The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
Interview
Ayrton Senna, Williams, Interlagos, 1994
One scene in Senna which is received with laughter by most audiences gets a very different reaction when shown in Brazil.
Why does one scene get two contrasting reactions?
The film’s writer Manish Pandey explained some of the surprising responses to the film in Senna’s home country.
“I should have kissed him for ’94″
One of the more amusing moments in Senna sees him on stage in a Brazilian children’s television show. He is smothered with kisses – and bright red lipstick – by the host Xuxa Meneghel.
But while this scene is viewed as comedy by many – including the filmmakers – in Brazil it carries more sombre undertones, as Pandey explains:
“Watching that in Sao Paulo, it was one of the darkest moments of the film.
“It just shows you, [what happens] when you’re a bunch of foreigners and you make a film about somebody you never really knew.
“We turn up and Asif [Kapadia, director] and James [Gay-Rees, executive producer] and I watched the film at the premiere in a cinema full of Brazilians for the first time.
“Normally, when you watch it, you know where the funny moments are – like Alain Prost asking if they can be tied on points.
“When the Xuxa thing happens, everyone in England laughs: you’ve got this big world champion dancing badly with lipstick all over his face.
“What we didn’t realise is that in Brazil there’s a big myth about the number of times she kisses him. When she stops, she stops at 1993.
“It never occurred to me, it never occurred to Asif, it never occurred to James, it never occurred to anybody. We were laughing at it. She shook our hands at the end of the film and she was crying.
“And the next day in the Brazilian press she said ‘I should have kissed him for ’94′”.
The Piquet rivalry
Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Jacarepagua, 1986
The critical reaction to the film in Brazil was also quite different: “They really wanted more of the Senna-[Nelson] Piquet rivalry, because our film is centred around Senna and Prost”.
Pandey contrasts Senna’s view of being Brazilian, given in an interview on a programme called Roda Viva, with Piquet’s:
“He clearly felt that he was Brazilian, whereas Piquet wasn’t. He clearly felt that he’d made this absolutely conscious decision to get on a plane after every race [to return home].
“Ron Dennis told us much the same thing that, at McLaren, even if they were travelling two days to be in Brazil for one, he just needed to do that.
“Whereas Piquet, as he says, lived in Italy, his friends are Italian and he’s got very few Brazilians around him. Nelson Piquet’s name was Piquet Souto Maior and he hid the Souto Maior part because he didn’t want his mother to know he was motor racing.
“He’s a great guy, a funny guy, but he was in some ways an extremely different human being to [Ayrton] Senna. I think the Brazilians loved that playboy image in the beginning but then they found something a bit more earnest. The thing about Senna is, if you’re going to market the two, he’s probably the easier one to, he’s a bit more wholesome.
“But we couldn’t get that into it, and it’s a criticism in Brazil – they just feel, how can you talk about Senna without talking about Piquet. And that’s absolutely fair”.
But Pandey was less interested in another aspect of the story there was much appetite for in Brazil:
“I think the Brazilians also – because they’ve got quite an active tabloid press – they wanted to know why we hadn’t gone into all his girlfriends. And our reaction to that was, well, how would you do it? Do you cut away from a race to a headline in a newspaper?
“Weirdly, I think we were desperately faithful. Because he does come across as a guy for whom, really, motor racing was it. Those girls were interchangeable and that’s the truth of it.
“In the context of a guy who gave his all to become a motor racing driver, I think women, not matter how important they were to him in real life, could only ever have been incidental to him in the film”.
This is the concluding part of “The Making of Senna”. You can find all nine parts of the series here.
See the official website for more information on the film and the official Facebook page for a list of cinemas that are showing it.
Senna movie
- The Making of Senna part 9: The response in Brazil
- The Making of Senna part 8: The Death of Ayrton Senna
- The Making of Senna part 7: Imola 1994
- The Making of Senna part 6: The perfect bad guy?
