170 quotes found
"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography."
"Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me."
"Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure. Besides, you can’t teach old fleas new dogs."
"Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream."
"What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist."
"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."
"Cinéma-vérité? I prefer 'cine-mendacity'. A lie is always more interesting than the truth...Fiction may have a greater truth than everyday, obvious reality."
"I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it."
"I discovered that what's really important for a creator isn't what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we want to say, recall, regret, or rebel against. No, what's important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It's not what we say but how we say it that matters."
"A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself."
"Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain."
"The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all — that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open — has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?"
"Experience is what you get while looking for something else."
"It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman."
"No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the opposite."
"Nietzsche claimed that his genius was in his nostrils and I think that is a very excellent place for it to be."
"God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again."
"Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it."
"If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses."
"Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets."
"A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together."
"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borghese on a daily basis."
"I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?"
"I've always written at the top of my lungs and from some secret motives within. I have followed the advice of my good friend Federico Fellini who, when asked about his work, said, "Don't tell me what I'm doing, I don't want to know.""
"My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing..."
"Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing."
"The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up."
"I am not a theoretician of the cinema. If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: I don't know."
"The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development — whether psychological or material — one must pass on to the actual realization. In the cinema, as in the other arts, this is the most delicate moment — the moment when the poet or writer makes his first mark on the page, the painter on his canvas, when the director arranges his characters in their setting, makes them speak and move, establishes, through the compositions of his various images, a reciprocal relationship between persons and things, between rhythm of the dialogue and that of the whole sequence, makes the movement of the camera fit in with the psychological situation. But the most crucial moment of all comes when the director gathers from all the people and from everything around him every possible suggestion, in order that his work may acquire a more spontaneous cast, may become more personal and, we might even say — in the broadest sense — more autobiographical."
"For me, from the moment when the first, still unformed, idea comes into my head until the projection of the rushes, the process of making a film constitutes a single piece of work. I mean that I cannot become interested in anything, day or night, which is not that film. Let no one imagine that this is a romantic pose — on the contrary. I become relatively more lucid, more attentive, and almost feel as if I were intelligent and more ready to understand."
"I rarely feel the desire to reread a scene the day before the shooting. Sometimes I arrive at the place where the work is to be done and I do not even know what I am going to shoot. This is the system I prefer: to arrive at the moment when shooting is about to begin, absolutely unprepared, virgin. I often ask to be left alone on the spot for fifteen minutes or half an hour and I let me thoughts wander freely."
"I find that it is very useful to look over the location and to feel out the atmosphere while waiting for the actors. It may happen that the images before my eyes coincide with those I had in my mind, but this is not frequently the case. It more often happens that there is something insincere or artificial about the image one has thought of. Here again is another way of improvising."
"The principle behind the cinema, like that behind all the arts, rests on a choice. It is, in Camus' words, "the revolt of the artist against the real." If one holds to this principle, what difference can it make by what means reality is revealed? Whether the author of a film seizes on the real in a novel, in a newspaper story or in his own imagination, what counts is the way he isolates it, stylizes it, makes it his own."
"A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply."
"When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which differs from film to film, is wholly instinctive and never based on a priori considerations."
"I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules."
"I try to avoid repetitions of any shot. It isn't easy to find one in my films. You might, I suppose, see something twice, but it would be rare. And then, you know, every line requires its own kind of shot. The American method of shooting one actor continuously, then moving to the other, then intercutting both — this method is wrong. A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own."
"I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space."
"We are saddled with a culture that hasn't advanced as far as science. Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer. Hence this upset, this disequilibrium that makes weaker people anxious and apprehensive, that makes it so difficult for them to adapt to the mechanism of modern life. … We live in a society that compels us to go on using these concepts, and we no longer know what they mean. In the future — not soon, perhaps by the twenty-fifth century — these concepts will have lost their relevance. I can never understand how we have been able to follow these worn-out tracks, which have been laid down by panic in the face of nature. When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them."
"I would like to make clear that I speak only of sensations. I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like."
"I don't want what I am saying to sound like a prophecy or anything like an analysis of modern society .... these are only feelings I have, and I am the least speculative man on earth."
"When a scene is being shot, it is very difficult to know what one wants it to say, and even if one does know, there is always a difference between what one has in mind and the result on film. I never think ahead of the shot I'm going to make the following day because if I did, I'd only produce a bad imitation of the original image in my mind. So what you see on the screen doesn't represent my exact meaning, but only my possibilities of expression, with all the limitations implied in that phrase. Perhaps the scene reveals my incapacity to do better; perhaps I felt subconsciously ironic toward it. But it is on film; the rest is up to you."
