Feature image: Diego Muñoz is a Chilean scriptwriter, writer, and film critic. Photo by Daniel Gil. Courtesy of Agencia La Luz.
Diego Muñoz’s Creative Scriptwriting Art Speaks About the Human Condition
Diego Muñoz is a Chilean award-winning scriptwriter, writer, and film critic. His scriptwriting is characterized by his creativity and imagination with characters and stories that go from his mind and paper to life. His creations speak about the human condition and become real whenever an actor and a director interpret them. It’s his way of “sculpting” a masterpiece that travels around the world with Netflix and Disney+ while showcasing Latin America to millions of people.
Diego Muñoz is a Chilean award-winning scriptwriter, writer, and film critic. Stories, art, and literature caught his attention at a very young age. As a child, he was fascinated with reading illustrated books and drawing. He was deeply interested in writing stories similar to what he read. During high school, he did well in any writing or art subject.
That creative motivation was always present and alive in Muñoz. It was what led him to study art and literature at the Universidad Católica de Chile, where he specialized in scriptwriting. He dove deep into his art and craft by adding dramaturgy and scriptwriting workshops to his learning process.
“The human condition tends to go a lot into stories. I think we’re a narrative animal. Actually, I think that’s a reason why I didn’t finish my art career. Art is more about concepts, and the art that’s very narrative is usually rejected,” Muñoz said. “I was told my paintings are very illustrative and told stories. Meanwhile, art is more about a concept, sensations, and abstract. That’s why I left. Stories are never going to end. The way in which we consume them is what changes.”
That fascination and inclination for stories led Muñoz on a quest to try to understand them from the inside. It is important to grasp how they function and comprehend what people want to see. He wanted to reach a point where he could emotionally move a spectator or reader. This genuine curiosity regarding the creation of his storytelling became a certain “obsession” where writing, film, and art come together in a compelling manner.
Writing, film, and art are narrative and expressive mediums for Muñoz, and they have the potential to be transcendental. These mediums can give meaning to people’s existence and allow the audience to live multiple lives while understanding the world.
Muñoz has reached a point of telling stories that are synonymous with creating meaning in life. To achieve this, he understands himself as a scriptwriter and artist who is in pursuit of producing stories that provoke emotion in the audience.
“It’s about having a trip full of meaning. An experience that should be associated with emotions. You read or watch [stories] to get excited. Suffer. Get entertained. Fall in love. Laugh. Get scared,” Muñoz said. “If the story can have emotion and meaning, the work is done.”
Scriptwriting That’s Transcendental
That means Muñoz explores his scriptwriting as an art in which the technical aspects merge with the emotional part. It’s about knowing how to work with different formats and understanding the structure of a scene, a chapter, and a season.
“That [technical] part merged with wanting to say something can take us to that transcendence. A complete experience that not only excites you and takes you on a rollercoaster, but also has certain reflective weight, expression, and an aesthetic beauty transmission,” Muñoz said. “A purpose that’s more intangible, which transcends the technique.”
To write a transcendental script, Muñoz seeks inspiration from what he consumes as a spectator and his life experiences. His art consumption includes films, series, books, novels, comics, and many more. His life experiences can include falling in love, loss, frustrations, and whatever he sees in the environment around him.
His inspiration process may seem like an individual one, but his scriptwriting process entails ongoing collective collaboration. This means that his art requires collaborating with a very large team, and through his work, he gives people jobs.
“Your script not only should inspire the director, but also artists, costume designers, makeup artists, the people who choose the music, the people who post produce,” Muñoz said. “You also need a great negotiation capacity. Be able to sacrifice your best ideas or the ones you think are the best ones. Being permanently open that your artwork is diluted and it ends up being the artwork of many.”
In understanding his collaborative art, Muñoz also finds his general process for scriptwriting depends on the project he’s working on. It starts with a spark that can either be his own idea or a commission. Afterward comes the development phase, where there’s an emphasis on who the characters will be and what moments they’re in. Sometimes, early on during that phase, the work will give context to the images and make them possible.
