E25 • The Right Way Is Usually The Hard Way • VALERIO MASTANDREA, dir. of ‘Feeling Better’ at the Venice Int. Film Festival

In this conversation, Valerio Mastandrea discusses his film 'Feeling Better', which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film thematically explores love, emotional awakening, and authenticity within the creative process. Past cinema inspirations include Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’.

Valerio reflects on his transition from acting to directing, the need for bravery in choosing film roles, the significance of audience connection, and the communal experience of watching films. Also discussed is the importance of collaboration in cinema, and the challenges faced in the Italian film industry, which faces practical challenges but has artistic potential. 

Valerio enjoys engaging with audiences to understand their reactions, finds joy in learning, and dedicates his new film ‘Feeling Better’ to his father, who embodied love.

Like, subscribe and follow us on our socials @pastpresentfeature

Chapters

• 0:01 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:19 Introducing Filmmaker Valerio Mastandrea, dir. of 'Feeling Better'
• 4:59 Exploring Love and Metaphor in Film
• 7:50 Transitioning from Acting to Directing
• 11:04 The Art of Collaboration in Filmmaking
• 13:57 Challenges and Highlights of Filming
• 16:51 The Importance of Audience Connection
• 19:41 Navigating the Italian Cinema Landscape
• 23:06 Reflections on Filmmaking and Personal Growth
• 25:36 Past Inspo: 'Lost In Translation' dir. by Sofia Coppola
• 26:22 Filmmaking Advice: The Hardest Way is the Right Way

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:02)

Welcome to the Past Present Feature podcast.

Marcus Mizelle (00:19)
In this conversation, Valerio Mastandrea discusses his film Feeling Better, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film thematically explores love, emotional awakening, and authenticity within the creative Coppola's Lost in Translation. Valerio reflects on his transition from acting to directing, the need for bravery in choosing film the significance of audience

and the communal experience of watching Also discussed is the importance of collaboration in cinema and the challenges faced in the Italian film industry, which faces practical challenges, but has artistic potential. Valerio enjoys engaging with audiences to understand their reactions, finds joy in learning, and dedicates his new film, Feeling Better, to his father, embodied love. Also, this is a rather short episode due to internet issues on my

Shout out to This message is not brought to you by Spectrum, by the way. So I look at this as an opportunity to say a few more than usual. is our 25th episode and thankfully we have established quite a nice base of with about 35,000 downloads as of this recording. wanna say thank you all to those who listen and I'd love to know what you guys like, what you might want more of, any ideas, completely welcome. Please just shoot me an

the contact form at pastpresentfeature.com or fortepictures at has been such a fun, fulfilling, eye-opening journey for me so far. And one of my favorite things is to connect with other filmmakers from around the has been such a to hear their processes and journeys and war stories. I mean, this is film school. This is film community. to feel less alone and share knowledge of the craft of filmmaking. Like it's just a no brainer.

I totally scratched an itch that I couldn't reach until now. So I guess I can safely say I'm happy I started this podcast. Thank you again for listening. back to our episode at hand with Valerio and his film Feeling in which the celebrated Roman actor also stars This is his sophomore feature as director following his 2018 debut, Laughing.

Marcus Mizelle (02:15)
Film is super cool. I got Birdman vibes and Bardo vibes with this movie, especially with Birdman when he's walking down the street and you go into this fantastical world where he's literally leaving the ground. It's just so much fun. It reminds you of the power of filmmaking if you choose to go that route. It's kind of a surreal fantasy, very metaphoric, very clever ways of capturing and filming the representation of

Why did you need to make this film? I would like to tell a love story, but I know that thousands and thousands of years has been told love stories in humanity, so we would like to be a little bit original. And we try to be metaphoric in the choice of the coma situation that is not the real coma. It's when people is stopped in their life emotionally and people love.

that kind of situation because they have no responsibilities. It's okay, like this, I'm on the bed, I can eat, I can breathe. But when you meet love, something happens, always. And you have to wake up, you have to live, you have to fight for your life, you have to fight for your love. And so it's a really metaphoric movie.

