Luca Miniero, known as the “gold mine” since his “Benvenuti al Sud” hit the box office: when he’s not making films, what do you like to do?
“I would like to say, as Marcello Mastroianni used to say, that I am lying on the sofa in a catatonic state. That’s right, I don’t have many hobbies: when I’m not touring, I’m on the sofa, but I write. Writing gives me pleasure, it’s not like I would like to go horse riding or boating.’
Is there a purely Neapolitan form of creative laziness?
‘I don’t know, it’s not like I stand still and should be doing things I don’t do. More than lazy, I select the things not to do: I never clean the house; I don’t have a car, I prefer a taxi; I always have an empty fridge, otherwise I’d have to go shopping, I had it empty even when I was poor but I ate out, ruining my stomach. I am paralyzed, not lazy.’
At the cinema, no one has told the differences between Northern and Southern Italy like you. What was the South in which he was born like?
“Of petty bourgeois neighborhoods, those of the sack of Naples told by Francesco Rosi in the” Hands on the city. Mine was Arenella, which however those from Arenella call Vomero, although it is much more popular than Vomero. My parents, mom who worked at Sip, dad at the Municipality, had come to us in the 1960s from the lower parts of the city. They were “hello” from Porta Capuana: they had climbed the social ladder. And while my dad hadn’t changed his lifestyle and continued to hang melons on the balcony, my mother was “safer”, also because she had studied more. We were three brothers, I was a boy in the 80s and I remember a very violent Naples, the presence of the Camorra was felt. Let’s say that our 80s were more tiring than those of the paninari in Milan».
And how do you end up in Milan immediately after graduation?
“Because a copywriter had come to the university to speak and so I discovered that there was this job in advertising. Going to Milan was like being deported: with different trains than the current ones, it was a very distant city. I arrived not with the cardboard suitcase, but with a notebook that I needed to specialize in interviews. I made more than 80 in small agencies. I wrote down everything: questions, answers and, if they told me “call back in a month or three months”, I really called back».
Did you have time to get to know Milan to drink?
‘There was little to drink and also to eat. It was a Milan in crisis, which fired, finding work was difficult. I began by writing shampoo and detergent labels. It seems easy but it was very complicated: you can’t say that a product is made of a certain ingredient because there’s 1% of it, you can’t say it’s good for something if it’s not scientifically proven… Then , I moved on to commercials and, therefore, I realized the dream of a real contract in an important agency».
The “permanent place”, finally?
“My parents cared more about it. When things get stable, I run away. In fact, I left the permanent job very soon: I didn’t particularly like Milan, I had been there four years, I remember a cold city, my house was sad: it overlooked the monumental cemetery, which was not yet in a cool neighborhood like today. I went back to Naples, I interviewed in Rome, they hired me in another important agency. I won several awards, including one in Cannes. I started making shorts and from there came the cinema».
Hadn’t you thought about becoming a director before?
‘At the time, we didn’t have as much information as we do today. I didn’t even know there was a film school. I found myself being a director and I only had the certainty of doing so after Benvenuti al Sud».
First short in 1999: «Little things of unquantifiable value», directed by him and Paolo Genovese.
«It was the story of a police brigadier who recorded the curious complaint of a girl, who claimed to have been robbed of all her dreams. We met Paolo in Rome while working at McCann Erickson: a great friendship was born that became a partnership that lasted for years. We could do everything because we were friends, we saw each other from morning to night, immersed in an atmosphere of laughter and without tension. When you find a workmate like this, even if he has a different sense of humor than yours, you can do great things. Cinema began as a game, with a whole story linked to the “Neapolitan spell”, complicated to explain.
Make an effort.
