To Rome With Love - and an Espresso with Vincent Gardenia

The Path to Celebrity Begins on the Via Veneto...

My first youthful brushes with Celebrity involved chance encounters with actors Vincent Gardenia and Jim Nabors (no, they weren't together) - the latter at the then-stately-later-tawdry-now-defunct New Haven Motor Inn, and the former on the always-grand Via Veneto.

At the time - long before People Magazine begat Entertainment Tonight begat E! network begat The Kardashians and their appalling ilk - as a kid from the provinces I was jolted by, then later conditioned to celebrate, the honor of having luckily shared space on mortal ground with "somebody famous."

"Birds fly to the stars, I guess . . . "

The meeting with, rather sighting of, Vincent Gardenia occurred one beautifully sunny spring afternoon in April, 1970 as our family strolled away to the southeast from the Villa Borghese and down the Via Veneto on our Easter-time Roman Holiday.

Passing the glorious Hotel Excelsior,it was la mia cara madre, native of Avella in the Campana province inland of Naples, who spotted the star.  Signor Gardenia, nee Vincenzo Scognamiglio and also a Naples paesano.  He was sipping an espresso at an outdoor table and "watching the world go by."  E anche noi: he watched us go by too.

Perhaps Vincenzo was studying a script as he sipped, for his upcoming project, Norman Lear's Cold Turkey, to shoot that summer in Des Moines.  Co-staring with an incredible cast that included among many others Dick Van Dyke, Tom Poston (as town tippler), Jean Stapleton and evil Bob Newhart, our Signor Gardenia would play the Mayor in this fantastic farce.  Among later work, he is well recalled as Frank Lorenzo from All In The Family, Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors, and Cosmo Castorini in Moonstruck.

Mayor Wappler Goes for Broke, as the Clock Strikes Midnight

And while we're in Rome together, . . .

[ - SPOILER ALERT -

I will explain the crux and creative impetus of "To Rome With Love," as it will of me, a questo punto: ]

To Rome With Love treats the Woody Allen fan to a comic collage of four (five) parallel plots involving ten+ relationships (the term "relationships" being understood to span a continuum of consummated human interactions).  Comedy and pathos abound - it's a good Woody film, nearly on par with Midnight in Paris, not as 'whole' but rather a rollicking mash-up, and equally effective as una posta-carta magnifica (senza francobolli), for the national tourism industry - in this case, the Italians.

Quando dico che ti amo . . .

The common thread?  Celebrity.

Its pursuit by Monica destroys Jack's earnest but illicit dreams; its unaccountable appearance makes Leopold a reluctant, anonymity-craving sensation - and its disappearance drives him mad; its allure leads Giancarlo to allow Woody/Jerry to parade him naked and soaking wet across Rome's Teatro dell' opera stage; and its attraction mesmerizes la paesana Milly into forgetting her new marriage on the chance of bedding down with film star Luca.  To a degree, everyone - even the pro-bono idealist and hard-leftee Michelangelo - succumbs sooner or later to the lash of celebrity.  Nearly everyone, that is: the one honest, psychologically 'healthy' line of the film is uttered by il Rapinatore, the hotel thief (who 'also dabbles in break-ins and hold-ups').  As screen star Luca Salta weakly protests robbery, saying "Don't you know who I am?" the thief retorts, instantly and con forza: "I Don't Care!"

I encourage everyone to see To Rome With Love.  Any film in which Alec Baldwin ("I'm here from Downtown - I'm here from Mitch an' Murray!") plays the foreseeing conscience, the angel Clarence, is going to be a winner in my book [Note: Baldwin's character, architect John Foy, does not really exist - or, probabilmente, he is the only character in his vignette who exists].  But moreso, To Rome With Love a splendidly entertaining and inventive paean to the fickleness, elusiveness and risk of celebrity - and our obsessions with it.

Arrivaderci, Roma!