2024-03-02 19:39:19
by Valerio Cappelli
The actor is a policeman, a pupil of the cult character all intuition and slaps: «I admired him, he was always on the side of the weakest»
NAPLES In his personal ping-pong between cops and robbers, the «Gomorrah» saga long since archived, Salvatore Esposito now has the turn of a good and abusive policeman, all intuition and slaps. Just outside Naples, in Sant’Antimo, filming has just finished on «Piedone», a series on Sky (and streaming on Now), co-produced by Wildside and Titanus) in four episodes directed by Alessio Maria Federici. In terms of tonnage we are more or less there. He lacks thirty kilos and ten centimeters to “be” Bud Spencer. The fact is that it is not a remake but a sequel. And one imagines that Inspector Rizzo, or the “legendary” Piedone, as popular as he is snubbed by critics, is the mentor from whom the new Piedone, called Vincenzo Palmieri, learned everything.
For Salvatore Esposito, Piedone is «the heir of super heroes, of Batman and Superman». He remains a good and abusive cop. In short, we play on the ambiguity that recalls the catchphrase of Striscia, «is it him or is it not him?», because the hope is to repeat the triumphal march of the first Piedone, the one that filled the theaters giving a second youth to Bud Spencer, after the success of the two «Trinity» with Terence Hill. Here he doesn’t slap the criminals by brandishing frozen fish like baseball bats, because “it would be ridiculous, calligraphic and anachronistic”, says Alessio Maria Federici, who says he was intimidated by the director of “Piedone”: it was Steno. Another reference to the original film is in having maintained “a realistic tone while remaining in the comedy”.
The whole frame tells of today. We are in Sant’Antimo, an anonymous suburb just outside Naples, where the ring of a wrestling match has been reconstructed in a nightclub (amidst 350 extras screaming, swearing and cheering). A little black horse appears in the center of the square on a yellow background; he is the symbol of Stuttgart, because the scene is set in that city. One of the two contenders is incognito, wears a mask and is Salvatore Esposito (aided in the virtual fights by his stunt double); the idea of wrestling is his, a way «to tell the physicality of Bud Spencer through a non-violent fiction like that discipline». His character has returned to Naples to settle accounts with the past and make peace with his ghosts.
«Who hasn’t been a Bud Spencer fan? I was involved by his son, Giuseppe Pedersoli who is one of the authors. I met him at a traveling museum dedicated to his father, I had gone there as an admirer of him. On that occasion he proposed the series to me.” In chases with thieves and outlaws, Piedone «was always on the side of the weakest. We want to pay homage to the four films about Piedone. There is a lot of humanity in our series too. We combine crime and action with the sentimental aspect.” And every now and then a few smiles, the ones that Bud Spencer aroused with his fists, an actor who continues to be loved, on the grave at Verano the fans leave boxes of beans, which characterized the character like his big belly. Vincenzo Palmieri’s first objective is never revenge but justice. Not wanting to ape that way of hitting and a language that belonged to Bud Spencer, it will be a completely different project, immersed in contemporary Naples.”
Some news cases inspired the series, the director thinks of the “revenge porn of a little girl and the terrible use that has been made of it on social media, the reference was Tiziana Cantone”, who committed suicide eight years ago after the spread some of his amateur pornographic videos online. But why does Salvatore Esposito wrestle? «To vent, he has deep wounds that he carries inside and in that way he tries to manage his anger». Alongside Inspector Palmieri we find Inspector Fabio Balsamo, with a passion for medieval history but his instinct is that of a cop. And then there is the commissioner Sonia Ascarelli played by Silvia D’Amico, she is all in one piece, she believes in rules and procedures: everything that Palmieri cannot tolerate.
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March 2, 2024 (modified March 2, 2024 | 8:38 pm)
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