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Introduction

Tertium non datur

As I walked briskly along Corso Venezia towards the San Babila theatre on an autumnal day in Milan back in October 1976, I was about to conduct my very first interview.

I was sixteen years old, and together with my friend Alberto I was hosting a radio show for young people called “Spazio giovani” on one of Italy's earliest privately owned stations, Radio Milano Libera .

These were incredible times, when it seemed as though anything could happen, and frequently it did. Marvellous times. Horrible times. These were the anni di piombo [the Years of Lead], the years of youth protest, anarchy, strikes in schools and demonstrations that inevitably ended in violence. These were years of hope, filled with a cultural fervour so vibrant and all-consuming that it drew you in and threatened to explode. These were years of young people fighting and being killed, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right. These were simpler times: you were either on one side or the other. Tertium non datur.

But above all, these were times when every one of us felt, and often knew, we had the power to change things. To – in our own small way – make a difference .

Amid all the chaos, excitement and violence, we were actually pretty laid back, taking things as they came. Terror attacks, bombings, the Red Brigades...these were all part and parcel of our youth and adolescence, but overall they didn't worry us excessively. We had quickly learned to survive in a manner not too dissimilar to that which I would later encounter among those living amid conflict or civil war. They had adapted to such extreme living conditions, a bit like we had back in the 1970s.

Alberto and I really wanted to make a difference. Whereas today's kids are engrossed in selfies, Instagram and smartphones, we poured our boundless enthusiasm and utterly carefree attitude into reading everything in sight and going to concerts, music festivals (it was that magical time when rock music was really taking off) and film clubs.

And so it was, armed with a dictaphone and our heads full of dreams, we made our way hurriedly towards the San Babila theatre on that sunny October afternoon more than forty years ago.

Our appointment was at 4pm, an hour before the matinée performance was due to begin. We were led down to the basement of the theatre, where the actors had their dressing rooms, and waiting for us in one of them was the star of the show and my first interviewee: Peppino De Filippo.

I don't remember much about the interview, and unfortunately the recordings of our radio show must have got lost during one of my many moves.

What I can still remember clear as day is the buzz, that frisson of nervous energy that I felt – and would feel plenty more times in my life – before the interview began. I say interview, but really I see an interview as a meeting ; it's a lot more than just a series of questions and answers.

Peppino De Filippo was coming to the end – he died just a few years later – of what was already a legendary career acting on stage and screen. He greeted us without getting up from his seat in front of the mirror, where he was doing his make-up. He was kind, courteous and engaging, and he pretended not to be taken aback when he found himself confronted with a couple of spotty teenagers. I remember the calm, methodical way in which he laid out his stage make-up, which looked heavy, thick and very bright. But the one thing that really sticks in my mind is the profound look of sadness in his eyes. It hit me hard because I felt his sadness so intensely. Perhaps he knew that his life was drawing to a close, or maybe it was proof of the old theory about comedians: they might make everybody else laugh, but they are themselves the saddest people in the world.

We spoke about the theatre and about his brother Eduardo, naturally. He told us how he had born into show business, always travelling around with the family company.

When we left after nearly an hour in his company, we had a full tape and felt a little fuzzy-headed.

That wasn't just my first interview; it was the moment I realised that being a journalist was the only career choice for me. It was the moment I felt for the first time that strange, almost magical chemistry between and interviewer and their subject.

An interview can be a formula to get to the truth, or it can be a futile exercise in vanity. An interview is also a potent weapon, because the journalist can decide whether to work on behalf of the interviewee or the reader.

In my opinion, there is so much more to an interview. It’s all about psychoanalysis, a battle of minds between the interviewer and the interviewee.

In one of the interviews you will read in this book, José Luis de Vilallonga puts it very nicely: “It's all about finding that sweet spot where the interviewer stops being a journalist and instead becomes a friend, someone you can really open up to. Things you wouldn't normally dream of telling a journalist.”

An interview is the practical application of the Socratic art of maieutics: the journalist’s ability to extract honesty from their subject, get them to lower their guard, surprise them with a particular line of questioning that removes any filters from their answers.

The magic doesn't always happen; but when it does, you can be sure that the interview will be a success and not just a sterile question-and-answer session or an exercise in vanity for a journalist motivated solely by a possible scoop.

In over thirty years as a journalist, I have interviewed celebrities, heads of state, prime ministers, religious leaders and politicians, but I have to admit that they're not the ones towards whom I have felt genuine empathy.

Because of my cultural and family background, I ought to have felt on their side, on the side of those men and women who were in power, who had the power to decide the fate of millions of people and often whether they would live or die. Sometimes the destiny of entire populations lay in their hands.

But it never happened like that. I only felt true empathy, that closeness and that frisson of nervous energy when I interviewed the rebels, the fighters, those who proved they were willing to put their (often peaceful and comfortable) lives on the line to defend their ideals.

Whether they were a revolutionary leader in a balaclava, hiding out in a shack in the middle of the Mexican jungle, or a brave Chilean mother waging a stubborn but dignified fight to learn the horrible truth about what happened to her sons, who disappeared during the time of General Pinochet.

It seems to me as though these are the people with the real power.

Grotteria, August 2017

*****

The interviews I have collated for this book appeared between 1993 and 2006 in the publications I have worked for over the years as a reporter or correspondent, primarily in Latin America and the Far East: the weekly magazines Panorama and L’Espresso , the dailies Il Tempo , Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica , and some for the broadcaster RAI.

I have deliberately left them as they were originally written, sometimes in the traditional question/answer format and sometimes in a more journalistic style.

I have written introductions to each interview to help set the scene.

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