My mother managed the money: I was 16 years old, I worked all day, she paid for the hotels and checked that I ate». Monica Guerritore remembers her when, in 1973, she went back and forth to the Piccolo Teatro. Inside her was Giorgio Strehler, the most visionary European theater director and she was Anja, nel Cherry orchard by Chekhov.
Today the actress, whose career is an encyclopedia of films, plays and TV series, capable of going from Giovanna D’Arco to Totti’s mother, from theater direction to screenplays, has decided to take the leap to give new possibilities to his “volcano”, as she puts it. For a month launched the project Patrons of Monica Guerritore thus moving on to «direct democracy» in art: a patron is someone who buys a digital token and enters the artist’s community to give opinions on which productions to invest, as well as being able to meet and dialogue with the creative, assist
at shows and rehearsals.
“I have always given so much to the spectators, now they can take responsibility, publicly declare that they support me”. The token is a kind of «registration certificate», non-tradable or salable, with which the public helps cultural production. A project, explains Guerritore, «that does not arise only from the “crisis” of the theatres, but from a problem
of gender inequality”.
TO Vanity Fair in 2015 he said, speaking of his desire to direct a film: “I don’t want to ask anyone for permission anymore, I don’t want a man who will tell me if I’m right”. Have you always felt “put one step behind” compared to males?
“Not on the same starting line. If to do Rocky Stallone took 10 years, I took 20. I had written a screenplay on the story of the first Italian femicide, that of the Countess Trigona, but I wasn’t able to make the film. A short film and a book, What I know about herwhich had three editions, those yes».
Why not a movie?
«Because everything is always “beautiful”, the producers meet you, they listen to you, you are welcomed, there is curiosity… Then they just as easily disappear. You do not attribute to the woman – despite her having, as in my case, 47 years of experience in the artistic field – the rationality, the concreteness, the ability to steer the ship. She grants her sensitivity, she knows how to recognize
the winds and feel that the storm is approaching, but then they have to give the rudder to a male».
The glass ceiling: he thought of tokens to rebel?
“Exactly: but I have to explain a difference.”
Which?
«As a theater director I have done many shows, because in the theater the producer has the pulse of the success that the work will have, consult the data of previous stagings. There is a direct relationship between me, my direction and the audience, who, to be precise, spend 30 euros per ticket, not 8 or 10. It’s different at the cinema. They don’t even meet you, the script passes from hand to hand, someone reads it, then they try to figure out if there’s a budget, they look for tenders, ministerial aid, the co-producer, everything becomes a financial transfer. A lot of planets have to align.”
Isn’t his known name enough?
«No, because I have no experience as a film director, I’m like a beginner, but without being 20 or 30 years old. If I were male, however, the theme of experience wouldn’t arise: fellow actors, whom I adore, make films as directors, for example Neri Marcoré, or Fabio De Luigi. It’s very discriminating. In addition, my film had feminicide as its theme, it was not the usual Italian film about a group of forty-year-olds in crisis. So I wanted to bypass the intermediaries between me, my project and the public».
The first time she tried to be a film director she had opened a Facebook page to explain her project and do some sort of
crowdfunding. How did that operation end?
“I was overwhelmed by other jobs. I used social media but they didn’t help to raise funds, rather we counted on each other: up change.org, after the lockdown, I made an appeal to create the network of “stone theaters”, the ancient ones, of which the Italian coasts are full, in order to get actors, technicians and the audience back to work. In 15 days the petition was signed by 60,000 people. A community that exists and I can count on.”
How did you come up with the idea of having patrons through tokens?
«Francesco Guido Bonetti proposed it to me, who works in the high technology and finance sector in Milan, and has a company called Innova et Bella. He had already done it for football and rugby teams but he wanted to apply the tokens to artistic production. At a time when the State can do nothing more than that, it is right that those who can – those who don’t have the problem of bills or putting together lunch and dinner – help not only the artists, but also the other spectators, who may not be able to act as patrons, to return to the hall».
For now, he has only done one reading in which he has reserved seats for his patrons. Who and how many were these people?
“I’ve met six of them. It is a drop in the bucket, but if the direct relationship between artist and
public – which is representation, that thing that politics has lost – there are no limits. It takes time. If I were on tour, going around Italy, it would be easier: but I’m on the set with Verdone in Rome».
