Filippo Timi: "Me, a lie that tells the truth. On stage like on the Titanic. My stuttering? It gave me courage."

Milan – The beauty of Filippo Timi is that you always feel like you're on his side. He can screw up a show or perform two hundred times, be everywhere or disappear into thin air: the result is that you still love him. Perhaps because every time he seems to put a piece of his heart in there. And that's no small thing. Especially for a restless fifty-year-old who divides his time between film, TV, and theater. Specifically, the Franco Parenti Theater. Where on Sunday he debuts with "Non sarà mai Elvis Presley," 13 original songs (and as many monologues) that feel like intimate selfies. Crazy. Unprejudiced. A singing catalog of themselves. On stage until the 25th.

Timi, last time he said he wanted to go to Sanremo.

"And who doesn't want to 'fly'? For me, the festival is like singing in heaven. Like saving my mother from death."

Exaggerated.

"It's something you can't understand. Two years ago, I was there for four seconds, accompanying the wonderful Diodato. And my father, who had never before spoken out about my work, said to me, 'You were beautiful.' With such pride! Because Sanremo is an altar, it's getting married on world television."

So are you preparing for next February?

"No, no, actually, let's not say it, it's bad luck. Maybe in a few years. In the meantime, 'desire was the bait,' as David Lynch said. Or rather: the carrot before the donkey. It dragged me into writing songs, giving me the courage to embark on this thing I wanted. I feel very much like a donkey."

Hence the subtitle 'Are we all beasts in front of a masterpiece'?

"Yes, I have hooves instead of hands and I deal with my feelings. The risk is enormous."

What risk?

“To shit on me. That's why I'm on the poster doing the shit. Because that's how it ends when you decide to talk about yourself. Like karaoke: you start off well, but after a couple of minutes you feel like Beyoncé, all gorgeous, with your hair in the air in front of the fan. That's when you're shitting yourself.”

Yet he is used to putting himself on stage.

"You are too. I do it on stage. But it's something we all experience, even my sister at Conad. I'm a lie that always tells the truth, I share my life but perhaps hidden behind an image."

An example?

“The story of the fly, which has just a few hours to accomplish everything: eat, fly, make love, before disappearing onto a frog's sticky tongue. It's that emotional sunset that overtakes you when you no longer have any hope of finding love. Or you sense the inevitability of death. During the monologues, I often gave musician Lorenzo Minozzi a piece of advice: let's be like the Titanic's orchestra, which played as it sank. While we realized that that breeze was an iceberg. We're suspended over the abyss.”

Can we be saved?

"Adventure is freeing yourself from judgment. And from the judgment we have on death, on natural events. Which is always there, no matter what you do."

As Troisi would say: I'll make a note of it now.

“But you have to look at the glass half full or everything loses meaning.”

'La vita bestia', which debuted twenty years ago, made a lot of sense.

"It gave me credibility as an author. From then on, I began writing texts between films. But the previous ten years with Giorgio Barberio Corsetti had already been a fundamental apprenticeship."

Any advice you would give yourself looking back?

“Worry less.” At the time, I was obsessed with my stuttering; it made me feel bad, I cried. But I realize that that obsession allowed me to forget about other problems as big as sharks, like the fact that Giorgio asked me to play the lead without having any academic background. My stuttering pushed me to be fearless.”

What wouldn't you do again?

I'd try not to be as superficial as I have been at times. But when you're born and have to fend for yourself, you tend to reveal a somewhat harsh selfishness, a lack of trust. Which is an attitude that creates immediate judgment. For years, I barely spoke to my parents. And I'm sorry about that; it feels like something I haven't experienced. Although perhaps in the end, some of my unconscious bullshit has evened out some of their conscious ones... Can I share something I say in the show too?

Certain.

“Every victorious Roman emperor rode in triumph, in a golden chariot, surrounded by his family, with the most handsome of his slaves holding the laurel wreath on his head while continually repeating in his ear: ‘remember that you are a man’”.

Best moment?

"When I returned to the theater after Covid. My job requires people. Goethe, to summarize love, emphasized the importance of dialogue. That's why at the end of Hamlet I tell the audience that perhaps they didn't realize it, but we made love."

What's the fourteenth story he left out?

"Look, I've already written twenty more. And the show itself is a game in which I swap the songs or maybe insert a new one depending on the evening. Even the monologues I'm trying not to memorize but to share their momentum, almost improvising. In short, I'm protecting this very living spirit."