My wife, Mara Maryl. Mara and me made a deal when we married: she would have acted only if I was the director and I would have directed only if she was the first character. I refused a lot of film for that deal and Mara refused to be the first character in the Vadim's movie when Brigitte Bardot left Vadim definetly. DeLaurentiis production offered to Mara a signed contract leaving her free to write the amount of the money she wished... 

Mara said no, a month after Vadim took Catherine Deneuve. So, I was looking for a movie for her. I wrote four tales of SF (one of them was The End of Eternity), hoping that I could give her to act one of the main characters (4 tales, 4 main girl characters...). But SF wasn't understood by our stupid Italian producers, so I thought about a giallo working with Mara to built her character. Because Mara wasn't an important name, I wrote for her a "fake" second character, putting in evidence the other woman of the plot. I wrote the script, keeping apart the best mara's scenes to avoid that more important actress stole his role. In spite of it, Carrol Baker read the script and asked to Martino & Loy to act the Mara's role. I had to answer "no" and the whole movie was in danger!

Good enough. The film was issued in every Italian city. Martino & Loy did very good foreign sales.

It depends. At studios I usually adopts the normal schedule: from 9am to 6pm. In those old times you could stay at work until the director decided to say STOP. In LIBIDO we worked very often until 8 PM. When we were on location, things were completely different. Usually we started to shoot at 10am and we went on, sometimes, until after midnight! I put together external-day and external-night scenes when it was possible.

I chose Giancarlo Giannini between himself and Franco Sparanero who later became the famous Franco Nero. Giancarlo was perfect. He was a little shy and very collaborative. Since he had a degree as a electromechanic, he offered himself to build the cricket toy we needed in some scenes. He was at his first cinema experience. He was wrong just in the first scene (too much make up in his eyes, too much emphasis in his acting), then he calibrated his acting and I could easily guess he would have been a great actor. I paid him 120.000 lira for all his work. I think I gave him only 100.000 lira, so I still have a debt of 20.000....

Very professional. We are still good friends. Luciano is always ready, always nice, always collaborative. His face helps him very much, he has just to give a look to something and it's an important look! You almost never need to repeat scenes because of him.

Just a little! ;) ...also if I were the writer, the director and the producer, so all things were in my hands.I was embarassed because of the embarassment of my collaborators. I never went on... too much!

All of LIBIDO was an annecdote! We shot in very sacrificed conditions. We have no money enough to pay workers and scenes. We had to shoot in 3 weeks and in those times it was a real race. We had also a room made by mirror and no ones of us had experience about this condition. We made little holes behind mirrors to take many scenes and I discovered after a week that you can stay quietly INSIDE the room with your camera and workers if you put the Camera exactly in the bisector of mirror angles! Our photography director was an old man who had forgotten the B&W technique (we were compelled to B&W from the distributor who didn't want to spend too much money for color copies...) and who spent 4 hours to put his "right" lights on the bridges to enlight a short dolly, so I decided that I cannot move the rails anymore. I used the same dolly for a lot of different scenes changing walls and furniture around it…

We had also little funny problems with actors: Giancarlo had bad acne with pimples and actressess were afraid to take it..., Dominique Boschero was bisexual and she amused herself running behind Giancarlo or Mara... because we were all working almost without be paying I had to listen to every one, so I had to repeat a frame because the Mara's leg was partially hidden by a bed and she got angry about it..., or because Giancarlo put too much make up on his eyes (we hadn't a make-up man). I had to be careful that when I was shooting the "hidden" scenes acted by Mara, Dominque Boschero wasn't there... In spite of those stupid funny problems, we worked wonderfully quickly and in friendship.

Workers wanted to renounce to they extra-money to help me and when I gave them a chocolate egg because it was Easter, the old workers chief cried, saying that in hos long career it was the first time that "a producer" had given a chocolate egg to him for Easter.

