The courtyard of the decommissioned hospital/orphanage near San Marco where we were dressed, made up, and retained until time to go to the set. I have no idea how many pictures the other extras took while hanging around. There wasn’t much else to do.Helpful signs were everywhere, and scrupulously obeyed, as you can see. The center sign says “For security reasons, this door must always be closed.”
Perhaps you missed this recent bulletin from “Entertainment Weekly”:
The previously announced, highly anticipated drama from The Weinstein Company about the adventures of Marco Polo has begun production for Netflix.
The show, which will have a 10-episode first season and premiere on Netflix in late 2014, will follow the famed explorer’s journey as it takes him to the center of a brutal war in 13th century China, “a world replete with exotic martial arts, political skullduggery, spectacular battles and sexual intrigue,” according to the press release.
What it didn’t mention, but which was relatively reliably reported by a cast member, is that the production will cost 120 million dollars, the most expensive TV series in the history of Marcos, Polos, and any number of fabulous khans. When you hear somebody say, “After Venice, we’re going to spend five months in Malaysia,” you begin to get an idea of where some of the money is going. Ditto when you hear that the cast and a batch of the crew are staying at a multi-star hotel whose cheapest room is called “Deluxe” and costs $750 per night. Perhaps they were bunking 18 people per room, like sweatshop immigrants.
But I like our no-star hovel. I could get room service there, too, if I really wanted it.
The world to be depicted will also be replete with scenes staged in Venice two weeks ago, which were made even more replete by Lino and me as extras. As was the case two years ago with the still-MIA film “Effie Gray,” we were engaged to row some old boats and give some credible watery backdrop to whatever was happening on center stage, or street or square.
First, they dressed us. (Note: This is not Pippo — see below). Then they put makeup on our faces or hands. Then they put makeup on the costumes. She had a bag full of dust which she tapped on various spots, when she wasn’t streaking dirt-like colors or otherwise distressing our garb. I know the fabric is supposed to look worn, but I am skeptical that people, even in that soap-challenged era, would have liked walking around dusty and streaked. But it might have been a class thing. We were near the bottom of the social scale, where everybody knows we don’t care about being clean, or healthy, or knowing that the earth isn’t the center of the solar system.
To be an extra essentially means either moving (walking, running, rowing) or standing still. You might be called on to fake conversations or other normal activities (conversations, I mean — I don’t mean faking them is normal) for a few seconds at a time. I wouldn’t call it acting, but the real actors with lines to speak were faking just as much as we were, when you think about it.
Lino got in a few extra days of work before filming began because somebody needed to teach young Marco Polo (played by a certain Lorenzo Richelmy) how to row in the Venetian way. He says Lorenzo was not only a good sport but not a bad beginner. This is high praise, considering that a ferocious bora (northeast wind) was blowing all week. Not the best weather for learning how to do anything except hold onto your hat.
Here’s what’s fun: The costumes make you look like something from the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event that’s been dug up from under a dead tree. Ditto the make-up. And it’s extreme fun to get up at 3:30 AM to be ready for makeup at 5:00. After which you do nothing for hours.
It was 6:00 AM. I don’t think I need to say anything more.They put no makeup on my face at all, but the makeup people put their hearts into making my hands look like I’d been trying to excavate Tulamba.
It’s also fun to try to climb around in a big heavy boat, and even row it, when you’re swaddled in three layers of fabric, plus a long piece of cloth on your head which falls everywhere, especially in front of your face, when you’re trying to do real work. I still have green-gray and dark-brown bruises all over my legs from encounters with wood, stone, wickerwork, and other things that got in my way when I had to get from here to there while also fighting with my personal drapery. I felt as if I’d been wrapped in Miss Ellen’s portieres, before they were made into dresses.
It was less dramatic, but also less interesting, to spend an hour or two out of the boat, joining a small group required to walk over a small bridge, then walk back over it, then walk back over it, then walk back over it, then walk back over it….
But I’m happy. At times in my life I’ve been paid very little to work really hard. To be paid (also very little) to do scarcely anything, and even to do nothing, seems like an excellent way to spend some of my time. In my normal life, I don’t get to stand still and do nothing for any reason, and I certainly don’t get paid for it.
