By Mariana Marcaletti,

It was a long time ago that Gastón Pauls was just a pretty face, infatuating teenage girls with his role on Montaña Rusa TV show. From that moment on, his career took an unexpected turn: he travelled to the Balkans, in the middle of nowhere, to perform in the film Territorio Comanche, nothing like what he had done before.
This decision would mark his entire professional career - Pauls is permanently intent on experimenting with the concerns that come to his mind.

"The challenge, for me, is how to convey my convictions about life in a story. How can my stories contribute to make the world a place I imagine as possible? I would like my programmes to be connected with the world I dream of," he says in an interview with the Herald.

In order to achieve this dream, he plays several roles - acting, directing, writing, hosting TV programmes - with his production company Rosstoc, founded five years ago. His firm has financed several documentaries, such as Apache and Padre Mujica, the journalistic show Humanos en el camino and the avant-garde comedy Todos contra Juan, a fiction piece about an actor who succeeded in a television show for teenagers (La vida es un juego) 15 years back but is currently unemployed, and spends his days longing for his long-lost, ephemeral fame.

Admitting the similarities between himself and his character, Gastón Pauls feels free to talk about the sequel of Todos contra Juan, the world of television and actors' egos, the problems entailed in leading a production company, as well as the risks and possibilities it offers. Unlike other production companies grounded on innovation but which ended up producing and broadcasting more mainstream, Rosstoc claims to be a space for experimentation. How can Rosstoc's products find a slot in television? Is it possible to stick to one's own way, beliefs and dictums without coming to a commercial standstill? Furthermore, which elements make his programmes different from the rest? Pauls confesses his thoughts and ambitions, as well as the lingering on in his mind, the initiatives waiting to materialize and what he hasn't spoken about before.

Word has it that you're travelling to New York to shoot the sequel of Todos contra Juan.
Not really! I wish we could. (Screen writer and director) Gabriel Nesci and I get together three or four hours a day to work on the second part of Todos contra Juan. A few days ago, his phone rang, and a magazine reporter enquired about this supposed trip to New York. No such plans! Anyway, it was an idea already we'd been turning over in our heads, we somehow had this idea of having Juan take off to the First World of art, television and cinema. For now, however, it's not going to happen. We're working on the script, we have already written four episodes. Juan has settled in BA and can't afford a trip to New York.

Are you going to talk about sequels in Todos contra Juan 2?
I would like to reflect on sequels in this second part, playing with the situation that Gabriel and I are experimenting as authors, and take it to fiction. The problems we are facing as creators can be reflected in the story. I am interested in telling what the world of an actor is like, and what he must go through after achieving success. Juan's life is about this: exploring what comes next. Is there life after success? In this sequel we deal with the obstacles faced by actors, what happens to an actor when he has to appear in a sequel? What the audience feels, what expectations it has. If the first part is good, then the sequel must be even better. If the first part is excellent, then the sequel must be brilliant.

So, Juan is asked to appear in a sequel of La vida es un juego...
We haven't decided yet. I wouldn't like to reveal a lot because we are still in the middle of the creative process, we are developing the structure of the story, the main traits of the programme. Although we have written just four episodes, we constantly need to hark back to the previous ones. For example, today we revised episode number two. We modified some elements we didn't quite like, and even some instrumental elements. Last week, we fully changed part of an episode we weren't quite pleased with. We are used to rewriting from the first scene to the last, we spend hours analyzing and giving the final touches to a story. And new ideas come up all the time; it's fun, working together.

What's it like, working with Gabriel Nesci?
Working together, for us, is like a couple making love: one of us says something useful for the final result; sometimes, it is him who comes up with an idea, other times it's me who come up with new concepts. Gabriel has the final word on the dialogue, but all are based on rigid structures developed by the two of us. Our first task is jotting down our ideas, then Gabriel writes a summary and puts some sort of order in the chain of events. Only then do we develop the scenes, and then Gabriel adds the dialogue lines. After that, we both do a general revision.

