Pluton Verbenero -Alex de la Iglesia (2008)

[bloknotise]

Diffusion demain soir en Espagne de la nouvelle série de science fiction

réalisée par Alex "god of the cinema" de la Iglesia

 

 

September 22: Alex de la Iglesia talks his new TV series

 

Following his TV debut with the telemovie THE BABY’S ROOM (part of the 6 FILMS TO KEEP YOU AWAKE that hit U.S. DVD recently via Lionsgate), Spanish genre specialist Alex de la Iglesia returns to the medium with PLUTÓN VERBENERO, which he describes as “the first ever sci-fi sitcom made in Spain.” Comprised of 26 35-minute episodes, PLUTÓN kicks off in the year 2530 as Macaulay Culkin III, President of the United States of the World, sends Pluton BRB Nero, a starship crewed by Spaniards under the command of Space Marine Valladares, on an intergalactic quest to find an inhabitable planet after every square inch of the Earth’s surface has been built over by property developers.

 

Episode one is scheduled to hit the airwaves September 24 on Spain’s public channel TVE2—and it has taken the director of such notable features as THE DAY OF THE BEAST and LA COMUNIDAD some three years to get this far. “TVE2 isn’t paying much,” he tells Fango, “but they’ve allowed me total freedom, and they accepted scripts that would never have been greenlighted by any other [free terrestrial] channel. They’re all so paranoid about losing their audience share to go with anything remotely transgressive.”

 

PLUTÓN VERBENERO’s cast includes well-known Spanish small-screen performers Antonio Gil, Carlos Areces, Enrique Martinez, Manuel Tallafé and the only female on board, Carolina Bang (who plays an android). The title is a play on words: Putón is a form of puta, meaning prostitute, and the expression Putón Verbenero (from verbena—dancing in the streets) is a pejorative term for a “loose” woman; Pluton is the planet Pluto. Inevitably, the show’s details conjure up memories of de la Iglesia’s debut feature ACCIÓN MUTANTE, which was a big hit in 1993 and pretty much kick-started the modern resurgence in Spanish genre filmmaking. TVE2’s promo trailer (with the voiceover “Their mission is to save mankind. The question is, who will save us from them?”) bears more than a passing resemblance to MUTANTE’s sets and props, while the scenario sounds like more in the same vein.

 

De la Iglesia shared script duties on PLUTÓN VERBENERO with longtime creative partner Jorge Guerricaechevarría as well as Pepón Montero and Juan Maidagan—two of the writing team behind the hit TV comedy CAMERA CAFÉ. He promises “embarrassing situations, absurd sets, ridiculous aliens, gratuitous ray-gun massacres, totally unrealistic characters and situations and, above all, absolutely no twee, lovey-dovey family relationships or funny kids!” —Mike Hodges