“Cinquecento, Cinquecento”, Tom Hanks says quickly and I start giggling. “I just like the sound of that,” he adds, “Salone del Cinquecento, that sounds so much better than the Hall of 500.” I am standing in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence interviewing Tom Hanks about his work on the film “Inferno” and he’s given my cameraman Pietro and me a case of the giggles.
But first a little background.
This week I had the good fortune to go to Florence for the Inferno “junket”. “Junket” is a word used by our Entertainment department when we are invited onto a movie set to interview the stars and director of a film. I just looked up the word because I am not sure how it evolved to describe interviews with stars. The second definition in my American Heritage dictionary defines a junket as: “ an excursion or tour; especially a trip covering some professional circuit.” So I guess our use falls into that definition. During a “junket” you don’t have a free hand to cover as you wish. It is an invitation by the production company and they set the rules.
In this case we were given an appointment at the Pitti Palace in Florence at 5:30pm while the cast and crew were in the middle of filming in the Boboli Gardens visible from the balcony. We—the main news agencies – AP, AFP, Reuters, and ANSA– were taken to an elegant room with beautiful chandeliers and set up in a media line. When the actors and director arrived we each got more or less five minutes with each of them.
For anyone who does not know, “Inferno” is the third film being made by director Ron Howard based on the best-selling thrillers by Dan Brown that follow the adventures of Robert Langdon, a Harvard Professor of Symbology. The first film “Da Vinci Code” was mostly shot in Paris, followed by “Angels and Demons” in Rome, and now “Inferno” which is being shot in Florence, Venice and Istanbul. Tom Hanks has played Robert Langdon in the first two and is now again in “Inferno.”
AP Cameraman Pietro De Cristofaro, AP Photographer Andrew Medichini and I took a morning train from Rome arriving at noon and hopped in a taxi to go to Piazzale Michelangelo for the spectacular “top-shot” of Florence with the Ponte Vecchio bridge stretched out over the Arno River, and the Cathedral with Brunelleschi’s Dome with its orange tiles. We then headed back into town to meet up with Beatrice Fabbrani from FlorenceInferno.com who leads tours of Florence following the trail of Robert Langdon and his female lead Sienna Brooks.
In the book Professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital room in Florence with a gunshot wound to his head and no memory of ever being there. He has to make a quick escape from the hospital with a beautiful young British doctor, Sienna Brooks when a hired killer tries to shoot him dead.
Langdon and Brooks set out on a wild, intellectual scavenger hunt that starts with Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” part of “The Divine Comedy”, an epic poem written in the 14th century, which dramatically describes a descent into Hell. The scavenger hunt then turns to Sandro Botticelli’s painting “The Map of Hell” which visually depicts humans in various forms of torture as described in Dante’s “Inferno”
Beatrice led us to the statue of Dante Alighieri on the side of the Uffizi Gallery and pointed out a few key spots that appear in the book, the Palazzo Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor.
We then took off to find out where the film crews were working. A taxi driver told us near the Porta Romana roundabout. We briefly stopped there to film some stunt crews preparing for a scene before heading to our appointment at the Palazzo Pitti.
When the actors finally arrived, it was such a pleasure talking to them. Believe me, this is not always the case. I’ve covered the Rome Film festival for years and also the Venice Film festival and some stars can be pains in the neck. Not on this film.
Tom Hanks came charging into the room with the media line and greeted everyone warmly with a “Hi, I’m Tom.”
During my five minutes with Tom Hanks, I think my cameraman Pietro and I were laughing most of the time. He was really funny. He told us how they are filming amidst the historic works of arts, running around past Botticelli and Da Vinci paintings and past Michelangelo statues. He said that the Italian Carabinieri police, which has a special squad that is dedicated to protecting Italy’s cultural heritage, has sent a team to make sure they don’t knock over a statue or scratch up a Botticelli in all their Hollywood enthusiasm.
