Punching Day: Gil vs. Galerito 🌭

I wrote a book called I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200, it’s sort of about a man fighting puppets, but it’s actually hiding a darker story about how capitalism destroys our brains and lives. The second part sounds like a bummer, so let’s focus on the first: Here’s my favorite puppet fight. It took place on the Brazilian show Canal Livre back in the mid-2000s, and became a minor meme down there. One of my favorite bands even did a music video homage to it. You don’t have to click any of those links except the first one, I’m obviously about to analyze this puppet fight like a presidential assassination.

It takes place at the very end of the program, when the announcer brings out a singer to close the show. His name is Nunes Filho, and he’s got kind of a Wayne Newton guest starring on a very special episode of Miami Vice vibe going on.

Nunes is not going to fight the puppet. I know, I know you want that. I want it, too. I want him to rip that necklace off and hurl it at a puppet’s face like Burt Reynolds in Heat.

Wait, I retract my earlier description. Nunes Filho looks like Burt Reynolds in Heat. He looks like no other thing. His outfit might actually be a Heat reference, now that I think about it. If it is, he never gathers the nerve to put a motherfucker on credit like Burt. Nunes just walks out and begins his lovely song and strange little dance… all while a voice offscreen mocks him relentlessly.

“He’s killing cockroaches!” The voice says, “he’s doing the cockroach killing dance!” Nunes spares a quick glance offscreen, as though checking to make sure security is beating the hell out of that heckler. They are not. The heckling will continue the whole time he sings his beautiful song about love and longing.

We switch to a different camera angle, and reason abandons us to drown in chaos. The heckler is a madly flailing puppet in a cardboard jail cell. It pauses its wild gyrations only briefly, to point out how dumb Nunes’ voice sounds, or how he’s doing a weird thing with his feet. If I were writing a children’s show for victims of premature derangement, this is how I would show them that a negative inner monologue can destroy any fun activity.

Again, somehow Nunes is not the one who fights this puppet. I know, I also can’t believe it. I think if you told Nunes in this exact moment that somebody would be fighting that puppet today and it wasn’t him, he wouldn’t believe you either.

Here’s a better look at that puppet. You won’t thank me for it.

His name is Galerito, and he looks like a Long Beach sex parasite. Something Bugs Bunny would kill in a cartoon that now comes with a trigger warning about its historical significance. Galerito is a rare example of a racial caricature made by people of that same race. Like a Mammy puppet on the hand of Whoopi Goldberg. I’m sorry if that’s a dated reference but she’s my go-to black puppetmonger. I don’t think society has a replacement for that role yet, and when she passes, I fear we never will.

The crowd holds up a banner of what might be somebody’s daughter gone too soon, or the eastside’s best realtor. I have no way of knowing. I don’t speak Portuguese, I have bad eyes, and I’m way too distracted by the frowning man and his enormous bowl of bread.

The unhappy baker is Gil Da Esfirra, and he’s a local snack vendor and puppet fighter. He is actually here to sell that bread, he is actually here to fight that puppet.

Suddenly Galerito leans out of his cell to bash at Gil in way that makes it clear this is not an in-character performance by a puppet, but a desperate attack by a puppeteer using the only weapon God gave him.

Gil loses his mind. Maybe that’s not fair, I’m not trying to backseat puppet fight here, I don’t actually know what the appropriate response to being hair-whipped by a racist muppet is. I know that Gil immediately attacks the entire set, throwing inflexible middle-aged kicks at a cardboard police station while a stage hand tries to drag him away.

I wish David Lynch was still alive so you could say the following words to him and watch his eyes as he falls in love: The crooner picks, of all times, the start of a puppet fight to plug his new album. Somewhere, a baby begins to cry. It drowns out his plug.

For just a moment, the stage hand relaxes his grip on Gil. An instant mistake. This is not the kind of puppet fury that ends in talking. It ends when a puppet is full of blood or a man is full of stuffing.

Gil sets down his enormous bowl of bread in the same way that an ancient Kung Fu master sweeps his hair over his shoulder. It’s visual shorthand letting the audience know that the budget of this fight scene is about to skyrocket. Gil slips his wrangler and runs behind the divider, disappearing into what I assume is the part of every set called Puppet Town.

More crew pile on Gil like the restaurant staff in Possession, desperately trying to restrain a man who has abandoned his humanity to become a puppet berserker. I’m sorry, that phrase makes it sound like he is a puppet who has gone berserk. I tried “berserker of puppets” but it just gets Metallica stuck in my head.

Galerito’s puppeteer throws Puppet Code to the wind and leaps out the window to eat shit right at Nunes’ feet, who is still singing. Nunes Filho does not falter, he does not stutter, he simply takes a few steps back. This is a man who knows the exact range of a puppet battle, and will retreat from it, but only just.

Looking into this show, it seems there were other incidents between Galerito and Gil. So maybe this was all planned, just one part of a wonderful recurring skit. But if that’s the case then Gil gets credit as the best comedic performer of his generation, because even when totally removed from all context this expression can mean no other thing than “I’m going to murder that fucking puppet.”

Also, it sounds like Gil was eventually kicked off the show for fighting the puppet too much, which doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d do if you hired the guy to be your Chief Puppet Fighter.

Once again things seem to settle, but it’s merely another Gil ruse. He leaps out of the crew’s grasp and throws a karate kick straight into the black heart of Puppet Town, which is a great way to come back with a puppet for a foot.

The puppet screams. The singer croons. The baby is inconsolable.