So thank you, Marco Polo, Harvey Weinstein, and all the ships at sea. I can’t wait for the next chance to play dress-up and do nothing. At 3:30 AM.
Apparently every period film requires a market scene. As far as I could tell, the market served only as a funky setting through which young Marco had to run at top speed. That’s all I saw. No horses or cars in pursuit, which usually are required to decimate the market. So we pretended to buy things and he ran. All that setting-up was just for that. If you ever see this opus, please tell me we were TOTALLY CREDIBLE.While all the marketing and running was going on in the campo, Lino was awaiting his assorted cues in the canal. That is not his hair, by the way, but a wig.There was plenty of downtime to go around. We occasionally stopped to let boats or people pass, but the sun was shining, so I don’t think anybody cared very much.What’s really interesting about this scene isn’t the boat — though of course it’s excellent — but the wooden wall stretching above it. That was installed in order to conceal the modern wrought-iron railing. They covered drainpipes, windows, boats, lamps. You don’t think Venice is so modern until you try to make it look like it was 700 years ago.Another day, another market — this time, masses of cargo piled up on a small dock near the Punta della Dogana. The activity was hectic, to create the atmosphere of the port of Venice (at the time, the number one port in Europe) in full swing. The white-bearded man isn’t just any old walk-on. His name is Benito “Pippo” Garbisa, and he is the oldest lifeguard in Italy, still showing up at the beach on the Lido every summer. He has saved more people than anyone could count (though I suppose he knows exactly how many he’s pulled from the drink). He started his work in 1949 at the beachside operation belonging to his family, and which everyone still calls “Garbisa” even though it’s got a different owner and name now. For his exceptional achievements, he has been awarded both a silver and a bronze national medal for “civic valor.” He has two medals from the Carnegie Foundation, and is an official Cavalier of the Republic of Italy. To sum up, one heck of an extra to have in the mob. Or, now that I think about it, I wonder if he was a costumed security agent.Lino, Antonella Mainardi, and I rowed this ponderous hulk of a caorlina to the “port” for our moment of glory: being the centerpiece of loading/unloading action, plus actually rowing away as the cameras turned, while exchanging loud comments with some extras on the dock. Happily, we only had to do that scene once; the boat must weigh 157 tons, even being so lightly loaded. By the time they were finished with the scene, the boat was full. Full, that is, of things designed to damage my legs.“Il Nuovo Trionfo,” the only trabacolo still floating, was the perfect vessel for giving that ocean-going vibe. That and its sails, which were crucially important for blocking out the 21st century just beyond.This is what “backstage” looked like, in the meantime. This is only part of the panoply of technicians and equipment of every sort. Just think, even boring movies require much of the same level of labor. Gad.Two days later, we were on the night shift, rowing a slightly smaller boat which we rigged with two masts and sails to conceal the reality lurking even in the smallest canals. If anyone might wonder why a boat would be moored in a canal with its sails up, I will have to arrest them on a charge of “unwilling suspension of disbelief.”For some reason, we looked relatively more human later in the day.Not to brag or anything, but I think I look like a genuine mammal here. It was impressive progress from Day One.The boats and their people (us) clocked out at about 10:00 PM and made it into the canteen just in time to eat some hot food. Out in the campo, the lighting was already blazing for the next scenes, which we were told would continue till 4:00 AM. Seeing light this bright surrounded by darkness gave me a strange sensation, but part of it was admiration for whoever invented this apparatus to simulate daylight. If I’d stayed under it, I might even have started to grow.
The stage is ready, all we need are the people.Voila’ — people. Jammed into the refreshment corner, but they did listen to the speeches first.
The votes are in, but they’re still being counted. So far, though, the number of ballots on the spelling of the nizioleti has exceeded 1,500. And they are unanimous in favor of bringing back the old spelling, the old words, the old way, period.
