A Silly Short Post with Marcello Mastroianni and Vinny Vedecci

I hope you enjoy some Italian and comedy courtesy of two iconic actors and artists.

Following a productive Sunday Zoom call with novelist

Christine Sneed

, who writes Bookish here on Substack, where her other paid supporters and I discussed our individual writing projects and goals, I reclined on my couch to recharge. I turned on my television's Criterion Channel app and was tickled to discover it had just added the late Roger Ebert’s favorite film La Dolce Vita written and directed by the Oscar-winning Italian auteur Federico Fellini.

For several years, I have been looking for La Dolce Vita to hit one of my streaming platforms. This satirical and tragic film with the ironic title always moves me. I often feel like the character “Marcello.”

Watching Fellini's 1960 classic again made me reflect on how much Marcello Mastroianni reminds me of Bill Hader's Saturday Night Live character Vinny Vedecci. Hader said he based Vinny on an Italian man he witnessed in real life though I remain convinced Mastroianni served as his real inspiration

A cinephile and rising auteur, Hader draws his comedic, literary and cinematic art from classic film and actors. Even if Hader ever tells me otherwise to my face, I will never be persuaded that Vinnie was not birthed from the head of Marcello.

Below are two clips from La Dolce Vita and a clip of Vinny Vedecci with John Malkovich who attended my undergraduate alma mater Eastern Illinois University as a theater student. The first La Dolce Vita clip does not include subtitles. While watching the first clip, please simply enjoy the exquisite music of this bewitching Romance language.

What do you think? Do you see the shade of Marcello within Vinny?

Buona settimana! A presto, amici!