Fulci for fake (2019) - full transcript

The image you see, I shot it myself.

It's sitges,

and I'm there

during the shooting of a screwball film

that will lead us all to a miserable end.

It's our last Sunday in sitges.

Today it's palm Sunday. Next Sunday is
easter,

and we'll go back to Rome.

I play lucio fulci

in the first film about his life.

As an actor, 've never
wanted to play a real character.



They told me, "no worries, fulci's life
was a legend anyway, a myth,

half a lie.

So you can do whatever you like.

You can be the fulci that suits you best."

The film director is Danish,
his pseudonym is Saigon.

He wants to make a film about
the most important moments

of fulci's life and work.

The centro sperimentale,

the films with Toto, sordi, Orson welles,

and the more violent
films. The fame, the obscurity,

and his premature death.

The first scene will be about an aged
fulci, alienated from the film industry,

while he's shooting his testimonial film,

a cat in the brain.



You need to start from the end

to work your way back to the start.

I am here in the makeup room

where they are turning me into fulci.

I'm thinking I should have
made a film about John belushi.

He was a self-indulgent genius,

someone like me.

But once again I've been told not to worry,

because fulci was a genius

and he had many passions.

I guess "passions" is a euphemism

for vices,

addictions,

destruction.

The film director asked me to talk
to those who knew fulci.

He's sending me with a
production crew to do interviews.

I'll study and investigate,

like all the good actors,

because in the end

I will find out

who lucio fulci really was.

Saigon told me that if I
want to find the real fulci,

I need to speak to his younger daughter,

Camilla.

Everybody believed her to be dead,

to have vanished,

impossible to meet.

Really?

Sorry, I speak Roman dialect like dad.

Romanesco is the language of cinema.

Camilla overwhelms me with her tales.

Life has been hard on her,

but fuck me, she can make you laugh!

We'd started to shoot the house of clocks

and there was this handsome model,

Keith Van hoven.

In the early days, in the
evenings after shooting,

I dated this beautiful guy.

He put his hand on my shoulder

as we were leaving the hotel.

Then I heard, amid the
murmuring of the lobby,

a voice.

"Good catch, Camilla!"

That was my father,

in front of the whole crew.

Camilla, how much
do you miss your father?

My father is always with me,

even now.

For my father, I was like a mom,

as well as a girl and a daughter.

Sometimes he would remember that.

I miss him a lot,

even now while I'm talking about him.

I was born under the luckiest star.

I was tiny, 1.7 kilos,
but I came through okay.

I lived in a beautiful
house in via zandonai,

a prestigious, prosperous area in Rome.

I went to schools run by nuns.

Dad was a left-winger,

and his daughter went to
the nuns. Can you imagine!

Life was good though.

Mom worked at the cinema critics' union.

Dad said she was stunning,

but only from the hips up.

From the hips down,

she had legs like those of a table,

meaning no ankles.

Usually it takes some time before
kids understand their parents' jobs.

When did you figure out
what your father's job was?

With don't torture a duckling,
I more or less understood

that dad was a film director.

I remember the set and the lunch bags,

my first lunch bag.

Saigon says that the beyond
is the pinnacle of fulci's films.

It's unique and different
from all his other films.

This film begins in 1927,
the year of fulci's birth.

In the prologue, an innocent painter

gets killed, comes back to life,

and creates a fascinating,
yet infernal world.

Saigon told me to start there to get
familiar with fulci's pictures.

By 1981, fulci had
already directed 40 films,

but it's at that time that the
true lucio fulci emerged.

From zombie

to the New York ripper,

a handful of films

over three or four years.

In my opinion they are the center,

the heart of fulci"s cinema.

Somehow they are the beginning of his story

and the end too.

They embody everything that fulci

is today regarded for as a director.

Nothing shows the essence of fulci

like that handful of films.

Somehow lucio, at some point in his life,

decided that he

should start to tell his story.

Whether true or false, I don't care.

He started to tell a story

around which these movies revolved.

Davide pulici of "nocturno cinema"

will be my guide
through lucio fulci's films.

His voice is harsh, unconventional,

yet he knows where to find true beauty.

Camilla told me that in
each of her father's films

there's a piece of their family's life.

It's like a mosaic

that we, as an audience, will
never be able to reconstruct.

Can you tell of a bad
argument you had with your dad?

No, we didn't argue much.

But there was that one time

when dad, at 60 years old, bought a Vespa.

Well,

I was a bit worried, of course.

He drove the Vespa

wearing a red baron's helmet

to go with his beard.

He goes out with this scooter

and comes back home almost at once.

I was dead worried

something must have happened.

But he was angry more
than anything else, very angry.

"You didn't tell me anything!"

“What?”

“Here you go again!”

“What?”

“Listen, I stopped at the traffic light.

As I was about to take off
again, a chap shouted at me:

'Boccio! Where do you
think you're going!"

What is 'boccio?"

Boccio in Roman dialect means

loopy old sod.

He felt like a loser.

Scholars assert that even in his films
with Franco and ciccio,

with celentano and Mina,

you can see fulci's trademark.

They say those films are
as good as the horror films,

although on an english fulci fan page

somebody wrote,

"you can remove 35 out of all his films
without missing anything at all."

Like an uncut diamond,
the rough must be removed.

Nobody in Germany, Japan, or France

buys a DVD of a fulci comedy.

Yet his horror films, even the worst,

are released in deluxe editions.

I don't think it's necessary

to watch all of fulci"s films

to understand his greatness.

I believe that a good
part of his filmography,

especially the early films

from the 50s,

or partially from the 60s,

I don't think these films

are essential to grasp fulci.

Enrico vanzina is one of the
masters of the Italian comedy.

I decided to meet him not only because
his father was fulci"s master,

but also because I'm interested in
what he remembers of lucio fulci.

Also his extraordinary ability to portray
iconic characters of Italian cinema,

and his memories as a child

as well as a fiimmaker.

In the 50s, making
movies was a serious affair,

indeed because it wasn't serious.

A bunch of jolly good fellows

with experience in comics

had shifted to the film industry.

I think dad was one of
the leaders of this group.

They invented a film genre,

in which a serious topic was
depicted in a light manner.

This is what the Italian-style comedy
is about, in a nutshell.

Fulci was in his element there

because he was an intellectual,

a very complicated person.

He was a funny communist.

Dad loved this intellectual side of fulci,

because dad was like him.

They were two guys partial to comedy

with a more serious background.

They were very deep,

very well educated.

So they found in their relationship

something absolutely special,

because fulci wasn't
just the assistant director.

He was also an author.

Dad was immensely fond of lucio.