Of course I wasn't "a producer", I was just a boy come from Northern Italy and with a wife who had said "no" to Vadim...

Mara always refused to say bad words in her career. There was just a light bad word in the script. Looking at a Rubens' picture she had to say "Che culoni dipingevano una volta!" (What kind of big asses pictured time ago!), Mara said "Che CUBONI dipingevano una volta" (big cube...!), but when the movie arrived to the censor he standed up shouting: Ha detto culo! Vietato ai minori di 18 anni! (She told "ass". Forbidden to the minor of 18!). And so it was. We were in the 1965 Lord's year.

My last movies were L'Uovo del Cuculo, La Storia di Olga O and now Crime vs. Crime. I wrote in 1996/1997 two TV movies directed by Nando Cicero, who died last year too.... They are titled VIRUS and IL PENTITO. They were broadcasted by RAI.

It depends. When I started to write scripts I began as a ghostwriter of Ugo Guerra. I wrote many scripts without to sign them because Ugo was signing. He was well paid, so it was "convenient" for both of us. After there was a few films I wrote and I didn't sign for different reasons. I can remember, for example, DIAMANTI A COLAZIONE produced by Ponti. Ponti asked me to cancel my name on credits because of the English coproduction. I cannot refuse a demand from Ponti!

In the case of IL PREZZO DEL POTERE, the producer had signed a contract with the former screenplayer saying that he would have been the unique screenwriter on credits, so when Tonino Valerii didn't like his version, I rewrote it but I cannot sign it.

In the case of LA DECIMA VITTIMA: it was my first work for Carlo Ponti. He told me he had said to the famous Italian screenwriters engaged in that work that a very famous American writer was rewriting the script. He told me he couldn't say them that he preferred the script of a young almost unknown writer to that one written by "sacred monsters"... I agreed. I was happy to start to work with Carlo Ponti and Sofia Loren!

In the case of C'ERA UNA VOLTA IN AMERICA I wrote only the treatment, without any contract.

In the case of LA CORTE NOTTE DELLE BAMBOLE DI VETRO, Aldo Lado asked me to cancel my name from credits: because we were friends and I had written that

script on spec (it was called LE NOTTI DI MALASTRANA) just to help him to shoot his first movie, I took it as an incomprehensible asking and I answer yes, but it was the last yes to him.

In the case of LA STRANA STORIA DI OLGA O I agreed that the director had changed too much my script and the right thing was to sign just the plot. I never asked to cancel my name for the film was bad. I think usually it's not right to do this, otherwise when the film is better than the script what do you have to do? ;) I was just tempted to ask to cancel my name from credit for the Teti's movie L'ASSASSINO E' ANCORA FRA NOI, but it wasn't because of the movie (I never saw it), but because of his behavior.

Camillo Mastrocinque (often signed as Camillo Mastro5...) was a medium comedy director. He was a little conceited ass. I didn't meet him for this movie (otherwise what kind of ghost I would have been?) . I met him when he directed LA CRIPTA E L'INCUBO and it wasn't a nice meeting. Probably because I had sold the script with the obligation that my wife was one of the main character and Camillo, who was called after, got this as an overwhelming. He had to accept it but he behaved in a way that Mara and me had to renounce. He shot some scenes with Mara asking to the director of photography the worse light it was possible for Mara... and things like these... then he reshot those scenes with another girl. Awful!

I PIRATI DELLA COSTA was one of my first work. I enjoyed it because it was set among my childish dreams... Mara was working in that movie, a very litle role she had found by herself. Misiano, the producer, built a big ship for that movie, for that he asked for other scripts to use that ship again. So I wrote IL TERRORE DEI MARI and then LE AVVENTURE DI MARY READ and then IL GIUSTIZIERE DEI MARI. Mara had to stop to work in these productions because mister Misiano gave to her his congratulations and... his garconniere key!

