Month: December 2024

-Which writer inspires you the most?

Screenwriters:  Aaron Sorkin and William Goldman.   Novels:  Stephen Hunter, Thomas Harris and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.  I buy the latter authors in print usually hardback from Barnes and Noble to support the last major national bookseller.   All authors make more money in print and I want to support them.  Just as I went to Horizon in the theater because I wanted to support Kevin Costner.  I’ll also see Gladiator II there. 

-What is the main challenge you encountered while writing your work?

I know this may sound arrogant, but I don’t seem to have many limitations on my imagination or skill set in bringing ideas to fruition. That said, getting the novels into screenplay format has been difficult.  Having written both, I can tell you indubitably scripts are much more difficult to write– well– than novels.  I’ve written ten at this point but only really tried to market three of them, all listed at Film Freeway.  If anyone reads all three they’ll see on the first read they’re very different, but to me they all have the same elements:  romance, action/adventure, humor and usually some type of art, history or science.  Time and the research involved are also a challenge.  Two of my novels, unpublished as of yet, required me to query prominent professors, one on wormholes (Kip Thorne) and the other on prions (Stanley Prusiner).  I needed information I couldn’t find either online or in libraries and they were both definitive sources.  Both gave me personal replies that answered my questions.  Both subsequently won the Nobel prize in their fields. I’m not saying this to brag but to illustrate the lengths to which I’ll go to make my research accurate.  And I’m also very good at tracking down people and information, which was an advantage in my development career and is surely an advantage in screenwriting too.

–Every screenwriter needs feedback after completing their project. Is there someone you always turn to for their opinion as soon as you finish writing?

I have two screenwriter friends, one in LA who has won tons of festivals, done multiple shorts, and works in management at a prominent LA based festival.  Per her suggestion I just joined the Blacklist a few days ago.  We’ll see what happens.  The second one lives in Austin and is in my critique group.  I manage it and we meet twice monthly.  He’s the only experienced screenwriter in the group as he was a paid but uncredited writer on a major film, and used to be a script doctor.  He’s given me great feedback.  Funnily enough, when I pitched to him my idea of bringing in Robin Williams in da Vinci and Me to teach God to be a comic, he was negative on the idea.  I saw it clearly in my head, however, and cried for weeks when Robin died.  I wanted to give him a tribute as well as da Vinci, and when this screenwriter read the 12 page sequel opener, he ‘loved’ it. The other four in my critique group are all very good writers but didn’t have much feedback on the two scripts I printed for them because they liked them and were not sure what to critique.  I can say I never market a rough draft; I revise multiple times before I even take it for a critique.  I’ve also received coverage from several film festivals but they seldom make the same notes.   I’m just not a formulaic writer, either for my novels or scripts, which I think has made it difficult for me to make all the plot points clear.  I’m working on a rewrite now for the Blacklist. 

  –Are you currently working on a new screenplay? If so, can you tell us more about it?

I think I’ll probably write the first ten pp of the last of the trilogy, Rafael and Me.  Da Vinci and Me, if it gets written, will be considerably different to Heaven’s Hero, its source material, especially as I’ll bring da Vinci to our time, unlike in the book.  I already have multiple scenes in my head, such as having a scene where da Vinci has to borrow a helicopter to help defeat the antagonist.  I’m attaching a rendering of his machine, just delete if you think it doesn’t fit your format.  As for the last story, Rafael and Me, I haven’t come up with a logline yet I love but a kinder, gentler Gladiator meets Star Wars fits pretty well.  Rafe will be given the same choice as Mike and Honor:  transport to another era on an important mission for humanity.  But he’ll be going to the year 3000 when humanity has traveled to the stars.  I’m an optimist so I believe we’ll make it that far, hopefully much improved as a species.  In my story humanity has evolved into empaths.  Artists, engineers, architects, scientists.  Because of the earth wars that sent them there they abhor violence and are about to be conquered by an alien race who have based their world building on ancient Roman ideals and ruthlessness.  Rafe, homeless and unhappy back in modern NYC because he misses the SEALS that unfairly cashiered him out of their ranks, is in God’s plan to teach them to fight (again, shown in the Sistine Chapel).  In the process, he’ll fall in love with the lead empath’s daughter.  It may sound like a lot, but I know this last story will have the same elements as the others and that I can pull off this unusual combination.  I have the first chapter and a synopsis that my editor offered for, but we couldn’t come to terms.  Many of my reviews of Heaven’s Rogue and Heaven’s Hero mention a request for Rafe’s story.  Author’s note: Whether Hollywood considers me small potatoes or not, I know I’m a professional fiction writer.  These days I only write something I think I can market.  I’m working on a virus thriller now that will be the first of a series.  Of course if I sell Michelangelo and Me I’ll put it aside and concentrate on screenwriting, but I’m not just going to twiddle my thumbs lol.  I’ll be writing until the day I die and there’s much longevity in my lineage.

