Interview with Fiorello

YOU WANT TO BE AN AMERICAN...

Fiorello, what did you teach Matt Damon and Jude Law about Italy?

To eat. Matt Damon had to lose some weight and I suggested him one of my diets. We left from Rome by bus to follow all the stages of the film. The whole cast was in the bus, including Gwyneth Paltrow, with Minghella who acted like a professor, that explained what we would have done in this or otherwise that place. I was shocked by their great professionality. Two months before starting the filming we toured with this little bus as in a school trip. We stopped for lunch at a road house and Matt Damon couldn’t eat anything – according to him – so I bought him two bags of “bresaola”. He didn’t know this cold meat without grease.

And what did Matt Damon teach you instead?

When we were trying a scene of the film, which has been cut because the movie would have taken four hours otherwise, I had to read my joke and he touched me with his great concentration. Furthermore, everything is perfect in American movies: I had a envelope with some bank notes in it to pay the sale of Jude Law’s boat. One day, out of curiosity, I open this envelope and I find the exact amount that was written in the script. Everything in copy of the lira which were used in 1959.

Is your brother also in the scene of the procession?

Here Anthony gave us the opportunity to show our sentiments as if they would have been natural. This is how we exceeded the embarrassment of playing something that wasn’t real. We even cried, that’s how much tension we had.

How many days have you been on the set?

Always, also when I didn’t act, because I said to myself: “When will I ever have an occasion like this again?”. Furthermore it’s odd seeing Minghella having eight cameras connected to eight monitors. I, who was the last wheel of the car, had to wear the same cloths for eight days and a stand-in who took my place to try the lights... it’s extraordinary that I was treated like Gwyneth Paltrow, with a lot of caring. In Italy it would never be like this..