I get up. No. I can’t do it. Drop this sofa, come on. Impossible. Rest nailed. Come on, please, do it for yourself, turn off the TV, forget it, do something more serious. Here is the sentence I care about with Maria De Filippi. I never know if there’s anything more serious than the Temptation Island bonfire or the tears of a mom begging her daughter to give her another chance behind a giant open envelope. Of course it gets better. But on the spot it seems to me not. And I leave the tronists alone or the quarrels between Gemma and Tina. Pure hypnosis. A kind of itch that I can’t help but scratch. Like the baby love of Giulia and Sangiovanni to Amici.
And behind all this is her, the Grand Master of Ceremony, Maria Vinco Facile, on a mission to solve the messes of the world. Calm, understanding, balanced. Very serious and understood even on apparent nothingness, perhaps because she refuses to imagine from what an inglorious war her guests arrive. He just listens to them. And then it has the trick. I got there. There is always one who wins and one who loses. One that is eliminated and one that is chosen. One who cries and one who laughs. Life and death. The loves me does not love me perennial. The white moon and the black moon. Caesar and the slave. And De Filippi is there to pay homage to Caesar and to guarantee the slave that one day Caesar will be him. It doesn’t matter if she says it. It matters that they believe it. The Great Teacher exhibits without exposing herself. It is always in the center while remaining to the side. The lighthouse dazzles someone else, but the Grand Master of Ceremony moves it. Perhaps his distrust of interviews like this one stems from here. He considers them a place of sudden harshness. Yet, in the end, she tells more about herself than one might expect, and then lets herself go exhausted as if she had traveled a kilometer uphill.
Maria De Filippi, did you then play burraco?
“With the Carrà?”
With the Carrà. You promised yourself after his participation in Amici.
“In the end, no. That summer I was in Ansedonia, she in Cala Piccola; I should have reached her but a problem with my mother blew the night away. He said he would beat me hands down. ‘
Would he beat her?
“Hands down.”
What relationship did he have with her?
“A relationship that was born long before I knew it.”
A little cryptic.
«I watched her singing on TV, conducting“ Canzonissima ”, dancing the“ Tuca tuca ”with Alberto Sordi, pretending not to know how many beans there were … Indeed, perhaps she knew, I’ve always wondered. Then, four years ago, I was asked to participate in one of her shows and I finally met her in person. That interview was very important to me because sometimes you get an idea of a person through television and see that reality corresponds to your thinking is important. I think I was extremely sincere with her, I think I caught in her gaze the same sincerity and a bit of amazement, at times, on some considerations I made. She was sharp, intelligent, sensitive, she led by pretending not to lead, re-establishing in front of the cameras what was the truth ».
Is there the truth in front of a camera?
“In my opinion, yes. The story in front of another human being, mediated by a camera or not, is always true even if more controlled than when we are alone with ourselves ».
The navel of the Carrà has been around the world.
«Because he suddenly showed it in a slightly respectable Italy, where women, by culture, pretended not to want to discover him. He broke a taboo ».
He was not the only one.
“When he sang: How beautiful it is to make love from Trieste down … he had the courage to say what everyone thought but that was bad to say, especially for a woman, because then it passed to be superficial or light”.
Why has Carrà become a gay icon?
“He was just an icon. For straight people because he had the courage to do what everyone thought but did not have the courage to do. For gays because maybe she was dancing dressed as a sexy nun singing a Beatles hit with the half-naked dancers moving as if they were on horseback. And then she said she grew up alone with her mother. And this allowed her to say that there is no problem in a family made up of two men or two women ».
In fact there isn’t. Yet we live in a country that seeks to define people’s sexual orientation by law.
“It is sad to see that this is the case. But when an eighteen-year-old commits suicide in Turin because he can’t stand homophobic bullying or in Crotone, a fifteen-year-old is beaten on the seafront because he’s gay, we are forced to reiterate by law that people’s sexual orientations shouldn’t interest us. The daily bulletin of violence and intimidation should scare us ».
I say it as they would say on the right: the Zan bill is liberticide, it wants to take away the freedom of expression.
“Freedom of expression is a fundamental cornerstone of any democracy, but it is not intellectually honest to confuse freedom of expression with the freedom to insult, discriminate or instigate acts of violence and, in a certain way, justify them. The debate on the Zan decree has taken on, as always happens in Italy, partisan connotations and exploitation. But here we are not faced with a question of parties or parties, but a question of civilization ”.
The concept of civilization is apparently not shared.
«It is not appearance, it is substance. We pride ourselves on it, but episodes like those we were talking about before show that in fact we do not live in a civilized country ».
Why does sex haunt us like this?
«But I don’t think that we are obsessed, sometimes we are obsessed with not understanding…».
“Men and Women”, “Temptation Island”, isn’t it all about sex?
“Beyond my plans, what I think obsessions us is the idea of being alone, suffering or investing in bad relationships.”
Sophisticated vision. Doesn’t he betray himself more often out of narcissism?
“I don’t think he is betraying himself for narcissism, I never thought that. Perhaps out of weakness, loneliness, decompensation, attraction ».
After all, she too was her husband’s “lover”. If you think about it today, what effect does it have on you?
“The same thing he did to me then, the fear of doing something wrong that would lead nowhere, that would cause me unnecessary suffering, but I wanted to live.”