He passed this fondness
to me and my brother Carlo.

We used to see him often as kids,

because he used to
come to our home a lot.

We had a sort of crush on lucio fulci,

because he was like a comics character,

physically as well.

As kids we were mad about him.

Sergio salvati was the most important
cinematographer of fulci's films.

He's the man who shaped the images

and visions of fulci's world.

He's one of the greatest
men of Italian cinema.

One day I was at the
camera, waiting for the lights

and my chief operator,

when two people approached
bolognini, the director.

We were in a hall,
they were at the counter.

As I'm sitting at the camera

I heard them talking about cinema,

chatting away.

At some point, one of them asked bolognini,

“who's someone among the young directors

who can give us something good?”

I heard with my own ears mauro bolognini

say, “there's only one
who can write and make nice films.

His name is lucio fulci."

My mother liked lucio fulci,

but she was also a bit bothered by him

because lucio fulci smoked a lot.

When he used to come to our
place to work on screenplays

he made a mess with the ash.

So my mother used to lay newspapers

in my father's study under the
armchair where fulci would sit.

He had to sit right there,
without complaining,

with all the newspapers around
the armchair to avoid any mess.

He was the idol of
a guy called otello.

Lucio fulci had an mg,

and when he was leaving
the screenplay meeting,

otello would run to the terrace

to see fulci getting into this mg cabrio

and roaring off just like James Bond.

Every time he saw him
pulling away, he used to say,

"what a force, Dr. fulci!"

If fulci had died in 1966,

so to speak,

with 15 films under his belt,

more than all the films kubrick
made in his whole life,

nobody would have remembered him.

Perhaps because pain hadn't come yet.

Pain, with all it stirs,

with all the cinema it can create.

In her childhood memories, Camilla
often told me about sandro bitetto,

a very important person for her family,
especially for her father.

I worked with fulci from 1969 to 1974

as a personal assistant.

I used to do a bit of everything,

from paying bills to script boy,

until, bit by bit,

he introduced me to the film industry

as a production secretary of his films.

Judging by his manner
when I came into his life,

he gave me the impression of

being a messy guy

in need of someone who would tidy him up.

The first year I was
employed by him, in 1969,

there was the tragic
death of fulci's wife.

She sent the daughters to
the pictures with her brother,

And she remained alone.

She did it on purpose,

what she actually

managed to do.

How did she die?

She died with the gas.

I remember that day.

I came home first, with my uncle,
my mom"s brother, by car.

We'd been to the pictures with him.

She'd sent everybody away.

I remember ringing the
bell, but nobody answered.

All at once they put me in the car

and drove me to the entrance. They took me

into the watchman booth,
where I stayed for hours.

All I could hear were the sirens.

Then they took us to my
grandma Lucia, dad's mom,

both my sister and I.

They didn't tell us mum was dead.

They told us she had gone to Switzerland.

He never overcame this tragedy.
He was always

very, very...

He never came out of
this sense of

guilt or...

More than once he did
tell me about his pain,

how much he missed his wife.

After her death, he lived for his girls.

He always loved them very much.

Not now, but when I was young,
I was mom's spitting image.

As usual, he would
be quite ironic about it.

He used to say, "you look like your mother,
without the legs of a table."

Fulci's three thrillers, one on top
of the other/perversion story,

don't torture a duckling
and a lizard in a woman's skin

are good films,

well directed.

But I object to what has been said

by many, that those films are
the secret essence of fulci film-making.

About don't torture a duckling,

you can read everywhere these incredibly

disproportionate reviews

on things fulci allegedly hinted at.

Sin, innocence, purity and the like,

stuff I don't give half a fuck about.

Because I think the power of
don't torture a duckling, for instance,

lays in a few scenes.

There's the scene of the maciara,

when the maciara gets killed with a chain,

which, not by coincidence,

will be replicated at the
start of the beyond.

I am much more interested
in referential quotes like this

than in all the boring discussions
about these movies,

objectively useless.

Dad loved dogs and
that was the "dog film."

He didn't like snow.
Six months in the snow,

he made the first white fang

with an enormous effort... two units,

plus a sled dogs' race.

He was asked to shoot
the sequel straight after.

The first one wasn't out yet.

Dad wasn't sure at all. "No, no, I
don't wanna make another dog film."

Because of the snow, etc.

Back then, he was married to a
German woman, his second wife.

He signed the contract, but
the first white fang wasn't out yet.

“I'll make it, it's not about
the money, I don't care.

This is the last time I'm
doing something like this."

White fang was released and
it was the great success that we know.

I went to visit him. The
German woman was there.

My sister was with me.

The German woman had pekingese dogs.

We often went up the perennial
glacier where dad was shooting.

There was this incredible
light on the glacier,

and dad said that the German was so selfish

that we were there without sunglasses,

while she put sunglasses on the pekingese.

I re-watched white fang recently.
It's a good film,

don't get me wrong. It's skillfully
directed by fulci.

But I don't think in a film like white fang

these explosions of

violence or cruelty,

the ability to overthrow genres,
I can't see all that in white fang.

I can see it much more in
the four of the apocalypse,

another film of that time.

This thing about the terrorist of genres,

that retroactively labels
every film by lucio,

makes me laugh.

If Sergio salvati is the
image of fulci's film-making,

fabio frizzi is the greatest composer of
fulci"s film soundtracks.

He's the son of fulvio frizzi, a big
distributor who also worked with fulci.

Fabio talks about his deep relationship
with fulci with a light touch.

Lucio was one of very few
who'd often talked about

this nice relationship
he had with my father.

He described it, most of all,

as a matter of feeling valued
during difficult moments.

Lucio didn't have an easy private life,

therefore he felt the support and the
complicity of this prestigious distributor

who encouraged him to be productive again,

to come out with and
believe in something nice.

Can you tell me about your first music
for fulci in the four of the apocalypse?

It was a horror film disguised
as a western, in true fulci style.

The template music already existed,

support music for editing.

We were struck by the fact
that the producers decided to use

a Dylan song that would have started
any music composer off on the wrong foot,

“knockin' on heaven's door,"

at the end of the film. It was a rough cut.

I was worried about meeting this guy,

as he had the reputation
of being rather grumpy.

The idea was to go along
with the intention of the film,

not to have a traditional
wild west film soundtrack

with trombones and horns,

but to have a different musical tale,

with music closer to
the local environment.

I was lucky because I love
the west coast in general,

not just Dylan, but also Crosby,
stills & Nash and many other bands.

When the film was
released, and the soundtrack,

we were all very proud of what we had done.

And lucio had the opportunity to work
with people he didn't dislike at all.

