Behind the Cozzi folly
One of the unexpected suprises of the Fantastiq Film Festival in Derby, England this year was the documentary on the Italian director Luigi Cozzi. Titled Fantasticozzi, it provided a delightful and informative viewing and begged the question why hasn’t this been done more, why Luigi Cozzi and why now?
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To answer these questions I caught up with the innovative director behind this delightful documentary, Felipe M. Guerra.
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CP: Felipe, you have produced several short and feature films in the past so as much as I enjoy his films, why a documentary on Luigi Cozzi?
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FMG: Well, I need to confess that I love Luigi Cozzi's movies, and I always saw him as someone who is having a great deal of fun with what he does, even when the work in question is something very questionable (the erotic comedy “La Portiera Nuda”, for example). And he never seemed as serious and pretentious as several of his colleagues of the Golden Era of Italian Cinema.
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Anyway, it seems to me that this fun ends up affecting us as spectators. Luigi himself once described to me these excesses when making movies with a lovely term: “pure Cozzi folly”.
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Around 2005 or 2006, I was writing articles for a Brazilian site about horror movies, and I started to use my free time to look up for directors’ contacts to interview them by e-mail. Today they are all on Facebook, but at the time it was very difficult to find these lovable gentlemen online, I think it was a very new and mysterious universe for them.
Thanks to Google, I discovered that it was possible to get in touch with Cozzi because he is the manager of the Profondo Rosso store, which he runs in partnership with Dario Argento. I sent an email to the store and Luigi himself replied. We began to exchange sporadic messages, interviewed him by e-mail and phone, and in the end my “interview” had almost 30 pages in Microsoft Word.
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And than I realized that Cozzi was not just a director talking about his own work, but a living encyclopedia about a magical moment in Italian cinema. Unlike other directors that I interviewed who practically only said “I did this, I did that, me, me, me, me…”, every answer from Luigi brings a whole panorama and a contextualization of the Italian production of that time, citing the names of many people and lots of “inside information”.
No one was taking advantage of this great and very sympathetic source of information that is Luigi Cozzi, just a few companies that were re-releasing Italian cinema classics on DVD and interviewed him to make featurettes for the extras. So I decided to make a documentary exclusively about Luigi Cozzi myself, because I knew that not only his private story was incredible, but mainly because it allowed me to tell the story of three or four decades of fantastic Italian cinema at the same time.
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CP: How big of an influence did the films of Luigi Cozzi and the genre films in general coming out of Italy during the 1970’s and 1980’s have on you?
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FMG: Quentin Tarantino once said that he did not go to film school, he went to movie theaters. Well, I am part of a generation of self-taught filmmakers who also didn’t go to film school, and instead went to video stores. My childhood and adolescence was among those shelves filled with VHS cases, and among my teachers were all those completely crazy Italian directors, and not only the big ones, like Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento, but also the “B side” of Italian genre cinema, these guys like Cozzi, Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi, Bruno Mattei, Joe D'Amato, Demofilo Fidani and many others.
I grew up seeing those movies that could even be cheap on resources and budget, but they were extremely rich artistically and in ideas and creativity. It didn’t even look like these guys had very little money considering the photography and the soundtracks of this movies, which got even better when I started reviewing them later on DVD – since in VHS times the widescreen and scope formats that the Italians loved used to be terribly cut to fit on the TV screen.
And when I started directing my first independent short and feature films, still in the days of the video cameras, the lessons of these teachers were very present, so I always tried to honor them in some way (for example, in my first feature, the SOV romantic comedy "Patricia Gennice," which I filmed in 1998, the bad guys watch Fulci's "The Beyond" on TV).
CP: The documentary features both archive footage and new, purpose recorded footage - how did you go about approaching Luigi about your idea?
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FMG: In 2010 I managed to convince my friends João Fleck and Nicolas Tonsho, the directors of Fantaspoa Film Festival here in the South of Brazil, to bring Luigi Cozzi as a guest to a retrospective of his films, with my curatorship. This would be the first visit of the Italian director to Brazil.
But then I remember that he didn’t direct anything since the late 1980s, and probably many people didn’t even know who Luigi Cozzi was. Because of this, we decided to also show a short film about Luigi’s career, "Le Tunnel Sur le Monde", directed by Daniel Gouyette, which had been included as an extra in a the French DVD of "Starcrash".
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I had already interviewed Cozzi for Boca do Inferno, that Brazilian site I mentioned earlier, and I already knew him personally from a visit to Profondo Rosso Store when I went to Italy in 2009, so Luigi was more or less informed that I was a young independent director with no money, but completely in love with his films and Italian genre cinema in general. I made him the proposal of the documentary without thinking twice, and he was very happy with the homage, although he probably suspected that we would never really make a movie with all those hours of interviews that they gave us.