Which are the similarities and differences between Juan Peruggia and Gastón Pauls?
There are a lot of coincidences. I was lucky because I had the chance to keep on working. Or perhaps it was fate, maybe it was God's will, or maybe I found a way to keep doing what I like. On the contrary, Juan is unable to find his way, and this is where our roads diverge. The two of us are performers: Juan was Paco in La vida es un juego, and I was Alejandro in Montaña rusa. Both programmes were smash hits with young audiences. We were young and successful, we were 22 years old and already famous. There are certainly a lot of anecdotes included in the script that were my own - situations with colleagues, problems with star billing, actors spelling the beans on how many girls they laid... As for myself, I have often been mistaken for somebody else. As Juan, I have been mistaken for (actors) Pablo Rago and Pablo Echarri... When I used to go out with Nancy (Dupláa), back in 1995, we used to holiday in (the coastal resort of) Valeria del Mar; we were mistaken as if we were Fernán Mirás and Cecilia Dopazo...

Why do you make fun of the world of actors and television in Todos contra Juan?
Because I see a lot of stuff, things that happen and things that don't. I get to see a lot of poseurs, people who who spend their time posing as extraordinary people. However, when the cameras are off, you find they' re full of shit or harmful. I like to take a good laugh, taking on their oversized egos. In general, artists' egoes are oversized. I like the idea of Juan believing he is number one, but Juan allows me to laugh about myself, about people who believe in fame, glory and glamour. In Todos contra Juan there is criticism about television, of course. But what I like most about this critical stance is that it is the kind of comedy that doesn't point an accusing finger. We laugh about it all in a relaxed manner. Todos contra Juan is heavy with contextual references. If you forget about the funny elements, then you can see that there's a sad story underlying Todos contra Juan. It's about somebody who was once successful and then lost it. He never gets it back, and he is unable to make a living doing what he likes, there's no triumph in his choice, his is just another gray life. It can happen to anybody who has a parallel profession or craft. From the beginning, I wanted Todos contra Juan to be about television as a medium, with situations office employees, writers, road sweepers may identify with, never passing judgement on the importance of their work. On the contrary, we're all in the same place, we all face the same problem: we would like to do well in what we do.

Is this what Rosstoc is after? I mean, producing and releasing your own programmes, finding your own way...
Yes, but it's not easy. Well, working at a production company you realize how difficult it is. I am happy when I launch products I'm happy about. I wish I could fully agree with a programme's contents. But I don't work on my own, there's a lot of people involved. Sometimes, watching the rushes on the screen, I am surprised to find that there are things I would have done differently. But it's OK, we work all together and I respect other people's decisions. Luckily, so far I haven't watched anything I would disagree as far as ideology is concerned. I wish I could do more experimenting, I am interested in playing, tasting, making mistakes, learning. We screw everyday and that's cool. Of course, I would love things to run smoothly, but I wouldn't do anything I don't agree with in order to achieve success.

Is experimentation Rosstoc's trademark because it is a young company? What happens as time goes by and a buddying company that used to be innovative comes to a standstill?
Frankly, I wish Rosstoc would remain forever young and experimental in nature. I hope this doesn't happen to me in real life, either. If the creative process is comes to a standstill, it is affected by bourgeois ideology. It's as though we all felt at ease with what we have, earning more and more money. I intend Rosstoc to remain a space for experimentation. My daughter was born four months ago. A few days after coming into this world she tried different ways of breathing, because she was searching for her own way of breathing. I hope Rosstoc doesn't lose this kind of spiritual search.

Do you think your show Mitos is also experimental in nature?
Mitos is also very experimental. It is based on an anecdote told by an acquaintance who dreamt of fulfilling his teenage sexual fantasies, some of them came true. (Actor) Germán Palacios' character decides to do that. Apart from a comedy, this show has a dark side, it's a complex story. Suddenly, after finding out that his wife cheats on him, he realizes that he is a wealthy man who could have it all but but has nothing. Looking for other women, he tries to fulfil his secret desires. Mitos is experimental because it's unlike any show being aired on television today. We are plunging into quite different waters.