Paolo malco acted only
in two of fulci's films,

but he was the only actor with whom
the director had a bond of true friendship.

Malco says they were a strange pair.

They went through thick and thin together.

It would have been a dream to be there

on one of their many adventures.

The first day of the
house by the cemetery

was not a good day.

We were shooting in a small
town near Boston, called Concord.

The scene was about me and my family

coming from New York by car.

As we were approaching, just before action,

I had the bad idea to take off my jacket.

“Action!” I'm getting there,

and I come out of the
car in my shirt.

“Stop!”

“What are you doing?”

An unbearable scream.

I was crushed and said,
“that's not a good start."

“Did I tell you to take off your jacket?

I didn't! So just do as you are told!”

Then I looked at him.

“If this is your start, we can call it a
day because I'll take the first flight out!

Nobody has ever treated me like this!

Is that clear?"

At that point lucio,

grumbling with his pipe in his mouth,

smiled at me.

On that day, an amazing
friendship was born!

As a film director,

he knew his stuff very well.

He wasn't messy.

He knew the script inside out.

He'd written it, of course, but

he knew it, and every
position of the camera.

He would immediately say, “camera here!"

He was a messy person in his private life,

but a perfectionist in his work.

Lucio had an unbridled, passionate
relationship with the camera.

He knew exactly where to position it.

When he said “let's put a zoom there,”
or “let's put on a 25” or “a 38,"

He knew exactly what he was talking about.

The psychic is interesting because of

some extraordinary self-quotations.

The first one is the most glaring of all.

It's the suicide of Virginia's
mother from the cliff,

which is identical to

the scene of Marc porel's death
in don't torture a duckling.

With a tacked-on mannequin,

clearly a fake,

fulci turned it into an
extraordinarily beautiful sequence,

even if, before our eyes,

right there is a mannequin.

Self-quoting, before fulci
became aware of being fulci,

is an extremely thorny
issue, in my opinion.

It's like the unconscious
desire to hit the audience

with his past life.

Today we are shooting
some promos for the film.

Saigon is explaining
what we are going to do.

We start with an aged fulci

acting in a cat in the brain.

We start with a mock, then we become
something else, like fulci used to do.

We switch to fulci and his actresses,

the man on one side,
the images he created on the other.

His views on the actresses,
his views on his art,

on the beautiful women he longs for,
and on his filmmaking.

A woman gets killed
with a hatchet.

Her face is split in two.

Another one is strangled.

Another one

is hanged.

Another one is cut into pieces
with a chainsaw.

Another one is drowned in boiling water,

her throat torn to
pieces by an enraged cat.

Burned to death,

buried alive,

tortured,

stabbed,

sawn in two,

crucified,

beheaded.

In my early films, women were totally wild,

Full of life,

beautiful and innocent,

like life in the 60s,

like my life at the time.

In my thrillers, they became shady.

Victims, as well as executioners,

mirrors of my dreams,

and of my fears.

In the New York ripper,

I told of the beauty and the
dangers of being a woman.

It's my most cruel and

painful film.

I love women.

It is for them I make pictures.

In fulci's movies, sexuality always
appears in a quite deviant way.

Lesbianism is at the base of
a lizard in a woman's skin.

I can't think of anything more exciting
than the scene where florinda bolkan

gets closer to Anita strindberg
on that red bed.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think fulci
has ever revealed in his films

this sexual frame of mind.

He was consumed with desire
because he loved women on the set,

when they were acting, playing
any good or bad part of the script.

I met directors who would say,
"these are mine and nobody else's,”

to us youngsters, and
we had to step aside.

They would say it out loud,

but he never said anything like that.

I met a girlfriend he had for some years.

He treated her nicely.

But women were unsatisfied, because
he didn't spend much time with them.

He wasted time talking too much.

Lucio was a skillful talker,

he could talk about everything.

We were in Sarajevo to shoot aenigma.

We stayed at the holiday inn, the hotel

where all the journalists lodged
during the war in the Balkans.

The interiors were all glass.

Who did I catch slipping away?
And I called everybody, of course!

Dad, who was sneaking in to the room
of one of those very young girls.

He shamelessly denied
it and went on denying.

We had seen him going into the room,
and he didn't come out.

I was patrolling outside the room,
but he kept on denying it.

Did he ever fall in love
with one of his actresses?

He did fall in love with an actress

who worked with him on several occasions,

but she was very young, very pretty,

and had a boyfriend.

One day I was in a stationery shop with
dad. He never went to a stationery shop!

I found him at the till holding a little
Teddy with “Christmas love” written on it.

He had gone totally daft.

He would sit next to me on my bed

and say, “Camilla,
shall I call or shall I not?”

“Will she call or will she not?”
acting like a 12 year-old, and he was 60!

You only told me about young girls,

but what about “old woman 1”
and “old woman 2,” who are they?

That's not easy, you know.
“Old woman 1” and “old woman 2,”

in his address book they replaced
the actual names under “v.”

“Old woman 2” was a mystery to me,

maybe because she
wasn't exactly attractive.

I wouldn't say ugly,
but she wasn't beautiful.

I don't know why dad had
something with this lady.

“Old woman 1” was a very beautiful woman,
although of a certain age,

a famous psychotherapist.

There were many anecdotes about dad,
I doubt they were all true.

I don't believe dad would
have gone for 'dances.'

you know, in psychotherapy they do
these sort of 'dances, ' like yoga.

I can't see him doing that.

Dad couldn't lift up a finger.

And there was this thing,

a sex thing,

where she would tie him to a table.

C'mon... dad didn't use
to reveal intimate details,

but he said that this woman
would tie him to a table.

One day he called me up and said,

“I absolutely need to speak to you."

He came for dinner as usual

and said, “I met this hot chick."

“Where, who, how?”

“Stunning, young.”

I said, “lucio!”

“Two-meters tall!”

“Yeah, right, two meters...”

“Two meters!

She's a stunning Caribbean model.”

“So? What do you wanna do with her?”

“I told her I want to marry her."

The next day we were off to New York
to shoot the New York ripper.

We got to New York,

and took a couple of days
to settle before shooting.

He said to me, “now,

come down to the lobby
because she's coming.

I called her, and she's
coming from the Caribbean.”

The taxi pulled in,

stuffed to the roof with
trunks, suitcases and all that.

Lucio looked at me and turned white.

The following day, he
took me aside and said,

“listen, I need you to do me a favor."

“Okay,” I said.

“You have to call me
up from your hotel room."

Our rooms were as follows:

My room,

the cinematographer gigi kuveiller's,

and lucio's room.