AKIKO was a curious funny plot. I wrote the script but not the story. Ugo gave me a little treatment. In that time Rascel was one of our biggest comic actor. It was my first attempt in comedy. I never met the director, of course. Ugo told me that he was delighted by the script, saying that he had recognised the unmistakable Ugo's style.... Life is funny sometimes...

I saw this picture 47 years ago. I remember it was an acceptable movie for its time. Ghosts could go to stage! I met Lenzi just to ask him a role for my wife telling him the old story of her historica refuse to Vadim...). Lenzi answered me he couldn't. That's all.

"Caccia all'uomo" - This time I was the ghost of Luciano Martino. I wrote almost half of the script, the second part I think. It was usual to share the work among the scriptwriter involved in it. Of course I didn't meet Freda and I don't remember almost anything about his movie. There was a story about a dog called DOX who helped Police finding murderers. Dox was the best actor in that movie...

Directed by Domenico Paolella, this movie had unexecpected good reviews. Richard Harrison met Luciano Martino, who would have him in a lot of movies when Luciano became a producer. Michèle Mercier was very beautiful.

I wrote this script with Ottavio Alessi. He signed with Guerra and Martino. It was something historical about a fight between to brothers, both princes of something! It was a big movie, with a lot of people involved. I don't think it has any interest now.

This was a very important movie at its time! A big coproduction, famous actors as Jack Palance and Anita Eckberg but... an incredible unable director, called Savona. But the producer, seeing the sad material coming from Jugoslavia, had a great idea: to fire Savona and to hire Riccardo Freda! The final battle directed by Freda is wonderful, something that remember Eisenstein. For me was a long work. I wrote almost three time the script. The producer obliged Luciano Martino and Ugo Guerra to stay in a hotel outside of Rome because they could concentrate on the story. So I had to come up and down with my new litlle car from Roma to Grottaferrata (30 km far from Roma), play table tennis with my friends Luciano and Ugo, listening some observations about my scenes and the came back home and write and rewrite them!

Script wrote by me as Ugo Guerra's ghostwriter. It's one of the bunch of movies about pirates I wrote in that period. You know how Italian Cinema was working: all producers tried to repeat the last success, so in that time all of them were looking for pirates stories. I remember it was an enough good movie with a beautiful Michèle Mercier.

Mmmh. I remember that script. I never liked it and Lenzi directed the movie with his left hand (he wasn't great when he directed with both hands too...). Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino told me to write it. I wrote it.

Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West (1963)?

I wrote just some scenes of that script with Luciano Martino and then we made a revision together. I think the script wasn't too bad, but I didn't like the movie.

I wrote this script with Luciano Martino. Luciano rarely used me as a real complete ghostwriter. We were friends and we worked together even if at the end it was him who signed the scripts and took the official payment (then he shared it with me, of course, "almost" fifty-fifty...). Two words about Piero Pierotti, the director. He was a very friendly sweet portly man. He was for some months my movie direction teacher at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia of Roma. He died a long time ago. It was really sad, I loved this big man.

This was a long work because Orlandini, the director, was ambitious and never satisfied. I wrote a lot of scenes but not the whole script. I rewrote and rewrote them, following the waving ideas of the director. I met Orlandini just once, Luciano and Ugo were tolding me "rewrite, rewrite...". After all this working, I was expecting a great movie... it wasn't.

Reviews were very bad. Fortunately there was again Michèle Mercier and the movie wasn't a complete flop.

Sodoma e Gomorra (1963)

I wrote the sixth version of this script. It was my "bridge" to pass from ghostwriter to real writer. I wrote the first part of the script and Ugo Guerra wrote the second one. Then Ugo brought it to Goffredo Lombardo, Titanus, one of the most famous Italian producer. A week after, Lombardo met Ugo. He showed him a paper on his table. It looked as a blank paper. "Turn it up" said Lombardo to Ugo. He did. On the other face of that paper there was written "STRONZO!" (something as ASSHOLE). Ugo asked why and Lombardo told him: "Because you wrote the first part but who's the STRONZO who wrote the second part?". Ugo laughed and answered:"You're heavily wrong, my dear. I really wrote the second part and tomorrow I introduce you the young man who wrote the first one!". This way I met the "great" Lombardo and I started to work for him.

