Berto Romero has not invented fine irony. Neither Tuesday and Thirteen the phone calls with Encarna’s sketch. Nor were Faemino and Cansado the founders of surreal humor. And what the Comedy Club did was copy Gila’s way of making people laugh: the satirical monologue. All of them drink from the sources of the teacher of teachers, considered by themselves as the great reference of laughter, the pioneer of intelligent humor.
Miguel Gila was born on March 12, 1919 and worked from a very young age, due to the economic difficulties of his family, in disparate trades. When the Civil War broke out, as a member of the Unified Socialist Youth, he enlisted as a volunteerin July 1936 in Lister’s Fifth Regiment.
Although Gila is very famous in Spain for his monologues with the telephone, he had a lesser-known facet: that of a satirical cartoonist , having drawn and written scripts for the mythical magazine La Codorniz, among others. He also made movies as an actor and screenwriter both in Spain and in his Argentine exile, TV series and has published 12 books.
The most frequent way of expressing his humor was through figurative dialogues (in reality, monologues) on the telephone, whose naive costumbrismo sometimes touched on surrealism. It should be noted that he did not use profanity or polemic words. In his fake telephone dialogues, he had a crutch that went down in history: “Let him get on!”.
He died in 2001 in Barcelona, due to respiratory failure due to a chronic lung disease he suffered from.
Next, you can enjoy his nine best monologues and the spectacular commercial that Campofrio shot with his legacy as leitmotiv:
1. “Is the enemy
“
Perhaps the most remembered of all both by the public and by other comedians. From Buenafuente to Flo passing through Jose Mota they have made reference to this genius of a Gila in a state of grace.
Gila Monologue ‘War’
2. The Tourists
Another hilarious Gila moment is when he makes a scathing criticism of the tourist projectionfrom Spain with this magnificent monologue, in which he puts on a beret and acts as a villager to the general laughter of the respectable.
Monologue Gila ‘The tourists’
3. “I’ve bought a flat”
Here the master of humor criticizes the doggy conditions that banks put on people who ask for a mortgage and that fervor that many families have for going to live in the outskirts of the big city and then spend half their lives on public transport or riding in the car. Quality of life
Monologue Gila “I bought a flat”
4. “When I was born”
This is another Gila mythical monologue with phrases repeated from generation to generation in meetings with friends, family, at work or in an individual exercise just to smile. “Mama, I was born,” Miguelito said when he was born. And his mother replied: “May it be the last time you are born alone” . And his aunt died because she started pulling a stepfather and she broke all. Insuperable.
5. The trips and their inconveniences
Gila made monologues about her until the last days of her life. If he knew something, that he knew a lot about many things as a great observer of reality that he was, it was travel, because he traveled all over Spain and part of Latin America during his intense life trajectory. This hilarious speech talks about those little annoyances that travel entailsin the different means of locomotion.
Travel and its inconveniences
6. Conference from Africa
“The crocodile is like your bag, but without handles”. The adventures of a Spanish hick in the middle of the savannah. So we could title this great monologue by Miguel Gila.
7. My wife on the phone
“My mother-in-law is a seal with a mustache… who gives you a kiss and brushes your suit.” One joke after another about her relative and her other family discomforts.
8. Gila at school
The first comedian did not only do monologues. In this performance on TVE, he is accompanied by an actress who plays a stuffy teacher and her classmates. Miguel plays a donkey and donkey boy.
9. Bank mates
Another sketch in which Gila is not alone. She uses a young man sitting next to her to put the black blood on him with his tribulations of talking Charlot .
10. The Campofrio ad A script by theMcCann Erickson
advertising agency , directed by Alex de la Iglesia and the endorsement of Malena, the daughter of comedian Miguel Gila, were the basis for the Comicos ad, one of the most exciting spots that have been made in Spain in the 21st century.
It is a tribute to the figure of Gila who brought together couples who meet again, such as Tuesday and 13, Esteso and Pajares or the Hurtado sisters ; comedians like Anabel Alonso, Chiquito de la Calzada, Los Morancos, Juan Luis Cano -from Gomaespuma-,
Fofito, Mustache Arrocet , Pepe Carabias, Anabel Alonso or Toni Antonio; to more current comedians such as Santiago Segura, Florentino or El Mago More, and the graphic humorist Forges.
The ad, produced by La Joya , was recorded at Finca el Campillo, near El Escorial, in Madrid. The reunions that can be seen before the camera took place off-lens before filming began, when Josema and Millan from Martes y 13, on the one hand, and Andres Pajares and Fernando Esteso, on the other, met at the scene of filming.
Two couples who have written rivers of ink about how badly they got along and the roughness of the end of their professional relationships. Hence the strong emotions that this great short film highlighted, which in a way also served as reconciliation. Let nothing take away our way of enjoying life.
