From Tortora to Benigni, Giancarlo Governi tells his ‘friends’

There are many stories that governs, among the founders of Rai2, rattles in its Memoir who, from the Rome of the 1940s, arrives at the golden age of our television. Pleasant memories, but also sad and touching. Like that, says Governi interviewed by Adnkronos, on Enzo Tortora imprisoned in the penitentiary of Bergamo. One of the masters of television, ‘father’ of ‘Portobello’, had been accused of drug trafficking and a Camorra association.

“When he was arrested – he says – we fell into the most total bewilderment. I went to the Bergamo prison. I entered the speech and this man came completely destroyed. He had gone to zero alone with a razor blade and had also made cuts to the skin. As soon as I saw it he asked me: ‘Tell me what a galando does here in here? , we know it is innocent “. With the conductor of ‘Portobello’, governments had “a historical relationship because – he recalls – I had been the director of some vintages of the broadcast. It was a revolutionary program that was disappointed all by making crazy listening. Among other things, from ‘Portobello’ were Take out many formats including ‘Whoever saw it’ is ‘marriage agency’ “.

A positive memory, however, is that linked to the rise of Benigni. After knowing him, following him in a show he held in a cellar called Alberichino Malgrade there were no spectators, he led him to Rai where they welcomed him with distrust, “with the exception of Massimo Fichera”. They offered him a “supporting pay while we wanted him as the protagonist. I remember – I started fighting with the officials of the Rai Scriptures Office. But, a certain point, Benigni stopped me and said to me: ‘Giancarlo, leave it alone. Now I pay this because I am a dead man, but the day will come when these gentlemen will run after me and give me what I want ‘”.

Benigni, continues governments, “is the son of poor peasants, the father was a sharecropper. He studied up to the third grade because he did not have the means to continue. It was a self -taught: when I met him, he was just over twenty years old, He knew all of Dante’s hell. In addition to Tortora and Benigni, governments yes in his book also deals with the other adults of the television of the past. What inheritance did they leave? “I think Pippo Baudo – he replies – is the one who burst better than everyone the great generalist television, with his name, his presence and his way of speaking. A great innovator was Maurizio Costanzo: He was born in Rai but then went to Mediaset. The pioneer was Mike Bongiorno“.

Among the programs he has designed, Governments is linked to a particular transmission, ‘Supergulp!’a format dedicated to the world of comics. “It was a revolutionary program, we conquered a completely new audience that had read the comics only in the newspapers,” says Governi, remembering that “we entered the war with Mike Bongiorno. The program was aired on the second network on the same day when there is It was ‘Risriatutto’, which was the top program. myth because now everyone remembers ‘Supergulp!’ Like a program of the golden age of television. To pack a half hour documentary. Then we made four seasons and something like 26 episodes. That seemed Humphrey Bogart kneeling in front of Alberto Canciando: ‘This gentleman is my teacher’.

Returning to this television now, it is obvious to open a small window on the Sanremo Festival On which there are already many today between the announcements of the conductor Carlo Conti and Pagella to the songs in the race. Will you see the Festival? “I always see Sanremo because it is the mirror of Italy. It has become a show, a large showcase in which the best that can be offered in the field of the song is represented in a very assorted way: there is beautiful music and the denial of the Music, there is a bit of everything. that the “modern festival was launched by Pippo Baudo”.

From the story of the so -called ‘acquisition friends’, governments finally passes to mention also the friends of a life, those who draw “a disappeared world. I was born – he says – in via della Lungara in a very poor family. I am the only child. This is It was my luck because if I had a brother I would have stopped in the fifth grade. Choir of the Sistine Chapel. I was 1950, I had a white voice. Rome dialogue with Vincenzo Salemme. (by Carlo Roma)