
Al Coursera: “My mother encouraged me to observe, and that's how my characters were born. “We went to the cemetery, and she knew the stories of families who had graves close to their parents.”
Carlo Verdone tells the newspaper Corriere della Sera an unpublished part of his life, relating to his mother Rossanna Schiavina, married to Verdone, daughter of the director of the tobacco monopolies, a socialist family. “It was tough but it had weaknesses. He had panic attacks that I inherited. They started in 1978, after I made my first TV appearance with No Stop, and people recognized me on the street. “I made people laugh but I didn't consider myself suitable for the world of entertainment.”
Memories of Verdone
Verdone owes his first appearance on stage to her
“In 1977 I made my debut with Tali e Quali. At the time the theater was closed, Carmelo Benny, Mimi Perlini. I had a panic attack, and I wanted to skip the show. My mother took the bag containing my characters' things, put it in my hand, gave me the car keys, pushed me towards the door and said: Go, big girl, you'll thank me one day. Grab me by the ears like you do with children who don't want to go to school. “It was a great success.”
Carlo describes his mother as a saint “I bombarded the house with rock cylinders. My mother said: How can you hear this music? I would go with her once a week to pay the bills, and I remember a Jewish shopkeeper full of tics. My mother encouraged me to observe, and from here my characters were born. “We went to the cemetery, and she knew the stories of families who had graves close to their parents.”
the joke
That saint must have made her angry…
“You made a terrible joke. I watered the preserve as if it were blood, opened the drawers, and turned the table. She turned the house upside down, simulating a burglary. When my parents returned from the opera, they opened the door and almost fainted. There was dead silence. I ran out and shouted: “It's a joke.” My father chased after me, waving his pants belt.”
A peaceful and happy life with a mother who takes care of all her children
“Maybe it is me. When I was a child, if my father was away I would crawl into their bed, and ask my mother a lot of questions about the war. For a while, his brother, Uncle Gaston, a playboy, a kind of Neapolitan, moved in with us. When he left “My father celebrated. Then there was Aunt Lina, who was not an aunt; an elegant lady from Vicenza surrounded by great mystery. My mother told me she was Grandmother Fernanda's lady-in-waiting. But legend said she was a better friend than her husband, her grandfather Aldo…”
I love Fellini risotto
“The living room is where all the intellectuals passed. Fellini He was obsessed with risotto, the Leonard Bernstein whose photo I have with my ex-wife Gianna eating it, and he, as always, with whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I remember Zeffirelli, Ettore Scola, Busotti, the director Urbini, the violinist Milstein, and that genius Benedetti Michelangeli who almost lived with the pianist and broke his silence to ask us to control our silence. At the end of the meal, Vittorio De Sica was chewing a verbena leaf from the balcony. Then there were the best Italian surgeons, and that was my mother’s brother’s job.”