And it's dedicated to all the people that love someone in their lives. And I'd like to think that the whole world is made of people like that. When you meet people that say, I'm never fully loving my life, it's not true. All of us fall in love once time in our life, at least. At the end, for my father, this movie, the past 10 years ago, my father was a kind of person like this. He felt in love one time.

He was an open-heart man that he always fall in love with everything and with everyone, think. Love that. So that's why I would like to dedicate this movie to him. Beautiful. Yeah, my dad's kind of the same way, honestly. And my mom passed away when I was 22. I know what it's like to feel like losing the parent. It is what it is for different people. But for me, I'm grateful to say that I was able to look at what I had when I had it.

more than I focused on not having it anymore. Obviously your parent, who do you have more love for than your parent? I think it's pretty rad that you, this is for your father, that's really special. I'm going to just give the audience a quick synopsis about Feeling Better, your movie. Mastan Dreyha plays a man who passes his days peacefully in a hospital with nothing much to worry about. He's been there for a while, sheltered from everything and everyone with no responsibilities or problems until a new patient arrives in the war.

Paulina played by Dolores Fonzi. Tell me about the relationship working with her. What was that like? I saw her the first time when I was a member of a jury in Torino Film Festival. And I saw her in Santiago Mitre's movie, Paulina. Since 2015, I always think about her because I thought that she would be a wonderful actress and I would love to work with her. I didn't know her. I sent the script.

And she brought me, we did a Zoom call, and it seems to me that we know each other since when we was young. I was right about my feelings about her, like actress and like person. So when he came here to shoot, she was fantastic, really fantastic. Let's tie this in with that feature debut, that Tarina. What was that experience like as far as that first feature film kind of making its rounds around the festival circuit? You know,

with your first feature film, you try to put everything on the table, maybe too much, but you are really free and honest. I think as an actor, I always be honest and authentic because I'm not too much ambitious. I did the job because I need the job. So when I think to direct movies, I face this new work.

with the same honesty, know. Laughing was a movie full of things, but really pure. And I think Nonostante feeling better too, is full of heart. And in the second movie, I prefer to put myself inside as an actor to give this honesty. Lots of heart, I enjoyed it. This is I was gonna ask you. What made you decide to direct? Going from acting to directing. And what made you then decide with your second film to go?

from directing to directing and acting? I think that the directions was a natural choice in my career. After 28, 30 years of acting, I would like to take more responsibilities about the story, about a movie. So it was natural. And it was an obsession, even because I wasn't actor in that movie. So I would like from the other actor to have...

the same way to play like my way. But they told me, we are not like you, so respect our job. And that's the first thing I have learned from my first movie. Respect actors and let them surprise me. That's the first and the main lesson I have learned. It's so interesting that you're coming from an actor's background into directing. And can I ask you, what strengths can you bring over?

being an actor that then goes into directing. I think that with laughing, I didn't feel more skills being an actor because I was really in a director position. So I look at the movie and the job from another point of view. While in the second movie, I make a sort of, in Italy we call it, psychodrama. So you put yourself in front of yourself and that's really hard.

But Dolores and my people around, from the first assistant to the DOP, I choose people, I trust them a lot. So I go free and really light. It was a light job because full of love, of sensations, of feelings. I'm not a very professional director. I do not come on stage knowing what to do. I search every day.

every scene as an actor. When I act, I do like this, if the director let me do this. But as director, I'm really continual. I go on searching every day, every time. Even editing is a great work of searching. Interesting. So when you're acting, do you feel like in relation to the searching, does that mean you do a lot of takes, you do a lot of different things, you come at it from different angles? Is that kind of a way? For example,

I leave the script at home. I go on stage day by day and in the morning, early in the morning, I know what we have to do. I try to use the space of the shot, of the scene to build with the director and other actors all the scene, you know? Okay. Do you leave the script at home because you don't want to be too beholden on the script? You want to keep it fresh and loose? No, because I read the script before.

