Coming never? OR “The Producers” and the pols
With Televisa, TV Azteca, Netflicks, ClaroVision, and even the theater chain Cinemex, having all given a pass to the chance to air “Populismo en América Latina” the advertising that has been seen in recent days on the sides of Mexico City buses may have been a tad premature.
Assumed to have been financed by Carlos Salinas and Claudio X. Gonzales, allegedly with a 100 million peso budget ($US 5.4 million), the would-be documentary (meant, apparently, to show Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the “tradition” of Juan Domingo Peron, Hugo Chavez and Lula da Silva … and is that bad?) was entrusted to producer Javier García, García had a minor acting career, mostly in his filmsn he also produced: the most recent being “Cazador de narcos”. If you don’t remember that 2003 release, you’re not alone. Low budget, even by Mexican standards, cop thrillers would seem to have been more up García’s alley than documentaries. Spanish director Enelio Farina maybe has a little more experience with the genre… he’s apparently well-known for producing television commercials.
Where did we go right?
Admittedly, Mexfiles knows nothing about the movie biz, but somehow, one doubts smart guys like Salinas and Gonzales would have dropped this much money on what appears to have been a start-up production company (La Division) run by people with this particular “skill set” behind them. Either the budget is highly inflated or — with Salinas and Gonzales reflexively seen as the villains behind any anti-AMLO project of any magnitude — the project was never intended to actually be shown. Both seem reasonable. An inflated production budget for a dog of a show ( a la “The Producers“) could be profitable not only for the producers themselves, but for anyone looking to make money disappear. And, assuming the costs were more reasonable, the attempt to create an image of AMLO as an intolerant, wannabe censor and tyrant, would be a relatively inexpensive way to get around pesky election laws about negative advertising and outright slander for the “any neoliberal will do, but above all stop AMLO” political class.
Neither Televisa nor TV Azteca (our two major television networks), neither of which has ever shown any indication of giving AMLO even the benefit of the doubt in their news coverage, having turned the “documentary series” down, one is dubious that, as AMLO claims, it shows the networks have some ethical standards hitherto unknown. Maybe they do, but maybe the thing is a dog, and the networks aren’t about to turn off even more audience than they have already lost to Clarovision and Netflicks. Which didn’t want it either. If Salinas and Gonzales (or whoever the wizards behind the curtain might be) really want to get this into the public, they might take a cue from the Mexican political thriller “Ingobernable” in which the protagonists turn to Tepito’s thriving pirate CD industry to get their message to the public. But in that story, the plan was to force the mainstream media to report what people have seen. Here, the plan is to create a news event over what is unseen. Perhaps because it doesn’t show anything worth seeing?
Sources:
Regeneracíon, “Salinas pagó 100 mpd por serie de ‘populismo’ y televisoras no la quieren: AMLO” 22 April 2018.
“Javier García”, IMDB.com.
El Finanaciero, “Ésta es la productora detrás de la serie ‘Populismo en América Latina”“, 27 April 2018.
Sin Embargo, “Una élite lanzó el “todos contra AMLO”, dicen analistas políticos; tienen sus dudas que funcione“, 26 April 2018.
SDPNoticias, “AMLO presiona para que no se transmita nuestro trabajo: Productores de serie sobre “populismo“, 26 April 2018.
Dirs-n-Dops, the Filmmakers Industry, “Enelio Farina“
The Mex Files 