Pete Croatto, May 2014

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

        John Turturro surely has done these quick phone interviews before. He must know the rules: offer compact, easily digestible answers to questions from the voice calling from New York or Topeka or wherever. Maybe the bored interviewer will give up early so the star’s lunch hour can be a bit more leisurely.

        That is not how Turturro, 57, operates. He gives long, thoughtful answers that wind and weave to their conclusion. It’s an unconventional route and a bit unnerving for me. So is the fact that he’s unfailingly polite. (“Thank you for looking at those other movies, by the way,” he says. “That was very thoughtful.”)

        Ah, but this is John Turturro, who became famous by being one of the most versatile and memorable supporting actors of the last 25 years. The guy even brought levity to Adam Sandler’s later movies, which is a miracle.

        Turturro is such a good actor that it’s easy to overlook his directing career. Fading Gigolo is his fifth film. Like his most recent efforts—the unsentimental musical Romance & Cigarettes and his love letter to Neapolitan music, Passione—Fading Gigolo basks in the complexities of regular people encountering love. Turturro plays New York City florist Fioravante, who at the urging of his unemployed friend, Murray (Woody Allen, playing, well, Woody Allen), becomes an in-demand prostitute. Things go from fun to complicated when Fioravante starts catering to the needs of Avigal  (Vanessa Paradis), the lonely and sheltered widow of a Hasidic Rabbi. Fading Gigolo [Pete Croatto’s review is on page 20] is a movie that doesn’t fit a mold, kind of like Turturro. 

Pete Croatto: I read that Woody Allen’s barber…

John Turturro: It was my barber. Our haircutter, actually. He may be insulted if we call him a barber.

PC: I read that he inadvertently pushed you toward Fading Gigolo, but what else pushed you toward writing and directing it?

JT: Well, I had this feeling that Woody and I could be a good pair in something, and my haircutter agreed. I knew that Woody liked my work, and I’m a huge fan of his. I thought, ‘Wow, it could be interesting if these two guys, because of financial circumstances, which happens quite frequently nowadays—little shops going out of business—had to reinvent themselves and they wound up in the sex trade.’ Woody loved that idea. He encouraged me to make it as nuanced as possible, because lots of people have crazy ideas, but then where does it lead? A comedy can be very delicate, and you can have a really human comedy. You can say a lot of things that way. 

Woody encouraged me to develop it along those lines…I did many different drafts, got to know him quite well, and we worked [together on Broadway] in the middle of it. There’ve been so many movies made about [sex]—dramatic movies, but sometimes movies that have some humor, too. When you deal with intimacy or sex, I thought it would be interesting to have some kind of religious theme that it butts up against, because it’s hard to do a movie about sex without religion. They’re interconnected in many ways—you’re dealing with a lot of suppression, and that’s a big part of the world still.  

I think one of the strengths of the film is that it has different levels to it. I tried to show that visually, socioeconomically, and religiously.

PC: I have a feeling that, if someone else had directed or written a movie like this, it would have either turned into a farce, or a victory lap for guys: “Oh, I wonder who he’s going to hook up with next?” So I got the impression that the tone was very important to you.

JT: Yeah, well, you can’t apply tone. Tone comes out of specificity. You can’t say, ‘Well, this is all going to be red because then it would be really boring.’ You need variety within it and you need different levels and so in the end the movie’s about friendship and the unceasing need that we have for intimacy, for human connection. 

There are people who’ve never committed to anyone, and that’s like my character, who’s very comfortable with women and loves them, but has never found someone to share his life with. In the course of the film, there’s actually this romance and kind of love story that happened. So I thought that was something that could be affecting. Many times comedies are okay for 20, 30 minutes, and that’s it. It’s over. It doesn’t really go anywhere. To have a great comedy is really rare.

When you see it with an audience, people really respond and women love the movie. Men dig it, too, but women really go for it. I think that says something, so I’m happy about that.