The stage hands grab Gil. Once more Nunes Filho gently dances out of the Puppet Splash Zone to sing of his lost love and the secrets she keeps, as peace slowly returns to the set…

Until the puppeteer ekes from his little window to try one more ineffectual slap at Gil, like a bloody-nosed schoolboy yelling insults from behind the safety of the yard duty.

Galerito stoked the fire, but was not prepared to burn. Gil sends another flying sidekick into Puppet Town. Nunes wraps up the song and speaks directly to his fans, telling them where he’ll be performing next. He gives no indication that eight feet away two stage hands are giving their lives to stop a middle-aged man from eating a puppet.

When you get this lost in madness, you start to question things. Reality. Safety. The tensile strength of felt. Whether or not those people are actually stage hands, or simply members of the audience foolishly defending a puppet like a mother bird might feed a cuckoo chick.

Every storm passes. Every inferno becomes ashes. Gil has been contained.

There’s so much emotion and symbolism in this single screengrab. It speaks of man’s fury, and its ridiculousness, and the ultimate futility of intent in a frivolous universe. This is art. This is the shit Yeats would write about if he was alive today, and Brazilian, and being attacked by a puppet.

Gil has slipped his bonds again. He begins to rip and tear.

Watch there, at the end, just as the credits begin to roll. One of the cameramen simply flees. I hope he never returned. I hope he found a life somewhere free from the directionless violence of puppets and the men who hate them.

Gil is restrained, for real this time. It doesn’t stop him throwing impotent kicks at the taunting puppet. He shouts something to Nunes – apologies? Pleas for help? Profanities? Threats? Maybe that’s why the puppet is really here. It’s the rodeo clown. The tank of the show, here to protect the bard and draw aggro from drunk snack vendors.

I watched this gif loop long enough to see one of the cameramen is named Mario Albuquerque. I hope he’s the one who ran. He’ll have to change his name; nobody will believe that one.

The credits roll as Nunes Filho takes a spotless bow, his soul and Burt Reynolds suit free from both blood and felt. This was considered a successful episode. They put a production card on it.

And that’s it, my favorite puppet fight. I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 is sort of about fighting puppets like this, because I think it’s an incredibly funny thing to watch a grown man do. But the book is also about horror, murder, and the many ways our lives are being destroyed by class warfare. Which is a fun coincidence, because so is this puppet fight.

Let’s talk about the five murders that followed.

First, you have to understand what Canal Livre was actually about. A show where racist puppets mock local singers and randomly attack the audience seems like plenty to me, I would only watch up to 12 seasons and a movie of that. But Canal Livre was actually a crime news variety program hosted by a celebrity police officer. Like if Entertainment Tonight was hosted by Joe Arpaio and a cruel soulless puppet of Mario Lopez, but instead of celebrity gossip they threw to random clips of police brutality. It seems like I’m not explaining it well, but no, that’s exactly it.

The host of Canal Livre was a man named Wallace Souza, and the show became so popular it got him elected as a legislator three times. A minor miracle considering how often the political endorsements of puppets backfire, and also that Wallace was fired as a police officer for rampant theft and fraud. He was fired for that. In Brazil.

For its first few years, Canal Livre was more straight-laced and focused on sensationalist video clips. It was only after Wallace added the singing, the puppets, and the furious bread-vendors that it really took off. So Wallace understood that the success of the show was the reason for his political power, and the puppets were the reason for the show’s success. I want you to picture that: A small man in a position of big influence, who knows it can all come tumbling down on the whims of a puppet. What ego could withstand that? Not a Brazilian cop’s, is the only answer I know.

Wallace Souza needed something more. Puppets might make a man rich, but they will never give him security. He expanded Canal Livre from just showing news clips to doing their own reporting. Wallace himself went on the frontlines as the show’s lead investigator. He had a knack for it. On several occasions he beat the cops to homicide scenes, filming brutal murders and broadcasting actual corpses in between the crooners and puppet skits. It sounds like madness, but it’s basically just Fox News when Jeff Dunham is plugging a new special.

Eventually people started to wonder: Why is the puppet guy so fucking good at this? How is he first on the scene for so many horrific murders?

You probably guessed it. But then, you’re cheating. You already know my motto: “Where there are puppets, there is crime.”

Over the span of two years Wallace Souza contracted with three hitmen, one of them his own son, to commit five vigilante murders of suspected criminals so he could be the first to film their dead bodies for his puppet show.

Maybe it seems unfair to keep dismissing Canal Livre as a “puppet show” when it’s more of an atrocity-based Hee Haw. But my theory is that if you have a puppet on your show more than once, you have a puppet show. Puppets stain whatever they touch. As evidence I present this actual screengrab from a later episode of Canal Livre, where they go behind the scenes in the control room.

Wallace Souza was eventually caught and charged with multiple counts of murder. Hopefully some of them puppet-related, as those carry a stiffer sentence. He tried to flee and authorities blockaded the entire city of Manaus to stop him. An entire city under siege because of puppet murders. Look, I call them “puppet murders” because at no point do the crime reports say the puppet wasn’t involved, so I have to assume it was. I have to assume the hitmen pulled each trigger through a felt mouth. I have to do that.

Souza’s son, Rafael, was sentenced to 9 years for murder, which seems light to me but it is Brazil. You should be surprised they didn’t give him a small but shockingly sexual parade. Wallace Souza himself died of a heart attack before ever seeing trial. Galerito is still at large.

I thought this was all a good tie-in to I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200 because it’s a bizarre, violent, funny veneer that hides deep tragedy and social criticism, just like the book. So I guess buy my book if you liked these puppet murders? I’m not good at this. Don’t tell my publisher I did this.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Elliot Watson, a puppet made of sinew and bone. Also really loves the film Dunston Checks In.