Beto Silva, former member of Casseta & Planeta, reflects on Brazilian life and mass communication in a new book

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In the background we have the behind-the-scenes of audiovisual production with all its implications. The producer always believes that the works should be simple and popular in order to have a good box office or audience. “Copyright cannot be established here,” says one. Screenwriters want to think about reality and at the same time have fun. The audience can laugh to make the team happy or remain silent to scare everyone.

Guto is almost never able to say what he’s thinking and ends up creating two catchphrases. He says it’s fun when a movie isn’t good. He says it’s intense when it comes to drama, and this intensity can be interpreted in many ways to whoever hears the commentary.

In “My Father’s Basin,” which has just arrived in bookstores, the reader is confronted with the fact that laughter is also productive and, as such, often born of complex and difficult conflicts. Author Beto Silva knows the subject well. He is a comedian, actor, screenwriter, and writer. For almost 20 years, he wrote and acted in “Casseta & Planeta Urgente”, a very successful program on TV Globo between 1992 and 2010. As a writer, he has published five books, including “Júlio Disappeared” (2005) and “A Joke That Could Save Your Life” (2008).

“My Father’s Swimming Pool” draws attention to the irony with which it treats professional and emotional situations, as well as to satirical and creative language. When referring to his marriage, for example, Goto mentions that the decline in ratings for the TV show he worked on may have contributed to the decline in ratings for his wedding.

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It means two expressions. The first is “A Place in the Sun.” “Maybe this is great in American cinema, where stories are set in cold places and having a place in the sun is good,” he says. “But in Brazil, if I went looking for a place in the sun, I would have to use a lot of sunscreen!” Between the comings and goings of his career, the protagonist ends up realizing that a place in the sun could leave him badly burned. The second is the “window of opportunity.” According to him, no one says on which floor of the building a person is located: “The window of opportunity only works if we are on the ground floor, otherwise Babaw!”

The protagonist is a great flirt, enchanted by Martinha, Camila, Thaïs and many others who occupy his bed and his imagination. But romantic relationships can give you pleasure and headaches.

Antonio is Goto’s 5-year-old son, with whom he has a very close relationship and ends up, as many children do, teaching his father life lessons.

As the novel progresses, we delve deeper into the family life of the protagonist. Mother Doña Selma tries to convince her son to get money from his father, who simply disappeared. Here we encounter one of the most symbolic characters in the narrative. His father has disappeared, changed his identity, destroyed his company, and gone to live in Argentina, and Guto finds himself faced with a mystery as he tries to find him. To solve these and other questions, he contacts a detective named Leomir and comments: “Who takes someone named Leomir seriously?”

Beto Silva does not miss the opportunity to exercise his sense of humor often. Faced with his many dilemmas, Guto comments: “When we have to think before making a decision, the question keeps running through our heads, and he acts as if he were a lazy man lying on other people’s beds, throwing the blanket on the floor and still doing it, making a mess of everything and leaving the sheet full of cookie crumbs.”

Ultimately, we are faced with a novel that in many ways aims to make people laugh, and is at the same time a reflection of Brazilian life and mass communication, in all its complexity.

Elias Fajardo is a writer

“My dad’s swimming pool.”