Ferzán Ozpetek: Because I was in contact with all three and we could never work together. Mariangela Melato sent me to call me after my first movie, “Haman, the Turkish bath.” He told me he would like to film with me. The years passed, sometimes we talked, but when I finally called her to make “magnificent presence” he told me that it was too late, because he was sick. Virna Lisi, having seen “the ignorant fairy,” he told the journalists that he admired me. Then I called her, I thanked her, we found ourselves, some time later I offered her the role of the grandmother “I have something to tell them”, but then Icharia Occhini seemed more appropriate for the paper. Virna told me that there was no problem, that we would already have another occasion, but in the end we could never work, which I still regret.
FO: That was different, we talked once, but he told me something unforgettable. When I won the Golden Globe for “The Turkish Bath” I received a tribute in Cinecittá. She was there, they introduced us and congratulated me. Then he moved away, but suddenly he came back to tell me “Look, this movie is very good, but you are going to do others as good as this.” That impressed me.
Q.: “The ignorant fairy”, “The Window in front”, “Cuore Sacro”, that just to start. How did everything start?
FO: I was born and grew up in Istanbul. One day I decided to study in Italy. I entered the University of the Sapienza, I went to the Silvio D’Amico dramatic academy, my father kept me three years, which on the one hand ashamed and on the other not, I will see why. At three years, seeing the irregular of my studies, I cut my food. I started working with a friend who made Marcos de Picros, I painted, lived from that, at the same time I met Julian Beck and his street shows (sometimes one understands only after what he has lived), and asked them to work in their films, even if it is free, directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Elio Petri. Until one day the Comedian Massimo Troisi accepted me, and I spent years working with him. We spend so many things!
Q.: And for almost two decades he was an assistant direction of Troisi, Maurizio Ponzi, Ricky Tognazzi, among others, in dramas and comedies with cast casts.
FO: A good school. And what I especially liked as an address assistant was to visit the theatrical tailors, and follow the advice of a costume designer: you have to be attentive to all the details, the color, to the light that falls on a dress.
Q.: Teaching that applies especially in “Diamanti”.
FO: There they all helped me, both a rookie dressmaker and a great art director, Turkish and me, Deniz Gokturb Kobanbay, who has a great intuition. It was a very good team. Attention, to form a good team you just have to choose people well, transmit your emotions, fill them with your emotions, and then let their creativity deploy, not cut that creativity. Just ask that they are attentive to certain things that I tell them, medium as a maniac. In this case I told them “the dominant must be the red color, the brightness must be such a way.” Not much more. When everything is ready, I do not repeat a shot more than three times. The best are always the first two. Then the gestures of the interpreters are already mechanical. But in my first movies I repeated many times, not for the artists, but because I already obsessed me to get the color and light I had dreamed.
Q.: Now, with experience, you also have time to do other things, such as directing operas and writing novels.
Fo: I am not only an opera passionate, but I made “Aída” for the Maggio Fiorentino, with the direction of Zubin Metha, a great experience, and almost immediately later I made “La Traviata” for the San Carlo de Naples Theater, which was on the billboard for seven years, and recently “Madame Butterfly”, also for that theater. And I already wrote four novels. From the third, 300,000 copies were sold, that is Record in Italy, and it was also published in Spain, in France, in Germany. The writing for me is a fun, a hobby that I dedicate myself to the early morning. The writing, filming a movie, the opera … I also participated in the 2019 Venice Art Biennale with a short film that was very applauded.
Q.: That water? It is wonderful.
FO: One day I was in Naples preparing “Madame Butterfly”, a lady calls me to take care of the short thing that I would have to represent the Venetik of that year. I told him I didn’t have time. Offended, “Do you realize that you are refusing to participate in the Biennale di Venezia?” I explained, “I don’t have time but if you want I propose an idea that any other director can do.” He tells her and gets excited, “Ah, but that is precisely the issue of this year’s venetika”! Result, I also got excited, and on Monday, which was my day off, we had a girl in the water, on which various images would appear and disappear. Poorceita, spent hours in the water for a short that lasts less than five minutes. But it was a success, and they were immediately calling me from the Museum of Modern Art of Rome to make another short.
Q.: And nothing time is left over.
FO: Yes, as to spend an entire afternoon chatting with Douglas Kirkland, for example. For the catalog and poster of a retrospective in Los Angeles they asked me to go to their studio to take a picture. “He is the photographer of the stars,” they told me. I didn’t feel like it, he was already big, his house-study was on the hills, out of the city. Kirkland received me and started telling me how every photo hung from the wall: Marilyn Monroe between the sheets, Liza Minnelli with a tear rolling down the cheek, was full of photos. I told myself “I am not interested in anything,” and suddenly, like 15 minutes, we were already great friends, and we spent five hours chatting, and we went to dinner, it was a beautiful afternoon. And sometimes I also have time to try things that occur to me during filming, out of the libretto, but in that you depend on the talent of the actresses. For example, during the filming of “Diamanti” I told an actress “tell the other that the daughter was died.” From there, everything was their creation. And they tolded and I see that the operator was crying, the people behind the camera cried, and I cried and said “they have to cry the spectators with this scene.” Because I have that mania of thinking how the public will react to each scene.
Q (Just the film about a boy who wants to leave the closet in full family reunion).
FO: Because my relationship with my father was never quite good. He was very masculine, virile, I hoped I was too, when in the street we saw a pretty girl he already drove me to conquer her. I could never talk about what happened to me. Above I felt that he did not trust my strength, or my talent. I know that one day I asked my brothers, who are mechanical engineers, “take care of their little brother because he is not going to do in life.” When I later made “the Turkish bath” I saw him a bit incredulous. We never talked, one day he died and later, while we ordered his desk, I found a folder of cuts. He had been collecting all the notes that spoke well of me, and my films! Who knows how our relationship would have been if we had had the courage to talk to us! Then I returned, I ordered wrinkles and gray to my friend Ennio Fantastichini until my father was equal, and made that movie.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
