 "Photo: Richard Martini")
 "Photo: Richard Martini")
Life can change in a split second: For Richard Martini, that second came at the flip of a coin.
“Heads I stay in Rome, tails I go to L.A,” said Martini of his decision to attend the University of Southern California’s film school. Thirty years later, Martini can boast 10 feature films to his name, including You Can’t Hurry Love, as well as several collaborative projects. He currently teaches a documentary course at Loyola’s John Felice Rome Center.
With his wiry gray hair and grizzled complexion, Martini looks every inch the seasoned Hollywood veteran. After attending the Rome Center briefly in the late 1970s, he found himself the instructor of a five-week filmmaking course designed for students of all proficiency levels, including those who had never held a camera. The class is still offered, and has only 10 slots.
The reasoning behind this? “When the cost of filmmaking is as much as a pencil and a piece of paper, then you’ll find true art,” said Martini, quoting the famous French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. For Martini, the advent of digital technology has enabled professionals and amateurs alike to make films at a relatively low cost. Few embody this thinking more than Charlie Noell, one of Martini’s first students.
A Loyola alum who graduated in 2008 with a degree in history, Noell came to Martini’s class with no prior experience in filmmaking. By the end of the course, Noell’s short documentary on the plight of the Roma (widely known as Gypsies) of Rome had qualified for Cannes, considered the most prestigious of all film festivals. He now works for Endless Eye Productions, a company that works on bringing socially conscious works to the screen. Noell hopes to turn his short film project into a feature-length film.
“It was kind of controversial,” said Noell of the documentary, entitled Sono Niente (I Am Nothing). “But Rich stood by us the whole way.” Much of the controversy surrounding the Roma centers on their status as a marginalized group within Italian society, facing poverty and prejudice on a daily basis.
Indeed, Martini remembers one of his fellow faculty members shouting “How dare you make this film” after the documentary screened at the Rome Center following the end of the course.
Martini declined to name the instructor.
Martini’s own experiences in the filmmaking industry began while still a student at USC, when he won the grand prize at the International Film Festival in Mexico City.
“Nobody told me. I didn’t get the information until a year later,” Martini said of receiving a phone call informing him he had a week to collect the prize money of $3,000. The film, shot on super-8 without sound, centered on Special Olympians racing in wheelchairs.
After graduating, Martini went to work for Robert Towne, the writer and director of such films as Chinatown and Mission: Impossible II. One moment stands out in particular from that time.
While shooting the film Personal Best at the University of Oregon, the cast of extras decided to go on strike, refusing to see anyone except Martini, who worked as Towne’s personal assistant. Although he was in L.A. at the time, Martini came back to the Oregon set where he was met by a crowd of 5,000 chanting “We want Martini” and an exasperated Towne.
“When I came back, [Towne] came across the football field, grabbed me, his face purple with rage, and said, ‘Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?’ Somehow he had assumed that I was in collusion with the studio or something. And I said, ‘Robert, I think it’s just that I was nice to people.’ So he picked up a megaphone and said: ‘You wanted Martini? I brought you Martini.’ And they cheered … And it was in that moment, that I thought: ‘I can direct a film.’ ” Martini said.
After years working and hobnobbing with the likes of Angeline Jolie, Francis Ford Coppola, Philip Noyce and John Schwartzman, Martini learned that filmmaking often comes down to the ability to tell a story well.
“You don’t have to know how to work a camera to make a film. You just have to want to tell a story … Just start shooting.”
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