Hanks thought that having the Carabinieri there was probably a good idea and I did too, but the image it conjured up of these elegant carabinieri desperately ducking between movie cameras to try to catch a falling sculpture or block a stunt man from banging up against a Da Vinci painting was very amusing.
I also had to laugh during my interview with Ron Howard who – in addition to telling me some serious and interesting things about the movie—said that one of his biggest challenges in Florence is making sure he doesn’t get any selfie-sticks in his shots. He said they keep on popping in from nowhere. I guest tourists get near the set and can’t resist a chance to immortalize themselves with an infernal selfie.
French actor Omar Sy – the star of French movie “The Untouchables” –plays the Inferno’s bad guy Christoph Bruder. As far as I could tell, the only thing killer about Omar Sy is his amazing smile. I thought I might melt to the floor when he smiled at me.
I was a bit surprised by beautiful Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen who plays Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, the brilliant 61-year-old director of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the book. Knudsen is probably best known for playing Danish Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg in the Danish political drama “Borgen.” But when Knudsen stepped up in front of our camera and I saw how young and attractive she is I wondered how she could play an older woman. She seemed the right fit for the dynamic Dr. Sienna Brooks (played by Felicity Jones). I immediately mentioned this and asked her about the long, silver ringlets that Sinskey has in the book. Knudsen explained that her character in the film has been changed but could not elaborate, so I will be curious to see what emerges.
Finally I spoke to the lovely Felicity Jones. The 31-old actress with gorgeous green eyes, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Jane Wilde Hawking in “The Theory of Everything.” Jones told me she is working hard to keep up with the talents of Dr. Sienna Brooks who she described as “incredible”, “witty” and “very, very bright”. She said “I have to be on my game, so I have to take it easy in the evenings and rest, so that when I am at work the next day I can be as quick as she is.”
Well, blog readers, I guess that is about it on my “Inferno” junket and all I can add is that if you want to put yourself in a good mood, try saying “cinquecento” (chin-quay chen-toe) like an Italian five times fast.
Too funny that there are tour guides for the book now. I vividly remember reading The DaVinci Code. I’d bought it right when it was released at the airport on my way to Europe, missed seeing a majority of Warsaw b/c I was holed up in my hotel reading it all the way through, then gave it to my brother to read when I got to his place in Germany, and by the time we got to Paris about a week after I’d left the US, we’d both read it and I think we were the very first DaVinci Code tourists. The people at the church were perplexed about why we wanted to see the Rose Line, one of them didn’t even seem to know what it was, etc. Such trendsetters we were!
Wow, you really were trendsetters! Dan Brown has spawned a big tour business. There are not Angel and Demons tours in Rome too. He really does make it fun to explore a city– gives one a mission.
Yes, five minutes does go by very quickly and does not give one time to ask many questions or to dig very deep. I think it is a routine that journalists and actors are pretty used to on these “junkets”. The press flacks from the film companies warn us ahead of time that we are not allowed to ask questions off topic –like about lovers or other scandals. We have to stick to the film they are working on. So the actors usually come in with a bit of a spiel ready and the journalists have their standard questions about the place they are, their role, the director and other actors they are working with etc.
Despite the limited opportunity to do the story my way, I still had a lot of fun.
Oh what fun this must have been. But five minutes is so short to interview someone. It must have gone by in a flash! Infernal selfie sticks? Clever girl you.
sounds like a lot of fun, hope it was. buon lavoro!
It was lots of fun. I had spent the week before covering migrants arriving in Sicily and was definitely ready for a frivolous story.
Looking forward to another great movie. Love Dan Brown’s books! Watch out for low flying Selfie sticks!
These selfie-sticks are a real problem. They have now banned them at the Colosseum for fear of the crowds with the selfie sticks scratching up the walls and poking eyeballs out. But, that said, selfie sticks are a lot of fun.
Very fun post. I love reading about places I know and seeing pictures too, of course. And I am also a fan of Tom Hanks. I think I might have been the first person on the waiting list for this book at the local library and loved it because I knew so many places (until Istanbul). I have taken the other Dan Brown “book tours” in Rome and Paris and have saved the tour you mentioned here. I hope it is operating around December 1 when I get there.
An interesting side note about the Angel and Demons tour–when it ended on top of Castel San Angelo, the narration didn’t sound right. On the way down a young man on the tour asked the guide about it and I chimed in. It seems there is/was something different in the U.S. and U.K. editions, and the tour was based on the U.K.
I also admit I’m a big Dante fan and (I’m bragging now) even to the “why” comments from my English teach friends, I said “because I want to.” Yes, I did read “The Divine Comedy.” Of course, it took me about a year because I was reading the John Ciardi translation which has just about as many (and maybe more) pages of notes than cantos. A canto or two a day plus notes worked fine.
Again thanks for a fun post.
A presto,
Joan
Good for you for reading the Divine Comedy. I must humbly admit I have not read it and I should. I have read bits a pieces with my daughter when she was in Junior High and I was helping her with her homework and it certainly is powerful stuff. We also have the DVD of the Benigni performance of the Divine Comedy and I must watch that. I think you will enjoy the “Inferno” tour in Florence if you get a chance to take it.
bathing in reflected glory instead of ass’s milk – does any of the glitter stay? :-)
I bet that was fun, and I am sure I will enjoy the film. Imagine the privilege of being able to shoot in all of these fantastic locations. I have enjoyed Dan Brown’s books, and I love Tom Hanks (who, by the way, is looking more and more like John Wayne as the years go by) as Robert Langdon. And I’d have to agree with him that it’s a good idea to have the Carabinieri nearby on Italian art and culture protection patrol On that subject – infernal selfie sticks Ha ! no kidding. Those things drive me nuts. By the way, have they banned them at the Pitti Palace? I hope so. I can just see someone wielding one and ripping right through a canvas, chipping plaster or wreaking some other havoc.
Fun story, Trisha. Sorry for the late post. I am getting caught up on your blog as I have been in Italy for the past two weeks. (Long story, my iPad dropped and shattered into a gazillion pieces so I wasn’t as connective as I normally am and wasn’t able to see these great reads).
I love Tom Hanks and these Dan Brown movies are a fun romp through Europe. With that said, I was really disappointed when I read “Inferno.” I was waiting for the action to begin or a big twist to happen and it just felt like Dan Brown phoned this one in. Disappointing because so much could have been done with the backdrop of Florence.
I totally agree with you Kay –the “Inferno” book was a big disappointment. It had all the elements to make a fantastic read, but it was as though Dan Brown was in too much of a hurry to have another best-seller that, as you say, he just came up with the idea and “phoned it in”– someone in the office glued it all together but it is missing so much. Oh well.
But I do LOVE the Carabinieri photos. I must confess something to you and all of your readers (I feel like this is an online AA meeting. I have a collection of Carabinieri photos that I have taken from all my travels to Italy…like an addiction to “carbs”! :-)
Yes, they Carabinieri have the reputation of being a little bit dumb, but who cares, they look awesome in their uniforms, and even better in the fancy dress riding a horse. Bring on the carabinieri-carbs! Must remind myself to do a blog post just on that!
Your reference to Omar Sy (AKA Kevin Wamo) is for his starring role in “The Intouchables” — which you reported as “The Untouchables”; it means the same of course, but it is a full fledged French movie and as such deserves the respect of the proper spelling when being referenced. It was the first time I had been introduced to any of the actors in that film and it is now a favorite. I watch it several times a month…some times twice in one day. Some days I cannot decide who I like best, Francois or Omar –lol. I have watched it enough to learn just how many original French words are used in the English language. I am especially impressed by the different words in French for the same meaning in English (profanities — of course). I give it another year and I should be able to speak a modicum of French fairly well — not just the swear words either…HA!!