Then my and Ugo's version was corrected by Giorgio Prosperi, one of my best teacher at Centro Sperimentale who taught me the art of screenwriting. Sodoma a Gomorra was the ruin of Goffredo Lombardo. In those times he was a young conceited ass. He was used to behave in an incredible way while Aldrich was shooting that big expensive movie. For example, he was used to fly over the African desert, when hundreds of technicians and actors were working and heavily perspiring, with his private airplane, going to dive in the Red Sea, making obscene gestures to them! Lombardo had to sell one of his big wonderful properties called "Titanus Farnesina" to pay his debts. There were his biggest theaters. Now there there is a residential area. Lombardo fell in a serious depression. When I met him 2 years after, he told me: Every time someone appears on my office threshold I ask myself "Who is going now to fuck me?".

There is also another anecdote about Sodoma e Gomorra. Rumors say that the main character was offered to Gina Lollobrigida. She answered "OK, I'll act Sodoma, but who'll act Gomorra?".

None, but one of his assistant was my close friend Franco Cirino. He told me a lot of stories about that movie: Aldrich tried with success to ruin Lombardo. They were in the middle of the sand African desert but Aldrich chose a rocky area, then he wanted that all rocks were moved out. There were 16 cameramen, all of them were shooting the same scenes. They exposed 200.000 meters of film (it was impossible to see all that material!), but it would have be longer if many of them weren't shooting WITHOUT any film in their cameras! (Of course Lombardo paid even for that ghost film!)

No. Stewart Granger had never been a good actor. I didn't like that movie.

I met Simonelli just one time, but not for this movie. It was when in 1957 I was writing my first very bad paid script. It had to be titled "IL BELLO", acted by Alberto Sordi and Maurizio Arena. That movie wasn't ever shot. It happened some droll facts that time and I met, first time, Rodolfo Sonego and then Federico Fellini who he was going around to find a producer for his "La Dolce Vita". Simonelli came to direct "Il Bello". I remember him as a little man, sitting in a chair, with his feet that cannot arrive to the floor, saying that if the producer wanted "high poetry" he was able to do it... (high in Italian means also tall).

Goliath alla conquista di Bagdad (1964) - Perhaps this was the title of a film when NATO bombed Sadam, eh?

I don't remember anything about this movie. Maybe there were Kurds involved in that war against Bagdad and this made me sure that Goliath wasn't Bush...

Michele Lupo was a medium good director. After him, or maybe over him, there was Piero Lazzari, the production direction. Piero was Michele's master! Michele shot this movie as it was a western movie and it had a great hit at the box-office. I met Michele some time after, when I wrote Arizona Colt.

It was my first work for Carlo Ponti, the Sofia Loren's husband, but I read the first script coming to me from Ugo Guerra and Goffredo Lombardo. It was titles "Perchè vuoi rovinare questa bella storia d'amore?" (Why do you want to ruine this beautiful love story?). I agreed completely with the title! Screenwriters had ruined that beautiful love story coming from a famous Bob Sheckley's tale. By chance, two years before, Ugo Guerra and me, worked on that Sheckley's tale LA SETTIMA VITTIMA, asking rights to Sheckley who answered that he would have given them us free if we filmed his tale exactly as it was. We didn't find any Italian producer who wanted make it. In that time I was trying in vain to convince producers to make Sci-Fi movies. Mrs. Jone Tuzi, the best Ponti's manager, knew my ideas about this topic and called me when Ponti was upset about the version of "a Sci-Fi script" written by Scola, Petri and others very important Italian screenwriters. It was The Seventh Victim, I don't know why manignified until the 10th one. Mrs. Jone Tuzi introduced me to Ponti and he told me that I had to use azur papers when I put new pages in the script, to see them better.

