Empire of Light (23 page)

Cinecittà Studios

The House That Fellini Built

(1951 – 1993)

“Would you like to see one of our sound stages?” she asks.

The variety shows in Italy are things of gaudy beauty. They are huge with sparkling lights, gorgeous girls and spacious sets that resemble the Oscars on steroids.

Trish and I enter the stage and are dwarfed by the glistening design and massive seating, enough for thousands of spectators.

“Back in Hollywood, tourists are kidnapped off the streets to fill audience seats. I didn’t get any of that bullshit here in Rome? Where do you get enough butts to fill these seats?”

“We kidnap our audience from Naples. Not Rome.” she responds in a matter-of-fact manner.

“Naples? That’s, like, two hours away. Why not just snatch up fans from Rome?”

“Romans would never attend this kind of show. Besides, we want a different type of audience. The southerners are a little more enthusiastic about this sort of entertainment,” she says with a bit of a snooty smile.

“Well, I actually I hop a train to Napoli tomorrow.”

“What!” Trish shrieks as she stops dead in her tracks.

“Yep. Tomorrow. I’m in Naples.”

“Why would you want to go there?” she says with her face twisted in disgust.

“Well, there are some paintings I want to see.”

“We have plenty of paintings here in Rome.”

“Why is everybody trying to talk me out of going to that joint?”

“Napoli is a dirty, smelly place and everybody there is a criminal. My boyfriend makes me go there constantly to visit his family, and I have no idea why. I could live the rest of my life without ever seeing such a hellish place again.”

The last time I heard such utter disdain for a location was when I asked my cousin about his three-year prison stint.

Trish stops walking and looks me directly in the eye. My torso is chilled, as if ice water were suddenly pumped into my veins.

“Jason. Listen very carefully. I want you to believe everything you’ve ever heard about Napoli.”

Whoa.

That foreboding statement, combined with her soft English accent, creeps me out, makes the back of my neck tingle. I feel like I’m in a trailer for a British horror flick.

“It’s really that bananas?”

“It’s a horrible place.”

Man, this chick really has a bone to pick with that city.

We walk in silence across the back lot as I try to digest the gravity of her Naples warning. The immature part of me now wants to go more than ever, just to see for myself how hellish it is. But isn’t this how people are killed in those horror films?

Whatever you do, don’t go into the basement.

They go to the basement anyway, and they’re shot in the eyes by a nail gun. Horrible way to die, but I’d have mad braggin’ rights in heaven. That is, until Jesus throws in his two cents.

Nail gun? Ha! They drove nails into my wrist with hammers. HAMMERS! You wussy.
”

My mind is so occupied by this Neapolitan puzzle that I don’t notice that we’ve entered another building. I’m snapped out of my fearful thoughts when Trish escorts me past a bizarre machine sitting behind plexiglas. It’s a living contradiction. At the same time archaic and futuristic, a relic that looks like a villain’s prop from
The Wild Wild West
TV show. It would be right at home with steam-driven robots and boot heel blow-torches.

“What the hell is that?” I ask, pointing at the thing in amazement.

“That, my friend, is a coal-burning movie camera.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Who the hell ever heard of a
coal-burning
movie camera? I can’t believe my eyes.

The thing looks like it weighs a ton. On the side is a furnace door where the assistant shovels in the coal and, yes, there’s a goddamn chimney sticking out of its top. The ugly American part of me imagines Italians with bushy mustaches cooking pizzas in the thing between takes.

Awesome.

“I’m taking a picture of this,” I order, not ask. Taking still pictures on studio backlots, no matter where you are in the world, is a universal no-no. Too many stars wandering around worrying about their precious privacy.

“I’ll give you this one,” she says with a smirk.

After I snap off a shot with my point n’ shoot, we make small talk as she continues to escort me down the hall and into one of the production offices. It’s easy to spot an office that’s just gearing up to shoot. There are always storyboards tacked up to a cork wall, along with tons of actors’ headshots and illustrations of the sets and costumes.

“How do you know Howard Edgerton?” I ask.

“I don’t know Mr. Edgerton personally. He’s a friend of the cinematographer currently prepping a feature here at Cinecittà,” she says.

“Really, what’s the project?” I ask as I notice that one of those illustrations includes a familiar painting in the set design.

“It’s a movie about the artist Caravaggio. Do you know of him?” she asks innocently.

“
What?”

“Yes! Isn’t that great? And here’s the man whom Mr. Edgerton asked to arrange your tour of the studio, Mr. Vittorio Storaro.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus.”

Before me stands the greatest cinematographer alive.

“Nice to meet you,” says Storaro as he shakes my hand.

“
Piacere, Signore.
I’m a big fan. Huge. Seriously. Oh, my God! I can’t believe I’m in the same room with you!”

Francis Ford Coppola once said that Storaro was the only man he ever knew who could fall off a ladder in a white suit, into the mud, and not get dirty. Who the hell preps a film in a suit these days? A scarf spun around his neck like he’s just rolled into the office after a full night on the town.

“You’re shooting a film on Caravaggio?” I ask in an accusatory manner, pointing my finger at him in disbelief.

“Yes. Edge told me that you would be very interested in this.”

