L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2015 www.italoamericano.org L'Italo-Americano 7 "Sergio Leone and I had a mutual understanding and shared the same creative vision" doing over there amidst the fog (RE: Milan's typical weather condition)?" I replied: "Advertising." Unimpressed, he told me to go and watch Kurosawa's film, Yojimbo (released in Italy as "La sfida del samurai", in 1961), because it might be remade as a western. I expressed my concerns about Kurosawa's unawareness and stepped back from the pro- ject, but Leone belittled any eventual bad consequence and realized what it would have become: Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars, 1964). The low-budget movie, despite an unsuccessful opening in Rome, captivated movie the- ater, Supercinema's owner, in Florence, where it ran for two- three weeks (very unusual occur- rence, back then). After the word of mouth spread across the peninsula, the film garnered suc- cess and established Leone's rep- utation. Rightfully, Kurosawa and his family sued Leone for copy- right's infringement, since the Italian director didn't give any credit to the Japanese filmmaker. Leone and I had a mutual understanding and shared the same creative vision. He urged me to move to Rome and work at the sequel, Per qualche dollaro in più (For a Few Dollars More, 1965). I rewrote the final scene, in which the bounty hunter, Manco (played by Clint Eastwood), counts the bodies, adding up the bounties, and finds he is short of the $27,000 total. In the previous version, Clint called every corpse by name. At that time, I was still work- ing in advertisement, but Leone and I made a deal, as he assured me that the producer, Alberto Grimaldi, would put me under contract for a year and remuner- ate me, at least as much as my previous job. In the next 8-9 months, I worked in the editing of: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966). The post-production stage was essential for Leone. At the same time, I was working at another "spaghetti- western": La resa dei conti (The Big Gundown, by S. Sollima). Meanwhile, Leone was start- ing to conceive the story for C'era una volta il West, with Bernardo Bertolucci - back then, already an accomplished director - and Dario Argento, who was just a film critic at that time. However, Leone's collabora- tion with the two of them was not working out, and, once again, I jumped on board. Upon Leone and I discussing every element of the story, I wrote down the full 420-pages script in twenty days. In the late seventies and eighties, you worked interna- tionally, collaborating with several directors, and, among them, some British leading fig- ures, the likes of Michael Anderson, John Irvin, and the late Tony Scott and John Guillermin. Let's go back together over that period. I recall with pleasure my col- laboration with Michael Anderson, for the horror movie, Orca (1977), coproduced by Dino De Laurentiis. Dino and I were invited to a screening of Jaws, at the screen- writer's house. De Laurentiis liked a lot the idea of a bad fish, jeopardizing the human commu- nity and asked me whether there was another marine animal alike. Upon some research, I got captivated by the orca whale and its male-female dynamics, which somehow recalled traditional Sicilian relation between gen- ders. In fact, the main plot line deals with a male killer whale, which seeks revenge after its female partner gets killed. As far as my collaboration with John Irvin, for the action movie, Raw Deal (1986), I co- wrote with my long-time writing partner, Luciano Vincenzoni, a role filled with irony for the pro- tagonist, A. Schwarzenegger, who up until then had exclusive- ly played serious, and unwilling- ly ridiculous, parts. From then on, the Austrian- American actor employed the successful formula in the subse- quent films, in whom he starred. And what about your pro- ject, never realized, with Billy Wilder? Billy and I developed a real friendship. He repeatedly invited me over at his house in Malibu. We were planning to do a remake of an Italian movie. However, the project ran aground during the editing stage. The last movie script you worked to, was the one for The Sicilian Girl (by Marco Amenta, 2008), based on a true story. Are you currently work- ing at something new? Italian cinema is dead. To me, the worldwide film production is experiencing a downward trend, since the end of the seventies. The main issue in Italy is that a movie cannot contain any con- troversial reference to religion or sex, since it always has to be fit for prime time on TV. That is due also to the fact that nowa- days RAI Cinema - and not the state – finances films. For similar reasons, The Sicilian Girl, which had a dis- creet success in the U.S., has been widely ignored in Italy. For four years, Amenta and I have been trying in vain to real- ize Il banchiere dei poveri (Banker to the Poor), about Muhammad Yunus, the Bengali economist and banker, inventor of microcredit and Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 along with his "Grameen Bank." Sadly, despite the best Pakistan actor is secured for the cast, along with a renowned American one, neither Italy, nor U.S., nor Pakistan (which literal- ly doesn't have money), are will- ing to finance the project. LOS ANGELES ITALIAN COMMUNITY Sergio Donati at the IIC LA. Photo courtesy of IIC-LA

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