Director Paolo Sorrentino feels like an ugly duckling. His new film, Parthenope, will arrive in our theaters on October 24th, with previews at midnight from September 19th: «For kids and sleepless people like me». He says that the work is «the ideal autobiography of my life, with a wonderful woman who goes from experience to experience. I, on the other hand, was the ugly duckling.” While on talent he says: «I don’t think you possess it innately: false myths. I work all the time.” Sorrentino speaks today in an interview with Everyday occurrence: «Even when I pretend to converse with my wife: in fact I am elsewhere, building a parallel reality for myself. Books? Today just a few, three a month. Film even less, not out of snobbery. I prefer not to see those of others, because if I see a beautiful one I get depressed, if I see an ugly one it’s worse, because I get excited and think I’m making a masterpiece.”
The cinema he likes
The cinema he loves is the American one of the Nineties: «Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Scorsese. And David Lynch.” He changed his lifestyle habits with age: «In the decade between 40 and 50 I was very nervous about the passage of time, I even made a film about it, Youth. Over the years, expectations are reduced, as is the need to experience certain emotions because they have already been experienced: going to a dinner or a party was an essential reason, now I feel like “I already know what’s going to happen” and I stay home”. On Fellini he says: «8 and ½ is the film of my life, but it’s enough for me to make the next one: The Plus Man was two films, I thought it’d be better to make 2×1 like in the supermarket, if I didn’t manage to do it again…».
The rivalries
He claims that he doesn’t feel better than his colleagues: «Inventing rivalries is a very popular game, I understand it, but I’ve never experienced it. Also because I’m not competitive, I’m not sporty, I don’t do sports, and all in all I’m more comfortable losing.” Finally, he explains why he wrote “They are all right”: «My tendency towards common sense, I always struggle a lot with extremism, clear positions that do not retreat, reason can be found in the middle. I’m basically central. Even political? Maybe yes, over the years.”
