Simply put -- watching a movie becomes infinitely more exciting if I can ask myself, "would I make a film like this?"
I'm a total storytelling narcissist. I identify myself through the stuff I write and through the movies I love (and subsequently shove down everyone else's throats). When a friend sitting next to me at the movie theater says of the Silver Linings Playbook trailer, "that looks like you," I get positively giddy... especially when I agree that the Silver Linings Playbook trailer does, in fact, "look like me."
Maybe that little desire deep within my soul is not the desire to make a movie at all. Maybe it's a desire to find self-definition, to find behavior and stylistic choices that appeal to me on screen and claim them as my own -- to paint a picture of who I really am. I really, REALLY like having a specific sense of taste (Disney-meets-Hal Ashby) that people are able to pin-point and associate with ME.
Most people have never seen a film or play that I've written, but somehow Pedro Almodovar's sweeter, more humanitarian flicks remind them of me. Perhaps it's because I talk a blue streak about how I really like Pedro Almodovar's sweeter, more humanitarian flicks.
Whatever the case, I just dig it when films possess "my storytelling sensibility". I dig it when films look or feel like me.
And if you've made it this far, you're probably wondering what Sophia Loren has to do with ANY of this!
Well, she has EVERYTHING thing to do with it.
Lately, I've been watching her movies like a complete maniac. Even the not-so-good ones. Why? Because I think Sophia Loren looks like me.
Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. Sophia Loren looks like ME. When she's at her best, her films are almost representative of everything I adore about cinema.
For the past few weeks, I have been taking lessons from her on how to "own it." If you really step back and look at Sophia Loren, she's not perfect-looking. She's got a long, pointy nose with strange, almond-shaped eyes -- and she's got a big booty. However, from the way she carries herself, you just believe she's the most beautiful woman in the world -- the way she walks with her head up and boobs out, smiling and waving at everybody. She just doesn't seem to take herself too seriously. It takes a special type of actor to pull-off an insulting argument with a child, or to do a striptease without objectifying herself and looking like an idiot, but Sophia is able to do it all... endearingly so.
In fact, she has an incredible knack for bringing out the warmth and humanity in the scabbiest, most unholy of subjects. I'm pretty sure she wrote the book on how to play "the whore with the heart of gold", which (let's face it) is pretty much one of the biggest, most cliched stock characters in the universe. However, whenever Sophia plays a sweet-natured prostitute, she somehow feels like the first one you've ever encountered.
Her multi-decade, multi-faceted career has included work in pretty much every genre there is, but she's really good at realism (of the Italian, Bicycle Thieves variety). Sophia Loren can work a black & white close-up like nobody else can. She makes every little mundane task on screen seem incredibly personal to her and you just naturally root for her. In the same breadth, she can play extremely broad comedy and knock a musical number out of the park! If there's a genre that "feels like me", it's realism with a touch of humor and musicality... and Sophia Loren would be right at home within it.
There's also another distinct quality that Sophia brings to the screen. It's a quality that few other actresses can evoke. I think it has to do with her upbringing. Supposedly, until the age of 14, Sophia Loren was a shy, awkward-looking "ugly duckling" who got treated differently in strict Catholic Italy because her mother had her illegitmately. By the time, she started acting in films, she had grown into her voluptuous self, but still pulled-out that quiet "I need validation" sensibility in her work. It's such a pleasure to watch many of Sophia Loren's characters (however confident they might appear on the outside) learn to get over their lack of self-love and come into their own. When she finally lets her guard down and bursts into loud laughter, you feel it -- and if there's one thing I love in movies, it's that.
Sophia Loren's films, ESPECIALLY her collaborations with director Vittorio de Sica (pic. below) and screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, look and feel like me. That's why I'm writing this entry today -- to pay tribute to Lady Loren for her 78th birthday (which happened last week) and because this is a space where I like to call attention to the things I love, mainly in movies and pop culture, so that other people can continue to know ME. I might not be able to make a movie at the moment, but I have a blog.
But seriously, she really does look like me. I'm pretty sure my grandparents have this photo of me in their collection of lake pictures -- one piece bathing suit, stomach protruding, armpit hair. She's THE BEST.
Ciao for now!!!
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