“You have to pretend to by my lawyer,

a sicilian,

and you have to speak up

because I'll place the receiver
so that she can hear!"

I rang lucio's room.

“Hello lucio!

I'm the lawyer."

And he goes, "hello, all good?"

“Your wife is not gonna Grant
you the divorce. You cannot remarry."

"What?" he said.

“Nope, you cannot
remarry, forget about it!"

The day after, on the set,
gigi kuveiller,

who we called 'Hitchcock' because
he was always very collected,

looked at us and went,

“you have to explain
something to me.

Last night I was in my room,

and I heard lucio talking to his lawyer.

But I also heard the lawyer talking
back to him, how is that possible?"

And I said, “gigi, that
was me, speaking sicilian."

“So how did it go with the girl?"

And lucio said,

“I paid for her flight back to the
Caribbean with Columbia airlines.”

“What did she say?”

“She said,

'tu es un misérable."

Sergio salvati's life has been
luckier than lucio fulci's.

He had his wife berenice sparano
at his side his whole life.

Berenice met fulci before salvati.

She worked with him as a costume designer.

We always got on.

I used to ask him first
before doing anything.

"Is it okay if I do this and that?"

He used to say, "il trust you."

And I'd say, "I need to know before going
on the set and realizing you don't like it.

It's better to say it beforehand
so that we're both free afterward."

One day he called me at de paolis studios

and said, “listen, I don't know what to do,

I have nothing more to wear.”

“What do you mean
you have nothing to wear?"

“Look, berenice, please do me a favor.
You're the only one I can ask

because you're a good person.

I have no more clean shirts.
I don't even know if they are clean or not.

I took a full suitcase,
please see what you can do."

This softened me tremendously,

because I realized he
didn't have anybody else

to count on.

I felt sorry for this man,

because I realized his loneliness,

despite being a lively man

full of savoir vivre.

"I've filled my 64 years of life
with women, life, stuff.

I'm an absolute misogynist.

I grew up looking at

the menstrual pads of my
mother, my aunt, and my

grandma who brought me up
and financially supported me.

I fathered women,

I had women,

therefore misogyny
had to be part of my life.

C'mon!"

I imagined your house differently.

I was almost afraid of you,

based on your films, the
way you interpreted them.

Not anymore.

Fabrizio de angelis, the
producer of most of the films

on which we are now focusing,

was in my opinion unintentionally,
yet necessarily, instrumental

to the fulfillment of fulci's destiny.

Perhaps de angelis had no idea

where they were going.

He set the basic conditions

for fulci to be free to shoot
these films the way he wanted.

I've very often heard this thing about

these films having great potential,

if only there were more
money and equipment.

That's not how we're supposed
to look at them by any means.

Those films were released like that because
they were supposed to be exactly that way.

He loved gory scenes,
full of blood.

I remember this make-up man, his name was,

Franco di girolamo,

saying,

"I don't know how much
blood I have to bring today,

because he always asks me to put on a lot."

This is the genre he loved the most,

maybe because of his inner pain,

maybe because of other factors.

On the outside, he
would hide these feelings

but on the inside, they were there.

More than once, when I went with him

to sperlonga, where his wife was from,

he shared this pain with me.

One day, on the first or
second day of shooting,

we were at de paolis studios in Rome.

We were all busy with zombie.

We were laughing because
the extras had to move around

in a clumsy way. They
were all keen to play the part,

bless them.

They were awfully made up as zombies.

He came from behind and asked for
the wing with all the zombies lined up

to be opened.

When you see that scene, he's the one
who indicated to everyone what to do,

with the head like this,
slowly moving forward.

And we were all astonished.

The entire crew stopped for
half an hour, as they all wanted to see.

After zombie

and its success,

de angelis figured that dad

would make him a lot of money.

But he noticed dad wasn't that happy
and he couldn't understand why.

They used to say, “we'll make you
do something else." Other producers,

perhaps they would have paid him less,

and dad was always afraid to ask.

It's just not who he was.

I'm exactly the same, I get dead shy.

Zombie was like an athanor,

a furnace containing a mix of
different components all thrown in.

A blend of single elements,
apparently all quite wobbly,

yet nicely blending together
to generate this extraordinary film,

a horror film with almost
a touch of western.

But most of all, an incredibly
colorful and bright movie.

Even the color of the blood
is beautiful in zombie.

The zombie soundtrack is
definitely one of the strangest,

because it's like a "making-of."
While my idea was taking shape,

the theme of the eye

actually sprang up from my love

for the bridge in sgt.
Pepper's "a day in the life,"

something that for me is
still fundamental to this day.

The descriptive capacity of the melody
is Paramount, even in a horror movie.

You can't just have noises,
or induce fear with sound effects.

I believe we all have a
sort of switch inside of us.

If you can magically manage to press it,

it puts you in a
deeply reflective mode.

On the set of city of the living dead,

both as an actor and as an assistant,

there was the young Michele soavi.

Fulci said that soavi
was his only possible heir.

Today, Michele soavi is one of the
most important Italian film directors.

Films are often shot in
sequences out of chronological order.

Therefore, on my first day of shooting

I already had to be
made up as a zombie,

even though that was
the last scene of the film.

The first time I saw fulci in full action

was around 3 pm, for my scene's rehearsal.

At one point I looked at
him, in my zombie makeup,

and fulci said,

"why are you looking
at me? Go to your spot!"

Good morning, lucio
fulci! Welcome to the set!

I do remember him as a grumpy man,

like everybody used to say.

The crew was fairly terrified of him.

He especially picked on the
main actress, antonella interlenghi,

not only because she was
the daughter of a famous actor,

but also because she
was a bit of a prima Donna.

I remember his almost sadistic attitude

during a scene where someone,

I can't remember who,

had to put worms in her mouth or something,

and fulci wanted to do it himself.

Another time, in a night scene

there was the role of a doctor,

with just a couple of cues.

Fulci didn't like him because he was bad.

He started to shout and
tell everybody to fuck off.

He said, “I'll be the doctor.”

He didn't even know one
cue, nor a smidge of english,

so instead of saying “2, 3, 4, 5, 6,”
to be dubbed afterwards,

he started to tell everybody to fuck off,

here and there.

"Go to hell!" And so on.

He stormed off with this briefcase,
knowing full well

he was going to dub his own voice.

His verbal outrage was just

his way to get his
emotions out of his system.

Has he ever praised you?

Maestro fulci did once
give me a star, I think,

not as an actor but as a camera assistant.

We were shooting in a derelict house
with a lot of wind effects.

There were some enormous fans,

and at some point the wind blew
a paper sheet onto a window,

covering the view.

