I hate to write a title that insinuates that queer-surrealist comedian Julio Torres isn’t as insanely successful as he already is. But for context, I believe he’s not as popular in the student accoms of Bristol, UK as he would be, let’s say, in a flat share in Bushwick, New York.
Ever since I was thirteen, I have been deeply obsessed with the work of Julio Torres. I didn’t realise this however, until I was 16. Before releasing his own A24 movie and HBO series this year, Torres started out as a writer on Saturday Night Live. You’ve probably seen the sketch Papyrus which explores Ryan Gosling playing a man obsessed and tortured over the fact that the Avatar franchise uses the papyrus font for their title. Or perhaps you have seen (arguably the greatest piece of media ever) The Actress, which stars Emma Stone as a woman tackling her most challenging role yet, an extra in a gay porn film. Torres is the brains behind these viral sketches, but for some reason, the SNL YouTube channel hates to credit their writers. If I wasn’t so chronically online, I may never have known he was responsible for such high art. Whilst these sketches are hilarious, Torres’ still manages to highlight beauty and vulnerability in his writing through his campy dramatisations of the small parts of life. And this hasn’t stopped at SNL, he has gone on to expand this in his independent work.
Problemista (2024), written, directed, and starring (wow) Torres was stupidly tossed into a UK digital release in July, when it deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible. The film is an irresistible tale partly based on Torres’s own life, it focuses on Alejandro, played by Torres, who has moved from El Salvador to New York City, in hopes of becoming a toy designer for Hasbro. Alejandro, in a race against time to secure his work Visa, becomes a freelance assistant for Art critic Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton, as she could end up being his visa sponsor. The film takes the viewer through the practically impossible process of US Immigration as seen through the unique lens of Julio Torres’ mind. This is marvellously paired with Elizabeth, a woman with London Bus-red hair, heavy eyeliner, and a phone torch that is always on. She is a hilariously erratic character acting as both the film’s villain and platonic love-interest. I was apprehensive about Swinton’s character at first, as I find that any ‘Can I speak to your manager?’ Karen characters in comedy have become cringey. But Torres breathes new life into the archetype, offering a nuance to her character and imbuing her with a sense of warmth and intricacy that ‘Karens’ are so often denied.
Swinton is genuinely at her best here: you can tell she’s having the time of her life playing around with the colourful set, if she is having fun acting, we are having just as much fun watching. Her character, Elizabeth wreaks havoc on those around her, but Alejandro isn’t scared, he is drawn to her. Throughout queer history there is a canon of queer men being inspired and connected to the ‘mad-woman’ character that most would brush off. From Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket (1964), Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom (1994) and Dorinda Medley in The Real Housewives of New York (2008), there has always been a queer audience for enraged women. Torres has written this character not to be made fun of, but to be inspired by. As Elizabeth says after Alejandro receives a rejection from a ‘do-not-reply’ email, “You won’t get anything in life if you’re hoping for answers from an entity. Find someone and make yourself a problem to them”.
Just when I thought Problemista was enough to satisfy me for at least a decade, along comes Fantasmas. This show follows Torres playing a surreal version of himself. As he navigates a New York like filmset his journey is intertwined with sketches that are reminiscent of his SNL work, only on steroids. Featuring such masterpieces as: Euphoria’s Alexa Demie delivering a chilling monologue as a customer service representative, Emma Stone as a Real Housewife stuck in a Matrix-Truman show-like nightmare and (my absolute favourite guest on anything) Kate Berlant as a theme-park Superhero whose bisexuality is “addressed by a little rainbow flag pin on her jacket, digitally deleted in select foreign markets”. Whilst Torres’s work would still be just as good without all these stars, it is important to acknowledge just how stacked his casts always are. Cool people want to work with Torres because he is truly like no one else.
Throughout the show, people are constantly trying to define Torres and put him in a box. Either by the government for not having his ‘Proof of Existence ID’, by Hollywood as they attempt to use his trauma for profit on his TV show “How I Came Out To My Abuela”, and by Society, when he is told to use a skipping rope in gym class when jumping on the spot would have the same result. Nonetheless, Torres continuously insists on standing out, rather than hiding away. If you’re not hooked already, it also has icon and fashion mogul Julia Fox as Mrs Claus, Paul Dano making out with an alien puppet and Dylan O’Brien in women’s lingerie, so go crazy I guess…
Apart from little robots and the impossibilities of the American Citizenship system, both Problemista and Fantasmas share a similar message of embracing our weirdness and sensitivity. Throughout his body of work, Torres always maintains the idea that uniqueness is never a burden but a magical gift. His humour is queer to its core, for instance, this is the man who wrote a sketch advertising a new children’s playset, a well for sensitive little boys to mope and contemplate over. With the recent ongoing successful run of, Fantasmas guest star, Cole Escola’s Oh Mary! on Broadway (a hilarious play about Mary Todd Lincoln, in which no historical research was done), we can see the mainstream culture is shifting more and more towards Queer humour that would’ve otherwise been flattened no less than ten years ago. Torres has been playing this game for a while, but he’s still only getting started so why not get on board? In a world of Joe Rogans and Matt Rifes, be a Julio Torres!
P.S: He’s arguably a better collaborator with Emma stone than Yorgos Lanthimos, but in fear of being blacklisted by Hollywood I’ll stop here.
Fantasmas is available on NOW TV/Sky, Problemista is on demand.
