Sergio Vastano: “With Bocconian in Drive In, I earned 4 million lire per episode. Fiorello? His hatred for me hurts me.”

“We’ve knocked on many doors, even with Gianfranco D’Angelo, but after a while you look like one of those fish that still pant in puddles at low tide, hoping that the wave will arrive soon. “But at a certain point, the fish can’t take it anymore.” Sergio Vastano, 71 years oldone of the many masks he has released Drive, he’s been “happily” retired for a while (“The best gift is the people who, 40 years later, still stop me in the street”). Among his characters “Dirty businessman” And his “guardian devil”; il the top manager in luxury style 1980s; Especially meFor “Boconiano”the college student in Calabria far from home and off the track who chants like a mantra “Is this fact clear?».

How did you meet Antonio Ricci?
“Coincidence. I am a very good friend of Andy Lotto, one day he called me and told me: I met Antonio who is preparing a new program for Italy 1. I did not know who Antonio was or what Italy 1 was. They asked me for a tape with an audition and I suggested my character. I lived Near Sapienza, which was full of wealthy Calabrians who had come from the south to be students far from home, I prepared a 30-second number, which Antonio liked but turned into a Bocconi number.”

Why was he so successful?
“Knowing…it was a meeting of the stars. He was a different “southern,” and he didn’t come with a cardboard bag to beg for a spot, but he came as a boss. It was a moment of revelation, and represented the arrogance of a character who believed he had already arrived, in a period of maximum ostentation. Today the paradigm has just changed, and I would suggest a rapper who flaunts money.”

An unrepeatable season. Who was closest to him?
“For a while I was a duo with Enzo Braschi, we had a lot of fun, then we lost touch due to a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that I don’t remember anymore.”

Gianfranco D’Angelo?
“I was amazed by his generosity, he always paid at the restaurant, and I never put my hand in my wallet with him. We toured together until we were 84 years old. Then we were left with Covid. “Real pain.”

raw?
“He always had a watch in his hand. He had a thousand things to do. He would arrive, finish his work, and then run away.”

The craziest?
“Francesco Salvi was the stray bullet, completely surreal, outside the box.”

Giorgio Valetti?
“Lone wolf, no company. He created amazing pieces. So much so that Antonio gave him a second personality. Open the sky. All the comedians ran to him to ask for more space, I, Tritri, Zorro, Gaspard…”

she also?
“Not me, I swear. We were all a pain in the ass anyway.”

At first she was under surveillance.
“Four episodes, including a travel voucher, accommodation, and a meal. They gave me 400,000 liras for each episode. For me, coming from the theater of the Roman crypts, it seemed like a dream. Then it reached 4 million.”

Women on their feet?
“Delivers. Especially in Drive The slogan was look but don’t touch, pastera is beautiful but you can’t taste it. It was hard to get close to the fast food girls, and Tutti Botta drove me crazy, but nothing.”

Spending savings?
“On a big whim, I got a red Porsche Targa. “I kept her for many years and took care of her as if she were a son.”

Do you miss this success?
“You take it while it’s there, it’s okay. I knew that the life of a comedian could not last forever, in fact, at a certain point, the moment came when they no longer called me as before. “I would have loved to be a competition presenter, but you had to have the right connections.”

She ended up with Richie, but was hoping for Arbor.
“They were two different comedies. In Ritchie, we played on speed, and we had to remove the unhelpful qualities. It was an exercise in discipline: you had to stay within 4 minutes, and if you were 10 seconds late, you had to repeat the piece. If Ritchie was a perfectionist, Arbor was an improvisationalist: he came from jazz, and he didn’t want to know what other people were saying.

After “Drive In” he made “Streccia” with Teo Teocoli.
“It’s not a quarrel as they describe it, but I made things clear right away: He made me fall off the table on purpose, just as he did with my boy whom he slapped for fun. But I made him fall too. “So he immediately understood that I was responding to provocations.”

Then 300 episodes with Ms. Coriandoli.
“You get along well with Maurizio Ferrini, he is a great storyteller. We’ve also gone on many vacations together. He was the strongest character, I supported him without problems. Then at a certain point our batteries ran out.”

He named a comedy film with Andrea Pazienza.
“Meeting these skulls in the seventies. We arrived at his house at noon as scheduled, he was asleep, and he came at two-thirty, spoiled by sleep.”

Why did he say Fiorello was overrated?
“There was a misunderstanding. The journalist put things in my mouth that I had never said before. “Fiorello got very angry. He said I was half a whore, and he had a hatred towards me that hurt me.”

At the beginning of his career he was about to give a show with only two spectators, Nanni Moretti and his historical producer Angelo Barbagallo.
“It was a time when the dinosaurs had just become extinct… There was a theatre, the Albericino, which is the basement of the Alberico. Basically, a cellar with fish and frogs stuck to the wall because of the humidity, and in addition to the ticket, they also gave you a folding chair to sit on.”

He was on stage with Remo Remoti.
“There was no one there, and we were about to leave when Moretti and Barbagallo arrived. We asked them to come the next day and called some friends. They were looking for a representative for Sweet dream Obviously they took my remote and not me. I went to the set once and that was enough for me. Moretti was even worse than Kubrick, taking 100 takes of each scene. “For us he was still a legend, but what a bore he was on set.”