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Let's say he was almost right.For a few years I didn’t really know what would come out of this material, and I even left all the tapes stored and forgotten, until Cozzi decided to direct a new feature film, his first in almost 30 years, gaving me the reason I needed to finally edit and release “FantastiCozzi” at the right time!
CP: And how did Luigi Cozzi take these requests?
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FMG: He was very happy. At the time, Luigi was emerging from complete oblivion for a decade for a fair reappraisal of his work and its importance for Italian genre cinema. His last film was released in 1989 and he spent years only as manager of Profondo Rosso Store in Rome. Until Tarantino gave an interview speaking good things about him and “Contamination”, and a whole new generation came to know Luigi Cozzi.
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I think that“FantastiCozzi” has a prominent role in this process of re-evaluating Luigi's work with another look, and for a new generation, and I hope that even more people will finally know his cinema (and Italian genre cinema) through the documentary.
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It’s also worth remembering that with “FantastiCozzi” Luigi became one of the first Italian directors of his generation to win a feature-length documentary about his work - and, even better, his life! A feat that even today only a few guys can boast!
CP: I had the pleasure of meeting Luigi several years ago when he sold me a copy of the recently released blu-ray of FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (from Shameless), and he stuck me as a genuinely friendly and charming man which you have managed to capture in your documentary. Were there ever times he would go off topic and just talk…and did you let him?
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FMG: Luigi Cozzi is a great guy, simple as that. It was a shame I didn’t shoot him 24-hours-a-day for the documentary, because he is a funny guy who keeps telling anecdotes and making jokes. During our interview, he went off the subject all the time, and often made many detours before going into the history of a particular film, because he explained the whole context of the time and the different people involved in the production of the movie in question.
For example, the time on the documentary covering “Contamination”, I had to summarize a lot, because Cozzi spent a long time explaining how he had gone to work with Joe D'Amato in the Dominican Republic as script doctor and made contacts to direct a science fiction movie there, but the process took a long time and never materialised.
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The same happened when he explained the genesis of one of his most surreal projects, musical horror “Paganini Horror”, which was born as a serious biopic, like “Amadeus”, about the Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini, which would be shot around 1985-86 with French star Christopher Lambert (post- “Greystoke”) as Paganini! Obviously, the money was short, the producers began to abandon and the “Paganini bio-biography” turned into a cheap horror. Unfortunately I had to cut all this part of the documentary and I regret it.
But anyway, he got off the subject the whole time and I let him talk because the guy was practically giving a class about Italian genre cinema, and his memory is unbelievable. Now I even regret that I didn’t have more time to interview and film Luigi, because I'm sure that even better stories about him and about Italian cinema in general would have come out.
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CP: What were the most challenging aspects of putting this film together?
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FMG: Well, the biggest problem was the fact that Luigi and I talked extensively about each of his films, and I have so much material with him talking only about “Starcrash”, for example, that I'm thinking of making a new documentary only about the process of making this film. Because of this, as I have already explained, I had to cut down, or cut completely, some great stories for reasons of time and rhythm.
Another challenging aspect was deciding what else to use so that the film would not be restricted to 70 minutes just with Luigi Cozzi speaking. I hate these “talking heads” documentaries, and I would never do anything like it. But is very difficult to know who exactly are the owners of these Italian films of the 1970s and 1980s, and because of that my original idea was not to use scenes from any movie in “FantastiCozzi”, to avoid possible copyright problems. Initially, I would illustrate the testimonials using only lobby cards and posters for each film, as well as behind-the-scenes footage from Luigi's private collection.
It worked well at first, but soon I realized that the rhythm of the film would be very “stuck” using still images all the time. I talked to Cozzi and he assured me that I could use scenes from his films even though he wasn’t the copyright holder.
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As I already imagined that the documentary would not have such a wide releaseand the real “owners” of Cozzi’s movies would never want to charge us any money for that, I thought “What the hell...” and decided that it was worth the risk.
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CP: One thing that struck me was how well edited the documentary is. Did you enter the filming process knowing how you wanted to visualise the narrative or did you find this in the editing process?
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FMG: Well, first of all thank you very much for the “well edited”!
Answering your question: The narrative of the film came almost by accident during the editing process. I didn’t have an initial script when recording the several hours of interviews with Cozzi, and the questions themselves were made out of order – we started talking about his most famous films and then returned to the origin of Luigi's passion for science fiction; and then Cozzi remembered something that he hadn’t mentioned before about some of the films and talked about it again; then he would comment on something interesting and get out of the subject again, and so we went...
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As I've commented before, this whole material remained forgotten for years, because other projects came up. Besides, no one ever imagined that one day Cozzi would return to making movies, so the interview with him was completely timeless.
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But suddenly Luigi announced his return to movie making, around 2015, with the science fiction film “Blood on Méliès Moon”. It was his first feature film since 1989, and probably his first film shot so independently, with a small crew composed by friends and digital cameras, just like me and several of his fans make movies too!