"Modern life is very difficult for people who are unprepared. But this new environment will eventually facilitate more realistic relationships between people."
"I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why."
"When we say a character in my films doesn't function, we mean he doesn't function as a person, but he does function as a character — that is, until you take him as a symbol. At that point it is you who are not functioning. Why not simply accept him as a character, without judging him? Accept him for what he is. Accept him as a character in a story, without claiming that he derives or acquires meaning from that story. There may be meanings, but they are different for all of us."
"Don't regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own."
"My characters are ambiguous. Call them that. I don't mind. I am ambiguous myself. Who isn't?"
"Sometimes I pick up a magazine and read a piece of film criticism — to the end only if I like it. I don't like those which are too free with praise because their reasons seem wrong and that annoys me. Critics who attack me do so for such contradictory reasons that they confuse me, and I am afraid that if I am influenced by one, I will sin according to the standards of the other."
"We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of that reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see or perhaps right down to the decomposition of any image, of any reality."
"People are always misquoting me."
"I've always said that the actor is only an element of the image, rarely the most important. The actor is important with his dialogue, with the landscape, with a gesture — but the actor in himself is nothing."
"You must be painter who takes a canvas and does what he likes with it. We are more like painters in past centuries who were ordered to paint frescoes to specific measurements. Among the people in the fresco may be a bishop, the prince's wife, etc. The fresco isn't bad simply because the painter used for models people from the court of the prince who ordered and paid for it."
"When we find ourselves up against practical obstacles that can't be overcome, we must go forward. You either make the film as you can or don't make it at all."
"I have always imposed my wishes on the cameraman. Moreover, I have always picked them at the outset of their careers and, to a certain extent, have formed them myself."
"Everything depends on what you put in front of the camera, what perspectives you create, contrasts, colors. The cameraman can do great things, provided he is well grounded technically. If a person hasn't the raw material, I obviously couldn't do anything with him. But all I ask of a cameraman is technical experience. Everything else is up to me. I was amazed to find that in America cameramen are surprised that this is the way I work."
"I always want to tell stories. But they must be stories that evolve, like our own lives. Perhaps what I seek is a new kind of story."
"One doesn't enter groups of people simply because one wants or needs to. One has an infinite number of opportunities that occur for no particular reason. Sometimes you feel a sudden unexpected pleasure at being where you find yourself."
"Is it important to show why a character is what he is? No. He is. That's all."
"You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that. How can I say why at a certain moment I needed this. How can I explain why I needed a confusion of colors?"
"The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying."
"It's very difficult to explain what I do. It is much more instinctive than you realize; much, much more. … the reasons that make me interested in a subject are, how shall I say, fickle. Many times I have chosen, among three stories, one for reasons that are entirely accidental: I get up and think this one will be stupendous because the night before I had a certain dream. Or perhaps I put it better by saying that I had found inside myself reasons why this particular story seems more valid. … I always have motives, but I forget them."
"The films of Michelangelo Antonioni are aesthetically complex – critically stimulating though elusive in meaning. They are ambiguous works that pose difficult questions and resist simple conclusions. Classical narrative causalities are dissolved in favour of expressive abstraction. Displaced dramatic action leads to the creation of a stasis occupied by vague feelings, moods and ideas. Confronted with hesitancy, the spectator is compelled to respond imaginatively and independent of the film. The frustration of this experience reflects that felt in the lives of Antonioni's characters: unable to solve their own personal mysteries they often disappear, leave, submit or die. The idea of abandonment is central to Antonioni's formal structuring of people, objects, and ideas. He evades presences and emphasises related absences. His films are as enigmatic as life: they show that the systematic organisation of reality is a process of individual mediation disturbed by a profound inability to act with certainty."
"Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up opened in America two months before I became a film critic, and colored my first years on the job with its lingering influence. … Over three days recently, I revisited Blow-Up in a shot-by-shot analysis. Freed from the hype and fashion, it emerges as a great film, if not the one we thought we were seeing at the time. … Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, we recognize the bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking now about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but is lost in his craft. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy. Later, all his gains are taken back.... Blow-Up audaciously involves us in a plot that promises the solution to a mystery, and leaves us lacking even its players."
