and here’s the only one I’ve ever recommended”

If this were an interview, there would be no competition: I don’t know how to do interviews and he, Giovanni Minoli is the inventor of “face to face”. So we mutually decide, to my relief, to just have a chat. On the other hand, we have something in common: every time I write about death (and – ouch to you – I often do it), he calls me. So we discovered, for example, that we were both more inclined towards burial than cremation. He told me that he is looking for a small plot of land on the island where he owns a holiday home; in the hope that, if he is buried there, the grandchildren attracted by the holiday will go to visit him at least once a year.
In short, we don’t mind imagining our funeral. Which he foresees ritual and Catholic, having always been a convinced believer. I tell him I’m watching a German series, it’s called The last word, in which a lady who soon became a widow reinvents herself as a “eulogist”, that is, a paid author and declaimer of funeral eulogies. «I already have my eulogist: he is the priest who married me, exactly fifty years ago. He thinks that Giorgio La Pira was the best man at the wedding.” At the time of Mixers, in the fabulous 80s, was considered Craxian (and it was). But today Minoli shows clear signs of nostalgia for the DC: son of Professor Eugenio, jurist expert in international arbitration and among the drafters of “schema 13” of the Second Vatican Council (“I still have the letters of Paul VI thanking him”); and married to Matilde, in turn daughter of Ettore Bernabei, the legendary director of Rai in which Rossellini staged the Acts of the Apostles and Zeffirelli the Jesus of Nazareth. If you talk to him about the First Republic, he warms up to the name of Fanfani, leader of that left DC to which his father-in-law belonged. And Fanfani still defends him from the “damnatio memoriae” of the referendum against divorce: «It was the pontiff who asked the DC for an act of faith, at the end of the round of the table in the management they decided that he was the only one who could do that battle, and so he accepted the cross.”

Past and present of politics

He has no doubts about the DC, about its “strategic modernity”: «In short, that party created Eni, relaunched IRI, founded the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, brought Italy destroyed by war between the industrial powers of the world, reconstructed a foreign policy. I just finished reading the 500 unpublished pages of Bernabei’s diary: it’s all there.”
And Craxi? «Craxi, at least, had told the truth. In his speech in Parliament during Tangentopoli, when he warned that the entire party financing system was “irregular or illegal”, and that once the Wall had fallen, the time had come to recognize it as a political problem and move on. But do you know what Goffredo Bettini once told me? That Berlinguer’s famous interview on the moral question, widely reported in these days of scandals on the left, was aimed mainly at his party colleagues. It was a warning…”

Agnelli and Berlusconi

Minoli studied with the Jesuits: what do you think of the first Jesuit pope? «Have you asked yourself why for almost five centuries, since the Society of Jesus existed, none of them had ever become pontiff? Because the Jesuits are the research office of humanity, and you don’t make the head of the research office the head of the company. They are two different professions.” I get the vague feeling that he doesn’t like Francis… «His is the theology of the pueblo, ecclesial populism we could say. While I think that the Regensburg speech of Benedict XVI, a true saint, in a century will show us the way to make peace with Islam…”.
While conversing with Minoli you realize that the adjective “true”, the noun “truth”, recurs continuously. Almost as if it were a category that he uses to distinguish good from bad and beautiful from ugly. As a Turin native, for example, despite having a grandfather who was a consultant for Valletta and despite boasting a historian in his CV Face to face with Gianni Agnelli, he says he is “horrified” by what is coming out about the lawyer’s legacy. And he immediately contrasts it with “the simple and true Italy of Berlusconi, someone who did the work of three in a single generation”, the fruit of which can be seen in the fraternal management of the family assets after death.

Real Italy and television

«I prefer the real Italy. And if you want to know what it is, it’s all there Your business conducted by Amadeus: those are the Italians, with their ambitions, aspirations, clumsiness, a simple and good people, who however get furious when they find themselves faced with an injustice. Amadeus transformed that program into a sociology treatise. He is the best, together with Fiorello they were equivalent to the Baudo&Carrà of the old Rai. Letting him go was madness. I hope they have an idea of ​​how to get out of this now…”

«These miracles of identification with the country» he says «can only be achieved by public television: because it puts the “us” in the foreground: this is why it is called public, while commercial television is the television of the “I”. Generalist TV is the square, the agora that we still need to create the unity of time and place in which large and small events can be transformed into events, in a common national sense. We had given it up for dead, but that TV is proving to be very resilient, and among other things increasingly capable of absorbing and making its own the language of new media.”
We are talking about television, and then I stand up for a moment as a sign of respect for my interlocutor. You see, if the man in front of me painted pictures or made films, we would call him “Master”. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be done for someone who has done everything on TV. But literally everything. From variety shows to children’s programs, from Blitz to Those of the nightpassing through Agriculture tomorrow. All programs kissed by success. He says that, reading his own CV, he sometimes asks himself: “How the fuck did I do it?”. Perhaps this is why, modesty aside, he sent it via email to the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission to stand as a candidate for the future Board of Directors of Rai, and perhaps for President. I immediately declare my skepticism to him: you know too much about television to be president of Rai. But it is also true – he answers me – that at this rate Rai will no longer be Rai…