Action had already started though,
so I leaped out like a cat

before the camera could frame it,
and I snatched that thing off.

The maestro looked at me, after shooting.

“Well done, soavi!”

I think that was the first medal
the maestro awarded me.

When my agent introduced me to Saigon,

he told me that the guy had written
"the new movie by Saigon"

on the poster of his second film.

When people await the release of
your new film, it means you count.

It took fulci over 20
years worth of filmmaking

before having that
written on a movie poster.

The mystery of the beyond
is the mystery of one color

that tibetans would identify
as the color of the bard.

It's a mix of grey, light
blue and turquoise.

That's the color of the infinity

which the protagonists walk into
at the end of the film.

But it's also the mystery
of an 'absolute' film.

In the Latin meaning of the word,
absolutus, it means "released, freed."

It's a film freed from everything.

When he asked me to do
the beyond,

I was petrified.

I didn't know what to do.

We managed to represent
the beyond with nothing,

nothing at all, just a bit of sand, water,
and the heat from the lamps on the Bridges.

We spent the entire filming thinking
about what the afterlife might look like.

None of us could answer that.
The set designer, the editor,

myself, lucio, none of us.

What is the beyond?

Then I had an idea.

I worked flat out for days, on my breaks,
in the evenings, with the crew technicians,

the camera assistant, and two electricians,

to try and work out how to do it.

The soundtrack of the beyond is complex.

It's made of many things, and characters,

and different emotions
clearly spelled out one by one.

The out-of-tune piano was inevitable,
but the idea came by chance

while we were on the set.

Emily was rehearsing her walk through
the house, and I was visiting the set.

Like a kid, I saw an old piano,

opened it, and started to fiddle
with it during a break.

Obviously it was totally out of tune,
as it was just a piece of the set design.

Lucio heard it and said, “that's it, fabio.
That's just what I need."

That's how the idea came
out to write this crazy thing

that has been making
pianists insane ever since

when they play it.

We all think of the
afterlife as something grave,

but we very much hope it exists.

That final scene... speaking of
Sergio salvati, who I not only admire

but I'm also very fond
of, he's a first-class artist.

It hits me every time I watch it,
even when I play it in concert.

I have it right in front me, and
when it reaches that point,

it gets me. It moves me, because
the great magic of a finished film

is that you feel as if you
were in another place.

That's a scene which has always
swept me away to that place.

The color of the sky John and Lisa
walk towards, stayed inside me so deeply

that every time I look
up and I see that sky,

that for me is the sky of the beyond.

It takes me back to the
same mysterious place

the two blind protagonists walk towards.

Dad was wonderful with kids.

He loved them,

especially with my nephew

gabriele, aka lele,

a beloved nephew.

He would roll on the floor with lele, do
things he'd never done before with me.

He had a very special bond with lele,

a very strong one in his life.

His boat named "antonilla,"

antonella and Camilla,

was renamed "lele."

The second boat was named "lele dui,"

because my nephew used to say "lele dui"
to indicate his 2 years of age.

Then, when lele couldn't
stay with us anymore,

for various reasons,

"ex lele."

I never fully grasped
fulci's relationship with kids,

but I don't think it
was a plain one at all.

You can tell he had something with kids,
something very violent inside of him

that revives with the images of kids.

Although in the end kids survive and are
the only ones coming out of the inferno.

Freudstein's extraordinary features in
the house by the cemetery

were meant to look like

a sort of former union soldier with
the head and the body of an insect.

And the end, where
catriona is trying to get out

through that narrow
gap that would not budge,

that stuff is incredible.

It's the sum of fulci's raging
cruelty and savagery,

like perhaps never before
seen in his films.

One of the things I loved about fulci

was his hedgehog hair.

In those days there were shops where you
could buy cuckoo clocks, and little dolls

and teddies with fulci-like hair.

We found two or three of
those, absolutely marvelous.

Dad bought them for fulci, and it was
funny to see him with those teddies,

because they really looked like his sons.

It made me and Carlo laugh out loud.

There is a moment in the psychic

where the revelation of a mystery
is hidden in the date of a newspaper.

It features a picture with
a woman in the foreground

and, behind her, a young woman riding.

That young woman is Camilla fulci.

Camilla and her father shared
a big passion for horse riding.

Dad's love of horses began

in more innocent times,

when the partner of my
grandma, dad's mom,

renato sassoli,

used to have a racing stable.

My dad used to live with them as a boy.

That passion started
again when I came along.

I started horse riding
when I was seven and a half,

and he was always there.

He used to come and see me,
and he was very proud.

He would have bought a
horse for me if he could afford it.

"Me, fat with a pipe.

Camilla, our little one,

she was ten years old."

Perhaps fulci's passion for
horses was something aristocratic

for a director of popular films.

It became a legacy to
pass on to his younger daughter,

A passion that stayed
with him until his last days,

through thick and thin.

Lucio was always happy amongst
horses in any scene on the set.

He truly loved them, and
used to call them by name.

On the set of silver saddle he used
to show the actor giuliano Gemma

exactly how to ride,
how to vault onto a horse.

Lucio loved horse race betting.

Camilla told me about plenty of moments
in her life, back in her horse racing days,

about her trips with
her father to buy horses.

Out of all those episodes, needless to say,

her horse riding accident is
the one that hit me the most.

It was a life-changer,
for her and the whole family.

“Back then Camilla had
been riding for a year.

She was still too little to be a rider,

and she was not as brave as she
would be later on, unfortunately.”

I used to ride horses.
We had racing horses.

Unfortunately I would also
ride freshly trained horses,

not yet fully tamed.

One morning, I fell
from a thoroughbred.

Dad was there that morning.

A gate was left open by mistake,

and the horse skidded at 60 km/h.

I was thrown off and
broke the fence with my back.

Dad and everybody else came running.

I wasn't crying. I still
had my full helmet on.

I felt as if my legs were bent.

The first thing I managed to
say to dad and the instructor,

I remember that one thing very well.

“L broke my back."

Then I couldn't remember anything else.

I do remember the
hospital, the plaster corset,

and dad always being there.

He was in tears when
he told us, on the set.

We learned about the accident,
and her being taken to the hospital.

He was crying, and I don't know
if he said something bad about horses.

I remember he burst
out in front of everybody.

Before I left in 1976,
I called him up to say goodbye,

and when I phoned him

I learned about Camilla's tragic news,
her fall from the horse and the paralysis.

I was shocked.

I still am to this day.

Dad dreamed twice of having his hair cut.

He used to tell us this story

about a dream he'd had
about having his hair shaved.