“It’s like a snowball. It starts small from that spark, a character, or a situation. It starts taking its shape and structure. It comes to a very magical point in which the characters lead themselves because they now exist, and it seems they make decisions,” Muñoz said.
When Muñoz reaches the point where his characters lead themselves, it means that they have left his mind. They’ve spent a long time living there as an amorphous thing, as he said. Suddenly, they exist in a physical manner because there’s an actor or actress who’ll bring them to life.
Bringing the characters to life is no easy fit, yet it’s been a wild ride for Muñoz for international series such as Netflix’s “Baby Bandito” and Disney+’s “Llévame Al Cielo.” Both opportunities came through thanks to the Chilean production house Fabula, who are responsible for producing series with major global streaming services.
Sculpting “Baby Bandito’s” Script
Fabula called Muñoz to work with them for both shows and from that point on, the rest was history. “Baby Bandito” is inspired by Chile’s “biggest heist of the century,” which happened in 2014 at the Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport in Santiago. Chilean actor Nicolás Contreras played Kevin Tapia, the character inspired by Kevin Olguín, who was one of the gang’s members who carried out the heist in 2014. The show was directed by Chilean directors Julio Jorquera, Fernando Guzzoni, and Pepa San Martín.
Muñoz was the series’ head scriptwriter and worked in a strong collaborative manner. The process started by having a summary of the case and understanding that Kevin Olguín was one of the gang members who stole the money. He then went to Italy and uploaded photos on Instagram.
It was a process Muñoz compares to a sculptor working with a chisel and carefully selecting the material needed as if he were carving a stone.
“There were all these attractive elements, and the idea of doing a series limited to that was completely seductive. The first thing was researching and reading about the real case,” Muñoz said. “There were things [in the case] that would be very boring to watch. This should be more hectic. They should be constantly chased, and in some part, there was the rumor that they stole the plan. That’s when I said: wow. This is a series. This works well, and I went to Fabula with that proposal.”
Fabula and Netflix loved it, and then, Muñoz’s imagination came to life to create “Baby Bandito’s” characters. That meant a lot of research to merge reality with fiction carefully. Part of the research process included a lot of reading news stories to understand the case and gently sculpt the script.
Right away, they decided they didn’t want “Baby Bandito” to come off as a chronicle or documentary. With that in mind, they slowly sculpted the series by selecting the material that inspired the story’s plot: someone who steals, escapes the country with the money, lives a luxurious life in Italy, becomes famous on the Internet, and then returns and escapes.
“The [team’s] legal department was the one in charge of telling us: this is too much or change the characters’ names. As long as the names are changed, you can do anything and it was us doing the questioning process,” Muñoz said. “What are we saying? But at the same time, we’re very aware that our Kevin is not the real Kevin. It’s our Kevin, from our story.”
To develop Kevin as a strong character with which the audience could empathize with, Muñoz and the team made sure that Kevin didn’t engage in reprehensible behaviors. That’s why they had their villains – Los Carniceros (the butchers) – who were lethal and gruesome in their acts. Yet, Kevin does not get away with his bad behaviors.
“All crime stories are moral, and in fiction, generally, the crime does not pay. The ones who commit a crime end up punished in some way. Here, we had this element very early on. We thought: Kevin is going to have a triumph,” Muñoz said. “Maybe he’s going to make it, end up in Italy, and jump onto a bed full of money. But he’s going to suffer the consequences, and he suffers them early on.”
Kevin got his mother in trouble, exposed his grandmother to danger, and left behind his friends who then got back at him. The luxurious life in Italy did not last long for Kevin, and as you can see, Muñoz created a number of complex characters around Kevin, who add more to the story’s plot.
