His debut drama El Ayudante, about a truck driver (Pepe Soriano) who befriends a young, deaf male assistant, was based on the book El sordomudo by the author Bernardo Kordon. Upon release 25 March 1971 in Buenos Aires, it was both a box office success and critically acclaimed, with the critic from the newspaper La Razón writing: "Kordon's story gains expressive vigor in the images and verisimilitude in its characters and forms a captivating poetic climate and a lucid realistic testimony".