"I am showing the Old West as it really was. Cinema takes violence from life. Not the other way around. Americans treat Westerns with too much rhetoric."
"Even in the greatest Westerns, the woman is imposed on the action, as a star, and is generally destined to be “had” by the male lead. But she does not exist as a woman. If you cut her out of the film, in a version which you can imagine, the film becomes much better. In the desert, the essential problem was to survive. Women were an obstacle to survival! Usually, the woman not only holds up the story, but she has no real character, no reality. She is a symbol. She is there without having any reason to be there, simply because one must have a woman, and because the hero must prove, in some way or another, that he has "sex-appeal.""
"I myself regard the deaf people as superheroes, protectors of the visual language."
"The eye of the deaf sees what is invisible to the eye of the hearing."
"Our diversity is our superpower."
"My deafness is my superpower."
"From the director to the international cast, all of them are from deaf families for generations, while the film industry usually entrusts these roles to audacious interpreters that end up being bad imitators of the Sign language."
"“My first impression was that I had stumbled into the future, but as a linguist I was also instantly fascinated with Japanese and how it has a relationship with sign language. Kanji are usually concepts or ideas and then hiragana acts as a bridge for communication It’s the same with sign language: We use fingerspelling (spelling out the alphabet with your hands) between our conceptual signs."
"I’ve often felt visual communicators have superhero-like qualities."
"You can see the existence of these beautiful signed languages which are incredibly visual, and they require space, they require space to grow."
"Italian language is not just sonore. It is also visual."
"Sign Gene's director (Emilio Insolera) met up with Tokyo Journal in Shibuya whilst en route to the NHK studios. The director turns out to be a lively character, one, perhaps unsurprisingly, with a sense for physical and situational humor."
"The greatest merit of Sign Gene is to break the veil that separates the audiences from the mysterious and fascinating world of the deaf, just as it did at the party in the Odeon auditorium, all united from that silent toast, from that speaking animatedly without voice, from that mimic joy in which we – incapable of communicating – were the only outsiders, the unique dis/ables, mutes like fishes in a very capable and alien society. Yes, if wanted to subvert, Insolera made the centerpiece."
"Emilio Insolera’s “Sign Gene” gave the world its first deaf superheroes. But after writing, directing, producing and starring in the film himself, you might argue that Insolera is the one with the superpowers."
"Insolera’s efforts are equal to that of any Marvel star."
"@JimmyBennett love you for life my Jimmy. You know I've been testing 9 years old lately but unfortunately ain't nobody like you sonny."
"I got to know Asia Argento ten months ago. Our commonality is the shared pain of being assaulted by Harvey Weinstein."
"Siamo angeli con un'ala soltanto e possiamo volare solo restando abbracciati."
"Apart from the president Berlusconi, who is always the top, I see Brunetta very active, I would like very much to be the protagonist of a porn. I would like to take Brunetta back with the cameras, I see it, he is always pissed off. We always use tall and sometimes dwarf models, he would be fun. Because you don't have to lower it and it becomes cool to take it back. It would be the number one, the number one, also because it comes from the school of Berlusconi. I'm sure it's not complex and doesn't hold back, because it has self-esteem that's important for a porn movie."
"[About the experience in a gay porn movie] There were times, in my life, that it wasn't me who decided, but my body. I recently saw Shame, by Steve McQueen, and that movie represents my path. I, compared to many other actors, I never had problems shooting scenes where maybe my side was stimulated and I always found ridicule, believe me, all that "machismo"."
"Thanks mom, thanks dad for the bird you gave me. (from Lo Zoo 105 )"
"Power is the highest expression of perversion."
"In my opinion, Boschi is a real pig, an animal. With her it would be fun. A Renzi like the "potato", but definitely not a large pig, is one that goes on the traditional. While Grillo is a big one, one who has a lot of fun with the gnocca."
"[On Marco Travaglio] I would see him in a porn but in a somewhat alternative genre, not the ones I would do. I don't see him very active on a sexual level, it seems more passive than active. WhileI like Sallusti , he is very animal, he has 100 percent hormones. Like Santanchè."
"[On his heir] My wife constantly tells me to stop looking for him, because he doesn't exist."
"[In response to a producer who had asked him to make a gay porn movie] I'm sorry but I like pussy. (from Lo Zoo 105 )"
"[In answer to the question of whether the penis is too big to scare women] "Rocco you hurt me, don't put it in, make it easy, do it slowly ...", but then they never tell me: "Take it off!""
