Italian Screenwriter Ivan Cotroneo

HK Magazine: Were you born into an artistic family? What did your parents do?
Ivan Cotroneo: My mother worked in an office as a secretary, and my father ran a shop. But they also loved and still love both cinema and literature. So even when I was a little child they took me to movie theatres a few times a week, often to see movies not exactly fit for my age. I remember watching Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy” when I was six, and I was astonished. I really feel that this kind of casual education was my personal way into the world of cinema. In a sense, they shaped my path, even if they were not directly involved in arts. The funny thing is when I told them I wanted to move to Rome to study cinema they were scared.

HK: Where did your interest in screenwriting come from?
IC: When I was a kid I used to write short stories, mostly thriller or sci-fi adventures in which my family and my friends of school were involved as characters. I obliged my grandfather, who was the only one in the family that had a typing machine, to type them out for me. The cross of the passion for movies and telling stories was the key. When I grew up I discovered what I really wanted in life was to have an audience to my stories, make people laugh or cry with the characters I created.

HK: How did you get involved in “I Am Love?”
IC: I had worked before with the director Luca Guadagnino on a radio drama I wrote and the Italian adaptation of “Closer” by playwright Patrick Marber. So he called me to join a team of writers when he was involved in his most ambitious and visionary project, “I Am Love.” Guadagnino had written the original story years before. All I did was trying to help him to express what he had in his mind, and I’m proud of having helped. In the writing project, Guadagnino was very able, I think, to take the best we screenwriters could offer. But at the end I think the film’s major achievement is in the filmmaking and the cinematography—not to mention the astonishing performance of Tilda Swinton—more than in the script.

HK: I watched “Kryptonite!” and loved it. You only directed this film after more than a decade of working as a screenwriter. Why did you choose this one as your directorial debut?
IC: When I studied screenwriting in my twenties I often thought one day I could direct my own stories. I worked as assistant director on many sets, and as a screenwriter I’ve always tried to take some part in the shooting project. Some directors more than other liked the idea of having me on the set. Especially Ferzan Ozpetek, with whom I co-wrote “Loose Cannons,” wanted me by his side while he was shooting, and that helped me a lot when my turn to direct came. What happened is that my producers, Nicola Giuliano and Francesca Cima, from Indigo Films, decided to buy movie rights of my novel “Kryptonite!”. I was attached to the project as a screenwriter, but after few meetings I came up with lots of ideas about how to make the movie, so they decided to offer me the direction of it. And I gladly accepted, because even though I was asked to direct other movies I wrote before, I sensed I had a very close attachment to this particular story, and hoped I could do a good job.

HK: You were born in Naples in the 60s, so is the story of this movie partially based on your own life?
IC: Yes. The movie is set in 1973 and I tried to convey in the movie all I remembered of the city I lived in as a child: the colors, the music, the clothes, the idea of a world that was changing so fast, faster than the people who inhabited it. As my main character I had uncles and aunts who were very young and involved in the new political and social changes, and I loved hanging around with them. I didn’t have an imaginary friend as my main character Peppino has, but as a child I longed to have it, I desired so much to have some friend who was just for me, someone I only could see. So as a writer I gave my character such a friend. That’s one of the beauties of writing stories: you can rewrite your life, in a way.

HK: Some of the film’s core themes deal with comics and the hippie movement. Are you a big fan of American culture?
IC: I’m very interested in American Culture, and in particular with the impact it had in the 70’s in a small city like Naples. I liked the idea of a funny clash between a deeply traditional society and the new ideas coming from abroad, ideas often misunderstood or at least re-interpreted. It seemed to me both interesting and comical to have a small bourgeois family who dances to the lyrics of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” without even knowing what they meant.