Which myths does your programme attempt to debunk?
The main one: "money is tantamount to happiness". Mitos is a portrait of certain people in the world, people who are rich and yet think their life is not enough. Many businessmen told me they identified with the show. There is something addictive in the lead character, I don't know what the future holds in store for him, not even himself knows where he is going to. The thing that, back in the 80s, would turn us on, now appear to under a different guise, that's why we show different aspects of his life. He gets to know women in their everyday life, not as the sex objects they are used to be treated as.

No more sex objects then...
Yes... (Model/actress) Susana Romero was my teenage fantasy, she was my dream, I fell all over for her. When I finished watching the first episode, I called her to congratulate her and Susana, happy and crying, told me, "Thank you, this is going to save me years of therapy. Knowing that I can do something more than exhibiting my body is great." It was moving. I felt happy too, because without intending to I made somebody feel better. That's cool.

In Todos contra Juan and in Mitos, there is a combination of fiction and reality. How do you deal with both registers, and what is their connection like?
Ever since I was a little boy, I was always concerned about the moment before being photographed. I once directed a short about how faces change, how people modify their expression when they're aware they're about to be photographed. Nobody is the same when a camera is on: they choose their best profile, put a special face on. When a camera intervenes, fiction shows up, something is not quite what it used to be like. In programs like Humanos en el camino or Ser urbano I was myself, I wasn't performing for the camera, but I was aware that it was there. The people I interviewed were also aware of the camera's presence, and it did make a difference, they behaved differently with the device on and off. For instance, I once talked to a mother crying her heart out for her son's drug addiction, and when the camera went off, she asked me for an autograph. What a camera is able to generate is incredible. The true challenge, then, is maintaining the spirit and the essence of the interviewees intact. I mean, if you're a torturer, don't go out on TV pretending to care forfor human rights. I've known people who do.

Now that you mention Ser Urbano and Humanos en el camino, why do you think that the representation of the lower classes is mostly to be found in in journalistic programmes and not in fictional products, like as telenovelas or serials?
It's crazy. For a long time, I have felt like doing something like this, and it's one of my pet projects. One of them is about a family of Bolivian immigrants who live in an extremely poor neighbourhood; this story I would like to tell for real, based on actual facts. Here at Rosstoc, there's a similar project concerning youths, because other shows present audiences with a a rosy idea of youth, which doesn't exist in real life: there's violence, human rights violations, social exclusion, and many other problems. Above all the funny and nice comments about emos, floggers, the new social networking television programme like to make fun of. It only goes to prove that, with some exceptions, humans never learn. For instance, I've seen 40-ear-old men mocking 15-year old kids. Isn't it about the same situation when they, these middle-aged men would not be allowed to wear their hair long? Isn't this the same attitude we had to take from adults? I mean, the kind of violence suffered by these kids is reflected in their social behaviour. Justices now want to lower the accountability age for for minors. forgetting that kids repeating what they see. They live in a violent world, where people don't give a damn about others. Adults sell drugs, beat one other, and so kids, seeing all this, imitate their actions. Human beings, like animals, will repeat, imitate the conduct they see.

Will these two ideas materialize as works of fiction?
I've always thought about them as fiction TV shows. I would like to tell the stories I'm familiar with, but I certainly wouldn't use the testimonies from Humanos en el camino and create fiction works out of them. Certain everyday experiences can be turned into proper material for fiction, it would be a way to get social issues closer to people. Journalistic programmes will often represent people as though they were . Many years ago, I wrote a romantic piece with twelve love stories taking place in different places:, posh Recoleta, a shanty town, an elderly people's home. In general, the lower classes are represented as, for example, maids on telenovelas, ambitious, greedy young women bent on climbing the social ladder.

