DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES

Ernesto Gastaldi wrote more than a hundred movies in the heyday of Italian genre cinema. Among them Mario Bava’s THE WHIP AND THE BODY, Umberto Lenzi’s ALMOST HUMAN and the Sergio Leone produced MY NAME IS NOBODY. He even contributed to ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, but opted not to go to the States with Leone, to work on the script, while his wife was in the hospital. Looking back on his life, at the age of 86, Gastaldi has few professional regrets, although he wishes he could have convinced producers to turn his sci-fi screenplays into films. The only one that did get made, was 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK. Our expert on Italian genre cinema, Mike Lebbing, had a conversation with Gastaldi in 2021 via email, as Gastaldi’s hearing is not what it used to be.

Maestro, could you tell us how you started your screenwriting career after graduating from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome?

In 1957 I met two outstanding screenwriters, Rodolfo Sonego and Ugo Guerra. Rodolfo would occasionally invite me to dinner at his house and I would meet Cesare Zavattini, Federico Fellini and other big names of Italian cinema, but without results. It was different with Ugo. One day, after we’d been having talks on the telephone for a year, I asked him if he had anything which I could write. Ugo told me to meet him in his apartment in Monte Parioli, Rome and offered me coffee in a cup with a silver handle. He explained the situation to me: overwhelmed with requests and the desire to please everyone, he had gotten a payment three months before to write a treatment. After a month he had picked up the second payment to assure the producer that the work was in full swing and the day before he had taken the third payment. So, now he had to deliver the treatment the next day. There was only one detail: he had never started, he didn't even know where to start. He asked me: Would you like to write about fifty pages, tonight, about the adventures of a man who has to open a nightclub on the Via Appia Antica? Something that will make you smile at least a few times? And could you deliver it to me tomorrow at six o'clock in the evening?  I answered: I have a commitment at six o'clock. Are you at home at two o'clock in the afternoon? He smiled and looked at me in a curious way. I wrote NIGHT CLUB in one night and brought it to him at 2pm. Two days later Ugo called me: the producer was happy with his work and told him that his personal touch was clearly recognized! And if the producers recognized that hand when I was writing, they could give me all the work I could handle. So, as a ghostwriter I wrote about twenty movies. I remember AKIKO [Luigi Fillippo D’Amico, 1961], THE MONGOLS [André De Toth, 1961] and the first half of SODOM AND GOMORRAH [Robert Aldrich, 1962].

During this period, you became a prolific and popular screenwriter. How much time did you usually spend on a screenplay? And how many of your personal ideas could you put into it?

Usually a month. I liked to create characters and then watch how they interact with each other. I put my own ideas in context and in the plot, especially when it came to contemporary issues.

You also wrote three of the best gothic horror films of the period: Riccardo Freda’s THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK, Antonio Margheriti’s THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG and especially Mario Bava’s THE WHIP AND THE BODY. All three share a very dark atmosphere and a twisted sexuality. How did you come up with these ideas that were very controversial at the time? And what is your opinion about them today?

I never cared about criticism. I wrote stories to entertain people. The masturbation fantasies of people who wanted to make movies, but couldn't, and therefore judged the work of others, have always left me indifferent. Freda and Bava were geniuses in their field. By the way, I don't think I wrote THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG, maybe I did a supervision, but I don't remember. The credits don't always match the truth.

But these two films by Freda and Bava are about sado-masochism and doomed romance, which still makes them very different from most horror films made back then. Were you inspired by Freud’s work, as seems to be the case in your directorial debut LIBIDO? 

Contrary to what it seems, I have never been inspired by Freud’s theories, that since long have been known to be wrong. I've used some superficial references to what people still believe about Freudian theories. LIBIDO had come up short on the initial edit. The famous editor Roberto Cinquini helped me to make an new cut, but since there were still a few minutes left to the contract duration, I added those childhood traumas. In order to create characters and give them feelings, I sometimes create contrasting figures because I believe that good and evil are equally divided in people's souls.

How often did you meet the directors, producers and actors for which you wrote your screenplays?

There were no standard situations about when, if and how I met directors when writing a script. Of course I have always met the producers who commissioned my work, often from my own idea, sometimes from an idea of their own. I had more meetings with directors like Tonino Valerii and Sergio Martino because they were good friends. I sometimes ran into Antonio Margheriti, but he did not interfere with me when I was writing the scripts. I met Bava and Freda a few times and they filmed my scripts without discussing them.

Freda called once, during the shooting  of THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK, to ask me if he could tear the last pages out of the script and not film them. I laughed and said that as far as I was concerned he could do whatever he wanted, but the audience wouldn't understand the story. He laughed and replied: Exactly!