- The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes
- The Making of Senna part 4: 'You've never heard F1 sound like this'
- The Making of Senna part 3: Inside the F1 archive
- The Making of Senna part 2: Meeting the Sennas
- The Making of Senna part 1: Life and death
- "Senna" - the Ayrton Senna movie reviewed
Images © Williams/LAT
Malibu_GP said on 7th June 2011, 14:42
Hmmm, as Someone that has worked in the entertainment business for nearly twenty years (including Universal music) I find the speculation fascinating. Perhaps You Guys could get Me a treatment that I could pitch. Seriously though, there are several motor-sports stories floating around/being considered. Unfortunately, they all wish to depict NASCAR. How fun…, NOT!
BasCB (@bascb) said on 7th June 2011, 15:16
Your on!
Lets put this in. Seriously, I think it will be hard to do a really nice show (what studio has a range of pit boxes in their facilities?). But TV has been putting in some very high quality shows lately, a lot better than most hollywood movies for less budget.
d3v0 (@d3v0) said on 7th June 2011, 14:58
During the television show scene in the movie, you could see she loved him very much. I thought it was powerful and the saddest scene in the movie for me, and I’m a hot dog eating American. I cant possibly begin to imagine the grief Xuxa felt when she saw that part of the movie, or even the Brazilians for that matter.
Fixy (@fixy) said on 7th June 2011, 15:43
Reading it in the paragraph talking about Italy, I thought about “Sotomayor”, an expression used as nonsense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SofsI4j6i2g&feature=player_detailpage#t=334s
Probably no one will understand this!
Fixy (@fixy) said on 7th June 2011, 15:46
These 9 articels really offer an excellent guide to the film. Thanks Keith!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 7th June 2011, 15:52
You’re welcome, glad you enjoyed it.
roberto said on 7th June 2011, 23:45
Well, as a brazilian I can say there’s some misinformation here. First, I don’t think anybody here paid much attention to the Xuxa scene, other than it being funny/awkward. Xuxa made some TV success in the 80′s and then became quite a decadent personality. Most people here don’t even know she dated Senna for a while, and i never heard the story about the 1993 kisses before. But in case anyone’s interested, there’s a Senna interview for Playboy mag in 91 or 92, where he talks a lot about women, and of how important some of they were, contrary to what Pandy suggests.
As for Piquet, it’s really disapointing that the movie doesn’t talk more about him. This may surprise some of you, but Piquet is by and large hated for most people here in Brazil, mainly because he was seen as a enemy of Senna, and jeaolous of his talent. They fought a lot on the press, and Piquet even said Senna was gay. By the way Pandy is incorrect when he says Piquet didn’t use his last name because of his mother (that wouldnt make sense!). It was because of his father, a politician, that totally disapproved racing. SO he used his mother’s maiden name.
I’ve put together a series of Piquet interviews with english subs here, if anyone’s interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Z1_sQIxbw
The ‘Roda Viva’ programs mentioned are also very interesting, there’s one shot in 86 with Senna, when he talks about how Piquet was different from him and arrogant. And there’s another one, from 94, with Piquet. He had already been confirmed in the show, and then, in a strange coincidence, Senna died the day before, so it’s interesting to see Piquet having to talk about his disaffect the day after he died.
Nik said on 8th June 2011, 5:32
I am disappointed that the filmmakers didn’t realize the ’93 kisses connection – I thought that was the reason it was included in the film. The scene was absolutely chilling, to me, not even close to being a ‘funny moment’, so it isn’t just those in Brasil who reacted in a different way, I think the filmakers have completely misunderstood or misappropriated that footage.
btw if you watch Senna, try and fine the long cut. The short cut is a very different film and not as good as the festival version
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 8th June 2011, 9:49
There’s a lot of misinformation about the length of the film, largely spread by people who have obtained illegal copies of it.
For an explanation see this article:
The Making of Senna part 5: The lost scenes
And this comment:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2011/06/02/making-senna-part-5/#comment-704108
edmuiruf1 (@edmuiruf1) said on 9th June 2011, 10:17
How can we get hold of senna DVD in Africa (Nairobi).
Bob Richards said on 18th June 2011, 21:56
I have seen the film twice, in the Duke of York cinema in Brighton, and I have to say neither time did anyone laugh at the scene where Senna was kissed good luck for every year up to 1993. There was just silence in the cinema, the majority of the people saw the “significance” immediately.