Bringing a Dose of Reality to “Baby Bandito”
Since “Baby Bandito” was inspired by a real story with a very social background, Muñoz also made sure to include various realities that affect Chile. Realities such as scarce opportunities in vulnerable communities or the complex challenges that women face in socially vulnerable conditions.
“The situation of Kevin’s mother is a reality in this country. These women are single mothers and who are the head of their family dedicated to micro-trafficking out of need,” Muñoz said. “We included all of that. They’re details that enrich this universe and give it realism. But they also work to tell the story of the action thriller drama genre.”
The attention to detail in Muñoz’s scriptwriting is one of the many reasons “Baby Bandito” landed straight for two weeks as Netflix’s number-one series globally in the non-English category in February. That accomplishment was a great blessing for Muñoz because it meant that the team did create a series that was universal with solid archetypes and a rapid rhythm that made it addictive for the consumer.
“People did respond [to the series]. People from parts of the world that I had to Google had the series as number one that week. I was very happy and fascinated wondering how the inhabitants of Réunion Island ended up watching it,” Muñoz said. “It was one of the places where it was number one. How did they watch this series? Did they think it was something very exotic? Did they like our country on screen? It can give you very entertaining speculation and to Google Réunion to see a beautiful place.”
Reaching the Sky with “Llévame al Cielo”
In this case, the sculpting process for creating characters and a story was a bit different. Again, Muñoz was asked by Fabula to join the project. He was called at a time when the project was more advanced, and the characters were already defined since the series is based on Chilean writer Carla Guelfenbein ’s novel “Llévame al Cielo.”
“It’s a romantic adolescent drama. A very Disney series about young people who are discovering life. They’re discovering love, but it was also a very nice experience because the people from Disney in Latin America were impressively professional. Very concrete and accurate with their observations,” Muñoz said.
However, the process was quite different from “Baby Bandito” because it’s an adaptation of the novel. For Muñoz, it’s also a continuation of his “sculpting” process to write a script where he has to eliminate elements—or carve out the stone—that were not kid-friendly and more controversial.
Working on an adaptation meant transforming the novel into something that’s more for the Disney audience while respecting the original creation by conserving the drama and characters’ emotional impact.
Press photos for “Llévame al Cielo.” Photo by Diego Arayán. Fabula production house. Copyright Disney. Courtesy of Agencia La Luz.
“With an omniscient novel, you know what the characters are thinking. There’s nothing to solve on the story level. What you need to solve is the script on an audiovisual level,” Muñoz said. “In this case, it’s more about a literal adaptation. Take this character and change its medium. Change the media to something where we’ll only see and listen to it.”
“Llévame al Cielo” is set to premiere later this year, and for Muñoz, it was a tremendous honor to participate in a project like this one because of what Disney implies. He remembered the meetings he participated in when they were told that the series must have magical moments because it’s Disney.
“I’d say: wow. That’s beautiful. I love Disney and there are many animated movies that I love. Unforgettable trips to Disney. The happiest place on Earth. So, it was an honor,” Muñoz said, laughing.
Press photos for “Llévame al Cielo.” Photo by Diego Arayán. Fabula production house. Copyright Disney. Courtesy of Agencia La Luz.
Participating in these types of projects is a great satisfaction and awe for Muñoz. It means that he’s taken his creativity and imagination to another level to create characters and stories that go from his mind and paper to life.
It means his creations speak about the human condition and become real whenever an actor and a director interpret them. It’s his way of “sculpting” a masterpiece that travels around the world with Netflix and Disney+ while showcasing Latin America to millions of people.
“Being a Chilean and Latin American artist means having a great responsibility precisely for being a representative for all of this. But I also think there’s the advantage of being a less explored territory because our production level doesn’t compare with the United States or Europe,” Muñoz said. “It’s still a fertile area in which we can explore the narrative genres, and hopefully, the industry keeps flourishing.”
To keep up with Diego Muñoz’s creative artistic scriptwriting that speaks about the human condition, follow him on Instagram at @hermeselsabio.
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