When I came back a week after I gave him a script completely azur but the front page. Ponti laughed, he liked my script but told me I have not to say I was the author, because he, to stop to argue with the director, had told him that the author was a famous American screenwriter. I agreed and I started to work for Ponti. 

Tragically the script (by Ettore Scola & C.) was satyrical... but in that time there wasn't the SciFi genre in cinema! It was awful! Ponti sold the movie to Mr. Levine in USA for 2 million dollar, just translating in English my script and after the sale he wasn't interested in the film anymore, so the director was free to make a Ceasar salade between my script and the first one: what a pity!

I have few memories about this movie! In some way Luciano Martino was involved in it. His wife Wandisa Guida, one of my schoolmates at Centro Sperimentale, acted in it. I just remember that, as usual, Margheriti worried only about special effects and not about the script. I think I wrote just some scenes fixin the plot.

I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I wrote the whole script, paid by Ponti, then he told me that the movie would have been filmed in England as an English movie and for some reason the author had to be English. I had to accept but this time I got a little angry because I liked very much the story and Marcello Mastroianni was one of my favourite actors! How many times after that movie I saw in American movies tha same tricks to robber in a bank or to violate very secret places!

It was a good western directed by my friend Tonino Valerii. There was a first version of the script incredibly long: 400 pages! I had to rewrite it but the producer told me immediately he had signed a contract to Massimo Patrizi dealing that only him would have been on credit as screenwriter. Tonino asked me to help him, I did. My new idea was to use the Kennedy's murder as a trace to a western. There was a USA President called Garfield who was murdered too after the American Civil War, (to kill their presidents looks as the favourite American sport...), so it was possible put Kennedy's tragedy in western style.

More or less. To work on Italian TV you have to be introduced in political environment and I never took care about it.

I wrote the script and Sergio Martino directed "Il Mistero degli Etruschi" a sequel TV formed by 6 TV movies, then Sergio Martino used some material of the sequel (in English on the brochure THE ETRUSCAN ENIGMA) to edit a movie called CRIME IN AN ETRUSCAN CEMETERY. I don't remember the plot (I've written too much...), it was long and complicated.

Profumo di classe (1978)

It was a wonderful musical. It was formed by 2 parts, long 1 hour each. Directed by Giorgio Capitani. Music by Piero Umiliani. I liked it very much. It had splendid reviews too. I'm not cultured in music... maybe this was the principal reason because Italian TV RAI DUE asked me for a musical... Piero Umiliani tauhgt me the basis of music, starting from gregorian songs to modern music (he wasn't able to explain me why Japanese and eastern people continue to love their boring monophonic music...). "Profumo di Classe" had an incredible big success. Then Capitani and I wrote another musical called "Al Capone Superstar": it was better than "Profumo di Classe" but in the mean time politician protectors of Giorgio Capitani lose power and new ones arrived to direct the Net, so it is still unrealized.

Vanita' (1984)

The new boss (Pio DeBerti) of RAI 2, after to have cancelled "Al Capone Superstar", wanted a variety program. Giorgio Capitani, Laura Toscano and I wrote seven hours about a miscellanea of bullshits. The new boss seemed to like it but he cut the best parts of our work. I wanted to meet him to know why. He answered me that he didn't like those parts. I answered him that, since he was directing RAI 2 the net had lose one third of its audience, so, what was better for him and for the net, was that he choosed only the parts he DIDN'T like, to be sure they were the best! Of course I never worked again for Rai Due...

Caccia al tesoro (1978)

I wrote the first episode for the director Duccio Tessari, a good friend of mine. Gianni Hecht was the producer. I had to convince the Carabinieri authorities it was possible to show a Carabinieri's officer (Giuliano Gemma) as a modern man, not a perfect man as that Army pretended every of their officers were.