After that, my mom died.

Then he dreamed of
having his sideburns cut,

and that's when I fell.

“Camilla's first style jumping,
a strutted, dignified ride.”

Miraculously, Camilla was able
to walk again for many years,

until she was hit by a relentless disease

that left its Mark on her forever.

The New York ripper was
the only film that truly disturbed me,

for the practice of violence
on bodies. You could really feel it,

and still can, if you re-watch it.

Fulci's rage in the way

he represented the violence,

even nastiness, was almost linkable to

some resentment fulci
had against beautiful women.

The main character, the duck,
the murderer, is a father who kills

because his daughter is rotting,
bedridden in a hospital bit by bit,

to say it as things were.

Who knows how much there is of
Camilla in the daughter of the ripper.

Was fulci making those films to exorcise
his pain for his daughter's accident?

The original plot of the movie

was about a murderer who
would kill because of mental issues.

Fulci changed this. The
ripper was not mentally insane,

it was the unfairness of his daughter's
misfortune that drove him to kill.

I'd just finished school,

and dad said, “listen,

what do you wanna do now?
Keep on studying or work?”

Just like that, Roman style.

I didn't have to think too long about it.

“I want to work.”

I was curious about cinema.
I had seen so much of it,

but I'd never really been in it.

I wanted to know what pictures were all
about, what dad was giving his whole life to.

If I hadn't gone into cinema,
my dream would have been to be a vet,

or many other things,

like a horsemaster,

going to the states and specializing.
That was my dream.

But I have no regrets whatsoever,

absolutely none.

It's the nicest job in the world.

Rome 2033 - the fighter centurions,

that was a circus!

I remember the steps
inside helios film.

I remember going up and down
with scripts, folders and stuff.

That was the true
understanding of filmmaking,

the chaos and the beauty of it.

That wasn't just fiddling
around with papers.

It was a sequence of
meaningful moments, nice.

You said that your father was obsessed
with being on top of things.

What does that mean?

I've always had this thing in my head
about getting the time right.

It's difficult to get it right though.

Dad used to say, "look, that
guy is not on top of things."

In his opinion,
I was on top of things.

We were shooting murder rock in Rome.

I was approached by the production staff.

“Camilla, would you like to go to new
York, unpaid, only a daily allowance?”

I didn't let them finish the question.

I was ready in no time.

On the plane we bumped into enrico vanzina.
I was introduced to him

because dad had a nice bond with
the sons of steno, his great master.

He adored him, and was
always very grateful to him.

He had a nice relationship
with them, because

he'd spent time with
them over the years.

We last bumped into each
other on that famous plane.

Fulci himself used to
tell this story. It happened

by chance. We didn't
know he was on our plane.

A total coincidence. It was emotional,

because I used to know him
when I was a boy, and now we

were on the same plane and
I'd become a film-maker too.

In those few words we exchanged,
in the fondness we showed to each other,

with a moving handshake and maybe a pat,

there was a whole history of humanity.

After murder rock, something happened

in a very trivial way.

Dad had a heart attack.

I took him to the gemelli
polyclinic to have surgery.

We were waiting for this
famous surgeon, Dr. baruffi,

to return from his work in Baltimore

to perform this very complicated surgery.

I believe it was the
first of its kind in Italy,

the reconstruction
of half of dad's heart.

We were all very happy and optimistic,

but then the wait became longer and longer.

He had to assess whether to
wake him up, he was all intubated.

When Dr. baruffi came out
of the intensive care ward,

he took me to one side.

I sensed something was wrong.

He said, "look Camilla, it's serious,
we need to operate again."

Right then, when baruffi told me that,

I saw death standing before me.
It was a great blow to me.

It was like facing death,
my death.

He told me he had to
have open-heart surgery.

He said it with his usual irony,

to disguise what was
coming, especially to himself.

Before and after the operation he thought
he wasn't going to make it. It was hard,

very hard. I actually thought
he wasn't going to make it.

When eventually everything
went well, the operation and all,

he had a stroke of bad luck.
A damned blood transfusion

gave him viral hepatitis.

When dad had a heart attack,

he didn't want me to tell anybody

he was in the hospital, not a word.

He said to me, “Camilla,
I don't want anybody

in the film industry knowing I'm not well.

I'm afraid they're not
gonna let me work anymore."

It's sad, but I think
only he knew why.

Our lives went separate ways
as lucio had a break.

We were apart for a while,
not because we wanted to be,

but for work logistics, because he
was making films back to back.

“L'occhio del testimone”
was the first book about lucio fulci,

the only one published
when he was still alive.

Michele romagnoli was 20,
dreaming of becoming a filmmaker,

and ended up becoming
lucio fulci's biographer.

That's what the maestro
used to call Michele.

Michele hasn't spoken about
his relationship with fulci since,

but he has very generously
decided to do it today with me.

I set off to Rome with
the intention of attending

the filmmaking school
and meeting lucio fulci.

He agreed to meet me.

My excuse was an interview for the
presentation of voices from beyond.

Then fulci began to phone me often.

He used to say, “romagnoli,
are you scratching your belly?”

In the way we say it in bologna.

I wanted to keep this relationship going
and try to see him as much as possible,

because he was a real mentor to me.

He taught me how to get around on
the set and many filmmaking tricks.

But I couldn't justify this
mentoring anymore, so I told him

I wanted to write a book about him.

He said, “Michele, it's not a good
deal for you. I'm not dead yet."

The first film after dad's illness
was the devil's honey,

shot in Barcelona,

in sitges.

After the surgery,
during the film production,

he said to me, "Camilla, I'm so scared!"

He had a tiny laser incision.

You could hardly see it.

I came out with some foundation
to cover it, and nobody noticed.

He was nervous, but it
was all good in the end.

Here I'm shown with a beard
and a coat bought at sitges,

and a hat bought in Barcelona.
Successful shopping in Spain!

Camilla, have you ever thought
of becoming a film director?

- He gave me a script once,
the title was nhf: No human factor.

A nice, beautiful idea,

it still sounds fresh today,
easily doable, even now.

It was a fantasy film, and could
be turned into horror if you wanted it to,

horror or somehow violent.

You could do anything with that film,
the script was truly versatile.

He said that it was a female film.
He used to say that some movies are female.

That's perhaps one of my few regrets,

maybe the only regret
I've ever had in my life,

but I didn't feel ready for it.

It was too big of a challenge,
a Titanic one.

I really couldn't do it.

Such a shame,
as I regret it now.

What did your father say when
you decided not to make the film?

Nothing,

nothing...

How did you tell him?

I told him I wasn't up for it.

At that time I wasn't up for it.