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Anyway, when Luigi announced his return, I decided that it was the right moment to finalize the documentary, because it would have a start and an end. Before “Méliès Moon”, I would end “FantastiCozzi” with the fall of the director (along with the Italian genre cinema) in the late 1980s. I had even prepared a sad ending with Cozzi in his store saying that that was the only way he had found to continue working with fantasy and science fiction. But then came “Blood on Méliès Moon” and a real twist on the final scene – it was Luigi's return after all!
In the end, considering that everything happened on pure accident or coincidence, I believe that the way “FantastiCozzi” was edited worked perfectly, better than if it had been scripted from the beginning!
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CP: It is rumoured that the original edit was over two hours long, how did you set about deciding what to cut and were you forced to leave out any unheard stories?
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FMG: One of the reasons I procrastinated the documentary for a long time was the amount of material: we filmed two days of interviews with Cozzi and all his Q & A’s during Fantaspoa with two different cameras, and we end with 16 hours of interviews and 20 hours of Q & A’s! Because of this, my first cut had 2h45min! I never intended the film to have this duration, I simply put all the interesting material together, so the next step was to begin to reduce the snippets of Cozzi's films, his anecdotes, and finally take away whole segments with the director's memoirs.
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At some point, I decided to prioritise his work with cinema and reduce or omit completely what he did for television. The parts in which Luigi comments on the episodes he directed for the series “La Porta Sul Buio” (in the 1970s) and “Turno di Notte” (in the 1980s) were originally much longer, but I had to reduce them because they upset the rhythm of the movie, and because it was a material that very few people had access to, so perhaps it was not as interesting as the movies. So I decided to limit both themes to the link they had with the movies that Cozzi did later – episode “Il Vicino di Casa” inspired the film “The Killer Must Kill Again”, and a murder with a violin in one of the episodes of “Turno di Notte”precedes the mood of “Paganini Horror”.
The process of editing the film was so stressful that I don’t intend to revisit it so soon. But I would love to release an independent DVD of FANTASTICOZZI in the near future, and include these 90 minutes that I had to take out as extras, because I think these stories are very precious to be simply eliminated or forgotten.
CP: If you could change anything that you did during the film process what would it be?
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FMG: I think I would try to make the transitions between Luigi's films and periods of life more dynamic. Originally, I was thinking of using famous images from each period (like man on the moon, Vietnam, JFK...) to show what was happening in the world in the years that Cozzi made each film, but I gave up the idea right away. I would also try to make the editing of the film look more professional, because the “FantastiCozzi” was filmed, produced and finalized without any money, and I think this is quite noticeable.
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Ah yes: and I regret having cut all the part where Luigi told the story about “Sinbad of the Seven Seas”. This project emerged as a 3-D feature film that would be directed by him in the early 1980s, later turned into a TV miniseries written by Cozzi and directed by Enzo G. Castellari, and finally Luigi was brought back to the project to cut the four-or-five-hour-miniseries to a 90-minute-feature-film because the producers didn’t like the result! He ended up filming some new scenes to give the story a “fable look”, which I believe worked very well in the final film.
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Luigi told the story in detail, but the problem is that this project comes shortly after the two horror films he did (“Paganini Horror” and “The Black Cat”), and before his forced retirement. At this moment, “FantastiCozzi” was almost at the end and I realized that the part about “Sinbad" very much compromised the rhythm of the narrative.
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And since the story was long and complicated, I had to decide between leaving it or completely eliminating it, because I couldn’t summarize it, it will lost all sense. I opted for the second option, but today I regret it because several people complained that “FantastiCozzi” is not a “complete documentary” about the director's filmography because he doesn’t say anything about “Sinbad”! I really think it was a flaw, especially considering that the documentary covers “Nosferatu in Venice”, which is not a 100% Luigi movie either.
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CP: Do you have any advice for aspiring documentary film makers looking at genre films?
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FMG: It's a difficult question because I don’t consider myself a documentary director, just a movie fan who decided to record the life story of a director that I like because I knew that if I didn’t do it no one else would. The advice I give to moviegoers and independent filmmakers in general is: whenever they have access to their idols, especially those who are not inaccessible super-stars like Tarantino, try to record their stories.
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At Fantaspoa 2016, for example the guest of honor was Spanish actor Antonio Mayans, who not only has 400 credits in TV and film, but was also a regular partner of the great Jess Franco, another one of my favorite directors. I tried to interview Mayans on Franco, but the amount of information this guy has about each movie he made with Jess is absurd! He spent almost 40 minutes talking JUST about a specific movie! So if I really took on the task of making a documentary about Mayans' career, even his career with Jess Franco, it would take me a year, not a few days to do it!