I work on it before with directors, other actors. Then when I start shooting, I know the script perfectly, but I go on searching every day. It's not like in theater, but more or less my research is an interior research, you know? Working with actors, I'm always most impressed about the memorization. You guys being able to memorize the way you do, I don't know how you do it. I learned that there are two kinds of actors. Actors that...

listen to the others and deaf. I memorize, listen to the others and knowing where we are, what we are talking about, what do you feel when you talk to me. So it's an emotion memorization of lines. It's not only lines. I'm an actor like this. Then there are the other real actors that study a lot and they know

the sound, the rhythm and everything. I never act like this and I think now it's too late to learn another type of acting. A different flavor. Even as a good director, just a good human being, learning how to listen is just as important as knowing what you want to say, right? Let me ask you this, how did you get into the craft of acting? What was the beginning point? I was so young, I was 21 and I was writing with an actress, something for theater. And while we were...

writing, it was a brother's history. I told her I can try to do him the character. And I start like this and then I begin to being involved in very same characters. They call me for the same characters, you know, the young, full of questions in his mind, questioning about existence and everything. And after two or three years of movies like this, I realized I'm an actor.

I'm doing the actor to live. They pay me. I can live with this job. And so I go on trying to choose other kinds of movies, being consciousness every time more than the day before about the job, about everything. I have a good friend who's always a cop. And he's more than just a cop sometimes, but he always cop, cop, cop, cop, cop. High level though. He's on big shows and movies, but as a cop or a detective or something like this.

And I'm just telling him, that's a cool thing to be stuck in. How would an actor unpigeon hole themselves? Choosing, choosing movies, choosing roles, answering no to the same kind of movies. I think that an actor may be in an older job and makes difference. My movie, Feeling Better, talks about this. If you choose to free yourself to love, you have to fight for your life because love wake up everyone.

I think that I react to the business laws that want to put you in the same role for your life. I reacted choosing. When I was so young, I was so brave to say no and to let my life flow, no? Watching what is going to happen. I'm brave now too, but it's another kind of braveness. And I'm still pretty fierce and brave, but man, in my twenties, ooh.

You could not stop me at all. I was too stubborn and all. was too gung-ho, as they say, you know. But there's such power in being a young man when it comes to desire and fire. I think that also kids change your kind of being brave. After my first son, I felt that being actors wasn't enough for me. And I had to search other feelings and in other directions. And directions was...

being a director was one of these directions. You needed to fill your cup more. Yeah, you grew up, you know. What would you say the thrill of acting can feel like? Is there any similarities or is it whole different thing? No, it's really a question of perspective. If you act, you are like an arm, you know, and when you direct, you are mind, heart, belly, everything. So...

I never been an actor only like an arm. I always try to put my sensitivity, my feelings in what I did and characters I faced. But the difference is clear. And when I did feeling better being actor and director, I was half day director and half day actor. I think that it was a kind of balancing, you know? Very interesting. The only time I've acted is for like friends.

shorts and little stuff. I'm always like, I'm down as long as I can edit it. It's a control thing, I guess. That was the worst part of feeling better, editing myself. Wow. Because I know my skill and I want to destroy them because I want to put me in trouble to have something new, something surprised. my editor, Chiara, was also a psychologist with me because I always say, I don't like him.

I talk about myself calling myself him. She told me, it's perfect here. Why don't you like it? Because I know how to do it. And I want to search a take in which I'm in trouble. So it was really the worst and the better part of the job, editing myself. The ego is a weird thing, huh? The most important thing of the job is the movie. And if I'm good in three scenes, but being good in three scenes is not good for the movie, three scenes.

You have to have priority about what you do. That's what I learned in 32 years of acting. That's what's so cool about directing or any part of the filmmaking process, directing, anything, is to serve the greater good, which is the story, is a beautiful thing when people get on board with that. And it's a frustrating thing when people lose sight of that. It's easy to talk about it, but it's not easy to actually make that cut. All the job is that. Choose, sacrifice, and forget your ego.

and forget your vanity and everything. Yeah, and it's also just treating it like a job, because when it starts getting hard is when it starts getting good, if you stay with it. So shooting feeling better, tell me about the highlights or the challenges of filming, anything special that you want to talk about? The practical effects was probably the hardest part of the movie because we didn't use stunt. I did it by myself, everything. was hanging six, seven meters from the ground. So it was really hard.

but we tried to focus the story on a very special hospital. It wasn't an hospital. We did it with a production designer. We took an old building in south of Rome, displaced, completely abandoned, and we made a new hospital, very particular, like the story would be. I did only two movies, but one of my priorities

to have fun and to protect all the crew and myself from the time, money problems, and just to keep going with a collective experience to feeling better like the movie. Beautiful. When the tough gets tougher on film sets, when the time is breathing down your neck and the money problems, whatever, how do you not lose your cool? I keep keeping people together. I stop Jared when we have problems.

