August 19, 2007    Ah, La Dolce Vita By the time that Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita reached the movie theaters in 1962 things had changed and the action had moved from the cafes on Via Veneto to the two cafes on Piazza del Popolo, and by the late sixties the Dolce Vita began to turn into the Years of Lead. The Red Brigades appeared on the scene and bomb explosions in crowded places, kidnappings, knee-cappings, and murders became a fact of Italian life. People even joked that restaurants were more crowded because when top VIPs and politicians dined their bodyguards occupied a second table.
    Long live nostalgia! Via Veneto has been rebuilt as a set at Cinetta, the Italian cinema factory, just as Fellini did those many years ago. "Vita da Paparazzo" is being shot there and recounts the life of the celebrity photographers (the name of the photographer who followed Marcello Mastroianni in Dolce Vita which became and adjective) through the decades that followed La Dolce Vita. Actually it will be a two-part TV movie to appear on Canale 5 next fall. Director and screenwriter Pier Francesco Pingitore told "Corriere della Sera" that "I was inspired by the recent events of Vallettopoli, but the real theme of the film is the transformation of the paparazzo's job, born during the Dolce Vita, which has become something else entirely." (Guess he never heard of Weegee, the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig, the New York tabloid photographer who made his name in the nineteenforties with his gritty, slice-of-life photos.) "In the later part we also evoke Tangentopoli, the hurricane that not only overwhelmed the political world but marked a radical change in our society." (The Tangentopoli scandal led to the end of the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, the two most powerful political parties in Italy.)
    There's also a reference to the present scandal of Vallettopoli involving the owner of an important photographic agency whose owner ended up in jail accused of blackmail and extorsion. "I can't deny the reference," says Pingitore, "Daniele is completely without scruples, and that's where today is different from the past. The old paparazzo had a professional ethic, he had human values. Daniele is not mean, but overwhelmed with a mania for earning big money, to conquer his place in the sun. And that's why he ends up in trouble." He's right, a good friend of mine (who hates being called a paparazzo) who has become famous in Italy, told me once that he refused to photograph a well-known film directory who was dying of cancer, commenting that "Everyone has a right to his dignity at such a time."
   One of the stars who plays a photographer, Pino Insegno, said: "I've never been a victim of paparazzate because I've never put myself in the position of being surprised by a telephoto lens: I don't do drugs, I don't chase women on the street, I don't hang out in certain nightclubs. Just once, according to a scandal sheet, I was having a fling in Russia with a TV starlet, but I was actually in Positano with my wife and we had a big laugh about it."
    I must admit I was once the subject of a Paparazzo. Coming out of a radio station in Rome where I had been interviewed I was stopped by a very famous singer named Claudio Villa who kindly offered me a ride. I thanked him and said that I had my own car. A week or so later I was amazed when Carla Fendi called to tell me to buy a certain magazine and look for my photo with Claudio, who came up to my shoulder. The Fendi press office recognized the raincoat I was wearing, lined with my grandmother's mink coat from the 1950s which Fendi had made for me. (That was the olden days, they don't do that for customers any more.) I was never aware of a photographer in the vicinity!

August 16, 2007    For Lack of a Suitcase a Country Was Lost...   Panorama is the Italian newsweekly similar to Time and Newsweek, in fact, it was originally published after World War II by Italian publishing house Mondadori in collaboration with Time Inc. Today Mondadori is controlled by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The latest issue has an editorial by Pietro Calabrese, the magazine's editor, that pretty well sums up the country's problems today. Sig. Calabrese kindly gave permission for me to translate and post his article:

