VIRGIL AND A NOT-SO-DIVINE COMEDY

MIS-ADVENTURES IN THE SCREEN TRADE

I had lunch this week with a friend who just bought an apartment on rue de Bievre, one of those narrow, crooked, almost medieval streets that dead-end in the Seine. Among possible former residents, he mentioned, was the 14^th century poet Dante, who may have visited Paris during his exile from Italy in 1307 and 1309.

This reminded me that, some years ago,  my wife and I became involved in a project to turn the Italian Renaissance into a drama series for one of the big American cable companies. Rumour had it that, not long after the success of The Sopranos, a gentleman in a shiny suit with an ominous bulge under his left armpit called on the company president and, claiming to represent an Italian-American friendship alliance, suggested he should be producing programmes that showed Italian culture in a more favourable light.

Hence our project, among the principals of which was the actor Roy Scheider. We spent two very agreeable years bouncing between Paris, Rome and Florence, brainstorming the format for a series that none of us really believed would come to anything, and which, as anticipated, was bumped in favour of the BBC-produced Rome.

To describe the experience in detail would take more space than I have here, though I will say it called to mind James Thurber’s description of life on the French riviera in the twenties, among “knaves and rascals, adventurers and imposters, pochards and indiscrets, whose ingenious exploits, sometimes in full masquerade costume, sometimes in the nude, were easy and pleasant to record.” 

I had some original ideas for casting. One was Vin Diesel as the crusading monk Jerome Savonarola; if one can trust his portraits, both had the same brutish mien and hulking build.

And I was keen to have Gwyneth Paltrow play Simonetta Vespucci, model for Botticelli and lover of the young Giuliano de Medicis.  

Before that, however, the producer had to sign off on the narrative. And, while he liked most of my ideas, he saw one glaring omission.

“Where’s Dante?”

That rhyme came to mind about Cecil B. DeMille, much against his will, being forced to omit Moses from the War of the Roses.

“Dante died around 1321,” I said. “The Renaissance didn’t begin until the late 1400s, at the earliest. It would be like…well,  a World War II film including Napoleon.”

But I should have known better than to cite historical fact to a movie person.

“They’ll expect Dante,” he said stubbornly, pushing the script back across the desk. “See what you can do.”

I had nothing against Dante. In fact, I’d long wanted to write something about an incident in his infatuation with the beautiful but unattainable young Beatrice. So as not to appear to be stalking her when she appeared in the streets of Florence, he hired another woman to accompany him, and pretend to be the object of his affection. We don’t know her name. He calls her only the Lady of the Screen. Who was she? How did she feel about being used in this way? Was she in love with Dante herself? It was a situation rife with possibilities.

But there was no denying that Dante had no place in the Renaissance.  I tried to enlist Roy Scheider’s help but he deferred to the producer. Talking with him, however, reminded me that his thin, humourless face had something of the severity of Dante’s portraits. And with the realisation came inspiration.

 For the series Six Feet Under,  about a family of Los Angeles undertakers, writer Alan Ball ingeniously killed off the father in the first episode, only to bring him back as a sarcastic commentator on the lives of his children. Why not have Dante do the same, appearing at crucial moments to advise or admonish the Medics and Borgias ?

“And Roy,” I added as the clincher, “can play him!”  

What actor could turn down a chance like that? We were already measuring him for his robes when news reached us that we’d been trumped by Rome.

That admirable series was cut short halfway through its second season, but not, I assume, before placating the man in the shiny suit and his associates. (Whether it did anything to improve the image of Italian culture is debatable.)  There have since been series about both the Medicis and the Borgias, but none, I believe, including the Lady of the Screen – whom I saw, for some reason, being played by the young Meg Ryan.

With Roy Scheider as Dante?  Hmmm.

 Maybe it’s just as well they pulled the plug.