On January 22, 2012, like every Sunday, millions of people turned on the television after ten in the evening to see the outcome of the Melate, a popular numerical draw of the Mexican National Lottery known for offering million-dollar purses to its winners. The winning numbers that night were 06, 12, 15, 24, 25 and 49 and 09, 20, 36, 51, 53 and 54. What no one knew was that it was a fraud in which a group of Public Assistance Forecasting employees stole 110 million pesos (just over six million dollars) in a perfectly planned plot. Beats me yesfrom producer Rodrigo Santos, is a new series now available on Netflix that takes this real event as inspiration to fictionalize a behind-the-scenes look at this criminal coup hatched in just eight seconds.
Santos, who also serves as showrunner and co-writer, admits he likes Melate’s game. In 2012 he was working and learned of the fraud in a “very faint” news story. Because of the scale of the issue, he thought it would get more coverage, but it didn’t go any further at the time. A colleague of his told him that he knew one of the people accused of the robbery and that he could put him in touch. Due to various factors, the opportunity did not present itself. However, the co-director also remained curious.
“I thought about people who can make luck tilt in their favor, but then I also thought that luck is a goddess. You can’t get in touch with the gods. If you take the little hand of a goddess, as soon as she lets go, she’ll give you a zapwhich is what happened to the scammers, and I liked that. With Dínamo, the production company, we wanted to make an anthology of crimes, but not violent ones, and then I said: “I have the perfect story”, says Santos in a video call.
Santos built the project like a skyscraper, where each pause added layers of depth. César Blanco, co-author of the series, had access to some documents from the trial, news and people close to the case and even to some of the people involved. “The context was very rich, but also a bath of reality. With grace and with the possibility of doing a lot of reflection, in the end it is an illegal act. One thing that catches my attention and that I like about the fraud is that it was not done in secret. It is a fraud done on open television; everyone saw it. It is very difficult to perceive, but it is recorded. The cynicism, the courage and the balls were amazing,” says the screenwriter.
Santos, who this year also edited the bioseries on the comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaño, Chespirito: without wanting, wanting, He didn’t want to fall into the clichés of the robbery genre. He gives the example of Spanish production The robbery of moneyin which the characters have extraordinary talents. Or that of Ocean’s Elevenwhere one of the thieves is at super hacker capable of creating a seismic wave that turns off the cameras in the area where the robbery will be committed; or a gymnast who climbs into a cart to carry money. Him showrunner From Beats me yes I wanted ordinary people in a situation that allowed them to be part of an extraordinary act.
“One phrase that some of those involved repeated that caught my attention was ‘I didn’t steal it, I earned it’. I also liked that fantasy, that in their effort and their idea they found the prize worthy. That caught my attention,” explains Santos.
The series, with a cast led by Alberto Guerra, Luis Alberti, María José Vargas, Christian Tappan, Aldo Escalante, Jero Medina and Paloma Petra, plays with different genres, from heists, flirting with drama and comedy. Even, without saying it, with little thriller politician with nods to the politicians of the time.
“I’m interested in politics, in history. Of course, suddenly it’s tempting to go into a subplot about other officials, maybe higher up than them, who are also corrupt and have their own stories too, but you can guess how they work. There are dramatic constructions in the series to give shine to the characters, to give them their humanity. To have the ability to take their side, because that’s an ambition of the series. When we conceived it, we wanted the viewer to support whether they got what they they wanted it or not. The answer for me. It’s always been like this, we want them to win because they win against the system that has been unfair to them, without this ever becoming an excuse for corruption,” says Santos.
Although the director wanted to distance himself from the usual characters of this type of series, he states that part of his references were the versions of Ocean’s Eleven, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and some of its 2000s sequels, as well as the 1960s version they were inspired by. At first he didn’t want to classify his series as a “tropical” version, a term that is used with some disdain in the industry when Mexican or Latin American productions emulate this type of product. hollywood. However, he admits that he likes to reference Beats me yes like a robbery or a “tropical robbery”.
Santos did a similar exercise when he was responsible for adapting the series Belascoaranbased on the books by Paco Ignacio Taibo II about his famous capital detective, for cinematic recreation noira distinctive style of the detective genre. “Cinematic films noir They have steam in the streets coming out of the sewers, chiaroscuro and they are always found in Chicago or New York. We don’t have it here (Mexico City), but the steam comes out of the tamales pots, the carnitas pots, so we find that place where they coexist. In Beats me yes We tried something similar with another genre. The exercise is similar, but the result and ingredients are different. It was like “let’s try to create the feeling that Brad Pitt and George Clooney are coming, but no, some Melate officials show up.” We played with the visual treatment and the language, but with a group of mediocre characters discussing a great idea,” he concludes.