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But this is just one example: we have hundreds of veteran artists who are relatively affordable and who have an enviable amount of information to share. It’s an unfair world when there is no documentary about Italian trash master Bruno Mattei, for example. And Umberto Lenzi, a filmmaker who worked with virtually every genre and certainly had hundreds of unbelievable stories, recently died without a documentary in his honour!
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So this is my advice to the young filmmakers: just hunt your idols and record as much material as possible with them, even with the camera of your cell phone if necessary, because we need to register the amazing stories of this guys as soon as possible!
CP: After six years of work, FANTASTICOZZI premiered back in your native Brazil alongside a screening of Luigi’s latest film, BLOOD ON MELIES MOON, is it possible to describe how you felt that day.
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FMG: I was completely nervous and anesthetized with anxiety, as if I were stoned, and I confess that I don’t remember many things about the premiere. In addition, we were filming a short film starring Antonio Mayans, and with Luigi himself as special guest, a few hours before the premiere of “FantastiCozzi”, so my adrenaline was at the maximum level!
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What I remember well, and this moves me to this day, is that suddenly I was doing a Q & A alongside my idol Luigi Cozzi, me as the director of a documentary about his life, and Luigi as the honored guest. And that was one of the most incredible moments of my whole life! In addition, it was apparent that Cozzi himself was very moved and had approved the homage.
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Anyway, I would like to relive this moment with a little less nervousness, to be able to enjoy it a little more. But it was amazing anyway.
CP: The film has received terrific feedback from the festival circuit, when can we expect to see it on general release?
FMG: I've always been asked about this, and several fans of Cozzi's work have already asked whether the documentary will go out on DVD or enter the Netflix programming grid. The case is that “FantastiCozzi” is already closing the festival circuit and I don’t have much hope of releasing it anyway, because unfortunately the production is not as professional as it should be to get into Netflix, for example. At the same time, DVD is a dead media here in Brazil and I don’t see much future in releasing it in this format.
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The good news is that Cozzi himself intends to include the documentary as an extra on the future blu-ray of “Blood on Melies Moon”, to be released by the end of this year. So I imagine this will be the only way to have “FantastiCozzi” in the collection for some time.
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If any company like Severin or Arrow Video is planning to re-release any of Cozzi's classics in a “definitive” Blu-ray edition, and wants to include “FantastiCozzi” in the extras, just get in touch to negotiate, I'd love to!
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CP: And just as importantly what is next for you?
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FMG: Well, life is very short and I'm practically going from one project to another like one of my heroes, Jess Franco! In this year 2017 I finished and released a short film called “Bring Me the Head of Antonio Mayans”, the one that was filmed in 2016 on the eve of the premiere of “FantastiCozzi”, with the Spanish actor and Luigi himself in a plot that is a tribute to cinema and to the people who make it.
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And still in 2017 I enter the “editing room” to start editing my next feature film, a documentary in the vein of “FantastiCozzi”, but this time a little more professional and dedicated to Ruggero Deodato. To be released in 2018 (let’s hope!) “Deodato Holocaust” will be a synthesis of almost 10 hours of interviews with the famous Italian director responsible for “Cannibal Holocaust”.
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And in 2018 I'll be editing a third documentary whose theme I'll keep in secret for now, because I was surprised to find out that no one had made a movie about it yet and I don’t want anyone to copy me, but I guarantee it will be fantastic!
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CP: Final question – if you could chose only one Cozzi film to save, which would it be?
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FMG: Jeez, this is the most difficult question of all!
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Of importance, I would say “Starcrash”, which is probably Luigi's most iconic film and also the only time in his long career that he had the opportunity to make a science fiction adventure as he always dreamed, without disguising it as horror film to satisfy the producers. But that would mean that “Hercules” would be destroyed, and I'm completely in love with this crazy mix of epic adventure, carbon-copy of “Superman - The Movie” and space opera. And it would also mean leaving behind “Paganini Horror”, a film with which I have a relationship of love and hate, because every time I revisit it I still think it's really bad, but I keep talking with Luigi about it.
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Anyway, it's a very difficult question to answer, and I find it easier to say which Cozzi film I would NOT save: his first work, “The Tunnel Under the World”, which is too experimental for my taste. But even this one has its qualities here and there.
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Couldn’t I save all the films of Luigi Cozzi and leave behind those directed by Lars von Trier?
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CP: Thank you for your time Felipe and I look forward to, and I am sure many others do as well, the upcoming documentay 'Deodato Holocaust'. Best of luck.
On a personal note it is great when you speak to people like Felipe, who are clearly so passionate about film and filmmakers with this enthusiasm manifesting itself through unwavering support and promotion of the various genres and sub-genres that so often get overlooked or ignored by the masses.
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You can read our review of the documentary FantastiCozzi here. We hope that you have had or will get the chance to see it on your screens soon.