This information was imparted by Tiziano Graziottin, from the Gazzettino, to a happy gathering last Sunday on a cold, rainy morning in the Fish Market at the Rialto. I was interested to see maybe 50-70 people show up — perhaps more might have come if the weather had cooperated — and I was even more interested to see that only two people from the boating world (besides Lino and me) were there.
Why is this interesting? First, because I hardly ever see people in groups who are not of the boating ilk. Second, because for the past several years, the president of the Coordinating Committee of the Rowing Clubs, a certain Giovanni Giusto, has made it his own highly emotional, high-volume mantra that Venetian rowing is one of the last holdouts –perhaps the last holdout — of true venezianita‘, or Venetian-ness.
If that’s the case, I would have assumed (Zwingle’s Fifth Law: Never Assume) that boating people would have showed up in a solid, even if small, block of solidarity. But no. Let’s say that the weather prevented coming by oar — which it did — people who cared could have come by foot, just like us.
But the boating world was not to be seen. That particular piece of Venetian culture and heritage is apparently floating around sealed inside its own bubble, and the other piece of V.C. and H., i.e., the nizioleti, is doing likewise. In a city this small, it seems bizarre that there should be no contact between these two tracks carrying the same train.
As I looked around, I tried to guess from which quadrant these people emerged. The universities? The art world? The music world? The world of linguistics? The world of free snacks? I could only be sure about the last.
The new group is a fusion of two Facebook groups dedicated to the above-named elements of Venice’s corporeal being. Joining forces seems like a great thing. Next, I think they should make enough shirts so anybody who joins (me, for example) could get one. Or at least have the chance to buy one. So far, these are only for the staff. So fine: Make me staff!
The general sentiment of the occasion — of the project, mission, crusade — was expressed in Venetian on the sign shown above. Translation by me:
How many centuries of history are in this nizioleto,
Names of streets, written in dialect,
Squares, little squares, parishes and streets,
From the Bridge of the Beret-Makers to the Bridge of the Breasts,
But these names weren’t given by chance,
But according to strict criteria.
Each street we walk along reminds us of some fact (deed),
And, why not, even an ugly crime,
The Riva of Biasio, the Rio Tera’ of the Assassins,
As reported by the great Tassini …
To say nothing of the ancient trades,
Like the milk-seller or the barrel-maker,
Walk around the city with your head held high,
Every nizioleto is a truth.
And beware anybody who touches them
Or writes them in Italian,
Because we’ll bite their hand.
Poor nizioleti, old and worn,
And to fix them, there’s never any money.
The purpose of the festa wasn’t only to report on the voting, but also to promote (in a very soft way), the new organization known as “Masegni e Nizioleti.” (The masegni are the old trachyte paving stones, which have been endangered for the past several years by replacement by blocks of some other substance. I think it’s a kind of stone, but once it’s on the ground, it looks to the street the same way Italianized words look on the nizioleti: Strange, out of place, and uninvited). The sheets and the stones groups decided to join forces and it appears, at least in the honeymoon stage, to be a happy marriage.
I pulled out 10 euros and signed on as a member of Masegni and Nizioleti. I have no idea how far the group is going to get, but I do know that on May 25, squads will be organized to clean graffiti off the walls. I will take a break from whinging, put on my rubber gloves, pick up my bucket and brush, or sponge, or broom, and get to work, EVEN THOUGH I know that a week later graffiti will reappear.
More about the masegni themselves in my next; they are a story in themselves (as are we all). But this is enough for one day. Steady the Buffs! Tote that bedsheet! All hands to the pumps, and see you on the barricades. Bring refreshments.
And there are a good number of nizioleti whose primary problem isn’t spelling — it’s having letters at all. Gad.
A case in point. “Ole” in Venetian are (or were) terracotta containers for cooking food. I think “terracotta containers for cooking food” would sound just as awkward in Italian as it does in English. And “tajine,” “chatti,” “shaguo,” “donabe,” “palayok,” or “Romertopf” wouldn’t be much of a step in the right direction, either. This would definitely be one nizioleto to leave alone.
The bedsheets, as you recall, are known as nizioleti here, and are the characteristic street signs with their often-exotic names in the Venetian language.