Interested!

This project is the coming together of my two idols.

This is why I’m here.

This is my destiny.

I’ll never leave.

I’m going to stay and work on this film.

I don’t care if I have to work for free.

I don’t care if I have to work illegally!

I ain’t goin’ nowhere!

I have absolutely
no
doubt all this is what my journey has been all about!

Say…

What the hell is Matteo doing here?

“Oh, and I want you to meet my new assistant, Matteo Lo Grasso.”

Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.

“
Ciao
, Jason!”

“Oh!” says Storaro. “You two already know each other?”

I slowly realize what has happened.

I flash back to the subway when I was preaching the cult of light to Matteo.

The AFI Cinematography Fellows came together to anoint a cinematographer, your countryman, Vittorio Storaro, as our lord and savior.

Vittorio Storaro.

Our lord and savior.

I let Matteo use my camera and he took a picture of the
Entombment of Christ
. The element of the painting that came to life was not John, it was Jesus Christ! Well, at least it was
my 
Christ figure, Vittorio Storaro.

If I had taken the picture, as planned, I would’ve been the one that met Vittorio Storaro.

I would’ve met him in the Vatican, in front of my favorite painting. I would’ve ended up being his assistant on a film about Caravaggio at Cinecittà studios.

I just handed my life over to Matteo.

I must kill Matteo.

“Matteo,” I say with a pained smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, thanks to you, I’m starting a new life,” he says before kissing me on both cheeks. He grabs me by my shoulders. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. You will be my friend until I die, and there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you.”

Shit. I can’t kill him now.

“I’m happy for you, man.”

I can’t take this anymore. I just want to run the hell out of here, cancel my trip to Napoli and go home. I blew it. I’m shocked, crushed, that I just gave away my life to some asshole metro cop.

“Well,
Signore
Storaro. I bet you’re really busy, so I’ll let you go.”

“Wait,” says Matteo. “Do you have your Brownie camera with you?”

“Yeah,” I respond cautiously.

“Let me take a picture of you and
Signore 
Storaro.”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“
Certo,
” says Matteo, holding his hand out for the camera.

I hand it over to him hesitantly. He snatches it out of my hand as Vittorio wraps his arm around my shoulder and smiles, his teeth gleaming like new.

Trish steps up to Matteo and reaches for the camera. “Here. Let me take the picture so you can get into the shot, too?” she says.

“No,” Matteo says, jerking the camera away. “This one is just for Jason.”

He puts on his sunglasses and lines us up in the shot. I’m surprisingly uncomfortable being on this side of the camera, but what’s the worst that can happen?

I squint in anticipation of the flash and wait for the blow.

“Say cheese, my friend.”

Click!

17 

Who Turned Out the Lights?

IT’S PITCH BLACK 
and I can’t see a thing.

“Hey.”

Nobody answers.

“Hey!”

Again nobody answers.

I feel a panic attack coming and I reach out to find a wall and a light switch, but there’s nothing.

My eyes dart about, looking for a sliver of light.

Nothing.

I might as well be blind.

“Hello!”

The lack of any response sends me into a full-blown panic attack. My heart races as I begin to drip sweat. I go completely primal, screaming at the top of my lungs.

I can’t catch my breath. The panic takes over my entire body, and I crumple to the ground and curl up, sobbing like a four-year-old.

“Easy. Easy.”

I hear Vittorio’s voice.

“Could you turn a light on or something?” I ask, my voice cracking in the darkness.

“Just open your eyes.”

I open them and find myself in a small black room. A diffused light hangs from the ceiling like a light fog.

Vittorio stands in the center of it, now wearing a black suit, black shirt, black tie and grey scarf casually twisted around his neck. Even in my panicked disorientation I can’t help but admire how sharp this guy dresses.

“Black. It represents gestation. It’s interesting that in the midst of your anxiety, your mind placed you in the fetal position. When exposed to complete blackness, the same darkness you felt while in the mother’s womb, you instinctively fell into the same position in which you spent the first nine months of your existence. It was in the natal blackness, in that very position, that you once felt the safest. Isn’t that ironic?”

“You think?” I ask sarcastically as I wipe the snot bubble from my nose and stand up.

“The irony is that black absorbs all the variations of the visible light spectrum that you were crying like a such a little girl to find. The color you wanted so badly is locked within it. Isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious. Look. I hate to be rude. I’m just barely holding on here.”

“
Scusi
. Let’s go someplace else.”

Suddenly, we’re in my childhood home—my old bedroom, to be exact. It’s precisely as I remember it, except for the fact that the scene is absolutely devoid of color.

Trippy.

Everything is an unsettling shade of off-white, including the skin of the three people in the scene, who are frozen like mannequins: my mom, about in her twenties, and Giacomo and myself, both a couple of little brats. Giacomo and I are lounging on the bed as my mom sits close by in a chair, reading to us from a book.

“I remember this,” I say.

“Tell me about this scene,” Storaro requests.

“Some kid at school called me a nigger.”

***

When Giacomo and I were kids, we got into a fight on the school playground. Not that this was an abnormal event, mind you. We loved each other like brothers, and, every once in a while, we fought like ‘em, too.