“With my wife Cortellesi I risk divorce with every film. happiness? Seeing a wolf »- Corriere.it

In the end, Riccardo Milani He will tell me:I do comedy out of desperationFor ten years, it has been hitting the box office with cult films, such as welcome president
or Like a cat on the ring road

And now with
I run to you
. many, Written with his wife Paola Courtellesi. And he makes irreverent and funny TV series, which heroes listen to like All crazy for love. He started as a volunteer assistant for Mario Monicelli Like him, he knows how to make people laugh at bitter things.

Isn’t playing comedy out of desperation a contradiction?

“I tell about Italy that I do not love it, but with passion, because I love this country. In the cinema I love to hear people laugh and when you can make them laugh and even raise your head a little bit, you’re doing an important job. As a director, I have never been happier to belong to a small circle of filmmakers and intellectuals. I prefer to address a large audience, to tell those who do not think like me, perhaps the stories of ordinary people who do terrible things in everyday life.”

What kind of terrible things?

“In the car, you get the headlights to warn you of a speed camera: a sign of a country pressing itself against the law, as if there’s tax evasion, skipping lines, not reporting bullying.”

Instead, are you reporting, are you interfering?

“I try to talk to people, if they stop, if they don’t get out of the bar. I saw someone open the trunk, take a baseball bat and smash the windshield: it’s a real sight, put cat on the ring road“.

In despair, are you an optimist or a pessimist?

I always have hope that the country will be better than I say and sometimes I feel very optimistic. I quarreled with the book. about
sorry if you find!, in which Paola is an architect and pretends to be a man for business, I said: Isn’t it just that we’re talking about a country that no longer exists? Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda and Paola had to convince me, characters at hand, of the disparity of women in the world of work.”

So, does the macho predator Pierfrancesco Favino in Coro da Te still exist?

«I do not hesitate to people like him, I had a doubt. Then you look at the violence that women suffer on New Year’s Eve in Milan, you see the flock made by young people and you realize that the fifty-year-old girl in the film is not outdated.”

As in the movie, is love the engine of change?

“Favino meets Myriam Leon, a girl in a wheelchair who knows how to do many things well while enjoying half of her condition, and she is admired: because she falls in love with this.”

The inside is the latest interpretation of Pira degli Esposito, missed last August.

“We worked together a lot. You made her dance Beyoncé in it All crazy for love. We liked each other, he always came to Dacia Marini in Pescaseroli, I also have a house there. I brought her zucchini from the garden, she told wonderful jokes. Recently she had two oxygen tubes in her nose and she says to me: Do you think I can be an actress like this? I replied: You are Pierra degli Esposit, you can do whatever you want. I wrote to her, in I run to you
The ironic granny role that puts Favino on the wall.”

It is moving.

“I’ve seen her do something extraordinary. She could act just sitting, with her pipes, but there’s a scene where everyone is dancing, and when I give the motor on, she suddenly gets up and dances. That’s getting a job and loving this job.”

How does your passion for the profession come to you?

“I was born in Rome, in the Via Segesta, above the Airone cinema. When I was two years old, I looked at a very dangerous place to hear the sounds of movies. I picked up the dialogues and screams of Indians and cowboys. I had modest jobs, but Scalera Film was close to home. Dad started showing up and hanging out as a driver and handyman, then became a production inspector. He met Alberto Sordi, took home the fake teeth of one of his films and took me as a child to his house.”

His first set?

«I read that Carlo Vanzina started as a volunteer assistant: despite being the son of the great Steno, he did not leave the position of assistant director. So I went for the roads on a Monicelli buggy and introduced myself as a volunteer assistant. Months later, it took me Let’s hope it’s female
. I went, he gave no directions on anything, you had to make yourself useful in any way, bring coffee, stop traffic, help the train drivers, the electricians.”

First day of unpaid work?

