What hell and what laughter to be Verdone: you have no privacy, they ask you for selfies in every situation, they drag you, they take you by the jacket, they offer you anything, even to become mayor of Rome, they ask you how to recover from some disease knowing that you are informed almost like a doctor, they want to laugh with you and ask you to always make the same film with the characters that all of Italy recites by heart ("maybe as a strange famolo you could make an elderly famolo" says his humoral producer with the voice of Mario Brega from A lot beautiful, a truly ironic quote by Aurelio De Laurentiis).
"35-40% of what you see is part of my life, it tells about myself, my frailties, my torments", says the director, author and protagonist at his debut in a TV series after 44 years of work. It's called Vita da Carlo, it mixes reality and fantasy, characters who basically play themselves (besides Verdone, an amazing 'best friend' Max Tortora), and will be streamed on Prime Video on November 5th. "And if it is successful, perhaps a second season will also be made", adds enthusiastically Verdone who is also working on a new film produced by Filmauro.
And he admits: "the project was born as a challenge, a novelty, and I liked it, I loved telling my private life what happens to me and yet having more freedom than movies, not being obsessed with comic times, knowing about to be able to tell with a long time in which anything can happen. I had a good experience, full of truth and with less anxiety.
We wrote 10 episodes in just two months. I am happy with a beautiful cast with many opportunities for young people. age having young people around, guiding them is a great satisfaction ".
In Vita da Carlo, Verdone dreams of winning Cannes, of having his face on the cover of the cinephile Cahiers du cinema, of making a dramatic film that is a turning point in his filmography but fails, as well as perhaps dreams in real life 'condemned 'in a certain sense to be Verdone, that is to say to make people laugh, and precisely this authenticity, this' tragedy as a comic man' beyond the gimmicks of the screenplay written with Nicola Guaglianone, Menotti, Pasquale Plastino, Ciro Zecca, Luca Mastrogiovanni, is the original and interesting thing about the series he directed with Arnaldo Catinari.
The Amazon Original series produced by Filmauro di Aurelio and Luigi De Laurentiis is today a special event at the Rome Festival accompanied by the cast that includes among the many in addition to Tortora, Anita Caprioli, Monica Guerritore ("after being the mother of the king of Rome Totti , I am Gianna the ex-wife of the emperor of Rome "), the young Antonio Bannò, Caterina De Angelis (daughter of Buy in her debut, here daughter of Carlo), Filippo Contri.
In the first episodes of Vita da Carlo a Verdone a certain president of the Lazio Region Signoretti is proposed to become mayor of Rome and the news even before the director replies something is spread on social media and arrives on Dagospia.
"It really happened to me a few years ago - he explains - they came up with monstrous polls, 70% of those interviewed would have voted for me. But in 30 minutes I said no: in life if you take away the cinema, which is my existence from afar 1971 when I started in a university theater, I don't think of doing anything else, to manage the city it takes preparation. The thing fell thanks to God. To the newly elected Gualtieri I say that it is essential to have a strong, fast, determined and above all honest team. That must begin to break down the bureaucracy that blocks this city, it is seven years that you cannot put a marble back on the Janiculum after a lightning bolt has ruined it and when I asked the Raggi why she replied that there are 3 superintendents to have their say. but I disagree. We need to get rid of the filth,maintenance must start quickly again and then work on the suburbs, transport, give life to activities, open libraries that give life and dignity. "And to those who applaud him in the hall as if he were the mayor of Rome, Verdone replies:" I love too much Rome ". In the second episode Alessandro Haber, drunk, recites a Shakespearean monologue, turns to the 'lucky' Verdone who made a career and says that as a Jew he didn't have any: Carlo more or less replies to him 'but if you have excellent communication '. "I am tired of the politically correct - Verdone exclaims - every time we stopped on this sentence, a kind of terror, a form of hypocrisy." Verdone, 70, with La carzza della memoria and La casa sopra in the bookshop the arcades, both Bompiani,continues in its autobiographical phase also with the TV series and gives advice to young people who ask how to make films: "team up, network, experiment with shorts and offer volunteer assistants, many started like this: Paolo Sorrentino was the keeper of the frying pans of the lights, the mess is still fundamental ". (HANDLE).