The exception was Sergio Leone, who would produce MY NAME IS NOBODY. That film was ultimately directed by Tonino Valerii, but during the entire writing period - of eight months! - the intended director was Michele Lupo. With Sergio it worked like this: I wrote the scenes at night and during the day I went to his house to read them to him, and he would comment on them. At times, he collected half a dozen celebrities from Italian cinema and told them in detail about the script, which he told them was finished, while looking at their facial expressions. He claimed that's how he saw if the scenes worked. A statement that I dare to question, but that forced me to look critically at my own screenplay countless times, and this eventually gave me the opportunity to improve on it.

MY NAME IS NOBODY is a wonderful film and it was a huge commercial success. But it was also a difficult production. What was the experience like for you? 

Writing MY NAME IS NOBODY for Leone was a good experience. At the time, I was rebelling against authorities of any kind, especially those who are trying to subjugate you. With Sergio everything started well, then there was an argument between us about a scene which he called Serie C, by which he referred to the third class of the Italian football championship. I replied that he himself was a Serie B director, whereas Fellini, De Sica, Germi et cetera were Serie A. I left with slamming doors. He didn't call me for twenty days. The twenty-first day he called me like nothing had happened and we got back to work.

Sergio then had to fire Michele Lupo, who was assigned to direct the film, because of Michele's misunderstanding of a part of the script, while actual filming in the USA was only three weeks away. Terence Hill begged Sergio to direct the film, but Leone worried about his reputation if he directed a comedy western with the actor who had played the lead in THEY CALLED HIM TRINITY. So, Leone proposed Tonino Valerii, who had helped him with his movie FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, to direct the film. Sergio called him and they signed a contract and shortly afterwards Tonino left for the United States.

There were some problems during shooting. Tonino wanted to replace the director of photography and the production manager. In America the production manager was Fulvio Morsella, Sergio's brother-in-law, formerly a United Nations interpreter, who spoke perfect English. Sergio didn’t even speak one word of English. Sometimes he acted as a link between Tonino in America and myself, even while I was having a boat holiday.

I don't know why, but after Steven Spielberg had told Leone that his best movie was MY NAME IS NOBODY, which he did NOT direct, people started spreading ridiculous rumors about who actually directed that movie. The film was shot entirely by Valerii, with the exception of a few simple scenes in Spain that were shot by Sergio with a second unit crew.

How did the 'sequel’ THE GENIUS come about? For most people, it is inferior to Valerii’s film, but still it has some nice moments. What was your role in this movie and can you tell something about the production history?

THE GENIUS would have been the completion of the idea of the evolution of the West, in which the American natives would have been redeemed. The final scene was to be the culmination of a well-designed "sting", a real strong plot twist. Damiano Damiani's direction however was completely wrong, he didn't understand the film. The mystery is why Sergio didn't kick him out before starting production because it was evident that he didn't understand anything. Sergio told me not to watch the film so as not to get angry. I saw THE GENIUS years later and I indeed got angry. Terence Hill also got furious during the shoot because he realized that the director was ruining the script.

Directors such as Bava, Freda and Margheriti were looked down upon in their day, but are now recognized as artists or at least great professionals. How do you look back on that?

At the time, Italian film critics did not attach any importance to these, in my view, great directors who, with their commercial cinema, allowed the film industry to also produce so called artistic films, which sometimes had poor and certainly unpredictable performances at the box office. But we, who worked on films that were shown continuously in the cinema, we despised critics. We knew they were almost always wannabes, people who couldn't make it into the movie world and therefore wrote about it. I had some memorable clashes with director Francesco Maselli and others. At one of the Annual Screenwriters Conventions, which was held three days after Antonio Margheriti's death, none of these artists mentioned him in their speeches. So I got up and explained to Maselli and co. that if they could have made their movies, almost all of them at a loss, it was only thanks to people like Margheriti who interpreted cinema for what it essentially is about: entertaining people.

Of course there were also real artists, my great masters like Ugo Guerra and Rodolfo Sonego, Benevenuti and Debernardi, Age and Scarpelli [Agenore Incrocci & Furio Scarpelli], Aldo Florio and others. I loved Alessandro Blasetti because it was he who supported me at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinema when some of the teachers wanted to kick me out because I provoked them.

You wrote THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH and THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, two essential films in the development of the giallo genre. Did you anticipate at the time that a really popular genre was starting to develop? How did you react to Dario Argento’s films?

It all started with LIBIDO. The unexpected success of this cheaply produced thriller in foreign markets prompted producers Luciano Martino and Mino Loy to make more serious films of that genre. I never worried about how directors interpreted what I wrote. They were all true professionals. Dario Argento's films were modern. They weren't detective stories, but purely based on suspense, often against all the logic of the story, but they worked fine. In the genre of thriller and suspense, the Italians conquered the world market and held it for twenty years.

