As I stood there, camera in hand and doubt in heart, I realized that my first film in Italy would be as much about confronting my own heritage as it was my illusions.
BY JON CUCCHIELLA
October, 2024
Fellini. Leone. Scorsese. Antonioni. Coppola. Rossellini. De Sica. Bertolucci. Sorrentino. Filmmaking, like all arts, is an uncertain world. There is no guarantee of success. A filmmaker could write a script that achieves great recognition tomorrow, yet never write or make anything of substance or quality for the rest of their life. I believe it is this uncertainty which dissuades so many young people from becoming artists.
We are taught very early on that it is a difficult world, with a slim chance of success. This is why artists so often look to the greats for inspiration. In the doubtful mind of an artist, inspiration is the antidote. Great works of art, and great individuals who express the feelings in our very hearts, give us artists some much-needed hope; hope that we may one day be able to have the same impact on other people as these great veterans of the field have had on us.
In the case of the aforementioned directors, the inspiration I find is a cultural one. Like them, I am Italian, and just as they once were, I am an aspiring director. Having cinematic heroes who reflect elements of my own humanity makes me feel a close connection to the world of cinema; a world that oftentimes seems out of my reach.
I am inspired by these men because I can see myself in them and in their work. It is inspiration such as this which has energized my effort to become a film director. I have always chased such inspiration. Though in the beginning, culture had very little to do with it.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
As a four-year-old, I was oblivious to my Italian heritage. My world revolved around television, especially during family dinners at my nonna Tina’s house. Her son, my zio Ottavio, a film enthusiast, introduced me to movies instead of cable TV. One night, he showed me Jaws. Far from being traumatized, I was captivated—not by the movie itself, but by the shark. This obsession with sharks became my first passion, though I didn’t yet understand concepts like ‘director’ or ‘Steven Spielberg’.
As I grew older, my fascination shifted from sharks to superheroes. Films like Spider-Man and The Dark Knight opened my eyes to movies as an art form. I marveled at the music, performances, and special effects, beginning to grasp the language of cinema without yet distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ films. By thirteen, seeking to emulate my older cousins, I craved more mature content. This led me to Scorsese’s Goodfellas, Coppola’s The Godfather, and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. With these films, my path became clear: I wanted to be a film director. There was something else. Scorsese. Coppola. Tarantino.
Coming out of high school, I gained a new appreciation of my Italian roots. I’m sure at the onset, this had a lot to do with the fact that three of my favorite directors were of Italian background. Irrespective of these men, however, I was greatly inspired by the so-called ‘Italian’ way of life. A life that emphasized family, relationships, good food, good conversation, and beautiful art.
You can imagine the joy I felt upon learning that Italian culture was deeply intertwined with film culture. It was then that I became aware of directors such as Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, and Giuseppe Tornatore, all of whom seemed to inject their lives and their culture into their films. Suddenly, movies weren’t just entertainment. They became explorations of the self. Depicting feelings such as passion, doubt, love, hate, regret, remorse. Feelings that I felt not just as a wannabe filmmaker, or a second-generation Italian, but as a human being.
It wasn’t until my third year of university, having bounced between audio, single-camera, and multi-camera production courses, when I discovered my affinity for writing scripts. I took as many classes as I could, and ended up graduating with a few treatments, and one original feature film script under my belt. Still, I was unsatisfied. I didn’t have what I really wanted, which was my own movie. Shortly after graduation, I got a call from my best friend, Giacomo D’Andrea. He was inviting me to Italy for a week. During university, Giacomo and I had taken three separate trips all around Italy.
Inspired by the refreshing philosophy of life we had discovered on our first trip, we found ourselves re-visiting every year thereafter for a few weeks in the summer. This time, however, we wouldn’t be travelling around the country. We would be staying in his family’s hometown just outside of Rome, and unlike our other trips, we would only stay for six days. Seeing an opportunity, I asked him whether he would want to help me shoot a short film during that week. He agreed.
It was a spontaneous decision. Initially, I held this belief that shooting my first film in Italy would be a cool thing. The vast, diverse landscapes, the cinematic history of the country, the disconnect from the digital chaos of North America. It all seemed to make sense. However, there were a few problems. One, I didn’t have a camera. Two, I didn’t have a script. Three, I hadn’t the slightest idea what the short film would be about. And four, I was due to depart in three weeks. So, I quickly got to work on the script.
If there is one emotion which continues to place me in a stranglehold on my journey towards becoming a screenwriter and director, it is that of doubt. It’s the feeling of sitting in front of a blank script page for hours on end, then telling your family you have been writing all day. It’s watching a film such as Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love over and over again, being completely embraced by its perfectness, and thinking to yourself, “I’ll never make a film this great.” Doubt, I believe, is the enemy of action. Doubt always leaves me with an unfinished script or an unrealized idea. To this day, it still does.
In two weeks, I wrote three drafts of three separate ideas for short films I wished to shoot with Giacomo. Hating them all, I deleted every word I wrote. It was around a week before leaving for Italy when the nerves really started to take hold. By then, I had told my family and many of my friends that I was going to Italy to shoot a movie. Naturally, this excites people. They would ask, “What’s it about?” Little did they know, I knew as well as them what it was about. On top of that, I had already spent some (a lot of) money on a camera, a few pieces of equipment, and a nice bag to carry said camera and equipment. Still, I had no script.
That’s when I first asked myself the question: why Italy? What was driving me to make this film there as opposed to Canada? It surely wasn’t out of convenience, or comfort. It was no longer a “cool” thing in the way La Dolce Vita was a cool film. I had no script. There was nothing cool about that. In addition to the doubt growing in my chest, I now felt like a fraud in my heart. Had I made a mistake? Was it all just an aesthetic sham in order for me to appear more esteemed and ‘filmic’ than I actually was? Maybe I should call it all off.
Inherited Instinct
It was this very doubt and subsequent thought process which spawned the idea behind Inherited Instinct, my first film. The idea came in an instant. It would be a short film that centers on two men who move from Canada to Italy to rid themselves of the pugnacious life they live back at home. However, it wouldn’t be long before the very combative natures they are trying to escape begin to materialize in the day-to-day conversations they share.
With the help of Giacomo, I finished a very rough skeleton script for the project before my flight to Italy. Upon arriving, Giacomo and I met in Sperlonga for a day at the beach.
The following evening, we were at his house in Frosinone. In between a few excursions and many meals, we shot the film over three days, altering the script as we went along. On the sixth day, I flew back home. Just like that, it was over.
Inherited Instinct turned out to be a complete reflection of how I felt in the days leading up to my departure. Doubtful. Dishonest. Hypocritical. Phoney. Rather than continuing to ignore these feelings, I decided to embrace them. Throughout the writing of my final draft, I never stopped asking myself the question: “why Italy?” Through writing the film, I finally found an answer. I originally thought that if I went to Italy, I would make a better film. It’s true; I believed that because a great many of my inspirations shot their films in Italy, my film would surely be better if it were filmed there too. Obviously, this was nonsense.
But in realizing this idea of mine, I learned a valuable lesson about my relationship with inspiration. After I fell in love with Jaws, I would spend nights sitting along the headboard of my bed, Nerf-gun in hand, re-enacting the final, climactic scene of the movie. I wanted to be Chief Brody.
After watching Spider-Man and The Dark Knight, my next two Halloween costumes had been decided. I wanted to be the hero. In watching Goodfellas, The Godfather, and Reservoir Dogs, I became attracted to the gangster sub-genre. I wanted to make movies as cool as those ones. And in experiencing films like Cinema Paradiso and The Hand Of God had he not explored the reality of his own traumatic life? It’s impossible.
The very nature of these stories is that they wouldn’t exist outside of the lives of their creators. Inspiration had blinded me from this essential piece of the puzzle: myself.
That’s a Wrap
So, I made and set my film in Italy. Not because it would make my film better, but because it wouldn’t. Just as escaping to a new country wouldn’t make the characters in Inherited Instinct any less flawed as human beings. Just as trying to reproduce the impact of those who inspired me wouldn’t result in my own true and authentic exploration of emotion. I don’t say this to discount the importance of all the inspirations in my life.
My inspirations forever drive me forward as an artist. Inherited Instinct wouldn’t exist without the shark in Jaws, nor would it exist without the “funny how?” monologue from Goodfellas. But it also wouldn’t exist without me. My feelings of doubt. My feelings of hypocrisy. My love for my culture. My love for the cinema. That’s what makes Inherited Instinct my film, and that’s why I made it in Italy.
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