  –If you had to describe your writing style using three adjectives, which ones would you choose?

Believable, entertaining, emotional.

-Which writer inspires you the most?

Shakespeare , Rimbaud and Baudelaire . With them visit all spheres of life and the celestial in writing that is the Verb. So when the immensity unfolds , open yours eyes wide to marvel. To write poetry in my screenplays is to love life and embrace it all its dimensions . Creativity demands the salt of life , caravel of words , I feel like a woman !

– What is the main challenge you encountered while writing your work?

No challenge ! No support except God . Dolls that float in time . Contemplative , I smell the sky touch the stars and my writings rest in the palm of God . From then on the word emerges from the living in this writing which gives birth to beauty , inkjet plays with the marvelous .

-Every screenwriter needs feedback after completing their project. Is there someone you always turn to for their opinion as soon as you finish writing?

Not feedback ! I only my soul to give son many graces in the word life ! This power that is given to me ! The grace of living the infinite and to live it fully in this intoxication of the dream that becomes reality !

-Are you currently working on a new screenplay? If so, can you tell us more about it?

Yes after the one on Rennes the Castle , the Priory of Sion and the treasure of Abbey Sauniere published by Edilivre Editions who got 230 Awards Winner and the last on Camille Claudel and Rodin , now I write a new screenplay about the marvelous ! Because the cement sky of my creativity plays with density in various tones. Walk near stars , it’s opening the window of my creativity for a hundred years . My thoughts fly away like an angel kneeling before God ! Echo of his cross , melodious caress
of the sky , give the best of yourself . With God, I see everything in greatness and majesty . Thus when reading the living the Grail ignites.
“ Rimbaud , Eternity has not passed !” I find it in the smallest pores of life and in my creativity . Vines of grapes , red white wine desire, the blood of Christ !”’

-If you had to describe your writing style using three adjectives, which ones would you choose?

Poetic , mediumistic , philosophical, historical .

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-Which writer inspires you the most?

I was lucky enough to be the son of teachers, and I remember as a child many books and collections in the library at home. I remember the book series ” World’s Best Reading” by the Reader’s Digest and the 1980’s collection “Tesori della Narrativa Universale” by De Agostini. From this collection I chose the first book I read entirely: “Tales” by Edgar Allan Poe, a piece who continues to influence my fantasy until today. During my adolescence I was also inspired by H.P.Lovecraft, with the cycle of Cthulhu’s Myths, especially with “At The Mountains of Madness” story, by “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway, with his dry prose and the use of understatement and by Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, for its wonderful pages fully of characters introspection. More recently, my scripts are influenced by Murakami Haruki, especially the one of “IQ84” for the personal magical realism you can breathe in its pages (and that reminds me the Kurosawa’s and Fellini’s visual style), and by George R.R. Martin for his great ability to show and manage multiple characters. Indeed reading “A Song of Ice and Fire” you can literally learn to present and develop characters in a TV series! I also follow the works of Taika Waititi, Dai Sato, Hideaki Hanno, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and the creations of showrunners like Vince Gilligan (“Breaking Bad”), Tony Gilroy (“Andor”), Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl” and “The Last of Us”) and of course, Damon Lindelof (“Lost”).

–What is the main challenge you encountered while writing you work?