Age & Scarpelli wrote many movies I love, such as MAFIOSO, LA GRANDE GUERRA, L'ARMATA BRANCALEONE, C'ERAVAMO TANTO AMATI and of course THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Did you learn anything from them?

I met Age and Scarpelli several times, but I haven’t had the honor of working with them. For GUN MOLL, Monica Vitti, who was hired to play the lead, wanted Age and Scarpelli’s supervision on my script. Monica told me I might have some trouble now that she was hired to be the star. I told her I really didn't care about her and that when I wrote, I wrote for myself. This answer shocked her. Eventually, the script came into the hands of Sophia Loren who wanted to play the lead role, forcing her husband Carlo Ponti to break the contract with Vitti. Age and Scarpelli validated my script by saying there was nothing to change.

I admired the art of their scripts, the logic of the plots, the layering of the characters, they were two greats, the real authors of the films the directors made then, including THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. I read that one before it was shot by Sergio Leone, because they had first considered the Italian actor Enrico Maria Salerno, who was my friend, for the role of Tuco. Enrico let me read the script, he was doing very well in the business at the time, and he wanted some advice. The script was actually even better than the wonderful movie that Sergio made! A true masterpiece.

During this period you also wrote a lot of westerns. Was there a different modus operandi for you to write these films, compared to the other screenplays you were writing at the time?

None. These were always stories about men and women. I thought up contexts I didn’t really know anything about, but human feelings, the primary ones, didn’t change.

Is it true that you contributed to Elio Petri’s extraordinary THE 10TH VICTIM? If so, what was your work on it?

Petri never knew he was filming a script that was written by me, he thought an American sci-fi expert wrote it. I met Carlo Ponti and he handed me a stack of blue paper and Petri’s script, asking me to use the blue paper to edit it. Fifteen days later I brought him the script: the sheet with the title and the name of the authors was left blank. But then Petri inserted some scenes from his own original script that were absurd. He made a mockery of the sci-fi genre which was unknown in Italy at the time. He ruined the purity of Robert Sheckley's original and wonderful story.

During this period you worked like a maniac. It must have been great to be part of the Italian film industry that was so powerful at the time.

It was an intense period, full of professional satisfaction. In Italy, us screenwriters were more controversial than the Hollywood stars! The genres changed. First the pepli, then the James Bond rip-offs, then the gialli, then the westerns... but the worldwide success was stable. Italian cinema was on the verge of becoming an industry when hundreds of local television stations arrived that broadcast domestic movies every day.

In the early 1970s, when movies got more violent and sexier, you teamed up with one of the best directors in the giallo genre, Sergio Martino. When I met him, he struck me as a gentleman, but also as a very strict professional. How do you remember your work with Martino and do you have a favorite among the movies you made with him?

Sergio Martino was the brother of Luciano, my producer friend since the time we both wrote for Ugo Guerra. Sergio started as a production manager of his brother's films, then moved on to screenwriting and immediately afterwards to directing. I visited Luciano's offices often and then became friends with Sergio, one of the few directors with whom he happened to discuss the scripts he would produce. A true professional and director of a huge number of films, Sergio went through the golden age of Italian commercial cinema like one of the greats. Among many of my scripts he has directed, perhaps the one I love the most is THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS.

The movies you made with him have become popular with new audiences all over the world thanks to DVD and Blu-ray.

I don't know why these old films are back in fashion, maybe in some of them we see a vanished world, and they contain an optimism that is hard to find these days. For us old filmmakers they arouse a sense of compassion and regret: we were all young back then, and with little financial resources, we resisted the powerful American cinema in the world markets for three decades.

Martino thinks TORSO is his best giallo. Do you agree? The story is very clever and very precise.

I prefer THE CASE OF THE SCORPION’S TAIL, because it contains less blood and is more plot driven.

Did you have a problem that some directors added more violence to the movies than was actually present in your screenplays? 

I never really did care very much about the way my scripts were filmed. The directors were all professionals, with rare exceptions. Sometimes someone put in some shower scenes to show Edwige Fenech in the nude, others added more tomato sauce.

You said you like THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS. It was created when the poliziesco genre became very popular. It stands out in that genre because it is well directed, with a realistic story and a melancholic atmosphere. It's also very different from Umberto Lenzi’s ALMOST HUMAN, which you also wrote and is extremely violent and nihilistic. Both films were extremely successful.

I haven't seen THE VIOLENT PROFESSIONALS in years, though I have good memories of it. Unfortunately, the more political part, about the involvement of the state, didn't get through the distributor's control and I had to adjust it. The film had problems with distribution, so much so that producer Luciano Martino asked me the courtesy to give up my pay and be rewarded in a percentage of the box office results. I agreed and Luciano regretted that for the next five years.