Is it hard to find financing for these projects?
It's complex. Now that I find myself in the role of producer, I can see the difficulties involved in finding commercially financing. First of all, you need the money, and then you have to find TV programmers rave enough to broadcast this stuff.
Given the current scenario and the cost of creating works of fiction, producers resort to product placement and international sales to make their product commercially feasible. Is this the case with Rosstoc?
We coproduced Todos contra Juan with Fox, which allowed us to sell it internationally: the format was purchased by companies from Chile, Canada, the US, Italy, and Spain. Diego Luna is set to star in the Mexican version. Our canned version was broadcast on DirecTV satellite television, and it will be broadcast all over Latin America.

Was Todos contra Juan profitable?
When it comes to production, many things have to be considered. The first season of Todos contra Juan was a loss of money, for several reasons: network channels such as Telefé were expected to air it, but it fell through. The product was finally purchased by by América Television, which paid paid a lot less, I invested a lot of money in it... As for product placement, it's a necessary evil. Now that I am working on a sequel, we need sponsors. The challenge is how to reach a balance, how to strike the right combination? Are we willing to include extra ads to finance a programme with, do we a programme with specific advertisers in mind? I prefer coming up with a show and then finding the way to carry on with it, to keep on producing.

What about the internet? On Myspace Todos contra Juan was a huge success, the number of hits was similar to 20 points viewership ratings points on network TV...
Internet is a new space, it's pretty virgin in some aspects, it hasn't been fully developed by producing companies yet, except for some Internet-savvy people who are examining ways to make the Internet profitable. To me, it is a space for experimentation and new developments, it can be a great platform for launching new programmes. In our case, the web proved useful.

How do you deal with competition?
On television, the main rule is: success, success, success, at any cost. Frankly, it's not what we're after, we are not too concerned about viewership rating points and that kind of stuff. Of course, you need audience support, but there are programmes which clearly don't deserve to be popular and yet they are. For instance, if I film a toilet and people using this, it's sure to be popular. The bottom line is, higher rating points are not that difficult to get. It's got nothing to do with intellectual level or depth, I really don't think so. I wish we'd achieved something more complex with our show: in certain kind of works, intelligence is appreciated by a lot of people. It's difficult, though. So far, I don't see my programmes scoring 40 points in viewership ratings. It all comes down to priorities, viewership ratings are clearly not on our agenda.

where & when

Todos contra Juan: www.myspace.com/todoscontrajuan; Mitos: Wed 10.30pm on América Television, Channel 11.

