L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 20 L'Italo-Americano F inding stories written by Italians and disco- ver talented directors in the Belpaese to help them make their way through American film and tele- vision productions. This is the goal of Isabella Mastrodicasa, a young Italian woman who, four years ago, moved from Viterbo to Los Angeles, where she works as a literary manager and produ- cer. Considering the great open- ness Hollywood has shown in recent years towards foreign talents - from Sorrentino to Del Toro, from Iñárritu to Sollima - Isabella has certainly chosen an expanding and on some levels, still unexplored career. "A manager is like an Uber driver, director and screenwriter are the passengers. They say where they want to go, I am the person who has to understand which is the best route to get there in the most effective and efficient way," she explains to me, with clear ideas and a lot of determination. An arduous job, that requires understanding what Italian talents have to offer to the Hollywood industry and that, for some years, Mastrodicasa has been doing full-time for Heroes and Villains Entertainment, an important management and pro- duction company dealing with cinema, TV , video games , comics and new media. Isabella, how do you descri- be your job? I am both a literary manager and a producer. A literary mana- ger works exclusively in the con- text of writing, in contact with directors and screenwriters. Wri- ting is the primordial phase of any project, it happens right after an idea is born. I am also a pro- ducer, because in many cases these two roles come together during projects: often stories are developed together, and therefo- re the manager is also very much involved in this phase. Wh at comp an y are you working for in Los Angeles? I work for a management and production company called Heroes and Villains Entertain- ment. We find projects to produ- ce (both films and TV series), but above all w e guide the careers of talented directors and writers, bringing them to the highest possible level. Among our clients there are famous wri- ters who work on major series, from A Handmaid's Tale to 13 Reason Why, from Jessica Jones and Cloak and Dagger, to The Expanse and Dear White People, but als o others involved in projects for F ox, U nivers al, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Netflix and Amazon. What do you do exactly? In addition to supporting the work of my colleagues, I focus on the European market and on Italian talents. I actually started collaborating with Nicola Gua- glianone and Menotti, in my opi- nion, two of the most important s creenw riters of the Italian scene. Wh at is th e d ifferen ce between a manager and an agent? The manager takes over much earlier than the agent, he is the one who finds the rough dia- mond and tries to define it, to improve it. The agent takes over when there is already a product to sell. The manager is the one with whom writers or directors go "barefaced," the one dirty clothes are washed with. What is the your work pro- cess like? When someone has an idea, they send us a script and we work on it. After that, when it is ready, the agent helps try to sell the project to networks. A large part of my job is also finding new customers, so I always go to festivals, I constantly look for new material. In my case, the focus is on European and Italian talents. Writing coming from Europe is different, far from big budget action or science fiction movies. It is based on a simple structure, but with a strong emo- tional impact. What other things do you do? I also do I.P. research, which stands for intellectual property: books or new s paper articles whose rights are available and potentially developable in TV series. There is a lot of interest on Italian and European stories or cases. I would like Italian sto- ries that are not known yet to be pitched here through the clients of the agency I work for. Can you give us an exam- ple? At the moment I am working on a series, but I cannot reveal too many details, that is set in Tuscany, and involves the Vati- can, Japan, Spain, the secret ser- vices. What kind of content should a script have to be liked in America? The market is saturated with content in America, so the intere- st is towards new stories, diffe- rent from those told until now, but they have to have an interna- tional appeal. In the USA they like and look for a lot of stories about international intrigue, game-ship as they say here, with s ocio-political dynamics , or films with very strong and inspi- ring female roles; now, there is a lot of attention on gender and race diversity. There is a huge need for new, diverse content, but at the same time, we cannot focus only and exclusively on italianità. And here your role comes into play. What advice would you give? Emerging writers must abso- lutely speak and write in English. You have to be able to pitch your ideas smoothly, the goal is to sell and you have to master the lan- guage. When you get here, even if you were successful in Italy, you are nobody… They must also have an open mind to absorb every single thing around them, they have to accept any meeting, listen to all advice and even criticism. Criticism is often taken in a negative way, while in America it's constructi- ve, it's done with more respect. From everything they must learn a lesson, with a lot of humility. Have you ever been critici- zed? Y es , for example during screenplays presentations. You have only 60 seconds and you have to immediately capture their attention. It happened that I was interrupted, criticized for my accent. You need to learn how not to get offended, how not to take it personally, but rather from a profes s ional point of view. What are some of the grea- test satisfactions you've mana- ged to achieve? My first job. I was working in a big company and I was the only non-American. I struggled s o much to unders tand their mechanisms, to adapt, to have them take me s erious ly, and when I was offered a job that many other people wanted I felt I had won one of the toughest fights of my life. The second magic moment was when, after a lunch with the producer Frank Marshall, I was offered to go to work for the company he created along with Kathleen Kennedy decades ago and with which he had produced the movies we all grew up watching. Thanks to that experience I was able to work on the production of the award-win- ning documentary, Finding Oscar, about the civil war in Guatemala. Seeing my name next to Steven Spielberg's, co- producer with Marshall, was pri- celess. So is it possible to be Italian and succeed in US cinema? Yes. We must not presume, though, that a great career in Italy can keep us from starting from scratch here. I think it's possible, but it takes a lot of adaptability, a lot of intelligence and patience. There are many talents in Italy, we are very pas- sionate and we live out of inspi- ration, but we need to improve our entrepreneurial skills when it comes to sell ourselves. SILVIA GIUDICI Isabella Mastrodicasa, is both a literary manager and a producer seeking young Italian talents to work in Hollywood Finding Italian talents for the American cinema LOS ANGELES ITALIAN COMMUNITY

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