i feel like i have to spend two words to tell tumblr about the strange case of the late fabrizio frizzi.
frizzi was a tv host and actor who had been on air with a game show every day, 7pm, for a few years, but that was just his latest success in an almost 40-year long career. he was just 60 and very, very popular. every italian has seen him in something at some stage of their lives and kids knew him as woody from toy story. his face, smile and voice were familiar to everyone. he wasn’t - as far as we knew - some fine intellectual, he wasn’t even necessarily especially good at hosting and he certainly wasn’t an oscar-worthy actor but.
but.
when he died yesterday, it was an instant collective shock. the news opened talking about him (with no government yet formed nor likely to be any time soon!). three generations of audiences took to twitter to mourn him. the italian public broadcasting company made a special short clip to send inbetween promos. his colleagues couldn’t bear to go on air with their own shows, whose schedules changed abruptly to be replaced with tributes to him. some of those hosts came back on tv today and cried and others are still too devastated to release a proper statement. 10k people got in line in front of his mortuary today to pay homage.
his funeral will be BROADCASTED tomorrow.
it’s a level of mourning that’s surprising even to me, and i loved him. the thing is everyone’s tears are sincere because sure, he was popular, but most of all
he was
kind.
that’s literally it.
he’s universally described as kind, generous, gentle, sunny, gracious, polite. pick a positive adjective, he was that. he never had a mean word for anybody. when people got questions horrendously wrong on his show he never laughed at them but he somehow complimented them on their fantasy. even his divorce had been conflict-free and his ex-wife is heartbroken. he was always smiling, humble, modest, funny, self-deprecating. he was often on tv, but he stayed carefully away from the spotlight. as if that weren’t enough, 18 years ago he donated his bone marrow to a little girl who’s now a beautiful, grateful, soon-to-be-married young woman.
we italians are in a particular time where we’re angry and ugly, suspicious, mean, never contented, always complaining. we just voted for two of the angriest, ugliest, most hateful parties out there and yet here we are crying actual tears for probably the kindest, most decent tv personality of our days. it’s like we have two souls, which we probably do, and we’d buried one of them under tons of resentment and malice and now it’s back. i just wonder whether it’s going to go with this gentle face of our past or if it’s maybe staying, saddened and numb, until we’re reminded of what we were, could be, would like to be again. because that’s it, i think. we loved this person, someone we never met, because we must have admired the decency he had.
Grazie!