"[In response to the question of what a woman must do in bed] Allow yourself, without limitation, with your partner."
"When I put the penis in the vulva of my partner, strangely she almost always makes a comparison with a dildo ... my chapel is too big not to enjoy. (from "The Zoo of 105")"
"Hard was what I wanted to do as a kid. I started in 1985 in Paris, when the videocassette was not yet "protagonist"; at the time, hard films were only shown in cinemas and it was therefore very difficult to know the producers of the films as it was "forbidden" to approach this world."
"I remember as a child I read the abandoned porn magazines on the edge of Ortona's country roads, thrown away by truck drivers."
"The hard has become a real industry; he thinks that ten thousand films are produced in the United States and as many in Europe."
"The working rhythms are exhausting, so much so that the average life of an actress is only six months; for an actor, on the other hand, if he can manage himself without being fooled by the initial euphoria and the consequent physical decline, he can be better ..."
"Certainly it is a work that is learned, one must be gifted and not only from the sexual point of view, an element that is not the most important; you have to be naturally taken to sex and then there's a technique to learn, since the scene doesn't last ten minutes and you can't reach orgasm whenever you want."
"In fact, the most difficult thing for a director like me is to find the right people; it is enough to put in a group a man or a woman or a wrong person that everything is compromised."
"Currently, in this phase of much work, it is the lack of men. There is a lot of demand for films but few are really able to stay on a set and perform this profession. Instead, there are so many girls, also because of the short professional life of an actress."
"The real problem in Italy is the wall on the subject: I worked with the French (the numbers one for the hard), the Americans, the Spaniards, the Germans but only the Italians make a thousand problems ..."
"I have always defined myself halfway between an animal and a man, however in full respect of others. I am a pure instinct and I act as such. Thinking of an animal, I love monkeys ..."
"A man, a Walter. (Luciana Littizzetto)"
"L'importante è che la morte ci trovi vivi."
"Always remember that the only riches we possess are the dreams we have as children. They are the fuel of our lives, the only force that pushes us to keep on going even when things have gone all wrong."
"Just work, work, work, even at the risk of making mistakes. And if and when you do make mistakes, and you do hurt someone, ask for forgiveness. Asking forgiveness and admitting you've made a mistake is the hardest thing of all. But if someone else does you good, remember it always. Showing gratitude is every bit as complicated."
"Every one of us has already experienced thousands of last times without even realizing it. Most of the time, in fact, you never even imagine that what you're experiencing is the last time."
"Trust yourself. Even if you're really, really scared, never let on that you are."
"If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief."
"My independence, which is my strength, implies my loneliness, which is weakness. (Italian: La mia indipendenza, che è la mia forza, implica la solitudine, che è la mia debolezza.)"
"Nothing is more anarchic than power. Power does what it wants. (Italian: Nulla è più anarchico del potere, il potere fa praticamente ciò che vuole.)"
"Seriousness is the only quality of people who have no other ones. (Italian: La serietà è la qualità di coloro che non ne hanno altre.)"
"Devo al film della Wertmuller "Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore" il successo di un personaggio che è piaciuto molto all'estero e con il quale sono stato a lungo identificato con grande piacere."
"Pasqualino Settebellezze era un film che non voleva far nessuno, perché parla di un campo di concentramento. È una storia vera. Sono riuscito a convincere Lina [Wertmüller] a farlo e ha avuto quattro candidature all'Oscar."
"I wanted the two [lead] roles, of Mimi and Fiore, to be played by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato. Both were already well-respected actors but had not yet played lead roles in movies. At the beginning, the producers were hesitant and had to take a gamble on these two talents. In the end, everyone was convinced of how good they were, and we formed a beautiful team."
"The funny side is repressed inside myself somehow, but it was always there. I think it's from my mother's side, she was always funny and making jokes, so I didn't suffer at all! When I get together with Bud, something just clicks and we are funny."
"Gregorio Samsa is the character who has the courage to become truly an unclean and gigantic insect to scream the injustice that is perpetrated daily against millions of people, who are forced to buy, to have the necessities... I was saying to live, but it is more correct to say to 'exist', they are forced to spend the whole day, either looking for a job, or doing a job, or submitting to a job, or sickness due to overwork. In short, restlessness is the main sentiment of all societies that do not take into account the greatness and preciousness of every single human being."