PC:  You should be. It’s a film that you could describe it as being cheeky but it’s substantive. In your recent movies—Passione and Romance & Cigarettes—there seems to be an appreciation for the past. And I saw this a lot in Fading Gigolo: The occupations these characters have, the music that was used, even Sofía Vergara waxing poetic on Julius Erving. But I also got the sense that that sort of nostalgia applies to how men treat women. Is that accurate?

JT: Yeah. Things are lost and things are gained in the world. That’s why retro happens all the time. People are dressing like they’re in the ‘50s and the ‘60s. [Laughs] There’s a reason.There are lots of things that are lost when these little shops [e.g., Murray’s bookstore] go out of business. People don’t have as much human contact—they have more electronic contact. Not that that’s bad, but the appreciation of that also helps us understand the present.

I love history and think if you don’t understand it, then you don’t really understand where you are now, because history repeats itself—just in different guises with the advent of progress. But we’re still having the same struggles we’ve always had. So yeah, that certainly interests me…If a man is very confident physically and can take an engine apart, do electrical work, go into the bathroom and fix something, work in a flower shop, in a way he’s a replacement for the cowboy.

Paul Auster, my friend, wonderful writer, said, ‘Well the guy [Fioravante] is basically a samurai or a cowboy.’ He’s a taciturn guy. And I thought that would be a good foil for Woody’s character.

PC: I’m reluctant to say this movie is about sex, because it’s more about human connection.

JT: Yeah, that’s what it is. Sex is physical and beyond, you know what I mean? The reason people pay for sex sometimes is just for the physical release. But many times they pay for it because they’re looking for something…something that they’re not getting even when they’re in a relationship. Or if they’re not in a relationship. Or they want a crazy adventure —there’s a big hole somewhere.

You want to tap into things when you’re making a film—I want to find something that I not only love, but that people can relate to—but without dumbing it down.

PC: I noticed in Fading Gigolo, as well as in Passione and Romance & Cigarettes, that you have a love of ambiguity. Audiences might not like Avigal and Fioravante’s relationship if they’ve seen more conventional stuff. And in Passione you mention the contradiction and irony of Neapolitan songs and why they matter. Is that a draw for you?

JT: Sure. I mean, listen, I’ve done a lot of wonderful films. I’ve also done a lot of wonderful plays from Beckett to Chekov, who are two of my favorite writers. And when you read great writers—that’s what they’re exploring: all the contradictions of life. There’s a real energy to that. I tied [the movie] up in a different way at one time, but thought, ‘That’s not what I wrote and it’s not truthful.’ 

If a woman in [the Hasidic community] defends herself, that means she wants to stay in that world. She’s got children, a family. What is exchanged between the two people is going to remain with them. It’s going to help her and affect him, too, in a different way. That’s what life is. When you’re given this fairy tale ending I always think even audiences are sick of that, you know what I mean? Once in a while that works great. But you almost do a disservice. 

PC: I would agree, yeah.

JT: People start laughing and they’re really back into it. So you’re going back and forth between tenderness and the comic adventure that [Fioravante and Murray]are on, too. Our lives are like that, you know? [Laughs] Even though we imagine that they’re not, you know? I think that’s actually helpful. When I see films like that, it makes me feel less alone, actually, and part of a community.

PC: Do you feel that way when you direct? 

JT: Yeah, I mean I feel like I have a chance to express what interests me, and what interests a lot of people. Which is a big part of life—the dynamics between men and women is a huge part of life. And love stories…there are all kinds of love stories. That’s something that really does interest me, because I think that speaks to our human dilemma. And even our politics come out of those dynamics. 

PC: Many, many people know you as an actor. Do you want to be known more for your acting work or for your work as a director?

JT: You know what? I don’t really care. I just would like to be able to do more things that interest me. And I’d like to direct some more. I’ve done a few movies since then, but I feel like I’m developing my voice and approach. I’d like to exercise those muscles.

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An ICON contributor since 2006, Pete Croatto also writes movie reviews for The Weekender. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Broadway.com, Grantland, Philadelphia, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @PeteCroatto.