PESARO
by Elisabetta Ferri
Funny, what effect does it have on you to bring a show about basketball to what has been an iconic place for this sport?
“Fantastic, because I’ve been there several times following Milan and I’ve always lost. Maybe this time I’ll get a result.”
What memories do you have of the hangar?
“It was a temple of Italian basketball, not just Pesaro: playing there, with the crowd at your back, was impressive. I was talking about it just the other day with Dan Peterson, I think that -45 carved on the scoreboard of the old palas in the 1981/82 season made more of an impression on Olimpia than on Scavolini.”
His has a strong bond with Pesaro: in 2005 he took part in the organization of the Old Star Game to lift spirits after the club’s bankruptcy. Do you want to tell us?
“I often think back to that evening invented together with that phenomenon of Fabio Renzi, who no longer exists today. We brought Darren Daye back to the city for the first time and the following year we responded with the Bianchini against Peterson duel. They asked me for a souvenir in honor of Alphonso Ford, whose death was one year ago, I wrote it in one go in the bathrooms of the palas and read it in an unreal silence, with the Euroleague ball shining in front of me. We were more moved than the fans.”
How did the idea of the Kobe Bryant show that you will bring to Pesaro on February 7th come about?
“The aim is to unite generations, because his memory is not yet as distant in time as that of Michael Jordan, for example. And his tragic end makes him even more heroic. The most evocative part is the musical one, the director thought of the sounds of the ball which become notes and in certain situations the show is more musical than verbal”.
What is the biggest difficulty in telling such a complex character?
“Compressing 42 years of intense life into two hours, analyzing who Kobe was, who loved him and who didn’t. The legacy is strong, it’s natural that the beginning and end of the story have more impact.”
What impact did the fact that you lived in Italy from the age of 6 to 13 have in your life?
“Huge. When he returned to the United States, Kobe was totally different from his peers: in his first year of high school, black kids spoke to him in slang and he didn’t understand them because he had a total absence of African-American culture. He loved to write and wanted to ‘rap’ but he couldn’t because he lacked the basic elements, i.e. street things and without that rap died. He never fully integrated into that type of culture because it wasn’t the context he came from. At 18 years, on the plane that took the Lakers away, he read Newsweek magazine amidst the astonished looks of his teammates.”
Did he also learn the basketball technique in Italy that made him so different from the others?
“I would have doubts about this because Jordan, who never committed a passing offense in his life and who Bryant was inspired by, grew up in North Carolina.”
Your shows are full of curiosities, even on already well-known stories such as the Italia mundial of 1982: what sources do you draw on? “Often to direct sources. When the show about the Italian world champions was already on tour, Marco Tardelli called me, telling me that he liked the story and wanted to give me other details, which I would never have been able to tell if he hadn’t told me. As for Kobe, I went to draw from my files of what I commented on him as a player. And there was a lot of stuff, luckily…”.
Don’t you miss commenting on the NBA?
“I miss the finals played live in America. It was electrifying. In the early 2000s I was there while Kobe became a legend wearing the Lakers shirt: Game 4 in Indianapolis still has it engraved in my head.”
What would you say to young people who want to follow in your footsteps?
“That once they had to give you the opportunity, while today they can create a chance themselves, filming themselves with their cell phones and posting the video on Youtube. The important thing is to have ideas and originality. I would soon like to see the first female storytellers, there are many women’s stories to tell.” Speaking of cell phones, is it true that you don’t own a smartphone?
“Yes, I have a ’90s phone with which I send text messages at most. It’s shocking to see people listening to vocals at double speed, a sign that we don’t have time. So something is wrong.”