"Here in Kyrgyzstan, in every public and private sector, you don't work more than three hours a day, at full pay, with the reservation of a possible hour of overtime. The remaining 20 and 21 hours of the day are devoted to sleep, food, creativity, love, life, oneself, one's children, and one's fellow human beings. (p. 8)"
"This mechanism of eight hours of work every day has always produced social tensions, neuroses, depressions, illnesses and above all the precise feeling of losing the feeling of life forever."
"So, in the meantime one must not put flowers at the window of the cell of which he is prisoner because otherwise even if one day the door is open he will not want to go out. He must always think, with a perfect conscience: "These people are stealing my life, in exchange for two and a half million a month, all right, while I am a masterpiece whose value is unspeakable.""
""Better lick the floor" but what's horrendous in this culture is that "licking the floor" has even become an aspiration, you know? But it's monstrous that the guy has to go to work eight hours a day and he has to be grateful to those who make him lick the floor, you know?"
"The real slave, the true slave defends the master, not fights him. Because the slave is not so much the one who has the chain on his foot as the one who is no longer able to imagine freedom."
"D'amore si vive (C.E.1984)"
"The Fever (C.E.2005)"
"Silvano Agosti, Lettere dalla Kirghisia, Edizioni l'Immagine, Rome C.E.2007."
"Dante's relationship with women is very complex, because the range of real women in Dante's life and in Dante Alighieri's imagined life is very different. There is an idealization of women that occurs when he is nine years old. He lost his real mother when he was five years old, so he is the son of a father and a stepmother. The neighbors of the Portinari family had six daughters and one of these is Beatrice, a nine-year-old girl, her age. Dante meets her gaze and from that moment he becomes almost a prisoner of that gaze, which is why nine is Beatrice's magic number, because he meets her at nine years old. The Poet follows her to Florence for another nine years, without ever receiving encouragement from her, until at eighteen, before entering the church where the girl goes every evening in Santa Margherita dei Cerchi which is the Portinari church, suddenly he decides to stop, look at him and smile at him and says "I greet you" which is the only phrase Dante will hear from Beatrice. Dante remains completely satisfied by this smile and considers it the sealing of a relationship that has had no other type of concretization, nothing else, just this look and this greeting. He tells this story in this wonderful diary which is the Vita Nova, a set of poems and prose writings that he wrote in the aftermath of Beatrice's death."
"(Referring to the scoutism) I believe I have had, in that world, experiences that neither family nor school can offer you. Like the "campfires" before going to sleep. Those were also moments of socialization. Which could be playful, cheerful, with skits and jokes. But also very serious: moments in which we discussed each other, talked about each other, confided in each other, knowing that no one would ever make fun of what they felt. If I am a person who has a certain ease in talking about himself without hiding his own weaknesses and mistakes, I owe it to those moments there, to the "campfires"."
"In my life, right after my parents I put scoutism They taught me two things above all. The first is that we need to give meaning to each of our days. The second is the sacredness of life, one with the sacredness of nature."
"I make films that people call ‘horror’ because I want to make films about real things that happen in the world. And most real things aren’t very nice."
"When there are two Italians, they confide secrets to each other; three make philosophical observations; four play cards; five play poker; six talk about soccer; seven found a party in which they all secretly aspire to the presidency; eight form a mountain choir."
"[If you had the extraordinary—and also terrible—power to rule a country for a moment, to do whatever you wanted, what would you give its citizens first?] The question is a somewhat utopian one, and therefore the answer can only be utopian. Something that humanity will hardly achieve, perhaps at the end of its evolution: equality."
"There were two very beautiful blond children, the children of rich people: all the children of rich people are blond and look alike, while the children of Calabrian farm laborers are dark-skinned and look different from each other."
"With Fantozzi, I tried to recount the adventure of those who live in that part of life that everyone (except the children of the powerful) goes through or has gone through: the moment when you are under someone else's thumb. Many come out of it with honor, many went through it at twenty, others at thirty, many remain there forever, and they are the majority. Fantozzi is one of them."
"But it is not a book about [Fantozzi] at all, it is just a collection of Fantozzi stories that I wrote for L'Europeo, with a few extra semicolons, jotted down at random. Writing will never be my job, it's something I do for fun."
"Did I say that the Pope (John Paul II) doesn't believe in God?[14] I really think so. Come on. The Pope is too intelligent a person to believe in God."
"Fantozzi is also a therapist: he freed Italians from the fear of being Italian."
"TV is more dangerous because it is transparent: it magnifies flaws."
