we will see each other soon. Instead, pneumonia took him away”

«Maurizio asked me: “In your opinion, when you go to the other world, what happens there?” I replied: “I don’t know, but we’re going to get better”. “And will I be able to have a television?”. “I do not believe”. “You know how boring then”. “But no, you will live in the peace of the Lord”. Oh well, then let’s make sure that whoever arrives first waits for the other».

Best friends for 50 years, Maurizio Costanzo and Giorgio Assumma, 88, former president of Siae, lawyer and confidant of many film and TV stars, met in 1973. «I was president of Rusconi Film, I contacted him about a biopic on De Gasperi, then politics imposed Rossellini on us. He didn’t mind: “That’s how things go in the world”. But we haven’t been lost since. At least one phone call a day, coffee every Monday and Wednesday at the Vanni bar, in front of Rai. He asked me for my opinion on each of his projects, I advise on lawsuits, never a disagreement».

At the Parioli theater, for the Maurizio Costanzo Show, there was always a seat in the front row reserved for Assumma. «“If you’re here, I feel calmer”. The only time I missed they planted the bomb in via Fauro. Since then Maurizio made me promise that I would never lose an episode again».

It was Giorgio who introduced him Miss De Filippi. «Maria was a brilliant law graduate, consultant of the Italian phonographic association, in Milan. I often heard it. She asked me if I could find them a famous moderator for a conference on record piracy on the sidelines of the Venice Film Festival. Baudo was busy, Vespa as well, Maurizio halted and finally accepted. Maria picked us up at the airport, he didn’t even look at her, almost annoyed. At the Lido, after getting off the boat, a photographer approached. To which Maurizio said curtly: “Please, doctor, stay away from me, I don’t want paparazzi”. And he too at dinner he sat her across the table. We returned to Rome and twice the plane ran into a bad turbulence above Tarquinia, the pilot landed vertically, a very risky maneuver, how scary. “We were lucky, today a new life begins”, we commented once on the ground».

And indeed. «Ten days later, it was Saturday, I met Maria in a bar on Viale Mazzini. “I came to visit an aunt”. I pretended to believe her. On Monday Maurizio told me: “You know, that Dr. De Filippi is smart, I would like her as an assistant”. And so she went.’

Everything else is life. Wedding in the Capitol in 1995celebrant Francesco Rutelli, reception for one hundred guests a villa Assumma. «“Thanks to you I found the woman I dreamed of, the one I would like to look into her eyes when I leave”, he confided to me.

Every August we all left for Ansedonia. At 7, just the two of us, we ate breakfast reading the newspapers, then Maurizio soaked in the pool, without swimming, still in the water with his head sticking out. He carried along the tapes of Totò’s films, he must have seen them dozens of times, how much he laughed. In the evening she went to ballroom dancing in a small village in the Maremma, with the local orchestra, he just the slow ones however, those of the brick, enjoyed it. After three days off, however, she began to freak out, she couldn’t stand without working. “Lucky you”, he told me when I left for Rome.

Before meeting Maria he had never taken a vacation. AND he had never been on a diet. One morning, in San Giuseppe, we had a coffee and, at my insistence, even a small donut with cream. In the afternoon I went back to the same bar and the owner told me: “You know lawyer, that friend of yours came back and ate himself twelve beignets, one after the other”. Then she came Maria who kept him on a stick and she asked the secretaries to snitch on her if her husband was wrong. Mauritius he secretly bought candy».

They last spoke on Thursday.

“I called him at the clinic. Maurizio was much better, he had overcome the minor surgery well, a trifle, none of us were prepared for the worst. He was in an excellent mood, we talked about work, a new screenplay for the cinema, a contract for TV. She greeted me like this: “See you soon, not this one anyway, but next week I’m going out”.

And instead a pneumonia he took it away. The next day he died. He was my only true friend. Who am I going to talk to now?”