There's no chief and assistant. We are all part of a problem and we have to solve together. I did this when we are in trouble and even when we are full of joy and we are having fun. I learned that cinema is a really team job and we win and we lose. I played basketball in my life when I was a child. I played from six years old until 18 years old. So it was my life. And I learned from basketball to be part of a team.

always and to not play for myself, but for the team and not being against one of my team. Never. Even in a hard situation, in a difficult situation. You've wrapped the film, you've wrapped feeling better. And did you feel good after wrapping feeling better? Yeah, I think so. I feel very anxious to feel the audience reactions about the movie.

And now in Venice, in five days, we will have this answer. Because when you think about a story, then you write the story. Then you think about the story and work with people on the story. Then you realize everything. And then there is the birth and the audience. The audience is life. And a movie is a child. I'm really...

curious about this. That's a cool way to look at it. I haven't heard the words that way before. I guess. We made movies for the audience, not only for ourselves. How was your experience screening Laughing? Laughing had an hard screening because in Italy we have many traffic, too many movies. You have to be lucky to have a good period to screen. But I took the movie under my heart and I go one month

town by town in many cinema of Italy talking with audience about the movie. That's so cool. It was really good. I think we are going to do the same thing with feeling better. Even if we have a screening now more accurate and we have the periods. But I'm going to go around because I think that it's a paradox in a era like this full of social. I think that people want to meet people.

They want to talk about the movie with people and not online. We've got big TVs and all this stuff, but you can't replicate the communal experience. Especially when you add the filmmaker and the actor to the mix, right? People are going to come out even more so, I think. I love that you did that too. I tried to do that with a film I made. Similar kind of approach. I hit up every single double and single screen theater in America. I made this huge database and I think 10 or 15 got back to me. Basically, we'll do it, but pay us this much.

as opposed to, I just get the most off night you have and try to make us both money? Or at least I want the audience, you can take whatever the door makes. They weren't interested. So I guess my question to you, how did it look when you took it door to door? How did you approach the cinemas when you went and did that? Did you split the door 50-50? How did you go about getting your film in cinema to cinema with the film under your arm? And then I guess also is Italian cinema a little different than maybe American exhibition?

different. But in Italy we have 1,600 screens. And we have two or three, I don't know how to say in English, Then there are the independent screeners. There are more or less 50 in Italy. I went to these kind of screens with people that organized two days, two screens.

with two Q &A and then I went away to the other town and they go on two or three days screening my movie. It's really to resist to the business lows, to the market lows. It's a good way to make audience conscious about the Italian cinema and their struggles to be sown. It's beautiful. And to extend your life in cinemas, nothing is like it.

A lot of us just get a few festival screenings and that's the only time we see our movie on the big screen. And then you put your DCP on the shelf and that's the end of it, you know? It's not all a sad state of affairs here in America, but I do feel like at bottom, it's such a capitalist mindset here. Before you get up in my theater, how much money you got? Italian cinemas, do you feel like it's a healthy environment right now? Do you think people are going to the cinemas in Italy? And are they supporting certain types of movies more than others? I think that the Italian...

cinema industry is always in danger since I start doing Actors 3. But we are not in danger from an artistic point of view because we have many people that know how to make cinema and they have good stories to tell and so it's a practical danger not spiritual and cultural. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

Many people, very good people, young people, many new directors. It's good. But we have a great problem of industry. What is the big problem? We have, for example, screenings, distribution. It's few people decide the distribution of the Italian cinema, you know? A little gatekeeper situation. You have to be really lucky. I told you before, for the period, for the moment, for competitors.