“I carried the umbrella over Catherine Deneuve’s head, it was summer, it melted because it was too hot and because I was close to Deneuve. I had an artistic vision and cinema theory, but I learned on the set that cinema is handcraft. I used to go to Suso Cecchi d’Amico’s house. For text corrections: To me she was a god, but she, Monicelli, Piero De Bernardi, all great, was standing there with the sheets saying ‘What works? But is it funny? Is this fun?”. That was their concern.”

Among your films, one is a drama, “Piano Solo.” Why?

“Because it is the true story of the torment of a boy, Luca Varchi, an important musician who committed suicide. In adolescence, fragility is the master, I carried some with me. When I was 16 or 17, I went to a community center and the suburbs helped us. One of us died, it was the pain that made us think about suicide. We passed the evil of living a lot in those years. A painful contribution was terrorism.”

How close are you to experiencing it?

“I was politically active, we are around ’76 or 77, the years when leftism brought about severe distortions of leftism. The dialogue path was the least traversed and perhaps the most useful. It pains me to see how much responsibility it takes to not fight violence from within, not to tell a killer that he has become a killer. It is a season that I remember with a great sense of inferiority.”

When, for example, should he have spoken and not done?

“In a procession, some set out to smash the windows of an armory and take their guns. I was young and everything was bigger than me. But there is one thing I hope not to lose: the drive to understand what the right things are and not to turn my head.”

His first big hit was “Welcome President” with Claudio Bisio, where he managed to make people laugh at malapolitica.

“Even there, I was unsure about the subject: the issue was already there and made me suffer that it revolved around the idea that Parliament was sewers and that anyone would be better than a politician, even the fisherman elected President of the Republic because everyone Giuseppe Garibaldi voted for smear and Giuseppe Garibaldi is already there ».

2013 was the year the 5-Star entered Parliament to open it “like a can of tuna”.

It was the same parliament that was born out of the partisan struggle, for which the people fought and died. But the last speech of Claudio Pessio is important, when he addresses those who accuse politicians, but evade taxes, and pay in black … ».

upcoming movies?

“I just finished shooting a new edition of the French victorystarring Antonio Albanese, as I finish a documentary about the giant Gigi Riva, it took twenty years to make me say yes. I’m passionate about the story of the man who said no to market laws. Juventus, Inter, everyone wants him, and he always played for Cagliari.”

How was the cat born on the ring road?

“The first friend of one of my three daughters was Pastogi and I reacted to Antonio Albanese’s reaction in the film: I followed the bus my daughter was taking, and I went to meet the family. They also wondered what the director’s daughter was doing there. Then I used the boy’s house as a filming location.”

Will the suburbs enter her home, and will the woman who fought in the suburb befall her?

This movie is an admission of hypocrisy. As a father, I played my worst.”

He has two eldest daughters and one nine-year-old with Paola Courtelesi. Who is the father?

“I don’t know, someone trying to set an example.”

The first meeting with Paula?

“about soul place
I wanted a strong hero who would leave the village in search of work. It was a more dramatic movie than others and I also needed a sad look. I’ve seen her do funny things on TV, but I felt something bitter about her. I wanted to meet her.”

His wife says it differently.

“Actually, I saw her at Gianni Morandi’s house, she was rehearsing for a show in the garden. She was wearing sandals, arrived sweaty, dirt on her feet. Pretend to be angry if you say so.”

So when do you look at yourself with new eyes?

“Months after the set. Realizing that we share the same detachment from things, the same love for slightly bitter comedy and the fact of never going out, of never being mundane. We found ourselves on simple things.”

Almost twenty years together and seven films. “When we’re writing a script, we’re one step closer to a divorce because we even argue about breaks,” Paula said.

“A little bit right. The other two screenwriters say we look like Casa Vianello.”

And what is your life of simple things like?

“We stay at home a lot, go a lot to the cinema and in Pescaseroli. I’m fine in nature. I like trying to spot bears, wolves and deer ».

Is seeing a bear in the woods your perfect moment?

“It is also a pleasure to see human beings happy, when they have their own identity and are not just crushed by the identity of consumers. This gives me an idea of ​​freedom.”