounding the future of Channel 1, the attempts to find other broadcasters, protracted legal disputes designed to allow us creative freedom, and more. In the meantime, in a sweet irony, I created other projects with the producer Eric Bernstein, with whom I first met regarding the trackers, such as the documentary series “Crossings”. And the tracker series gradually got pushed to the bottom of the drawer. Every few years the director Eliav Lilti and I would meet and try to get started, but as the trackers article – There was no stopping it. Until at some point, about four years ago, the end of the series was officially announced. Similar to the end of several characters who were supposed to play a major role in it and passed away, such as Moti Kirshenbaum or Yossi Sherid (Kirshenbaum directed a program about the trackers. Sherid wrote the their election broadcasts to the array in the 1984 elections.) We still had time to investigate both of them.
The Pale Tracker Trio (Photo: Yaacov Sa’ar
Then a kind of miracle happened. The recently established broadcasting corporation published a tender for podcasts on cultural topics. And I thought, that’s an idea! (Apologies, this is exactly the appropriate column for the probe). I have four chapters written about the pale tracker, the vehicle that is communicated to the world mainly through the radio anyway. The connection to the podcast is only natural. Only one thing was missing for me, permission from the rights holders for the use of the sketches. I turned to Eric Bernstein, who would assist in the matter, and then he said – you know what? If I’m already doing a round, I might try to restart the series. I greeted him, with complete skepticism, but to my astonishment the move was gaining momentum. And in the end we got the green light for the series, which will be broadcast simultaneously on Hot 8 and Bis Israeli Cinema.
But the troubles did not end here. Because precisely when we started the operative phase, the corona virus broke out. And in addition to the general hysteria, we had two 80-year-old trackers, alongside other interviewees from age and health risk groups. The blessed result was that during the first lockdown of the Corona I had to sit at home and watch all the trackers’ movies, skits and commercials, in order to complete the scripts. So while all of Israel groaned, I enjoyed every moment. The world is shut down, so we laugh. In the end we managed to shoot between the closures, and after a long process of editing here it is.
But the biggest difficulty in working on the series was content. From the first moment we decided not to create a typical series based on chronology and the lives of the heroes, but to examine essential issues in Israeli society through the investigative work. Precisely because the trackers were so Israeli. We examined key issues such as Mizrahim-Ashkenazim, the figure of the man and the woman, the sanctity of security and the Israeli obsession with not going out as a sucker. However, the Israeli reality was changing all the time, and the fear was that the discussion of the experimental piece (the band broke up in 2000) would be less and less relevant. But as soon as we entered the editing room, we realized that even sketches that the trackers created in the late 1960s are still super relevant to Israel 2023. Just think of the legendary character of Barbara Kerker, who was a Tel Aviv hipster already in 1980.
It was a long and wonderful journey, which ended – in another kind of miracle – exactly in the 60th year of the founding of the trackers.
The series “The Chopchik of the Kettle” will be broadcast on Hot 8 and Bis Israeli starting from 2.4.23