“Reading the Pulp Fiction script was like looking at a beautiful sky”

He arrived at Forte Village, as super guest of Filming Italy Sardinia Festivalone of the most famous and talented American actors, who has in fact acted in more than 120 films and, since the day Quentin Tarantino he wanted it in pulp Fiction, is identified with “the problem-solving Mr. Wolf.” We are naturally talking about the immense Harvey Keitel, which spanned half a century of cinema. When we meet him, we are pleased to note that he is wearing his proverbial black Ray Ban Wayfarers. His hair is white but his face is as we have seen it in many films. Maybe he has a few more lines, but the inspector Slocumb Of Thelma & Louise he recently turned 85, and in any case, since he’s been here, he hasn’t missed an evening at Tiki Beach, a small place by the sea where you dance until late at night and the cocktails are fabulous.

During the meeting with journalists, Harvey Keitel he never takes off his sunglasses except to dry tears after someone asks him for a memory of his dear friend Paul Austerwho passed away at the end of April and was his director in Smoke And Lulu on the Bridge. Of the writer Harvey only says that he was a special man. A moment of embarrassment and we continue, and since this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of pulp Fictionthe question about the second film of Quentin Tarantino it is a must. Keitel first of all explain that you are not as active and organized as the Mr. Wolf and then says: “Knowing Quentin Tarantino it was certainly a fundamental moment in my life. It was a mutual friend, that is, a colleague from the Actors Studio, who introduced us to each other. The only thing I can tell you is that when I read the script of pulp FictionI remembered the impact the script had on me Piano lessons Of Jane Campion. I was struck, like when you meet an extraordinary person or look at a beautiful sky. pulp Fiction it had this effect on me. Maybe I can’t fully describe the feeling I felt, but you only have to see the film to realize that it has something very special.”

pulp Fiction is the second film of Tarantino in which he starred Harvey Keitelwhich he played in 1992 Mr. White neither Hyenas: “I will always remember the first time I met him” – continues the actor – “because he came knocking on my door, I opened it and found myself in front of a tall and very clumsy young man. He introduced himself and mispronounced the my name. I smiled and said to him: ‘Come, come in’. A short time later they came to me and said: ‘Harvey, how do you know he is really capable of making this movie? He’s never directed one.’ I replied: ‘But yes.’ And they said: ‘But what did he direct?’. I had the script in my hand and I said, ‘This movie.’ I would do anything for Quentin Tarantinohe is my boyfriend”.

Despite the affection and admiration for Tarantinothe character who Keitel he loved playing the most is the lieutenant of The bad lieutenantdirected by Abel Ferrara in 1992. The reason has to do with the actor’s private life: “I’ve been lucky to work with many great directors, and you know them all. Abel Ferrara it arrived at a very difficult time for me, which concerned my private life, and also Abel he was going through a complicated period, and therefore our inner life was very similar, and I needed him and he needed me. We started working together on the screenplay with great passion. The subject was written by a beautiful woman, Zoe Lund, and that she left too soon. She died of a heroin overdose and Abel and I had to develop the script without her. It was very sad.”

Harvey Keitel he doesn’t know whether over the course of his long career he had more intuition or more luck, but he wanted to make acting his life for a very specific reason: “I became an actor because I strongly wanted to know myself, and not only myself but all other people, and even if you don’t think I can already know you, in reality I understand something about each of you precisely because I know myself, but I still have a lot to learn. One of the best things about dealing with art is that you learn many things. Art shapes our lives, and for this reason it has great power.”

We remind the actor of some Italian authors with whom he worked, and he reveals that he particularly appreciated the collaboration with Lina Wertmüller For A complicated intrigue of women, alleys and crimes and the one with Ettore Scola For The new world. He then confesses to us that Italian directors are more severe and demanding than their American colleagues: “Italians like to give you more directions than American directors and tell you what you have to do. For me it’s easier to escape American directors than Italian ones, but I grew up in Brooklyn, so I’m quite familiar with Italians.”

Speaking of Italian directors, Harvey tells us about a film in which he starred and which has not yet been released and which bears the signature of Louis Black. Is titled Milarepa and is in postproduction: “The film has a beautiful screenplay, which I liked because it raises existential questions that the great Tibetan Buddhas of the eleventh century were grappling with. I realized that those questions were and are very important to me and with Louis we talked a lot about these questions that we all ask ourselves and in which I’m sure you will recognize yourself when you see the film. I learned a lot of things from the script. In the first scene in which I appear, I am sitting at a table with a little girl. I am at her house and her parents are also there, and the little girl asks us questions about life, knowing full well that I am a Buddha, and that is Milarepaand right in that sequence she is Louis Black they address an existential question that is always fundamental to me. The little girl knows that Milarepa she is a Buddha and that she is magical, and she says to me: ‘Your enemies must be very afraid of you’, then I answer her: ‘Your enemies are in your mind and they are small suggestible creatures. To control them you must learn to control your life.’ In short, we are talking about internal demons, and who doesn’t have internal demons?”.

At the end of the meeting, Harvey Keitel tells us a tasty anecdote about Martin Scorsesefriend and director by whom he was directed in Who’s knocking on my door?, Mean Streets, Alice doesn’t live here anymore, Taxi Driver, The last temptation of Christ And The Irishman: “The first time I met Marty, he was a college student while I was selling shoes. We made friends immediately. He was working on a project that was one of the first 35mm films shot by a student. I remember he was auditioning actors. I saw the advert, went to New York University and realized that there were fifty of us and all unemployed. For the last audition there were three of us left, and when I showed up at NYU, it was late in the evening and the school was closed. I arrived and there were just a few lights on in the corridors. Marty he immediately said to me: ‘Do you see that door at the end of the corridor? Go to that room.’ I obeyed and walked down the corridor and into the room. It was a classroom and there was no one except a guy sitting in a chair in front of a desk. There was a light on the desk, a bit like in police stations, and when the guy saw me, he told me in an imperious tone: ‘Sit down!’ I looked at him and said: ‘Who are you?’, and he said: ‘I told you to sit down’, then I replied: ‘Excuse me, who are you talking to?’, and he again ordered me: ‘Sit down!’, at which I got angry and growled: ‘Who the fuck are you?’, I approached him and he stood up, but then a voice from the back of the room shouted: ‘No, Harvey, no! It’s an improvisation’. Era Martyto which I immediately said: ‘Marty, come here, didn’t anyone tell you that when you do an improvisation you have to warn the actors?’ Soon after I got the role.”