But hidden within them was a problem which nobody had ever noticed — nobody except Tiziana Agostini, the Assessore (person officially responsible) for Place Names.
The nizioleti are in Venetian, but she thought they should be in Italian. Time to move on, leave that quaint little old past behind, step up the game. Was she ever surprised last December when she discovered that the Venetians were massively opposed to this cultural non-improvement. A citizens’ group quickly formed to stop the madness and promote the repairing and repainting of the good old names that were already in place and doing just fine as they were, thanks so much.
Citizens’ groups here can’t count on accomplishing much beyond letting their dudgeon be known, but in this case the response came from everywhere, it seemed, and it was unanimous: We want the old names back. Don’t fix the names. Leave the names the hell alone.
And the outcry seems to have worked.
Ms. Agostini came out from under her desk when the bombardment stopped, and has been meeting with the core citizens’ group with the intention of reviewing and correcting the situation. Fancy way of saying “Put the words back where they belong.”
Meanwhile, the Gazzettino has undertaken a poll of its readers. Every day for about a week (the last day will be March 16), the same list of names is published in the paper, and the reader can indicate his/her preference by ticking the appropriate box. Then one merely has to cut out the little survey form, and take it to one of the drop-off stations. Happily, one of them is right here in via Garibaldi, though I would have gone all the way to the train station if that were my only option.
Naturally I’ve been ticking all the boxes on the right every day, and will keep on doing so till the end.
Then we’ll see if it ever made any difference.
This is the survey form, correctly filled out. The left column lists the words in Italian — on the right, their Venetian equivalents. I’m not, in fact, in favor of their adopting “San Zanipolo,” as everyone knows, but I voted for it on principle.Brief, to the point, and in perfect Venetian. Note the lack of double consonants, which is your first clue. You could make “salizada” (paved) more Italianesque by writing “salizzata,” I suppose, but the correct Italian term would have to be “selciato,” which isn’t progress. “Streta” means “narrow” (in Italian, stretta). Anyway, it’s fine like it is already.The Street of the Little Fig Tree. In Italian, it would be “del piccolo fico.” Fine, but this is so much more appealing. The tree itself seems somehow smaller in Venetian.
Nuances — I love them, whether they’re in colors or in words. If you look carefully, you’ll see that almost every color in this scene is some shade of grey.
Being a word person, and having a daily need to understand what’s being said around, or to, me, and also having a need occasionally to communicate some fact or feeling of my own, it’s to be expected that I’d be listening pretty much all the time to the wonders of the Venetian language. Which, as you know by now, is what I mostly hear spoken around the neighborhood (as opposed to Italian), and which is a wizard’s trove of phrases and terms that are utterly Venetian.
I’m not saying that similar expressions might not be heard (with different accents and spelling) elsewhere in Italy — certainly the concepts are universal. But there are so many Venetian ways of putting things which are perfect for the thing described that I sometimes struggle to recall what might correspond to them in English. Or even in the language of the divine Dante, which is something the let’s-rewrite-the-nizioleti squad quickly discovered. Certain things only work in Venetian.
These phrases express myriad nuances of human behavior, in terms which are often intricately bound to what was, at one time, the ordinary stuff of everyday life here.
Here are a few of the more common ones, which I, or somebody, is almost certain to use in the course of a normal day, or couple of days:
The death of Ganelon. Little did he dream that his infamy would live on in Venice for a millennium and more. (The Roland Tapestry, projet-roland.d-t-x.com/pages/pagesGB/01prefaceA.html)
Magansese(mah-gan-SEH-zeh): This is my latest discovery and it’s a beaut. It means “two-faced,” “treacherous,” “dangerously, unscrupulously untrustworthy.” There is a lighter expression which you might use more commonly, which is to call someone “una bandiera di ogni vento” — a flag of every wind — a person who goes whichever way the wind, public opinion, fashion, happens to be blowing.
But to call someone magansese is bigger and darker, and it comes from a certain malefactor of the Middle Ages, no less, known in Italian as Gano de Maganza, or Gano from Mainz. In English, he’s known as Ganelon. He betrayed Charlemagne to the Muslims in 778, which is taking etymology, not to mention vituperation, back a breathtaking distance. (The whole story is recounted in the Chanson de Roland, which I know you remember becauseof all those Chanson de Roland bubblegum cards you collected when you were a kid.)