What did he say?

Absolutely nothing, that's the problem.

Fulci's following movies
were like a deflating balloon,

and I can't find an explanation for that.

The comparison is often
made to Dario argento's films.

Fans turned away at some point,

considering them to be rubbish.
But somehow Dario managed to keep

a technical dignity

that fulci, in my opinion, did not.

It isn't so much a
change of the directing eye,

but more of the
so-called contributing

circumstances, which
didn't allow fulci to

make movies like he
used to a few years before.

I was keen to have the
book out as soon as possible,

because I was sure it could help
the image of fulci the filmmaker.

One night he called me up and said,

“romagnoli, I have the title for our book,

it's "the eye of the witness."

Then I knew he understood
what I wanted to achieve.

From that point, my interviews were no
longer interviews, but long conversations,

from cinema topics to more private chats.

“Romagnoli, you understand
me like no one else,

you'll forever be my
official biographer."

I have to say that
I've always felt like I was,

as I managed to carve
out things from that man

that otherwise would
have been lost forever.

He appreciated it.

“At least you, romagnoli,
discovered me while I'm still alive."

They say that a cat in the brain,
today a huge cult film worldwide,

is somehow your film.

Is that true?

This film was a special
experiment for dad.

He liked the idea very much.

I took everything on my shoulders. I was
the general supervisor, assistant director,

all sorts of jobs! Everything!

And on some occasions

I know that dad praised me
a lot for this film.

And I'm obviously pleased
that you recognize it too,

but it was a commercial production.
I think it came out nicely,

dad acting,

with his usual fixations.
"Am I pulling faces?"

Every time he acted in a cameo, he
used to say, "Camilla, did I pull faces?"

Dad was a big surprise,
even for me, in that film,

because he was a proper actor,

not just a cameo. He amazed me a lot.

At first, he wasn't supposed
to play the main role, right?

I think, deep down,

in that case it was like
once in a lifetime.

It was a challenge he wanted
to take on, make it or break it.

Fulci used to say a cat in the brain
was his daughter's production masterpiece.

All the people who worked with Camilla
have the nicest words for her.

They say she was professional,
efficient, shy, and quiet.

I can't imagine her being silent.

Every time I meet her,
she's a torrent of witty words.

She says she now speaks as if her father
were speaking on her behalf. I believe her.

Michele romagnoli persuaded fulci

to propose door to silence to
producer aristide massaccesi.

Unfortunately, that was fulci's last film.

That time around he believed he could finally
make his comeback on the big screen,

because massaccesi's
productions were out in cinemas.

Unfortunately, that film
was dragged into the

fall of filmirage, the
production company.

Door to silence was
practically never released,

and in the end, he
didn't like it that much.

We were shooting door to silence.

He said to me, “we need to choose
the main actor. One option is John savage."

“Oh dad! John savage!”

He was my idol.

"The hunter", this blond guy. I usually
didn't like blondes, but he was a legend,

with his longish hair,

his beautiful face. Who
didn't like John savage?

But there was a problem.

There was a John savage
'before' and a John savage 'after.'

who was the other candidate?

I chose John savage, I didn't
even hear the second option,

because he was my idol.

Guess who the other candidate was?

Gene hackman.

In 1993 fulci was invited to receive the
honorary award at the fantafestival

in Rome. Asia argento was
on stage presenting the award,

and she called her father
Dario argento to the stage.

Fulci was next to me in a wheelchair.

When argento called his name, fulci got up.

I don't know how, with great effort he
reached the stage and they hugged.

In the following days he told
me that argento called him up

and proposed a project to work on together.

In 1994 I had the pleasure to have fulci
again as a guest at a festival

in the ferrara area,
where I was born and bred.

Together with effects artist Sergio
stivaletti and other guests,

they talked about that project a lot,

enough to have a storyboard
of some scenes already in place.

And they were actually made in the end.

However, this memory of his vitality

clashes with his real
state of health at the time.

He disguised the fact
that he was not feeling well.

He called me a few months before he died,

full-on keen to make that film.

He was keeping me
up-to-date with the production.

My regret is that he told me

this time I was going to
be his assistant director.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

Fulci believed very much
in that film, the wax mask.

I was with berenice when
he called me up and said,

“I'm going to pick up this film produced
by argento, although it's a difficult one,

a difficult character, but he's good,
I want to do it, I want the whole crew."

We were about to prep the movie. I
was ready, and he was feeling a bit better.

Then lucio died.

It was sorrowful for me,
but also for many others

who loved him. Not just
his daughters, everybody.

Why couldn't fulci's career be better?

He's also to blame for it,
because he talked too much

about colleagues, producers, directors. He
would speak the truth right to your face,

not between the walls with
a couple of penniless losers.

When lucio was gone,

in the evening gatherings at
friends' houses, the leitmotif

of our conversations was
how much we missed lucio.

I used to hang on his every word. I
adored him because lucio, as I said before,

was a great storyteller
and hugely cultured.

It wasn't like a
father-and-son relationship.

It was more like two on the road.

Lucio fulci is like a constant riddle.
His memory is now more powerful than ever.

You just have to browse on social
media to realize that fulci's name

always arouses massive interest.

Around lucio and his
memory, there's an enthusiasm

that many other directors
and horror masters don't have.

Why?

Lucio is like a question Mark.

You never really know if
you can grasp his full essence.

After door to silence,
it was all over for him and for me.

I fell ill six months later,

and within 2 and a half years my dad died.

When my dad died, I was in the hospital.

I had cervical spine surgery.

I learned it when the phone rang

at five o'clock in the afternoon.

My partner wouldn't say what had happened.

I was bedridden.

My partner hung up and didn't speak.

I said, "Gianni, what
happened? What did they want?”

At first he didn't speak, and then

he spoke up and said,
"Camilla, your father is dead!"

I didn't cry.

I was frozen.
I only thought, "I'm alone."

I didn't think I had Gianni. No.

"I'm alone," that was my first thought.

My last memory of
lucio fulci is similar to the

one I have of my father
when the writer longanesi died.

It was in the 50s, I remember dad didn't go

to work that day. He locked himself
in the study, lowered the blinds and cried.

My last true memory
of fulci is not physical.

The day I learned that he died,
I pretty much did the same.

When I'm out there and see
fondness for lucio everywhere,

his fans, the almost hysterical
appreciation, you can see people love him.

They love him, full stop. And every time
I tell something, or play,

or I just attend the showing of a film,

it's like he's really backstage,
and the ovation I receive

is nothing but a fraction of the ovation
he would get if he were on the stage.