"(About Silvio Berlusconi) He told me I'm a great comedian. I'm very grateful to him for that and for losing the last election."
"I realize that for the general public, Reder had become Filini, but we must remember that his career went far beyond Filini. He was an extraordinary actor, invaluable to many great directors."
"I don't like Eduardo. I'm with Peppino. And even if Eduardo remains one of the few Italian authors, along with Pirandello, Goldoni, and Fo, to be performed abroad, who knows what the future holds. Perhaps posterity will appreciate Pappagone's extraordinary tirades more than Eduardo's serious, boring, and pretentious ones. A virtue for our Catholic and falsely committed country."
"Peppino was not born just to make people laugh. Those in the extra category like him can do anything. It is no coincidence that he played Molière, Machiavelli, and Pinter. Eduardo, on the other hand, only played himself."
"(About Vittorio Gassman) Totò and Sordi were the funniest, Mastroianni the most charming, but Vittorio was the most complete: a great man of theater, cinema, and literature. He was a prince, far removed from the charlatanism of our milieu. His presence was enjoyable for his culture, his entertainment, and the honesty with which he approached every subject."
"At the beginning of spring, we used to go to Sampierdarena, a suburb of Genoa that is still one of the most atrocious things I have ever seen, of a terrible, repugnant atrocity. I acted as a guide and we were all equipped with fake tourist guides. [He stands up and begins to tell the story, using gestures to help him.] We started out like tourists. ‘What you see here [raising his voice] is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places in the world!’ [laughs] When a few people had gathered, intrigued to say the least, we began to say, 'How wonderful! How beautiful! Come, come here, look how well you can see' [laughs]. And then Fabrizio or someone else in our group would say, 'Look, apparently, it looks like shit [laughs]. But this is one of the most repulsive places on the face of the earth!"
"I am enraged by this tendency, which exists above all in Italy, perhaps because of its Catholic roots, to recognize the merits of artists only after their death. As if death ennobled them."
"One day we were at the Ritz in Madrid, in a suite. Moana went to the bathroom and came back wearing only her underwear. She looked at me and said, ‘I will never make love to you. I love you very much. I am HIV positive.’ It was a sentence that struck me deeply. I hugged her and she was moved. [...] The most curious thing about Moana Pozzi was that she hated sex. [...] She was completely frigid. It's quite sad: she did a job that she actually hated. Her frigidity led her to do this job with a certain anger, she did it with little joy. Honestly, she didn't understand what was the right path to happiness. For her, born in a poor neighborhood, it was about making money any way she could, even at the risk of unhappiness."
"Fantozzi at that time was a happy wretch; at least he had a steady job."
"Young people have a habit right now of saying that you are unhappy, that you are afraid of the future, that this or that is to blame... and you blame our generation above all, the thieves, the politicians... no, that's not true, you are also to blame, believe me. My generation! When the war ended, the country was completely destroyed, there were no roads, no highways, no bridges, no hospitals, there was nothing, there were only churches. After a horrific tragedy like the war, there was nothing left, nothing, nothing! In fifteen years, we in Italy became the fourth most industrialized country on Earth. In just fifteen years! Oooh! So I beg you, guys, it's your fault. This constant complaining! I'm starting to think that we're happier as old people than you are as young people. Think about it, it's incredible!"
"Comic behavior is childish behavior, which means that all comedians are children, immature. Stan Laurel is a child, he cries all the time [...], Jerry Lewis was a silly child, Totò never really touched a woman, Sordi the same. [...] Childish behavior, I would say, brings to light, in a sudden, unexpected way, the happiest period of life: childhood, which provokes a great emotion of happiness and therefore laughter. All great comedians have always moved and behaved immaturely, like children."
"(About Cécile Kyenge) He's not very charming. Absolutely not. Also because he speaks Italian... and he doesn't even have an Italian passport. [...] [The appointment to the Ministry of Integration is] Superfluous. It was very theatrical. [...] [Appointing a black minister] It's superfluous; all in all, it doesn't solve the problem [of integration]."
"Our culture has not yet accepted an inferior culture such as that which comes from Africa. It is not skin color, it is cultural difference. Undoubtedly, it cannot be compared to the great European culture. [...] We do-gooders, we Europeans, we priests, we saints... we have all always pretended to be better than we really are. [...] Relations with black people today, except perhaps with Obama, are still marked by a slight hypocrisy."