«It was the first story I wrote, while I was going up and down between Naples and Milan for reasons not of work, but of job search. At the time, the differences between North and South were so many and I was reminded of the story of a family with a cult of Neapolitanism which gives birth to a daughter who speaks Milanese, dreams of opening a small factory and loves panettone instead of pastiera. However, Paolo and I didn’t have the money to shoot it, but a friend of ours, Tonino Risuleo, had shot a short film with images of fishermen that we liked and that we thought we’d steal and dub. We won an award at the Locarno Film Festival, Tonino was also very grateful to us, and the award allowed us to shoot the first real short, the one about the girl robbed of her dreams».
And from “Neapolitan spell” was also born the first, homonymous film, in 2002.
«Marina Gonfalone, who played the mother, won the David di Donatello. It was a very lucky project. Then the film came out on Prime, people remember it, I’m very fond of it».
With Genovese he also signed “No message on the answering machine” and “This night is still ours”. Why did you separate after 2008?
‘There wasn’t a moment in which we decided, it was a gradual estrangement. He went towards sentimental comedy, I more towards comedy, but there has never been a conflict, also because arguing with him is impossible. It ended between us like in a love story: you never remember why you broke up with someone».
The first film alone was “Benvenuti al Sud”, thirty million receipts, how can you explain that success?
«It was a time when there was the secessionist League, Umberto Bossi had just said that SPQR stood for “these Romans are pigs”. And because extreme clich?? It’s like when Totò goes to Milan with a fur hat and is surprised that there is no fog».
Other clichés between that film and “Welcome to the North”?
«I’m interested in those linked to sociality, to the fact that the Milanese don’t take you home, but to the metro or that the Neapolitans force you to have coffee, otherwise they get offended. Then, the cliché leads you to think that they feel bad all day long. Today, however, the differences have softened: now, the comparison is more between the center and the periphery».
Is a “Welcome to Rome” imaginable?
“Not anymore, because everyone moves between Milan and Rome, but a third episode could find its relevance by working on politicians: in times of smartworking, they are the last commuters”.
When the new right won the elections, what came to mind of “I’m back”, the film in which Benito Mussolini wakes up in today’s Italy?
«That film was shot as a documentary, but in the scenes in which the Duce passes on the street and people give him the Roman salute, I don’t see a fascist country, I see people joking with an actor and a painting in which the judgment on Mussolini it’s almost good-natured. While it’s easy to say that Adolf Hitler was the devil, here, Mussolini was a devil and people don’t know it. In any case, today it makes no sense to talk about fascism, today it matters whether you are against immigrants or not… The mistake of the left, however, is to use labels».
With the due distinctions, would it make sense further on to say “I’m back” on Silvio Berlusconi?
“When 40 years have passed, I will apply.”
Why do you like your Rai series “The investigations of Lolita Lobosco” so much?
«Because Deputy Commissioner Lobosco is another character from the South who goes beyond clichés. She’s one of us, she never gives up. She is good at work, but she is not resolved in feelings, she lives in a conflict between getting married or not, having or not a family».
She has a family, but she never talks about it.
“I’ve had a lifelong partner, an economist who teaches in Florence and who has a 28-year-old son, while together we have a 23-year-old daughter, Vera, who is studying screenwriting”.
With so many comedy films under his belt, was he a nice dad?
‘I shouldn’t say it, but I think so. I was very absent in the early part of life when the trains were slower, but in the end it went well.’
How long has it been since you went to Naples?
«I have just shot a documentary about it which I may be taking to Venice. It is about the tragedy of Melarancio of 1983: eleven children died on a trip. I met the people 40 years later, I touched the guilt of survivors. And shortly, I will shoot the film for Raidue “Napoli milionaria”, with Vanessa Scalera and with Massimiliano Gallo who has the part that belonged to Eduardo De Filippo. This is his most poetic text and the theme of greed and enrichment makes it very current».
What do you like and what not about Italy in 2023?
‘I like places, people. We have come out of leprosy and I see a picture of a country that isn’t doing terribly badly, even if it has to do better and young people don’t have to go through 80 interviews to work. Having said that, I still like to talk about Italy. As long as you don’t get titles: Italy is the country I love».
2023-08-20 19:54:06
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