As for Umberto Lenzi, he was a mystery to me. He was a student of my companion at the CSC, always cheerful, ready to joke, sympathetic. When I met him later, as a film director Lenzi was no longer the same: short-tempered, grumpy, even violent.

At the end of the seventies, beginning of the eighties, the Italian cinema fell into decline. Still, some interesting films were being made. You wrote 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, one of the best and most successful post-apocalyptic action movies.

I tried to get Roman producers to produce dystopian sci-fi stories for a long time. Already in the sixties I had written a script very similar to BACK TO THE FUTURE, set in Italy. Despite the commitment of Giuliano Gemma, who was willing to work for free, despite my friendship with Carlo Ponti, despite green light from the distributor Rizzoli, the film was not made.

2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK was produced by Luciano Martino because of the success of John Carpenter’s 1981 film, which was called 1997: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK in Italy. I mocked the producer who had never wanted to produce my sci-fi stories, telling him that I should bring him stories in which there were Murano chandeliers on Cadillacs to convince him. I wrote that film professionally but it wasn't the sci-fi that I would have liked myself.

What about the story that you contributed to Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA? 

The idea of making a film from the book The Hoods came to Sergio Leone while we were working on the screenplay of  MY NAME IS NOBODY. He gave me the book and wanted to know what I thought. I told him it was a good story. We met Harry Grey, the author, and had a memorable conversation a few months later. Fulvio Morsella acted as the interpreter and Grey began the meeting by saying: I slit 29 people's throats, do you think I'm a criminal? Now, we were there only to buy the rights to the book, but fortunately he continued by explaining that he considered himself a soldier, and that he had only killed people who could have killed him.

Sergio's film is a masterpiece, we all know it, but it lacks logic. I wrote the treatment, which was the most faithful to the book. I couldn't write the script because Sergio wanted me to go to New York with him, with no return date, while my wife was in hospital with a caesarean for my third child. He offered me a hefty fixed salary as long as I didn’t work for others. I refused. I was never one to obey any masters.

In the eighties and nineties Italy experienced a steady decline of cinema production, both in terms of quantity and quality. What do you think was the reason for this? And are there any screenplays that you wrote during this period that you would like to mention and talk about?

The reasons for the decline were many: the arrival of the commercial TV channel network of P2 lodge member Silvio Berlusconi, which came into living rooms with films bought for two lire, with help from the liquidators of the old glorious film studios, the saturation of the market, and the arrival of big American productions that could do things with computer effects that were impossible for us.

The film I remember with a lump in my throat is CRIMINE CONTRO CRIMINE, expertly directed by Aldo Florio. Faced with censorship and mandatory programming, the film was forbidden by some idiots of the S.A.C.C., the cinema section of the Banca Nazionale di Lavoro, probably under pressure from Bettino Craxi’s Partito Socialista. The production was financed with two billion lire from the government. But this film, that bore a strong social significance, was never released and the government lost everything. It was said that the signed contracts for foreign markets were worth more than one  billion lire. Aldo Florio died with that pain.

Looking back, I realize that I managed to do what I wanted, that I have met and loved a fantastic and beautiful woman, Mara Maryl, that I have loving children and now a few dozen fans of the old cinema who write to me and call me "Maestro". Too bad that everything I see today seems blurred and afflicted by nothingness because soon, very soon, everything will disappear in death.

I am proud that I directed LIBIDO to make my Mara happy, but I regret not having been able to convince producers in the sixties  and seventies to make dystopian sci-fi stories about time travel. I entered the CSC with a story called THEY CALL ME CHANCE, a story with random plots which ended with a gentleman in a tuxedo saying "... they call me chance, but if you saw all the plots maybe you would call me destiny " and it was 1955! I wrote stories like SLIDING DOORS, THE GUARDIANS OF TIME, THE END OF ETERNITY... The one I regret the most is the latter because it was BACK TO THE FUTURE but written 20 years earlier.

But they paid me for thrillers, westerns, detective stories and I didn’t just live for cinema like Sergio Leone did. I loved family cruises with my two-master around the Mediterranean and long holidays in Hawaii with my beloved Mara. Now that the days of wine and roses are over, now that Mara has vanished into Alzheimer's disease and no longer knows who she is or who I am, and she remembers nothing from our past, just remembering things, alone by myself, makes no sense to me. On the 11th of May this year it was exactly 61 years ago since Mara came to live with me. I still visit her and look at her in her wheelchair, I will meet her serene gaze, once again childish, but still sweet and velvety, and I want to scream.

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Special thanks to Marco van Baalen for his help with the translation.

This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity.