Rome in the 1980s
Rome, 1980s. In the background is a party, “one of those where you look at each other, drink, chat, sometimes pick up”. In a corner of the room, Massimo Troisi, “hunting” because singles used to stay in that position so they could have “the best view” of the hall. In the center were the couples, including Francesco Nuti and model Clarissa Burt, happily engaged since she arrived in the capital in 1986. To tell the scene in detail, although much later, was the same Nuti, in his autobiography published in 2011 and written together with his brother, I’m a good boy. Gone, fallen and returned. “I don’t know why or how, when the party was over we went home in the same car. Me, Clarissa and Massimo,” remembers the Tuscan actor, sadly passed away at the age of 68 after a long illness.
Francesco Nuti’s Story
“I know for sure, however, that after a month she packed up and said goodbye to my attic in Parioli. She left me and got engaged to Troisi, moving to his villa a hundred meters from my house,” revealed Nuti. “That’s where it all started: pain, anger, pride, jealousy and, above all, envy. Which seems to me the fourth capital sin: yes, once and for a long time, envy scratched my soul with adult cat claws.” Nuti, who said he had even posted himself in the street with his car to find out – unsuccessfully – where his ex-girlfriend was sleeping, moved to Los Angeles at the time. He met the love rival again on a soccer field, months later: they barely said hello, “so it went on for many years.” Yes, because as he adds in one of the key passages, he already envied Troisi “for his sincere breed comic art, but this was really too much”.
The Farewell
So, when the Neapolitan star passes away in 1994, Nuti goes to pay his last respects. “I was very undecided, then I go with a friend. There was all the Italian cinema, all the press, all the television, it seemed to me that the whole world was there. I arrive breathless, I don’t think anyone sees me,” it reads. “I arrive at the bed where Massimo was resting. I bend down. I give him a kiss on the forehead. And I whisper to him: I have envied you so much.”
