Poquer Interminável

Date of Shooting:	March, 24th 1989 - Episode 1
	March, 25th 1989 - Episode 2 and 3
Date of Video Editing:	April, 1st 1989 - Episode 1
	April, 2nd 1989 - Episode 2 and 3
Date of Audio Editing:
Duration:
Actors:	Alessandra Leitão
	Daniela de Rossi
	Guilherme de Rossi
	Pedro Luís Bello Daldegan
	Ricardo Nori Gáudio
	Rodrigo Lemes
	Salvio Meirelles de Souza Pinto
	Thiago Bello Daldegan
Story by:	Luís Fernando Veríssimo
Screenplay:	Pedro Luís Bello Daldegan
	Guilherme de Rossi
Sound Track:	from The Sting

Four friends have been playing poker for weeks... and they refuse to leave the table

This film is the only exception to the rule that states that every film from Kobold Pictures is based on original stories from Kobold Pictures. Poquer Interminável (Endless Poker) is a comedy written by a famous Brazilian writer called Luís Fernando Veríssimo. This short story belongs to "O Analista de Bagé", probably the most successful book in Brazil. It is a collection of ingenious comic chronicles. Veríssimo's writings are so natural that they easily fit into screen. Some years after we had shot this film, a TV show based on his writings started on Rede Globo, the major TV station in Brazil.

The story was adapted to a screenplay by Pedro and Guilherme, and hardly any changes were made. The film (as the original story) is divided into three parts. The first one starts two weeks after four friends have started a poker game. The second part glimpses them one week later, and the third part does the same another week after that. Everytime anyone says something about "leaving", everyone else repeats in chorus "Nobody leaves, nobody leaves...", so they just keep playing. And everyone is also extremely careful and suspicious about the others. They know all dirty old tricks, like the one of "the mother bringing his son a clean shirt, with a full house hidden in it".

With a comic background like that, there could not have been another choice for the music but the classic soundtrack from The Sting.

This film was shot in two days, not being completely improvised. The fact that there were too many people in the set, including some audience unrelated to the production, didn't help the actors.

Unlike the previous koboldian films, this one is spoken. And this led us to a problem: acting. Trying to sound natural was something we were simply not used to, but doing so in a comedy was a real challenge. Editing didn't help either. The rhythm was unnaturally broken. It didn't flow. So the film simply didn't work as it should. That was quite frustrating, for we had a good material and we were not able to properly work with it. We assumed it as a lack of talent for comedies. Besides that, our filming techniques were not adequate for spoken films. We have had this sort of problem before with Die Nachtträum, but it was never released in its original version, as a spoken film. Those filming techniques would have to be reviewed for future spoken projects. There were a couple of other stories from Veríssimo that we were planning to shoot. But, although we did return to spoken films later - with new techniques - we did not shoot another comedy.