It is the second season of the TV series Life with Charlesdo you have other projects?
«I opened a production company, Lumina Mgr, in which I create and develop subjects, series that
they have thickness. Not only my things, they are in turn patrons: now I produce the first work of a young director, Catrinel Marlon, who up to now you have only seen as an actress and model».
He made his debut in cinema, theater and TV at the age of 15, with three greats: Vittorio De Sica, Giorgio Strehler and Sandro Bolchi. What do you remember about that little girl?
«I am Capricorn, tenacious, hard worker. Theater was tough: my ability to endure was key. I remember giving myself injections of baralgina when I had my period, due to the excruciating pain. Strehler didn’t treat me as a child, he considered me an ageless artist, and made me sit in the stalls: look how it’s done, she said. This is why I have a vision more as a director than as a leading actress. Back in Rome from Milan, to make her understand my temperament, I telephoned Rai and asked: where are you? They replied: in viale Mazzini, where the horse is. I went, and I said to the doorman: I’m an actress, who do I have to talk to to work? He gives me the names of two officials, Ottaviano and Salvi. Who is the cutest? I asked. Octavian. They take me up to him and I immediately start showing him all the good reviews I had thanks to Strehler. He replies: there’s no need, I’ve seen you, I know you. The following year I made my first color script, Manon Lescaut. Do you understand? A surreal thing today: both my security and the fact that at the time those who dealt with culture were people of culture».
Did the money from work immediately make you independent?
«My mother paid the expenses and what remained she invested in a house, where I then went to live with Gabriele (Street, ed.). Money matters to me to the extent that it allows me to do my job, I buy little: I dress like Steve Jobs, always in black or grey. I don’t do plastic surgery, nor do I invest in perfumes, even if every now and then I go to the pharmacy and say: can you give me a cream to become an eighteen year old? Of what I earn, 40% goes to my production company.
When she got married…
“I paid for everything. Gabriele is one of those men who says: you do… And since I cared more for the girls, therefore: go buy clothes, go buy gifts, notebooks, get ice cream… I did it. Even to laugh, but I reproached him many times. Robert (Zechariah, the second husband, ed) on the other hand, he is solid and very attentive to family management, he knows what to put aside for the holidays and to keep track of my company. He doesn’t derail me.”His daughters, Maria, aged 33, e
Are Lucia, 29, independent?
«Yes, they live alone, they are autonomous, one is a film agent, Lucia is the theater instead».
Do you manage their accounts, like your mother did hers?
«Nope! They don’t answer my phone.”
Does Gabriel take care of it?
(laughs) «Every now and then I call him and say, sorry Gabriele, I gave this, I gave the girls a gift… And he, convinced: I took the girls to the restaurant – he calls them “the girls” – and I gave them 50 euros… ».
She posted the photo of Samantha Cristoforetti on Instagram and wrote: «A woman is in command of a Space Station. Another is conducting a men’s soccer match for the first time. Another is the government.” You who have always been progressive and left-wing, what do you think of Giorgia Meloni?
«I would have preferred Draghi to stay. I wait to judge Meloni: “Thank goodness there is a woman” we say it because the woman must bring the qualities of the woman, not because she ends up with “a”. Let’s wait to see if the qualities of the feminine, combined with the virile ability that women too have – you can’t tell me that Cristoforetti looks at the moon, she has two balls like that – will improve the role of Prime Minister. She has set herself up as a mother, a carer, let’s see if she will be able to be one for her daughter as well as for the other citizens, even for those people whom she frees.
dog and that maybe now they don’t have the right to stay here, but that they need to be rescued».
WHAT ARE «TOKEN»
NTTs or Non Tradeable Tokens (not NFTs, mind you) are not tradable and represent intrinsically personal assets (tangible or intangible), such as university degrees, online training certificates, identity documents, for example. Although the blockchain is used, the purchase of NTT is not made in cryptocurrencies but in euros and is billable. For example, in the project Patrons of Monica Guerritore (info: monicaguerritoretoken.com) the purchase of the NTT certifies the artist’s enrollment in the Albo d’Oro, therefore entry into his community. The cost starts from 100 euros.
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Source: Vanity Fair
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