Transcript
Peter Weller (0:00)
This is an I heart podcast.
Erin Manke (0:04)
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Dana Schwartz (1:05)
Hi, this is Dana Schwartz. I am so excited to be here today for a very special episode of Noble Blood. I'm joined by the incredible actor, director, historian, writer Peter Weller. Just an incredible figure, an incredible life. You've done so much. We're going to be talking about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick ii. But before we dive in, I would just love to ask, and I think my listeners would love to know what was your transition like going from the acting world in Hollywood to going back and studying Italian Renaissance art?
Peter Weller (1:36)
So I knew nothing about art. My mother tried to introduce me to art. You know, I didn't really get it. There's a wonderful actress. Most people know her as an actress model. She's actually an art history design degree from Wellesley, was a girl of the year under Diana Vreeland, was a stylist from Vogue and a lot of other stuff. Ali McGraw. Yeah, and Ali McGraw is one of the great beauties of the world and also one of the smartest people I've ever known. And I did the movie with her and I usually don't get involved but after the movie she asked me to go to see Sweeney Todd. When Sweeney Todd first opened Angela Lansbury, I went to see it on St. Patrick's Day. I'll never forget it. And then we started up this affair fair and then return it to a long time friendship that goes on and on and on. And she's to this day one of the first people I thank in my new book it's just come out Cambridge University Press about a Renaissance guide. But Ali's personally took me by the hand introduced her to Picasso. Picasso's Guernica was leave New York and go to once Franco was either passed away in Spain, had A social democracy. Picasso wanted this cornerstone piece of anti fascist art and horror to go to Spain. And so there was a big exhibition Dana at MoMA. And you couldn't get in. But if you were Ally, you could get in because Ally's friends were. People think that she ran with movie. No, no, she ran with the literat. That glitter out there. She ran with like Halston and Trumi Capote and Vreeland and the head of MoMA and the head of the Met. Powerful, powerful people in New York, both women and men. So she took me by the hand, threw me into Picasso. I come out of five floors of Picasso, I'm sold. But this bears this embarrassment because the second person, other than Maria Canelli, who's a great friend and head of FIT and American Folk Art Museum, one of the people got me to the Renaissance after this happened. I am at the National Film Festival of Japan with the great Jean Moreau, one of the greatest actresses ever, Mike Metaboy, one of the great producers ever produced robocop, and Victorio Storaro. And if you haven't heard of him or your listeners haven't heard of him, then they have to leave the show because Toro is the first guy to filter Technicolor, which was against the law to be filtered. If you see visions of light, he's the first guy. They experiment, really. You know, we just take Technicolor for granted. And if, you know, Apocalypse now or Last Tango in Paris or the Sheltering sky or Last Emperor or Dick Tracy, can I go on and on and on. But Vittorio is a very elite dude and was Versace all the time. And he had this Versace scarf on and not playing Mr. Hortico, because I know I could talk about Cy Twombly and I could talk about Frankenthaler and whatever. So I say, vittorio, Favorito, this is 1992. I said, who's your favorite painter? 1991. And we're Kyoto. And he goes, and even the Padua to see Joto in the very first, one by one, four frames of narrative of light, color perception, dark emotion, negative space, narrative. I go, what? He says, giotto, I. I don't know who you're talking about, man. And he takes his Versace scar and he flips it. Look, Francis Coppola said, victoria Sorella is the only guy who had spent two years in the Philippines in a white suit. And he did. And that's Vittorio. So he flips his scarf and he says, well, Peter, we cannot talk about art. And he walks away. Then I say, you're really pretentious man. And he goes, no, you're like most Americans, you're pretentious. You like so many people. You can drop all these names and you don't know Giotto. You have no context. You have no context. He's the one person that's indemnified in. In contemporary art. Carlo Carra, father of Cubism, talks about it. Precisionism talks about him. Rothko talks about him. Picasso talks about him. Rembrandt. I'm going, I feel like a dummy. And I go to sit in that church in the Capella Scriven, which is in my book now, and I find out that that's the one piece, the one Dana piece of art in the Western world that is, like, solidified as a cornerstone, and all the art that comes after it in the Western world doesn't matter what you're talking about. You know, post Cubism, abstract Impressionism, Piet Mondrian, whatever. They're all going to go back to Giotto. They're all going to go back to that. I call up Ali, I go, look, why didn't you tell me about Giotto? She says, I did. You had no interest in the Renaissance. You wanted to do the horny toy New York scene like every other idiot. You know, I couldn't get you out of modern art. I couldn't get you out of get there. So that's how I started.