Proietti, Battiato, Morricone. It has been a tough year. What relationship does it have with death?
“Hideous. I fear it, I envy those who have a peaceful relationship with death. It scares me because I don’t know it, it’s something I can never control. And sickness frightens me, my suffering and that of others frighten me ”.
God exists?
“I think so. Why shouldn’t it exist? If it is an individual need to think that it exists, I don’t know. However, being mine too, I think it exists ».
He said: “Giovanni, my dad, put me on his belly and I combed him.” Did your father hug you a lot?
“My father couldn’t help hugging me because I hugged him all the time, when I was little I walked with my hands around his legs, I was a kind of koala.”
And his mother Giuseppina?
“Mom no, Mom wasn’t physically expansive, at least until she was 75. From the age of 75 until her death she changed, she became one ».
Yet, looking at her from a distance, it is as if the physical contact made her embarrassed.
“I have no embarrassment in physical contact with the people in my life. On television I do not meet those who are part of my family, I meet those who do my job, who is a singer, who is an actor or ordinary people with whom I certainly do not have a daily relationship. Hugs and kisses, in that case, are a television greeting but do not respond to a real life attendance and since I bring myself on television, perhaps you have noticed this ».
Does your son Gabriel hug him?
“I hugged him a lot when he was little; now that he is an adult he hugs me more, him and I consequently. Now I am smaller than him ».
They all call her Maria, as if it were normal to call her you.
“It’s my name. I don’t see anything wrong with it. The television is an appliance: one day I will put the Dixan. Some day someone else will put it on. ‘
What girl was that?
«Well, curious, I always asked why, I wanted to do so many things, they made me do a lot of sport because at least I calmed down. I had a beautiful childhood and a beautiful adolescence. I was lucky”.
What opinion did your mother have of her TV?
“She liked” Amici “, she liked:” There is mail “. She didn’t like “Men and Women” because she didn’t understand the meaning of boys looking for a girl on television. The version of “Men and Women over” was able to see it and there he was even more surprised. My mother was never afraid of loneliness, she was full of interests, she loved traveling, reading, going to the theater. She was widowed at the age of 70 but at the center of her life, at that point, there was certainly no idea of finding a partner ».
Of his mother he said: “He had a great sense of modesty and was very intelligent.”
«Mother’s great sense of modesty also characterized her life on the day of my father’s funeral. I was crying and she said to me: Maria, don’t put on a show. My father was his exact opposite ».
Is she still crying or has she stopped?
“I’ve never stopped crying. I don’t think there is a time when you do that. Not crying is a sign of dryness ».
His is perhaps the loudest TV ever made.
“I am convinced that we should only speak if there is something to say. I try never to be out of place and if what comes to mind creates doubts or seems useless to me, I avoid saying it ».
Do you ever feel embarrassed for the protagonists of your shows?
“It has happened to me more than once and I have always declared it. I hope I did it with education ».
When was the last time you raised your voice?
“Sometimes it happens on television. If, however, I become bullying with who I have invited, I am very sorry. Also because the role I have is overwhelming in itself. I prefer peer comparisons. I happen to do it even in private life, but after a minute it passes me and I’m so stupid as to apologize even if I’m right, for the simple fact of having raised my voice ».
Have you ever been in therapy?
“I did hypnosis and psychotherapy. I think it is useful for anyone, it means being with yourself ».
What did he discover?
“How to accept me.”
You have a very psychological approach. The gestures, the looks, the half sentences.
“I don’t know if what I have is a psychological approach, but it’s the only one I know and that’s what I have in life too.”
D’Agostino calls her Blood Mary.
“Yes, it’s something that has always amused me. D’Agostino is an intelligent and sharp man. From what I know him he has an honest sensibility ».
I quote again: at first I didn’t like Maurizio, I watched him on TV and asked uncomfortable questions. What’s wrong with awkward questions?
“Nothing. But I’ve always thought that when you invite someone on television, it’s a bit like when you invite them to your house. You open the door and let her sit, you don’t embarrass her. Uncomfortable questions are welcome, but whoever enters your home must know that you will ask them and be free, at that point, not to enter. I don’t like pitfalls and pitfalls. I don’t do them and I don’t want to suffer them. The awkward questions, then, should be asked to those who matter more than you, not to those who matter less than you, otherwise it is too easy. This consideration is totally independent of Maurizio, it is in general ».
When did you start changing your mind about him?
“When I met the person and not just the television reporter.”
She became more famous than him.
“I do not think. When I am stopped on the street, everyone tells me to say hello to him ».
What is the mafia for you today?
“Something that scares me.”
Are you still thinking about the attack?
“Much less”.
Evening. At the table. She and Costanzo. Is the TV on?
“Yes, it’s on, but at a low volume. The remote control is in Maurizio’s hands, as always, and turns up when the subject interests him ».
What are you interested in on TV?
“All. It’s my job, I do it and I look at it to understand ».
De Filippi, what’s around the corner?
“I wish you knew.”
Maybe Sanremo.
«Sanremo is a beautiful sight; when I was close to Carlo Conti I did not enjoy the opportunity that Carlo gave me. Amadeus and Fiorello did very well, with a lot of effort due to the restrictions ».