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''Along my path I've met Lucio several times, but I never had the chance to know him well, to be one of his friends. Basically, I had the same issue with other people in the business but, in the end, I've never craved to be a close buddy of another director, except of course for Lucio.
Lucio started to make giallo movies when I started to make them, and that for me was irritating - I was kinda pissed. By the way, Lucio's movies were really decent: Don't Torture a Duckling, above all, is a pretty neat piece of work.
The first time I met Lucio for real happened during a Film Festival some years ago. Lucio arriving on a wheelchair, for me, was totally unexpected and I felt strange, kinda guilty, regretting the chance I had in the past to get acquainted with him. He was sick, mentally and phisically, and from that moment on we tied strongly together.
I had a task to bring Lucio back behind the camera, because since 1990 he hadn't had a chance to make other movies. Lucio was abandoned, left alone into a corner by a bunch of self-entitled "best friends" of him. At the time Lucio used to live in a small house facing the Bracciano Lake; he was suffering of a severe form of diabetes and spent the little money left into leg surgery to get back on his feet, and no one of his "best friends" helped him, no one did shit for a man that, as a director, was more famous abroad than the 95% of the rest of Italian directors. I can say that loud for those who think that the movie business is all golden confetti, parties and happiness.
Anyway, I tried hard to bring him back to life, to allow him to make movies again. With a bunch of friends I helped him financially to have another leg surgery, and he did well.
I saw Lucio kinda reborn, with his strong, aggressive and savage spirit. He had only one tooth left in his mouth, but that one tooth began to shine with anger! Hanging around him at the time was an awesome experience.
So we decided to do a remake of Maschera di Cera (The Wax Mask), a movie that I'll do for sure, for the sake of Lucio and, above all, shot in the same way he would have directed it.
I last saw Lucio a few days before his death, always in Bracciano into a small restaurant run by a left-wing oriented couple (politically speaking). We had lunch talking about politics. Lucio always stood in defence of the underdogs, the needy and the humble: he was a really awesome person and a very decent man... And then he left this world, silently, on the tip of his feet.
After his death it was kinda strange for me reading some articles on the newspapers. In one of those, The Unità to be precise, it was written "Farewell to Lucio Fulci, a man who has never taken himself too seriously". I found that very rude. Lucio learned to make fun of himself 'cause he was forced to do that, forced by the whole movie business, including movie critics, who always talked shit about his movies, and if he dared to stand up and say "This isn't true!" he would be labeled as a fool. He was a joker, of course, a very positive person, but inside him suffered greatly for all the negative feedbacks he was used to receive from movie critics, and, most of the times, they didn't even bother to write a review about it.
He wasn't a straight storyteller, he used and abused the feelings, he literally bathed into it. If I must suggest some of his movies, I would say for sure the ones with Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, small masterpieces of comedy and legalized insanity in my opinion. Speaking of horror, I would suggest the most cruel ones that mirror the harshness and the bitter issues Lucio had in real life. I love The New York Ripper, The Black Cat and A Cat in the Brain.''
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