I did maybe one of the fifth most successful Italian movie. In English, it's Paolo Cortellis' movie, There's Still Tomorrow. It was a successful movie, even better than La Vita e Bella of Benigni. So the Italian audience exists and they want an Italian cinema. But you have to be brave. Producers have to be brave. Distributors too, to risk something.

with a story, it's a really long, long story. But I feel like Italian cinema filmmakers have always been on the braver side too. They've been at the forefront, I mean. No, my filmmakers are brave. I'm not surprised to hear you say that. To take those chances and not try to be conformist to try to like say something or say something that's unique, powerful, whatever. Which we need more of that in America to be honest with you. There's a lot of conformists, a lot of people being followers and not leaders trying to fit it into the marketplace, but not really thinking at all about the audience, you know. You're premiering at Venice. I'm excited for your premiere.

the audience is gonna love it. Anything else you wanna say about feeling better? You've got distribution, I see. I'm quite excited to have audience sensations in a few days. Then I'm gonna try to protect the movie marketplace and everything, going door to door once again. And I love discuss about my movie with audience because I understand better what I did. Because confrontation with audience, I live this job like this, learning something every time.

That's why it's probably one of the most beautiful jobs in the world, because you can study, can search, you can find, you can lose, you can... everything. That's cinema for me. It's a hell of a sound bite right there. Q &As too, I love them because it's the culmination point. Like you just said, every audience is different too though. I've learned that I can't be too low if a certain audience doesn't vibe with it. And you can tell when they're vibing or not. And then you go to the next audience and all of sudden they're responding...

in a way that your expectations would be. I feel so good. But it's in such a short amount of time too. It's like you spent all these years making this movie and then all of a sudden you have like 30 minutes maybe, had this conversation with these people. Past film inspiration, do you have a favorite film of all time? It's terrible question. See, that's an awful question, but I'm gonna give an awful answer. Okay. There is that many, many movies inspired me.

About feeling better, I try to think about feelings that Lost in Translation gave it to me. Because it is one of the most intense movie I feel. It's a great love story of meeting and loss. I always think about that movie as a person, not as a filmmaker. Yeah, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Yeah, with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Rewatching that movie, that's one of those movies that seems to get better each time I rewatch it.

A lonely aging movie star named Bob Harris played by Bill Murray and a conflicted newlywed Charlotte Scarlett Johansson meet in Tokyo. Bob is there to film a Japanese whiskey commercial. Charlotte is accompanying her celebrity photographer husband. A stranger's in a foreign land, the two find escape. That's one of my favorite scenes in any movie is when he's making that commercial. It's so good. So, so good. Yeah. I agree. I love it too. Got one last question. What would you tell your earlier self that you've learned now making films recently?

Like any sort of advice that you wish you could kind of hand off to your younger self? would tell him that's the hardest way is the right way if we want to do this job. that all the no that he told was has been the good no. Good, very good no. Of course you ended with the Italian Marcus Aurelius quote, the obstacle in the way is the way. It is true.

go towards the hardest thing that's gonna give you the best results usually. You're doing a shortcut, then you're probably gonna pay a price for it.

Marcus Mizelle (27:02)
According to Variety, Vandango's sales has taken global distribution rights outside Italy to feeling better. The hospital set drama by Italian Valerio which opened the Venice Film Festival's Horizons section focusing on new trends in world

And then a review from Screen Daily, Italian audiences have long had a soft spot for Valerio Mastandrea, a Roman actor in the tradition of Alberto Sorti with a world-weary regular guy face that can switch from to melancholic in an instant. Leveraging his stubbly charm to the max in his second film as to open Venice's Parallel Horizon section, Mastandrea makes a game attempt to make us believe in a meet-cute hospital set rom-com.

in which every character of note is in a coma. Feeling Better has a depth command of tone managed not only through a script that takes a less-is-more approach to big emotional moments, but also through color-coding and a supple use of natural light. The film is poignant and silly at the same time. Congrats, Valeria.

Marcus Mizelle (27:58)
Please like and subscribe to this podcast and follow us on social media at past present feature. And let us know in the comments section what movies you're watching. Thank you so much for listening to the past present feature podcast and we'll see you next time. Peace.