Erstellt von Rocco Siffredi am Sonntag 14. Dezember 2008
Habe diesen Artikel über Rocco Siffredi im Guardian gefunden, deshalb ist er auch auf Englisch. Aber ich bin mir sicher ihr versteht den Artikel auch in Englisch. Sollte jemand diesen Artikel übersetzt haben wollen dann hinterlasst einfach einen kurzen Kommentar warum Ihr Rocco Siffredi für den größten Analstar in Europa haltet:
Rocco Siffredi in Anatomy of Hell … he refused to do one of the sex scenes
Film-maker Catherine Breillat leans very close and says: “Nothing could possibly be degrading to Rocco Siffredi. There are people who cannot be degraded.” A quarter of an hour later, over an espresso, Rocco Siffredi, Italian porn legend and Breillat’s current actor of choice, confirms exactly what she means. Without blinking he goes on the assault. “I do porno because that’s what makes me happy. I fuck all day. I get money. I love what I’m doing. There is something wrong with that?” There is no double entendre with this one. No repression, no shame. He has made sex his raison d’être and what Freud might have to say about it is but a faint whimper in his presence.
In 1999 Siffredi was cast in a memorable role in Romance, Breillat’s story of a young woman’s unsettling sexual odyssey. Using a porn actor was essential. Romance pioneered real sex on camera in non-porn cinema, paving the way for The Idiots and 9 Songs. Breillat needed someone who could perform. Now, five years later, Siffredi is making a reappearance in her work, this time claiming centre stage. Her new film, Anatomy of Hell, was written for Siffredi personally. “Because of Rocco’s human qualities and because I get on so well with him,” she explains, “it was very easy to put myself in the male perspective.”
Far more than a tireless member, Siffredi has earned his triple-Xs, living the macho dream in over a thousand adult movie titles. Classic Siffredi features have an imaginative dimension unusual in skin flicks: there are Italian rock bands (Rock’n'Roll Rocco), James Bond-style stunts, nuclear weapons and helicopters (Rocco Never Dies) - even Zorro masks (Never Say Never to Rocco). In comparison to the Ron Jeremys of this world, favoured for their organs over all else, Siffredi is also a looker. He’s lean, with a beautiful, dented sort of face that the camera loves as much as any other part of his body. Siffredi has graced the pages of Vanity Fair, and fans include graphic design maverick Peter Saville, and Madonna’s favourite photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino.
Still, on paper, the interests of Breillat the French intellectual, and the star of such films as Rocco: Animal Trainer, appear poles apart. Her work explores gender roles and oppressive patriarchal social structures. His work reinforces them. In person, however, it’s easy to grasp Siffredi’s appeal for the director. Breillat’s films, such as A Ma Soeur, in which a 12-year-old girl is brutally raped then denies it all simply to defy her father, use extreme statements to make their point. In an artsy world of bourgeois nicety and sexual neurosis - albeit the same world that Breillat depends upon for an audience - the bluntly candid Siffredi is an extraordinary presence. As he rattles off asides in his heavy Italian accent, he makes you feel like there’s nowhere to hide. On male fear of unclean women, for example, he says: “Of course, if you are there for two hours behind a woman’s arse something will come out.” Perhaps all porn stars are like this. But then, it’s hard to imagine more than one Siffredi.
Like all good legends he knows how to self-mythologise. “I was born to be a porn star,” he proclaims. Siffredi grew up in Ortona a Mare, a small Italian seaport town in the province of Chieti. His course was set after discovering his first top-shelf mags discarded by truck drivers when he was 13. At 19, he got his first break in a Parisian swinger’s club when he met Gabriel Pontello, editor of Supersex magazine. “I tell him it’s my vocation, the dream of my life. He was with two girls and he told me, ‘Let me see what you know.’ I remember having sex in front of 200 people and in the morning I was in his studio working.” It may sound simple, but Siffredi says that being a male porn actor in the early 1980s was far from easy. Pornography was a closed shop and, as he recalls, monopolised almost entirely by the French. “You want to be a porn star today,” he says dismissively, “every big town has a porno film festival. You can introduce yourself, and in maybe 24 hours you are in the business.”
