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| An interview with
Gianfranco Manfredi released to a Brazilian magazine |
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To
start. Who’s Gianfranco Manfredi? I’m born in Senigallia (Ancona, Italy) in 1948. I made a lot of things: novels, essais, songs, theatre plays, films (as screenplayer, actor and musician) and comics. You can see the quite complete list of works in my site. Anyway, I don't like to speak too much about myself... Magico Vento is still on it’s 12th issue in Brazil. What can we expect for the character? It there an end previewed? Only the public can write the word "end". Characters have an independent life. An author could try to kill his character, but generally occurs that the character kills the author. Now I'm writing the episode number 86 and I can't see an end to the story of Magico vento. I hope he will not kill me! In Brazil, you are only known as a comic book writer. Talk a little about your works with other medias. Is there a intention of some of these works to be published in here? Maybe you saw in Brasil the tv serial I wrote about the Guido Crepax’s character Valentina, or some of the films I made as an actor. But not my songs or my novels ... and it’s a pity (for me) 'cause I think to do my best in music and novels. A big lack of the Magico Vento’s readers in Brazil is formed by people who are Ken Parker’s orfans. How do you see this comparation? What is your relationship with Berardi and Milazzo’s character and themselves? I appreciated very much Ken Parker, but my inspiration is very different: Berardi found his roots in Jack London and Robert Redford’s westerns, I'm more interested in magic, mystery, macabre, historic novels, gotic & horror. In a word, I'm collecting "flowers in the dirt", I love B-movies just as classic cinema. I try to mix any kind of "genres". I look at the western as a "meta-genre". Milazzo does'nt like "monsters", so I write for him stories more psychological: I think he is really great in giving humanity (and feelings ) to the characters, so I try to satisfy his whishes and encourage his talent. In Brazil, almost all that we have from italian comics comes from the Bonellis’ stuff, like Mister No, Tex and Zagor. In your opinion, what are we loosing? In Italy we have great authors of comedy and humoristic comics: as Silver (author of Lupo Alberto and Cattivik) and Altan (the real Master). Another great author (quite abstract in his inspiration) is Lorenzo Mattotti, a graphic poet. Magico vento has an accurate research about the people’s cotidian, what ends up in a kind of “chronicle”, do you believe that the comics must have a educational commitment or you just want your stories to look more “real”? I think that the real life is the perfect start and background for "wonders" and that history is the pedestal of the legend. Any true artist try to extract "spirit" and "vision" from sustance, material life and also brute matter. I don’t think this is only for an educational purpose. To show the dreams, we need to know the dreamer. The White (and Christian) World uses to separate reality from spirituality, the Native American Culture (and the indio culture) unify those two aspects (and also the latin american literature). Poe is one of the most interesting characters of the last years, it gives you the opportunity to discuss anything you want. Talk a little about him, where came that idea from? I read Poe when I was 13 years old. Poe is still one of my favourite authors. But my Willie Richards is very different from Edgar. Politically, my Poe is an anarchist. As human being Willy Richards is an intellectual who becomes a man of action. He loves poetry and literature, but he preferes the danger of the real life. Edgar Poe was a philosopher, a polemist, but I don't think he was very interested in politics... so I try to develope an "other" Poe, but with some of the "phantoms" of Edgar. How do you see the relationship between movien-comic-literature, three languages so connected into your work? Any language has his laws (to break, possibly). I don’t like movies taken from comics, and I dislike also comics taken from movies. But we can tell the same story in different languages. I'm fortunate, cause if I have an idea for cinema, I can write a film. So, when I think at a novel or a comic book, I dont think: this could be a good film. I think: this could be a good comic. And I write it. When you do a thing as a bridge to another thing, you can’t find happiness. If you love money, search money. If you love sex, search directly sex. Equally, if you want to do cinema, try to do cinema, don't do comics wishing cinema ... we have to love what we do, when we do it . Seems like Italy have found their way of making comics, but doesn’t talk too much about themselves. Why so much US-italian comics even nowadays? This is an interesting question. I think that USA is a kind of mirror for us (and not only for us italians). As an old Lakota saying goes: "if you want find yourself, wear the mocassins of another person". I think this is fascinating. But in many of my novels, I wrote of italian people in an italian context. What perspectives do you see for the market and art of comics when publishers and comic-shops are closing the doors and big characters just repeat themselves? I don't know. The circus ended after the cinema, and the mute cinema endend after the sound. But the creativity never ends. We don't have to be too much nostalgic, it's much more important keep high our curiousity. The real problem today, it is not the decline of the "old" languages, but the lack of invention and developement of new media and new languages. Television (which I did sometimes) is so conservative, so shut to young people and artists... but there are signs that also the television era is ending, and that could open new stages and opportunities. Anyway, I'm not so interested in market... I mean: if nobody buys CDs, we could play music in the streets and collect money in our hat!
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