Dino is Dead

Yesterday Dino DeLaurentiis died. He was 91.

He was born outside Naples in Torre Annunziata and lived through the poverty of post-World War II Italy. He had his own studio in Rome, and then built a movie empire here in Hollywood.

I never met the man but I feel like I did. Jonathan worked as his assistant and producer for two years and I have lived off crazy Dino stories for years. When I am sad, or in need of diversion, I still turn to Jonathan and say, "Tell me a Dino story."

I have, of course, also seen many Dino movies.

I even feel like Dino made Jonathan love having just a little Italy in his life, a niche which I am happy to fill--because I am just a little Italy.

I can't tell you Jonathan's Dino stories here, because they are his. But I can tell you this, Dino's influence lives on in my life. As a result of Dino, when we went to Italy the first time together I told Jonathan to dress casually, and err on the side of pastel-colored cotton shirts, like all the young Italians in Naples. Instead he wore a well-cut Italian blazer, and nice button-downs. When we got to Rome he realized something: He was dressed like a 60 year old Italian man. Why? Because the only Italian he knew was Dino, and that was what Dino wore.

When we got to Naples we went to a great, but also totally ordinary little ristorante in Spaccanapoli. On the side-board, near the antipasti was a spaghetti pie. Jonathan went crazy. He said he had been looking for those ever since he left Dino, when the Italian cook would sometimes make them. It made me laugh. They are the quintessential Neapolitan leftover meal--made with extra pasta, eggs and parmesan cheese all whipped together and fried up as a warm pie. But I have made sure to cook it for Jonathan lots of times.

But more than that I know that Dino DeLaurentis lives on as a man who was hard-working, daring, and willing to risk everything he owned to finance a great movie. Sure, sometimes he was slimy, or crazy, or mad, and Jonathan had to sue him to get his final pay check, but he loved movies and his passion for great stories, for movies, infected my husband.

Yesterday, the day Dino died, Jonathan got preliminary funding for a movie he wrote from a movie company that is small, independent and bold--a lot like Dino. The producer and director are both cut of the Dino cloth.

Symbolic? Who knows.

I wish I had met the man. But I love the version of Dino that lives on in him through Jonathan.

I mourn his passing.

If you can: Have a perfect afternoon espresso in his memory.