"Fantozzi is the prototype of the poor wretch, the quintessence of nothingness."
"I spent my childhood and youth with Fabrizio De André, then twenty years with Gassman, another twenty with Tognazzi, then Ferreri, Volonté, Fellini... In short... I only talk ‘about’ someone, not ‘with’ someone... oh well!"
"[After winning the 1990-1991 championship] I don't believe in God, but now I believe in Sampdoria."
"(About Roberto Benigni He is always over the top, a euphoric clown. Only when he talks about money with his wife does he become very serious. His voice and face change. The farmer in him comes out. Benigni is a great man, even if he leaves nothing written."
"Fantozzi no longer dresses like he did in the 1960s; baggy pants and boxer shorts, an incredible wife, an unimaginable daughter. Fantozzi had a different vibe back then. The name itself, Fantozzi, sounded like “fantocci” (puppets). All of that is gone now."
"The audience that goes to see Vasco Rossi is made up of young Fantozzis: frayed sweaters, military boots, the same Martini sports glasses, the same imitation watches."
"Benigni appeals to Fantozzis precisely because he is easy to understand, very comforting, a bit Chaplinesque."
"At my age, you're afraid of discoveries. A discovery would force you to change your frame of reference."
"(About Achille Campanile) He was my idol. But he was just surreal. He couldn't do social satire because the regime wouldn't let him. So he came up with ingenious solutions."
"Benigni and Villaggio are two overlooked and neglected treasures. Two actors who bring health and vitality to cinema... Ignoring their potential seems to me to be one of the many faults that can be attributed to our producers."
"Carlo Martello ritorna dalla battaglia di Poiters (Carlo Martello Returns from the Battle of Poiters) came about in a curious way. In one room, Mauro De André, Fabrizio's older brother, was preparing for his civil procedure exam, while in the next room, Paolo Villaggio and Fabrizio were helping each other with their private law exam. After a month, Mauro passed the exam with flying colors, a milestone in a journey that led him to become a distinguished lawyer. Fabrizio and Villaggio, on the other hand, composed a pleasant and playful song about Carlo Martello and another entitled Il fannullone (The Slacker). They did not take the exam and never graduated."
"He was the greatest clown of his generation, as rare as the great poets. A ruthless, revolutionary, and liberating child. Fantozzi represents us all, humiliates us and corrects us. With him, all anonymous people have found their Lord. Paolo created the first true national mask, something that will last forever."
"I met him for the first time in Pocol, above Cortina. I was an angry kid who swore a lot. he liked me because I was tormented and restless, and he was the same, only he was more controlled, perhaps because he was older than me, so he immediately took on the role of older brother and said to me: “Look, you mustn't swear, you swear to be the center of attention, you're an asshole.”"
"There haven't been many people as free as you in a country where satire is only directed at those who pose no threat. For this reason too, dear Paolo, Italy without you is a little sadder from today."
"He wasn't a very likeable character, Paolo... he was cynical... just like some of his characters. (Orchidea De Santis)"
"Paolo was the first teacher, cinematographically speaking, not only the teacher in the film Marco Tullio Sperelli, but a teacher of cinematic experience. We were all 14 children there. [...] Paolo was everything except the Fantozzi we expected him to be. [He was] a very serious person, very dutiful, very precise, not very clumsy... serious. Getting to know him in person and realizing that he was a totally different man from his character [...] was strange, especially through the eyes of an 8-year-old child."
"I had seen Villaggio on television: he had an explosive personality. His intelligence was a constant source of enrichment for me. He created the character of Fantozzi, around whom he built a galaxy of extraordinary faces. Including mine. I played my part with the awareness that I was acting in a cartoon."
"He was caustic, cynical, bizarre, and unpredictable. His irony was fierce, but in my opinion it hid a mysterious side of him that he didn't want to reveal. His fragility, his deep melancholy, which he didn't want to show. And that was his charm. He dressed in skirts, he was crazy, but that's how he was. His eccentricity wasn't ostentatious, he was just naturally eccentric."
"Paolo felt more like a writer than an actor. And it's a shame that only Federico Fellini and Lina Wertmüller recognized his talent. Paolo shouldn't have been reduced and relegated to the Fantozzi character that he himself had invented and that brought him success."
"Je ne suis pas un pessimiste: c'est une forme d'optimisme, selon moi, de voir aussi le mal."
"Non sono un pessimista: vedere anche il male è, a mio parere, una forma di ottimismo."