072400 Variety

July 24, 2000
Variety
Hungry Studios Ciao Down In Italy (excerpt)
by David Rooney

FINE LINE AND MIRAMAX GO ROMAN FOR CO-PRODUCTIONS

Riccardo Tozzi, whose credits include "Tea With Mussolini" and Fine Line's upcoming Cavani project "Ripley's Game," is one of a small handful of internationally minded producers who see the Americans as important allies in their attempt to improve their methods, including rectifying the twin weaknesses that have brought the local sector to its knees: producing and script development.

These used to be distinctive Italian strengths -- the heyday of Italian cinema in the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by risk-taking producers such as Franco Cristaldi, Carlo Ponti, Alberto Grimaldi and Dino De Laurentiis, and by illustrious screenwriters such as Luciano Vincenzoni, who penned the original "Malena" treatment for director Germi.

But the rise of the auteur has since eclipsed both roles, with the screenwriter now commanding less respect on the production food chain than the location caterer. Yet exceptions are becoming more common. In Tozzi's case, directors are routinely thrust into development meetings with story editors. And clearly no one is going to persuade Miramax and Fine Line to butt out of a script meeting. What's perhaps surprising is how readily some Italian directors are embracing unaccustomed interaction.

"They have responded fantastically well to the American development process," says Fine Line's London-based senior VP of production Ileen Maisel. They are open, attentive, interested, but they don't roll over either." Fine Line has also brought Italian helmers into contact with British scripters on both "Ripley's Game" (which Maisel had been developing for years prior to attaching Cavani) and Salvatores' English-lingo project "Calcutta Chromosome."

The latter was a dead project that producer Totti failed to set up through Italy's Cecchi Gori Group, until Fine Line execs sat down with Salvatores in Venice last fall and took the screenplay apart scene by scene. Together they agreed to return to the original novel, and to bring in Brit screenwriter Charles McKeown.