Each of our collections is like a movie. We write the script, and this Sicilian woman who has traveled around the world plays the lead role.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I see my role as a translator, telling the story that's in the book using the more visual language of film.
You grow up in a Sicilian household, becoming an actor is not a big leap.
As an author, you hope for a director and a cast that will make something wonderful out of your book.
I'd like to do a number of films. Westerns. Genre pieces. Maybe another film about Italian Americans where they're not gangsters, just to prove that not all Italians are gangsters.
I'll look at the script and I'll try to find as many books, movies, and pieces of music that I think are going to feed each scene or the character as a whole.
I'm just a hired actor who was hired for a particular job, but I think one of the joys of reading the script was the way that the personal and the global are woven together.
I'm going to do an adaptation of the Italian film, Bread and Tulips. I really like that film.
People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.
Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.
There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy.