«Pino Daniele was the anti-stereotype par excellence», interview with director Nicola Prosatore From October 15, the musical biopic about the Neapolitan artist, played by Massimiliano Caiazzo, arrives in cinemas

Nicola Prosatore, director and screenwriter of Je so' pazzo, was born and raised in the same neighborhood as Pino Daniele. He attended the same schools, met the same people, which made him the obvious choice from the outset to direct the musical biopic, inspired by the book named after the musician and written by his son Alessandro Daniele. But the author, together with co-screenwriters Edoardo Puma and Carlo Salsa, had a very specific angle in mind. To tell the story of Pino Daniele as a coming-of-age story that ends with the peak of the 1981 concert in Piazza del Plebiscito, at which the singer was just twenty-six years old and had managed to bring together 200,000 people. A glimpse into who Pinotto was before he became Pino, in cinemas from October 15 and portrayed for the occasion by Massimiliano Caiazzo. 

In 2022 you made your fiction debut with Piano piano, and already with your second feature film you have to contend with an icon. How did this transition come about?

I think Je so' Pazzo came about precisely because of Piano piano. Even though one story is more self-contained while the other revolves around such a towering figure, it was thanks to my debut that producer Filippo Valsecchi contacted me to make the biopic. During our first conversations, it was clear that we both had in mind the idea of telling a well-defined chapter of Pino Daniele's journey, and in fact, much like Piano piano, Je so' pazzo is also a coming-of-age film. It's the story of a young man who was searching for his own voice, his own way of expressing himself, and who poured into his work his humble origins, his detachment from his family, the social evolution that followed, his relationship with his father and, above all, with the city of Naples. I also think the film is a coherent continuation of my career, given that my first passion was music itself.

Did you play music too?

I did what today would be called producing. I started out playing bass, then gave it up fairly early on and began to be, let's say, the man behind the machines. Naples in the Nineties was something of an equivalent to the boom the city had experienced in the '70s. Both were periods of great creative fertility for a city that seemed to be entering a second youth. During my high school years I worked as a producer, and that sense of technique and musical structure is something I still carry with me today, especially in my editing work. 

This first musical boom you're talking about is very much present in Je so' pazzo, and Pino Daniele was one of its pillars.

That's also my favorite Pino. The one who stopped being Pinotto and became a semi-deity. The film ends precisely with the handover we make of the artist to the public. And for me, much as I loved him throughout his entire career, that's where the highest concentration of his output lies. 

Are those also your earliest memories of Pino Daniele?

Partly. I don't have very precise memories, but that's because Pino Daniele's records were playing in my home from the time I was very young. It's also worth saying that back then music aged more slowly. 

Did you ever speak with anyone who was at the concert in Piazza del Plebiscito? Perhaps someone from your own family? 

Absolutely. In general, for the reconstruction work, I was able to speak with people who knew Pino personally, from family members to his first wife Dorina, who was very generous, as was his son Alex. The concert is still, to this day, a mythological event in the city's collective fabric. We incorporated and drew on archival material, but there's far less of it than one might think, because so many people attended the event that they were climbing up the lighting and camera towers, so everything had to be dismantled to prevent it all from collapsing and people getting hurt. Some of my family members were there too, but we never got around to talking about it — though you only need to ask any Neapolitan to understand how massive the turnout was, with at least one in three residents claiming to have been there. And one shouldn't underestimate the emotional weight the concert carried: the Irpinia earthquake had left a deep wound, and the concert latched onto that, giving people a cathartic moment of freedom. 

Did you ever get to see Pino Daniele perform live?

Yes, at the tenth anniversary of the '81 concert, again in Piazza del Plebiscito. But for us Neapolitans, going to see Pino Daniele was like going to do the shopping. An automatic, obvious gesture — not something you had to decide or think about, you just went. I also caught him often at the Festa dell'Unità events my parents used to attend; I have to say, those were fun.

This sense of the real that you describe — from conversations with people who knew him to the collective memory in which Pino Daniele is immersed — also resonates in the decision to include archival material within the film's narrative fabric. What was the thinking behind that choice?

I'm used to working with sources, to engaging with the real. I did it before moving into fiction filmmaking, and after reading Alex's book and drafting the screenplay with Edoardo Puma and Carlo Salsa, I felt that incorporating archival material would help better convey the DNA of the city in which Pino came of age. Every element — from the interviews conducted to the conversations with the family, right down to the visit to the house in Formia — served to reconstruct the environment that shaped the artist. We even have an unreleased, never-published demo of Je so' pazzo in which, instead of singing "E oggi voglio parlare", he sings "E oggi voglio sparare." It's a gem that, beyond revealing who Pino Daniele was, also gives a sense of what Italy was like in the late Seventies. 

The portrait of Pino Daniele in Je so' pazzo is certainly not a flattering one.

First of all, while watching the film, one has to keep in mind that he was a man of a different era, carrying with him a legacy tied as much to his family as to the places he frequented. He had a toughness — a street and dockside toughness — understood in the way of the '60s and '70s. That said, both from speaking with people who knew him and from what some say openly and others only whisper, it was clear he had a strong, well-defined, fully formed character. I wouldn't say unlikeable, but he was certainly demanding in his work and decisive in his personal choices. In the film, he also has the fire of youth behind him, with many milestones reached early — from success to marriage and children. 

Are there any films or references you think Je so' pazzo might be associated with in terms of how the main character is portrayed? 

Walk the Line about Johnny Cash. Not for the film's narrative arc, but for the way it stays close to the character. True, Johnny gave the press plenty to talk about, but the film focuses on the childhood trauma, the relationship with drugs, with June Carter, and on everything that may have made him a figure considered difficult. The same happens in Control about Ian Curtis, which has a different tone but shows the dichotomy between the musician's anguish and ambition. In any case, when I agreed to direct the film, it was clear I had no interest in making a saintly portrait of Pino Daniele — not least because that's the worst possible way to talk about a legend. 

What were the risks?

Building him a monument, turning him into a trading card. Instead, he's an artist I've studied and love so deeply that I was determined not to fall into that trap. One must also remember that his relationship with Naples was not without its complications. He's a figure now obviously protected by his own legend — a source of pride and an amplification of the city's worth — but in the era when Pino was working, he was considered a revolutionary, not necessarily in a positive sense. He was a provocateur, a committed artist, not through allegiance to any political party, but because he called out what was wrong, both in his songs and in interviews. He's a figure who broke something at a social and cultural level, both in music and on a thematic plane. 

A rupture also shaped by the influences he absorbed from an early age.

There was already a strong American cultural dominance when he was a boy, and spending time around the port made it inevitable that he'd breathe it in. There were nightclubs for the Americans who came ashore, who listened to the blues. A cross-pollination I wanted to hint at briefly at the start of the film. 

Pino Daniele always fought against the clichés of his city. Do you think we've gone back to telling a more stereotyped version of Naples — perhaps a more tourist-friendly one? 

If cities like Naples — but really all major cities, from Rome to Milan, Palermo to Turin — lean on stereotypes, it's because stereotypes are reassuring. In an era like the one we're living through, and I don't want to oversimplify by going straight to social media but that's where we are, being able to immediately identify something — even a place — through a set of well-defined characteristics makes people feel more at ease and, at the same time, drives broader market consumption. More standardized models tend to be favored because they're easier to communicate and make their audience feel safe.

Do you think Pino Daniele would have hated today's world?

I can't say for certain. He's certainly become, in the popular imagination, one of those legends to be protected — and sometimes exploited for commercial and marketing purposes. But he will always remain a symbol of resistance. Pino was the great anti-stereotype storyteller par excellence, and in the film we tried to distill this tendency of his that he carried throughout his entire life. There was even a moment we ultimately didn't include in the film, where I had shot some Super 8 panoramic footage of Naples today that played while Pino spoke about how important it was to protect the city from purely commercial interests. It was cut because it didn't integrate well into the story, but it was a way of seeing what Pino was saying then and what the situation looks like now. 

Before we wrap up this interview, we can't not talk about Massimiliano Caiazzo's performance. How did the casting come about, and above all, how did the actor transform himself to inhabit the character?

You could say Massi and I made our cinema debut together, even though he wasn't the lead in Piano piano. I never had any doubts that he was the right choice to play Pino Daniele. Massi comes from the world of competitive sport, and I knew he would give a hundred percent. He still has the mindset of someone who competes and has a goal to reach — something he approaches with extreme seriousness and total dedication to a project. He studied singing, took guitar lessons, even though the voice you hear during the songs in the film isn't his. But that's fine, because we didn't want a mimicry exercise that was an end in itself. That's also why he put on weight rather than relying on prosthetics.

How much weight did he put on?

About twenty kilos. The conversation we had was that he didn't just need to be as heavy as Pino — he needed to feel the weight on his body, exactly as Pino did. Weight was an important part of his life; it often determined how he felt. There were periods when he trained a lot, others when he dieted or threw himself headlong into food. His physical appearance was crucial to how he perceived himself and believed he was seen by society, and it was a way of being in the world that I wanted Massi to experience and convey. 

The film closes with a dedication: to those who are half black, to those who have been, and to those who will be. Who is, for you, half black?

Obviously all the protagonists of this story. Those who exist on the margins, but also those who carry both a part of light and a part of darkness within themselves. It's also a reference to the culture Pino had devoted himself to — "half black" was a dedication to Mario Musella, who had a Neapolitan mother and a Native American father. And likewise James Senese, also with a Neapolitan mother and an African American father. It's a dedication to these children of the war, to tormented souls, to those who are searching — as Pino once was — to find their own voice.