Today lucio fulci is
acclaimed by everybody,

but in the last years
of his life, none of the

old producers would
offer him films to make,

films that today would be distributed
worldwide and make rich earnings.

Thinking that his old rival Dario argento

was the only one to try
and produce a film for

him, is absurd! Tragic
and poetic at the same time.

Alright... time to go
and see antonella now.

The only time he talked
to me about antonella,

I said to him, “by the
way, how's antonella?”

“Don't ask. She's getting into trouble,
she's out and about day and night.

I do love her, but I don't
know how to show it to her,

and perhaps she doesn't know how
to show it to me." He was talking softly.

I saw him saddened. He
was not working. That was

the first time he was
talking of his daughter, antonella.

I hope the girls are both well.

Lucio, let's say he didn't have
an easy relationship with women.

He had extraordinary girlfriends, but
he was trying to be the tough one

to compensate for his apparent shyness.

So he would just shout
to prove his toughness.

But he was very sweet with
his daughters. They weren't easy.

When antonella sums up her
life, she says terrifying things,

but I've learned that just
because one made mistakes,

it doesn't mean she's not an
exceptional person. In her, I can see

all of lucio's features
perfectly reproduced,

including things not too suitable for a
woman. Maybe this isn't a compliment.

I don't know what lucio
did for them in detail,

but I believe it was
the best he could offer.

Fabio frizzi is right. In antonella,
you can see her father's accomplishments,

the intelligence, the
depth, the generosity

of a daughter who
stayed by her father's side

in his last years, the most difficult ones,

I stupidly met her last,
when she was actually the one

who told me better than anybody else
who lucio fulci truly was,

through her words, and the
stunning family and work footage

her father recorded throughout his life.

When did you figure out
what your father's job was?

The moment I truly
realized what he was doing

was during a visit on the set of
don't torture a duckling,

during that famous scene of florinda bolkan
covered in those little tubes.

I was fascinated.

For me, that was one of the
greatest games I'd ever seen,

all those little pumps and stuff.

Then, I went with him to the premiere
of the film. I was young, 12 or 13.

That was the real stuff.

It wasn't my father playing with little
tubes anymore. That's when I realized

that perhaps I didn't understand
many things about my father until then.

What do you think your father missed?

What did he really want, but couldn't have?

He missed a male child.

This came out through his behavior.

Just like in the past, when
families were waiting for a son,

but he got two girls
instead. "Where's the boy?”

The lack of a male child was offset
by the birth of my eldest son.

That's when I was convinced,
once and for all,

that he picked on me because
he wanted me to be a boy.

Also my sister, he wanted her to be a boy.
What good are girls? There must be boys!

This was a very hidden side of him.
When my son was born,

I hadn't ever seen my father like that.

There are no pictures of
him with me in his arms,

no pictures with anybody, not even
with my mother. He wanted to stay

behind the camera. But with this little
boy, he was like a different person.

He spent time with him. He would
take him out to the playground.

He'd buy sweets for him. He
was like a fairy-tale grandpa.

Antonella, I've got to play
your father in a film about him.

Is there a way to understand who
he really was? Can you help me?

I think it's a very complicated task

to try to understand him. Perhaps
it's better not to. Instead, listen to him,

watch his films, and absorb all the madness

in his images, which
you will take with you.

Even in the most puzzling
moments, when you'll ask yourself

who he was, or what you should do, or
how he would have behaved right now,

don't try to understand. Just imagine
you're behind the camera,

that's when you might understand.

The greatest filmmakers
are masters of lying,

a sort of giving vent to their creativity,

and lucio fulci was one of them.

According to him, Brian de palma
told him that the psychic

was a flop, as people
didn't go to the pictures

because they were
afraid of the red brigades.

And again, scorsese allegedly told him that

Spielberg had been inspired by
the house by the cemetery

when he conceived poltergeist.

Then the iranian officials,
who were so impressed

by fulci's films with
Franco and ciccio,

allegedly offered
him the directorship

of the national cinema
institute of Tehran,

according to him.

Lucio fulci created his
own myth before we did.

This is something only
the great ones can do.

In the very moment it is told, some
bullshit becomes immediately true.

For example, I wonder whether the world
would have been a better or a worse place

if what fulci used to say was actually
true, about him being asked to take part in

the TV quiz show "rischiatutto,”
as a contestant expert on proust.

But, since proust was gay,
this thing came to nothing.

I believe that had fulci been on
"rischiatutto," as an expert on proust

impossible, really -

the world would have
been a much better place.

Dad wasn't one to show
affection with his kids.

He never gave me a kiss on the cheek,

no hugs. That wasn't
how he showed his love,

but he did it in other ways.

So when he was ll,

the day we finally left the hospital,

for the first time I saw
him particularly emotional.

He had watery eyes. I was shaking,

I couldn't believe it.
After all we'd went through

fighting that battle,

dad took my hand.

I was almost embarrassed,
because this contact with my father,

hand in hand, was like a hug.

And I understood what he went through,

which is what I went through, the same.

And right there you felt
like father and daughter.

We were father and daughter in many ways.

How was being fulci's
daughter when he was alive,

and how was it when he died?

When he was alive, I was
like a character in his films,

a rather fussy one, out of frame,

one of those who always has rows with
the director and gets kicked off the set.

When he sadly passed away,
I became a spectator of his films,

and of the emotions they
produced in the audience.

In my case, he was more of a director,

not the typical parent

who, between the two
options of getting a degree and

going around the world on
a boat, would say to his kid,

“get a degree!”

No, he would have said, “get
the boat and travel the world.”

A couple of unforgettable times, he
would just come out of the blue and say,

“listen, I have an idea.

I'll buy a boat, and you're going to set
off around the mediterranean islands."

And I would reply, “dad,
I don't know how to sail.

Why should I go around
the mediterranean islands?”

Or, “did you know there are people
selling boats in polynesia?"

And I'd say, “dad, why
should I go to polynesia?"

"I want a tobacco shop on my doorstep!”

Stop.

Lucio fulci directed dozens
of films, starting from the

musicarelli, Italian musicals,
starring adriano celentano

and Mina, and the cycle-comedies and
sketch-comedies, starring Franco and ciccio.

In 1969, he debuted in the thriller genre,
proving the unique style and vision

that he would ultimately show in his
revolutionary and shocking horror movies.

From the second half of the 80s,
he only shot very low-budget films,

which progressively estranged him
from the filmmaking he deserved.

He died in 1996 at 69 years old,
after 5 years away from a set,

and just when he was about to
make his comeback with an

important film, the wax
mask, produced by Dario argento.

Today he is one of the most
loved film directors worldwide.