"The Legend of the Lost Suitcases by Pietro Calabrese, Panaroma, August 16, 2007
Sometimes it arrives late. It can happen. Sometimes you don't find a suitcase right away and you have to wait. Sometimes a suitcase is lost forever. Unfortunately that can happen, too. But if all the flights arrive late and more than 16,000 pieces of luggage get left behind, loaded on the wrong airplane, or you have to wait from two to eighteen hours to retrieve your bags then it's a different story. It becomes a national emergency.
   We're not talking about about the situation of the airports of Sal Cabral at Capo Verde, or Gomez di Varadero-Cuba, which, with all respect for those two countries, head the black list of international airports. We're talking about Fiumicino (Rome's main airport) above all, and Malpensa (Milan) in part. More than 70 percent of the flights that arrive and depart are concentrated in these two hubs in Italy, a big modern country that statistics continue to insist ranks among the top eight countries in the world.
   What happened last weekend is shameful. And for which, we're certain, no culprit will be found: we are world champions in soccer but also in passing the buck. The Minister of Transportation announces heavy fines or even the revocation of the concessions. (yeah, sure!) His colleague Francesco Rutelli promises to address the problem (naturally after his summer vacation, because ministers have families, too) with the Committee for Tourism Policy (Wow, what a threat!). And the unavoidable Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio thunders: "The passengers must be reimbursed!"
   I'm ready to bet a year's salary against a cup of coffee to the inexpressible minister of Ecology that there won't be any refund besides the legal one, and those who lost their luggage won't see it again. And I'm also willing to bet that we'll see the same scenes of a fifth-world country next Christmas and New Year's.
   I'm only surprised that we Italians are still surprised by anything. Those who, like the writer of this article, take a plane for work at least twice a week know perfectly well what I'm talking about. During the past year I don't believe that my plane has departed or arrived on time more than three or four times.
   Naturally the pilot otherwise informs us "The inconvenience is due to the plane's delayed arrival at our departure point." In other words, he's pulling our leg. And he's right, because nobody objects and we're all resigned to the inevitable.
   We're at the farce that the few times the plane is punctual thegarrulous hostess announces triumphantly: We are happy to announce that our plane is landing on time." A rarity - to be celebrated - a special occasion: if we're not offered confetti and Italian spumante to celebrate it's because of the disastrous financial situation of our national airline.
   Will anything change? I doubt it. In this happy-go-lucky country you can't punish and certainly not fire anybody. (...)"
    I should add that a dear friend of mine whose son is an Alitalia pilot and lives in Milan told me that one of the reasons that bags are lost is that if the system putting luggage on the plane does not manage to load everything by takeoff time the plane taxies to the runway in any case, otherwise it will lose its takeoff slot.

August 12, 2007    Further on Bruce Willis and Billionaire Briatore stated that Willis was invited to a private party given by jeweler Grisogno on the ground floor of the night club but when Willis arrived with his party they went upstairs first and dined at restaurant Cipriani. As in Harry's Bar in Venice. By the time they got to the party downstairs their table had been given away so they were refused entrance. Go figure.

August 11, 2007       The Silly Season Has Begun It's started when Italy's most prestigious newspaper, Corriere della Sera, devotes half a page to a story about Bruce Willis and his friends being evicted from Sardinia's fancy nightclub "Billionaire" supposedly because he would not pose for a photograph with the owner's new fianceé. The owner being Renault Formula One racing team boss Flavio Briatore, who began his career as a credit collector. Willis then told tmz.com that he still loves Sardinia but people should avoid Billionaire.

August 1, 2007       The Ides of August It was some years ago that I first encountered the Italian phenomenom of the August vacation. I was driving from France to Rome via Milan. On the outskirts of Milan I encountered the most incredible traffic jam. I was stalled in traffic for almost an hour and I was afraid I would run out of gas with not a service station to be seen. When I finally arrived in Rome I was told that I had come face to face with the traditional August exodus. In those days well-off Italian families usually went to an owned or rented house at the seaside, the wives often for two months. (In July during the week many husbands went on the prowl for female adventure.) Factories, beginning with Fiat, then the backbone of Italian industry, closed for the entire month.
   Fast-forward to today, and like with many other non-events, the Italian press obsesses about these non-events that include Christmas, Easter, back-to-school for the kids, big and small, and the inevitable increase in what seems to be the price of everything (the "stangata" or sting) when everybody comes home in September. And for those who work, you can be sure that after July 15 any appointment you request is met with "We'll see about it after the holidays," but be assured that you won't get an appointment before September 15, if then. When I commented about this to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-hand man and then second most powerful politician in Italy Gianni Letta, he smiled serenely and answered: "Shall we talk about Christmas, when you can't see anybody after December 8, and you have to wait until January 7?"
    So what happens? You find yourself looking forward to the absence of heavy traffic in Rome, to the ease of finding a parking space even in the "Historic center," leisurely dinners outdoors in peaceful squares of Rome, and few if any lines at the post office. (But try finding a restaurant open at lunchtime on a Sunday in August. Fortunately Gusto, in the center of downtown Rome, never closes.) At the same time in the last weeks of July (but sometimes before, as in my pharmacist who inevitably takes his month beginning around July 15) you find yourself asking your auto mechanic, doctor, dentist, lawyer (fortunately his office is always manned), newsstand, cafe down the street, favorite restaurant (Bolognese), hairdresser, handyman, small appliances repairman, dry cleaner when they will close.
    Fortunately there are now two supermarkets around the corner from my apartment that are open every day, even Sunday morning. Although I've lived for years in Italy, I used to find myself baking a cake or making something to eat and discovering I was without eggs or flour or salad but it was Thursday afternoon and all the "alimentari" were closed. So you can admire certain things about the Italian "Style of life" but when you live here year-round some of the habits can be extremely irritating. Especially when the Italians and their press like to consider themselves one of the leading industrial countries in the world. Of course I'm probably mostly annoyed because one of my laptops decided to create its own password to its BIOS system the day the Toshiba assistance closed, and the other a few days later decided to render its spacebar on the keyboard inoperable. Stupid me, it took a week before I realized that although cumbersome I could attach an external keyboard which fortunately had the right plug.