A traitor, in a word. A fatal, scheming, hideous traitor. One that died more than a thousand years ago. Just think — a person so bad that even when everybody’s forgotten who he was, the stench of his villainy lives on, perpetuated by everyday folks needing the perfect word to vilify their so-called friends.
If there’s more than one — they sometimes travel in packs — the plural is magansesi.
“Tarring the Boat,” by Edouard Manet (1873). (The Barnes Foundation). If you’ve gotten yourself impegola’d in some situation, this is what you feel like — one hopes without the fire.
Impegola‘ (im-peg-oh-AH): It’s a verb form taken from pegola, or pitch. To say that you find yourself “pitched” doesn’t mean you’ve been blackened, nor that you’re in danger of having feathers stuck all over you and then be run out of town.
You would say that you’re impegola’ (or impegolada, if a woman) when you realize that you’ve gotten yourself involved in something that’s awkward or unpleasant in some unanticipated way, but that you would find awkward or unpleasant to get out of. Stuck, in a word, just as pitch was mixed with tar to waterproof all those thousands of wooden ships that kept the Serenissima in the game. Stuck in a particularly tenacious way which makes you discontented. “I offered to give her little boy a few English lessons for a week and now I’m impegola’ with his whole class every day for a month.”
You could also say that somebody else has impegola’d you. In any case, you’re stuck and you’ll have to find a way out on your own.
Cascar in covolo (cas-CAR in co-VOH-yo). Fall into a trap. Not a huge, menacing trap, probably, but if you’ve experienced this you’ve been tricked, shnookered, a little bit hoodwinked. You can do it to somebody else, too — make them fall into a covolo.
You can arrange your nets in a number of ingenious ways, but the endgame is always the same: being funneled into the covolo. (“La Pesca nella Laguna di Venezia, ” 1981).
The “covolo” is a neat tubular construction for accumulating the fish which have let themselves be induced to swim along a stretch of net which you have tied to poles, only to discover that they have obliviously swum into a container you attached to the last pole, from which there is no way out.
This covolo has certainly carried many fish to their destiny, but here it’s been decorated more cheerfully for Christmas. Maybe these are the spirits of the fish. In any case, you can see how the entrance (on the bottom) makes it impossible to exit.
If you have fallen into somebody’s covolo, they’ve tricked you in some way. It could be a practical joke, or a neat way of getting you to agree to do something before you realize what’s going on. You in turn could induce somebody to fall into a covolo. It doesn’t have to be serious or life-threatening. But once the falling-into-it has occurred, it can take some doing to get out. If you agree to the phone company’s too-good-to-be-true sales pitch without reading the fine print, you may well discover you’ve fallen into their covolo, along with a batch of other fish.
Far gagiolo (far ga-JYOH-yo). To “do” or “be” or “behave as” gagiolo. This is what someone does who is trying to pull a fast one. (Not to be confused with making you fall into the covolo. Just go with it.)
Somebody of whatever age who attempts some nifty little gag which ought to succeed because of its unexpectedness, or its audacity, or just plain luck, is trying to do a gagiolo. When it works, people may smile. When it fails, people may still smile, but sardonically. When the jig is up on some piece of reckless chutzpah, someone might say “Wow, you really thought you could do a gagiolo.”
A clunky example might be the person who gets his buddy to punch his time card so that he (person A) can quit work early.
Or better yet, the kid who says the dog ate his homework, and even brings his dog to class hoping to convince the teacher that its evident gastrointestinal distress is the result of ingesting five pages of algebra. Doing a gagiolo doesn’t depend on whether it succeeds; it’s enough to have tried. But you don’t get extra points if you succeed, either. The tinge of shiftiness will discolor any triumph you might be inclined to enjoy.