Virus and Il pentito (both 1992)

These are my last TV works. Two episodes in a sequel of six, directed by Nando Cicero, who died last year. They were about Guardia di Finanza (our financial police). To understand how in our public TV things are going I tell you this anecdote: a man called Biggi was the TV editor who would have to control the producer. He met me and told me the half of every episode had to be setted in the police department to reduce costs. Of course the duty of a TV editor is the opposite: to control that the money given by the Net to producers is well spent and not stolen. I answered him "go to hell". About "Il Pentito": this episode started with an action on Tevere (Tiber) and there was an helicopter in it. Biggi called me saying that I wrote a "Viet-Nam scene", too expensive! Notice that the Guardia di Finanza was providing helicopters, cars, ships and policemen completely free.

Mr.Biggi phoned me it was impossible to shoot this episode. I answered simply "OK" and I put down the phone. Some days after, Nando Cicero phoned me he was shooting some scenes of that episode. I called the Net saying that this episode wasn't free anymore. Since they didn't accept it, I had already sold it to a movie company... It wasn't true but I amused myself a little... You know what happened? Biggi met me pretending I signed a new contract for "Il Pentito". "The Viet-Nam episode? Sorry, Sir. Less you give me 100million liras, ten times more that for the other episode. Mr.Biggi hated me but he was in a sad emotional state: the Net was shooting something without having rights! Nando Cicero called me, asking I find a deal. I met Mr. Biggi again and I signed the contract for the same amount of money that the first one, saying to him how asshole he was. Now Mr. Biggi is a retired man but... do you think it's probably I'll work again for that Net? ;)

Publisher chose it. It's a thriller about an investigation.

Sangue in Tasca. [why the pseudo James Duffy?] 

Publisher chose the pseudo. It was about a rape.

Iperbole infinita.  

My title was "Iperbole Cosmica" but the publisher's ignorance changed it in Iperbole Infinita, of course every hyperbola is infinite. It was about the Mankind story and "someone" who was living in an atomic world.

Una storia da non credere. 

It was just a funny game. A friend of mine called Julian Birri (I took the pseudo of Julian Berry to pull his legs) started to work in a very important advertising company in Milan.- Often he phoned me about the stupid brainstormings to decide soap slogans. I wrote in first person, as I was working in that company. I put on the book some still "classified" slogans. When Mondadori, the publisher, published the first part on Urania, that ad company protested saying that they would have cancelled all of their ads in every Mondadori's magazine and of course they would have fired Mr. Julian Birri! Mondadori had to swear that Julian Berry wasn't the same person of Julian Birri! The funniest thing was that the publisher never suspected I knew Julian Birri! In spite of in my novel "I" had two children with the same names that the real Julian had!

The novel was about our modern mad life. I invented the game that you win "points" hitting pedestrians with you car: one man = 1 point. One woman = 2 points. One baby= 3 points. One woman with her baby = 5 points. One wery old woman or very old man = 5 points. The points are doubled if the pedestrians are crossing in the zebra area...

Tempo zero. 

It's about travel at the speed of light when time becomes null.

The End of Eternity. 

It's a short tale in which I imagine that someone put atomic bombs in the sewers of the most important cities of the world and then he blackmails the western world. The tale is about the example to demonstrate the blackmailer is saying the truth. The city chosen as example is Roma. All ministers are waiting to know what the NATO will decide. When the decision arrives it is "we have to run that risk". One of the ministers run out of the Foreign Office and jump on his car drived by his official driver. Into the car there is the whole minister's family, very upset because it's "ferragosto" and weather is hot and it's one of the most important Italian vacation day. The driver knows the truth. He drive faster that he can. He listened scientists to speak about a hole of 7 km in diameter. But he's an old Roman too and he drives crying and shouting to all people who are walking "All of you are dead!".

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