In the late 1980s Siffredi briefly ducked out of the industry to live in Margate with his girlfriend Louise Germaine, notorious for a page 3 moment and playing the blonde bombshell in Dennis Potter’s series Lipstick on Your Collar (as Louise Germaine). When the relationship fizzled he returned to his calling with new vigour. In the 1990s Siffredi began directing his own material, pushing against the limited production values of contemporary porn. The Buttman series, with notorious co-star and director John Stagliano, launched Siffredi in the US. Siffredi is one of the few male porn stars to claim billing above women.
These last few years have seen Siffredi make some of his most ambitious work. The Fashionistas, in 2002, for instance, is a near five-hour epic shot on proper celluloid film. It features hefty chunks of uninterrupted dialogue - discussions of American conservatism and tailoring the like of which you’d never expect. Still, Siffredi knows when to leave the party. He turned 40 this year and recently announced his retirement as an actor, though he will continue to direct.
Firstly, he says, he has always disapproved of older men starring with young girls, though he is keen to stress he is now better than ever sexually. “Second,” he says, “my Italian mentality comes back. I have two boys. I have a wife.” In 1991 Siffredi married Rosa Caracciolo, who initially also appeared in porn films, performing exclusively with her husband. “She accepts many things,” he continues, “but I’m thinking any woman in the world would wish to have her man only for her.”
Anatomy of Hell is not, as some people have surmised, the actor’s attempt to cross over into “proper acting”. Rather, the film fits his temperament, and he wanted to work with Breillat again. The two leads play nameless characters that are gender archetypes. Siffredi is “The Man”; “The Woman” is played by actress/model Amira Casar. They first meet in a club where the woman attempts suicide, before being rescued by the man. She then employs him to examine those female body parts that constitute the “anatomy of hell”. Through four bedroom encounters, with a lot of talk and very little sex, Siffredi’s hooded eyes convey all the anguish of the world. “Crying is not a hard problem,” he explains of his character’s emotional breakdown. “The problem with Catherine Breillat is she says things like, ‘OK, Rocco, I want you to cry without crying.’”
Even in the movie’s most brilliant and difficult moments - drinking water mixed with a used tampon, or inserting the handle of a rake between his co-star’s legs - he maintains a performance of considerable dignity. His character is also nominally gay, something that made the hetero fantasy figure uneasy. Before diving into poetic polemic, the film opens with exactly the sort of visual confrontation you’d expect from Breillat, a lush blow-job scene between two men. “Catherine is much more liberal than me sexually,” he smiles. “I’m supposed to receive blow job from a boy, and I said - ‘What?’ She says ‘Rocco Siffredi gives me censorship on sex now? Get a blowjob from a man or girl, I don’t see the difference.’ ” Siffredi clearly did. A body double was used for this scene.
Intriguingly, he says his approach to this work is no different from pornography. “As an actor I put my strong passion in anything I do. It can be porno, or it can be straight movies. The main difference generally, is emotions and physical. Unfortunately, we [in the porn industry] look more for the double penetrations or triple penetrations than how all this penetrations can start.”
The world has moved on since young Siffredi first took up his calling. At that time, he was warned by everyone that he would be ghettoised; while sex, and thus the actor’s whole career, is a subject his father has only been able to discuss with him recently. Yet even with a Catherine Breillat movie, acceptance is hard to come by. While Siffredi feels all his film work stems from the same drive, Breillat’s actresses have a very clear idea of the dividing line. As Siffredi tells it: “What I represent as porno star makes the girls scared. If it was an erotic movie with Hugh Grant they think it was artistic, though Hugh Grant would probably never get hard in front of the camera. They think with Rocco it will be really pornography.”
While shooting Anatomy of Hell relations between Siffredi and his co-star Casar were tumultuous. He recalls her first words to him as “stay away two metre from me with your dick”. It’s no surprise that Casar would be wary of how the association with a porn star might impact on her career, and a body double was used for intimate close-ups. Breillat points out that Casar has risked a lot to make the movie at all. “I couldn’t ask her to become a martyr because of the way society looks at sex,” she says sadly.
Rocco Siffredi may be beyond degradation. He has created an uncensored bubble world in his own image, where fantasy is made flesh. Outside of that the boundaries remain very real, though Siffredi is optimistic. He thinks the work of French extremists like Breillat will push filmed sex further into the mainstream and looks forward to a day when “some good actress like Julia Roberts, gives a great blow job to a great actor, like Harvey Keitel.” Time will tell.
· Anatomy of Hell is released on November 26.
