When Marco Ferrari was born 22 years ago, Alejandro Doria was embraced by such a feeling that the son of his great friend Gustavo became his beloved grandson at the same time.. It was thus that the director of the unforgettable film Waiting for the Float, who died exactly 15 years ago, declared Marco, who was only 7 years old at the time, to be the absolute heir of all of his intellectual production.
Until he came of age, Gustavo and his mother Marina, who live in Buenos Aires, They ensured the rights of Marco, who resides in Bariloche, and they assure that they never had problems with that issue. Although there is always a first time.
The new theatrical version of Waiting for the Carriage that premiered in April of this year at the Broadway theater in Buenos Aires, According to the RGB production company owned by Gustavo Yanquelevich, it is based only on the original script by Jacobo Langsner, which dates back to 1962. The film version that Doria directed and which was filmed in 1985, has contributions in the director’s own script and that they somehow enrich the original.
Marco and his parents maintain that the current staging of Waiting for the Float, directed by Ciro Zorzoli, is not based on Langsner’s original book, but in the script that Doria and Langsner wrote for the remembered and wonderful film.
“Marina and I decided to go see the play. We contacted the production, they left them the tickets and before the performance I had a talk with Yanquelevich, where I told him that my son Marco was the heir to Alejandro’s intellectual rights. After seeing it we confirmed that the work is inspired by the film script,” tells to “Black river” Gustavo Ferrari, former actor and currently theater producer, born in General Roca, where he spent his entire childhood and adolescence before leaving for Buenos Aires when he was 19 years old. Today he is 57.
“I told Gustavo (Yanquelevich) that in our opinion the work is closely related to what Alejandro created. In order not to have an argument between us, I suggested doing what Ale would have done if he were alive: resort to the institutions that protect these rights.”
Thus, Gustavo and Marina, representing Marco, presented the case to Argentores., the civil association for collective management of copyright, with a mutual and professional character, made up of Argentine authors of theater, film, television, radio, and all audiovisual platforms. The group is the one who also controls that what the resolutions indicate for each case is paid.
Thus, Argentores sent an inspector to see the play being presented on Broadway to verify the viability of the claim, and the verdict was final. In the theatrical piece produced by RGB, elements from the film are clearly used, so the corresponding rights had to be paid.
According to the email sent to Ferrari by Argentores and to which he had access Black riverthe civil association determined that the producer “You must pay the heir to the rights of Ricardo Guillermo Rosales (real name of Alejandro Doria) 2.5% of the price of each ticket sold.””. The production company must deposit this deduction in Argentores, which will then be forwarded to the authors.
According to Argentores, the other beneficiaries are Israel Jacobo Langsner (10% for each ticket sold) and Marcelo Katz, for the original music included in the play (2.5%).
Ferrari’s arguments point out, for example, that in the film book, Dolina decides that the character of Mamá Cora, played by Antonio Gasalla, in complicity with the public, is alive while the rest of the characters believe her to be dead. In the work produced by Yanquelevich, Martín Campilongo (Campi) plays the role of the central character.
In the original setting written by Langsner, Mama Cora was personified by a woman, and She only appeared at the beginning and end of the play, so the viewer and family members are under the same uncertainty about the grandmother’s fate.
The music from the film is also used at the entrance to the theater on Corrientes Street and in the performance some of the phrases that were popularized in Doria’s film are used, like the one immortalized by the character of Elvira, played by China Zorrilla: “I make ravioli… she makes ravioli”. In the play in question, Paola Barrientos takes China as a performance model and recalls the phrase that the audience in the room is responsible for completing.
Ferrari marks the difference with the theatrical production premiered in 2016, in Mar del Plata, in which Leonor Manso was based on Langsner’s original text, where Mama Cora appears at the beginning of the play and at the end, and the action takes place carried out in the same stage space.
These days Gustavo and Marina are with Marco in Bariloche waiting for a quick and friendly solution regarding the intellectual authorship rights that Doria, before leaving, left her grandson of the heart.