Profile: Gastón Pauls

n Montaña rusa (1994/1995). "The first time (teen soap) Montaña rusa aired, I watched myself and was moved, I told myself, 'That's me, I earned it myself, I didn't steal it from anybody, it was hard, I had to study, I full full of fear but I eventually made it'".
n Territorio Comanche (1996). Based on the novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. "It was my first film abroad, in the former Yugoslavia. I remember myself boarding a plane, my mum saying goodbye. I was popular here on account of Montaña rusa, but over there I was a complete stranger. It was an important decision of my life, because it defined my film career." After that, he appeared in, among other films, Lucho Bendler's Felicidades, Fabián Bielinsky's Nueve reinas, and Juan Villegas' little seen but critically acclaimed Sábado.
n Ser urbano (2003. "It was a change in my life. Sebastián De Caro recently reminded me that, when we were queuing for the casting call for Montaña Rusa, I told him I would like to do something in the line of (deceased journalist) Fabián Polosecki's programmes El otro lado and El Visitante. Somehow, I was searching for this kind of thing. I am open to read the signs that life puts before my eyes".
n Nat Geo / Encuentro (2009). At present, Pauls hosts two television programmes: La muerte del universo (National Geographic, 10pm, Sundays), and Mejor hablar de ciertas cosas (Encuentro, Mon to Fri 6pm). "Canal Encuentro will soon air Al pueblo argentino, salud! It's about health and its target audience are teens."
n Ciega a citas. "It will air on Channel 7, our first daily show. It will be directed by Juan Taratutto and written by Socias' screenwriter Marta Betoldi. We're still in the process of casting, no name has been confirmed yet. Ciega a citas will start shooting at the same time as Todos contra Juan, late August, early September. Ciega a citas is based on a blog which then became a book. It's something generational, with thirtysomething women obsessed with getting what they're expected to at her age. What society expects from her is to be married with children. There is social pressure to deal with. If she fails to comply, she will become a spinster."
n Padre Mujica. "I have been shooting material for this documentary for the last four years. In the beginning, it was going to be just a documentary, then I added fiction. There are many hours of footage with interviews with Padre Mujica's brother, his sister, his friends, the close friend (Ricardo Capelli) who was with him when Mujica died. Mujica was a wealthy young man who embraced the cause of the poor, which I think is moving."
n Apache. "We are planning a fiction movie about the life of (soccer player) Carlos Tévez, starring himself and to be directed by Adrián Caetano. It will be about Tévez's life, from his childhood to the present".
n Feo. "It's the life of somebody regarded as ugly by social standards. A 30-year old man comes up with this idea of organizing a revolution of the ugly, he is their leader".
n Dar la palabra. "We are publishing the second edition of a book called Dar la palabra, a compilation of short stories written by State-run school children from all over Argentina; there's also productions from Chile and Uruguay. Natalia Oreiro is in charge in her native Uruguay, while Chile's Benjamín Vicuña, a Unicef ambassador, is the programme's face in Chile. Proceeds from the book will be going to Unicef.
n Casa de la cultura de la calle. "The foundation is doing great. Five years ago, a homeless kid, Lucho, took up drama lessons in the house and now he teaches a literary workshop. This year we'll be releasing an album of lullabies written by these kids, with such solo musicians as Fito Páez, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Vicentico, Ismael Serrano, Caetano Veloso, Pedro Aznar, and many more. On November 17, several of them will perform live concert at Paseo La Plaza in downtown BA, and the children too will stage a drama show." For further details, check out the Foundation's website.
Website: www.cculturadelacalle.org.ar

Gastón Pauls in films

In Pauls' view, being an actor entails feeling as though you were somebody else. "When, as an actor, you create a character, you must defend him. If you play a villain,there must be an iternal logic to it, there must be something he believes in. I don't villains as having one single facet, bad guys have their reasons too, and their decisions are sometimes valid, even if history judges them as bad".

nSteven Soderbergh's Che Part Two: Guerrilla. "I played Ciro Bustos. When I accepted the script I knew little about him, all I knew was that he had betrayed Che. After accepting the role, when I learnt about the rest of the cast I did a lot of research, watched videos, read books, and I had this new vision of the historical facts. I talked to Ciro Bustos himself, who lives in Sweden, and he told me that there was another story that never got told. From my position - because I had to respect the author and couldn't make any changes - I somehow tried to express my own point of view. I still haven't seen the movie, so I don't know what's been left in and what's been left out. When he is with the military, Ciro draws the guerrillas and Che. The official version has it that Bustos' drawings led the military to Che's hideout. As an actor, what I was able to do was weep, drawing and weeping at the same time."

nTristán Bauer's Iluminados por el fuego. "My character, Esteban Leguizamón, embodies three real people: Edgardo Esteban, the book's writer, and other two former soldiers. Other than this character, I tried to tell the story of 10,000 men who went to war. Before principal photography began, I talked to some 500 soldiers. Before shooting began, Edgardo Esteban told me that, if only for seven seconds, I managed to convey the gaze of a former soldier, then the role was a triumph. On the day the film was released, Edgardo and I found ourselves crying our hearts out: he told me I had actually achieved one hour and a half of that gaze. I didn't care about anything else, awards or critical praise, most important of all was Edgardo's opinion."