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What we found is that Valentino is actually a tremendous star - almost a movie star, really, because he plays himself all the time. The camera loves him.
Ralph Lauren and Valentino have a lot of common. Ralph Lauren was one of the first really to put himself at the center of the story, and Valentino was even earlier.
His home life is as ordered and complex and sophisticated as his work life. You don't find creations like this anymore. The Leopard comes to mind - this tale of a glorious, lost Italy. That's Valentino.
Valentino lives his life like the Queen of England - he lives in the bubble. But he designs for royals, so it's almost a business decision, even though he would do it anyway. He wants to be part of that world.
They would sort of keep you on your toes that way - that kind of Italian allergic reaction to eagerness. It's very bruta figura, bad form, to be eager. You sort of glide in and have a conversation and work things out, then it takes two days to get up and running.
When Karl Lagerfeld does a documentary, it's Karl Lagerfeld spouting in front of the camera for two hours. Valentino isn't like that. He's not very verbally expressive. He's very controlled and he needs to be perfect all the time - never a hair out of place, always the impeccable outfit.
Giancarlo Giammetti has a lot of nervous energy. He's a director, really. He was trying to direct the Valentino movie over my shoulder. I don't blame him - that's been his job for 50 years. But I had final cut in the movie by contract and I wouldn't have made the movie if I had not been completely independent.
Valentino Garavani is never really shown himself as anything other than this gracious diplomat of the dolce vita. That's his preferred look. But he's a temperamental genius - a man of cyclone force, passion, and perfectionist impulses who has very little tolerance for things that aren't exactly as he wants them to be.
I reject criticism because the last thing I wanted was to sit there and look at people talking. I think people are conditioned to think of documentaries now as talking heads. This movie about Valentino is not about that at all. It's about watching people in action. To the critics who wanted more talking heads, I send a dozen dead roses.
It's the deepest relationship between Giancarlo Giammetti and Valentino Garavani I've ever seen, and no one's ever really scratched the surface with them. They weren't really openly gay. They're in Rome, the city of the Vatican. They didn't discuss this relationship, which I think is one of the great relationships. It's beyond a marriage; it defies words. But maybe it doesn't defy pictures.
When I went to see Valentino in Rome, I discovered 120 women in these ateliers who sew $100,000 dresses. There are no sewing machines. It's all done by hand for thousands of hours. It's a dying art and Valentino is really the last practitioner, the last person at the top of his house, which is why I called it The Last Emperor. That world is gone. You can almost see it slipping away as the cameras are rolling.
One of my favorite scenes in Fellini is the ecclesiastical fashion show in Roma, and the end of 8 ½, when all the characters in the life of Guido, Marcello Mastroianni, get together and do this grand procession. That was on my mind, especially at the 45th anniversary, when all those characters in Valentino's life returned to Rome. I kept watching that and saying, if only we can arrange that grand procession at the end...and it kind of happened.