Virtuous example of a program

In any case, he is more proud of none of his creatures than of A Place in the Suna series that has lasted for 27 years and has recently even earned him honorary citizenship of Naples. It was proposed by the workers of the center where it is made and – more unique than rare – the city council voted for it unanimously. «I have to thank Elvira Sellerio for this. It was in the Board of Directors that he was called “of the professors”. They wanted to cut, cut, save, and close the production center in Naples. She, who was a neighbor even though we had never met, came to me and said: “Can you find an idea to save Naples? You know, I’m on the Board of Directors at the “culture and Southern Italy” level, I can’t give up that center.” So I, who had been studying long serials for some time, had an idea: the feuilleton. It just came to me Agriculture tomorrowwhere I discovered that type of story thanks to a French story, Warbler of the Three Elms, a girl who lived in the city and was a secretary but then turns into a farmer for love and is so successful that she becomes mayor of her new town. I also found the sponsor: Necci, who was in Ferrovie at the time, gave us a billion lire. He didn’t ask for publicity in exchange, but that among the characters in the story there was a commuter who took a clean train every day. In no time at all, the program was ready. It never ended again. It gave employment to three thousand people, and directors like Gabriele Muccino cut their teeth there. Everyone remembers me as a journalist, but I am first and foremost a TV manager.”

The best? Gabanelli and Sagramola

Half of the faces we still see on television today were discovered or launched by him. Who are the best? «“Milena Gabanelli. And Sveva Sagramola. So as not to offend anyone.” And who knows how many recommendations… «Do you believe it? Only one in my life: Massimo Giletti. He was the son of a friend of my mother’s, they worked as charity ladies together in Turin. My mother asked me to help him. But I didn’t get along very well with her. So, when the boy showed up for the first time, I told him to go back to his father’s company where he worked. Here it is again a year later: same answer. The third time, as soon as I joined, he told me: “Look, I quit, he can’t send me back to the company anymore…”. I liked his obstinacy. I took it and put it to the test: the day after the notice of guarantee to Andreotti I told him to lurk at dawn in front of the church where the senator went to mass and to interview him on the street. He succeeded.”

The game of truth

I propose that he apply the “true/false” scheme, with which he judges the world, to politicians. Naturally Meloni wins, star of the moment: «He interprets the real Italy» he says: «But let me add: personally and alone. If he wants to go down in history, he must redo the government after the European elections. And find people who have a school, a cursus honorum.” Schlein? «When I met her I told her: the day a wasp lady from Manhattan lends her uterus to the South American domestic helper who cannot have children, I will be convinced that her battle is popular. But she is improving, now she also deals with salaries.” And with you? «One with the clutch bag, which Italy are we talking about?».
Minoli is on the threshold of eighty years. But he speaks, thinks and even moves as if he had forty others ahead of him. He belongs to that kind of elderly people who compensate for their age with vision, and keep themselves young by imagining what the future will be like. My laziness finds them irritating, but it’s all envy. I ask him why he doesn’t make a program for the army of “over 65s” who retire and watch TV: it is the only target that no program cultivates. He tells me: «But I do it, his name is History is us». He takes a folder and begins to read to me for each day of the year three events or anniversaries that he has already prepared. «But do you think they’ll make me do it on Rai as a daily strip? No”.
He is like that. For as long as I’ve known him he’s been complaining because they don’t let him work…

WHO IS’

THE LIFE
Born in Turin on 26 May 1945, after classical studies at the Jesuit Social Institute he graduated in Law in Modena and in 1972 he joined Rai. He married Matilde Bernabei, daughter of the then general director Ettore Bernabei. The two have a daughter, Giulia.
THE CARREER
After the debut of Agriculture Tomorrow, in 1980 he began hosting Mixer, one of the most popular Rai programs. He has produced dozens of programs, including Those of the night by Renzo Arbore, Blitz by Gianni Minà e Aboccaperta by Gianfranco Funari. From 1997 to 2002 he hosted on Rai History is us, a highly successful format he invented. Like fiction A Place in the Sunthe first soap opera completely produced in Italy, which has been on air since 1996 (6,435 episodes so far) and which earned him honorary citizenship of Naples.