But wait, I hear you cry. What, or who, is a gagiolo? I can answer that. I have discovered that it was the name of the pirate who swooped down (along with his men) in the year 973 and stole the girls from the church of San Pietro di Castello in mid-ceremony. This is a swashbuckling tale with a happy ending for the Venetians, whose rapid pursuit succeeded in retrieving the girls, along with their jewelry, and their virtue (I think). And it was the beginning of the “Festa de le Marie,” which was celebrated on February 2 every year thereafter until 1379.
Seeing that Venice had so brilliantly out-swashbuckled Gagiolo and his henchpirates, it’s only natural that he would have become a byword, one intended to be pronounced with the tiniest bit of a sneer. Venetians are still dissing him 13 centuries later.
These are four perfect musettos (“musetti”) in the butchershop window. Alberto has written that they are “lean and petaissi,” intending it to sound like the two things on earth that you can’t resist. Better musettos should be petaissi than people, I always say.
Petaisso(pet-ah-EE-so). Sticky, in a gummy sort of way. If you make meatloaf and mix the meat and egg and other ingredients with your hands, the material has become petaisso. So have your hands.
What use could this word have? Well, the butcher on the fondamenta has a sign in his window that advertises his musetto, whose quality is evidently superior because they’re said to be “petaissi.” Kind of gluey, due to the pork skin mixed into it, which is claimed to be part of its appeal.
Other things can be described as petaisso — maybe the viscid pavement after the acqua alta recedes, for example. But its ideal use is to describe a certain sort of person, or behavior. It’s basically when you overdo being nice, or complimentary, or helpful — to the extent that you either make the other person uncomfortable or you embarrass yourself. Writing a thank-you note that is just a little bit too grateful or appreciative could be a small example of being petaisso; or writing a note that’s just fine, but then following it up with a present. And then following it up with a phone call.
Petaisso behavior is at its worst when it is seeking, or disseminating, gossip. A person can be petaisso when she just has to find out that last little bit about why you came back early from vacation, and when she has to share this information with all sorts of other people. It’s not merely that she’s a gossip — a petaisso is a sticky sort of gossip that you can’t get off your hands, just like the raw meatloaf.
I suppose men could sometimes be petaisso, but they have a smaller repertoire. I don’t think they care about clothes, children, or boyfriends, but you could find yourself stuck with a man who wants to tell you every intimate detail about his last blood test and his prostate. Some men of a certain age seem to be convinced that this is important information which is desperately sought by their victim. And they become just as petaisso as a musetto about it.
Impesta’ (im-peh-STA). In Italian, the plague is la peste. As you know, it was a catastrophically fatal and contagious disease that devastated much of Europe in various periods, and Venice was no exception. To call someone “impesta'” is an ugly thing indeed; it not only means that in your opinion the person is already afflicted (ghastly) with the plague but is probably spreading it (even worse). You wouldn’t say it to someone’s face but you might be driven to say it about them. “This impesta’ never answers my phone call when he sees its my number, he’s been avoiding me for a week because he owes me money.” You should be really angry or exasperated to say it, and it’s never used in a humorous or affectionate backhanded way, like some other denigratory words.
You might also hear someone say that someone is “Brutto/a come la peste” — as ugly as the plague. No laughing matter, around here. I recommend that you avoid trying these words out, they could really backfire.
In some people’s mouths, these never stop clacking.
Sbatola(z-BAH-toe-a). I truly love this one. I can’t decline it for you, but “sbattere” is a verb which means “beat” or “bang”, the go-to word for the racket made by unsecured shutters in the wind, or a desperate person at your front door at midnight as the posse is closing in. Now imagine that sound being created by somebody’s jaws as they talk, and talk, and talk. To say that somebody’s “ga ‘na sbatola” means that when that person starts — and he or she is always in “start” mode — he or she will not stop, probably not even when you just walk away.
This is not ranting, this isn’t free-associating, this is sheer abundance of one-sided conversation which must, at all costs, be expended on friends, acquaintances, friends of acquaintances, acquaintances of friends. All it takes is to ask this indefatigable person how he is or how things are going or what he’s having for lunch or where he went to school, and you discover that you might as well have asked “What’s the plot of “War and Peace?”.
This picture has no significance — I just put it in because I like it.
