Diario Libre publishes an interview with Raymond and Miguel, two of the actors in the movie “Perico Ripiao” today, Monday 12 November, where they discuss their new movie, Lotoman 2.0. Raymond and Miguel describe themselves as two fairly normal husbands who have been married to the same wives for many years.
Even so, it’s very difficult to be normal, especially when they go out and their fans think they should always be acting. “When you’re out and about and people see you, the first thing they say is “You should be laughing!” although you haven’t done anything funny. And if you’re in a supermarket, you’re looking at a can of milk and people expect you to laugh,” said Miguel, “you laugh at those prices!” causing a big laugh.
Asking about the percentage of improvisation in their acts, Raymond answered: “We are improvisers first and foremost. When you make a movie, in our case where we’re not actors n we’re lucky to be given the opportunity to work in a production – the producers give us freedom to do it our own way, because if not, we would no longer be us. We have a great team on the program, and we all present our ideas one day earlier.”
Raymond and Miguel broke through to the movies with “Perico Ripiao”. “Angel Muniz called and asked me: “I have a movie role for a ‘guira’ player, do you know how to play the guira?” (The cylindrical grater played in merengue groups) “‘Of course I do!’ I told him, without knowing how to play it. I could not turn down this chance to get into the movies. After we read through the script I told him “I don’t know how to play the guira!” They had to get me a teacher and even so they had to dub it all,” said Raymond.
Miguel acknowledged: “Perico Ripiao has been the spearhead, the benchmark for actors on how to make Dominican movies. People still keep watching it. We believe we have made very good productions, of very good quality. But they have still not overtaken Perico Ripiao as far as audience numbers go,” he said.
http://www.diariolibre.com/dlenglish/2012/11/12/i359310_humor-what-gets-people-the-movies-live-violence-every-day.html