Maccio Capatonda is melancholy. He is reflective, profound and carries behind that compliance syndrome that often afflicts the best. But it was precisely this melancholy hidden behind a unique comedy of its kind that had made him enter the heart of the public with his sketches, the famous trailers and his jokes that have become iconic.
And his skill as a comedian, author, creative is seen entirely in his latest creation, the TV despair series, on Prime Video from March 20, a product that stands out from the usual series all the same as themselves and that shows us an unpublished side of Marcello Macchia (this is the real name of “Maccio Capondonda”) who tries, for the first time, in a dramatic role, putting himself in his naked and telling us a real time of his. Vita: an existential and creative crisis that has wanted to bring to the screen from reality.
In a society where everyone always shows Perfetti, he had the courage to tell, in the despair zone series, a great personal crisis, how difficult it was to do so?
“I made this series a little to psychoanize myself hoping that then the result could be universal. The courage for me was not as much as to expose myself emotionally as to do a job not in line with those of the past and I am a little afraid of not being understood. But I wanted to put myself barely compared to an audience that has always known me as a comedian and therefore hidden by certain masks and for this reason.”
What is an aspect of Marcello who kept hidden behind Maccio’s mask?
“I have been deepening my spiritual life for a few years. I do some meditation retreats where I do not speak with anyone for several days, I have no phones, nor books to read. So you learn to live a life in which you are not prey to blind reactions to the stimuli, because today we are truly bombed by so many stimuli that we no longer have the lucidity to act.
Was meditation useful also in work?
“Yes, because an artist must be on fire with himself. If you lose all this, then what do you say, what do you give to your audience? You don’t know what you are, so you can’t have a point of view anymore, you are only dragged between likes, views, positive, negative comments and therefore you no longer know where to communicate and what to communicate”.
Did he understand what his personal crisis was born from?
“From the lack of desire to do. A creative and inspiration block after all is the lack of desire to do something. I found myself in front of the white sheet and I did not need to write, I did not want the desire. And this happens when you reach a successful position and you feel not very stimulated. The desire to do is missing because you already feel like you arrive. When you start doing things to have an appreciation from the public, you do not think you do not find the Nothing”.
How did you pass this difficult moment?
“I have passed it over time, with the help of colleagues, the other authors of the series and also with the help of a psychologist that I contacted a little to do research on the topic – because this is a series that also speaks of therapy – and a little to understand some personal issues”.
Do you think creativity is inflated today?
“It is not creativity to be inflated, but the mechanism. Very often we are not creative and therefore we steal things, or we follow fashions, we try to lean on trends and this makes everyone less creative. In my opinion true creativity has to do with love because it is something that gives others through your ideas. Today there is a use of too much immoderate creativity and that is often not exactly creativity but more”.
And the comedy finds it changed compared to the past?
“Now there is this tendency to say that nothing can be said because there is politically correct, and it is a little true. However, I do not base my comedy on the politically incorrect so this thing has not had repercussions. The comedy has certainly been internationalized following the American fashion of the stand-up comedy and the comic proposal has increased very quantitatively, this yes. There are many people. Like this”.
What relationship do you have with your parents? We see them represented also in the series.
“A nice relationship, we are friends, there is almost an equal relationship with them. However, they have always quarreled a lot and I have suffered so much, on an emotional level, this thing of their lothies growing. It was a trauma for me as a child, I would have liked not so much and I would still like to do it no longer. I had also called them to act in my series, but manage them was too complicated”.
Is there anything he took from them?
“They are both two very particular characters, they make a lot of laughing. They gave me a humorous culture in a certain sense. My father makes many jokes and my mother himself, she is a missed actress”.
So they were happy that she wanted to be a job comedian?
“As a child I did sketch, I shot horror films, so I always had the passion but at the beginning they were a little doubtful, despite having given me the first camera themselves. At the beginning they did not understand what I did, they did not understand the trailers. Then, however, they became my fans”.
Have you ever imagined a future away from the spotlight?
“When I think about the future I imagine two ways: one is to become a golfist, the other to dedicate myself to spirituality. I feel like a missed golf. I played golf as a child when my grandfather took me on vacation to Fiuggi where there was a golf course and for several years I trained there. And then I would like to explore the world of spirituality and become a total asceta. Isolating myself from the social context but always momentarily.
Desciat Zone: the review