When you have an idea in your mind, whether you want to write a novel, a poem, a song or you want to make a painting, a film or a theatre show, you will always have to deal with writing, I would say almost with the purity of calligraphy, according to master Zang Yimou in the movie “Hero” (2002), that makes Nameless warrior say: “Calligraphy and sword art are alike. They are born from the harmony between the strength of the wrist and the feeling of the heart.” To write you must have wrist (the technique) and you must have heart (the feeling). In other words, you need to encapsulate the main idea and develop it into a form that you will communicate to the public. Writing is already seeing. That’s the great challenge. But it is also an opportunity we can take today as new boost, thanks to the social network’s power, a circuit of independent festivals and online reviews that can exponentially multiply the distribution channels. When you write and when you shoot, try to think in artistic terms but also in cross-media and multiple platform terms, you must prepare an expanded narrative, that helps the audience to “peek” at the work with curiosity from more points of view and perspectives. From this point of view, my crew and I are proud to be part of Wildfilmmaker, the first global network of independent artists, actors and directors. This is a constantly evolving project, which takes the historical and artistic roots of cinema and likewise aims to radically renew both selection processes and production, thanks to the active collaboration of an international community. So Wildfilmmaker enhances cinema. According to Michele Diomà, the WILD FILMMAKER project creator, this happens because our entire community loves cinema. More concretely, the challenge I had to face as a writer was the script of the Tv Series Boombox (The God of The Dance). I started from the 2022 short film, winner of several international awards, which had an open ending, a cliffhanger. The audience that always asked me the same question: “Why the boombox radio disappear?”. To answer this question I had to build an entire world. A fantasy world well revelead by the pitch-deck of Boombox Tv Series, also created with the help of generative AI software and awarded from Wildfilmmaker network. Boombox TV-Series world building involves the introduction of new powerful characters into the script, the construction (and destruction) of bonds between them, the creation of a credible villain, but above all an episode structure that consistently manages the inciting incident, main protagonists reactions, conflict and story resolution. It was very complex to manage the interactions between the characters, their introspection and characterization, the cliffhanghers on episodes ending, always focusing on the creativity of the anthology plot and the coherence of the running plot. I tried to do all this while maintaining my narrative style, which combines comedy, drama and a touch of hard sci-fi veins, here accentuated by the fascinating scientific context of quantum physics. We also caught two great challenges: the translation into words of a universe made up only of music, noise and sound (the Universe of Sound) and the use of direct cross-media interludes in the plot, such as the intervention of influencers and youtubers.

-Every screenwriter needs feedback after completing their project . Is there someone you always turn to for their opinion as soon as you finish writing?

My writing process frequently begins with a dream that merges and mix with a film or video I have seen in the past. This is what happened for my last short film, Dreaming Vincent. Kurosawa’s Dreams Episode 5 was grinding in my brain, until I made my version of the movie! Usually I fix the ideas that come from my dreams on the paper, connecting them with arrows, as in a brainstorming process. Later I save everything on my smartphone, to have a logical place where ideas can “flow” and “grow” at any time. So I take note of them wherever I am: at an exhibition, at the cinema, in a theatre, stadium or even at the supermarket… At this stage, I’m having conversations about writing process and narrative ideas with three people: my brother Igor, who has a great literary culture, Simona, my producer with whom we develop both narrative and marketing ideas, and not last, my nephew Francesco, who is 15 years old, when we discuss about the future of cinema and TV series, but also about the evolution of expanded narratives of masterpiece videogames like “The Last of Us”, “Red Dead Redemption” and especially “Detroit Become Human”. Francesco gave me some very useful suggestions on the readability of the pitch-deck of Boombox Tv-Series. Naturally, once the script is complete, I check it with all of them, with most of my crew, including in particular Luca Bottello and Alberto Cerri, and also with the WILD FILMMAKER community!

-Are you currently working on a new screenplay? If so, can you tell us more about it?

The exergue of this interview with the quote from Michelangelo’s Rhymes is not a random incipit. Michelangelo replied in 1545-46 with some verses, entitled “Buonarroto’s answer” to a famous quatrain of praise by Giovanni Carlo Strozzi, in which the statue was invited to wake up to be seen animated. “Caro m’è ‘l sonno, e più l’esser di sasso, mentre che ‘l danno e la vergogna dura; non veder, non sentir m’è gran ventura; però non mi destar, deh, parla basso.” Michelangelo made the statue itself pronounce these verses, highlighting what was the reason for the serenity of the night compared to the restlessness of the other statues. The statue prays not to be awakened by its serene, creative and “prolific” sleep. We find this in the opening theme of the anime “Ergo Proxy” (2006) by Manglobe Studio, universally recognized as a cult for deep introspection of characters and mixing traditional animation and CGI. At this link you can see the opening of Ergo Proxy anime, “Kiri” of Monoral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AiiT6IO_LA The ending theme of the anime is even “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead. The anime was written by the visionary master Dai Sato, who described the subject in a 2005 interview: “A group of robots become infected with something called Cogito virus and become aware of their own existence. So these robots, wich had been tools of humans, decode to go on an adventure to search for themselves”.

–If you had to describe your writing style using three adjectives, wich ones would you choose?

It’s not easy to explain my writing style in three words, but I would say my scripts are always pictorial, musical, and sensually misterious.