Bud Spencer’s Son

"My dad could eat up to two kilos of pasta. He and Terence Hill didn't know how to take each other off-set."

Corriere Della Sera

by Giovanna Cavalli

January 6, 2024

Giuseppe Pedersoli: “Modugno was left out of his friends' band. He slept with the radio on, connected to air traffic. He bought an airstrip."

[Carlo Pedersoli, aka Bud Spencer, with his son Giuseppe]

"If Dad drove me to school, I never made it to class. " What are you going to do there?" And he took me on a trip to the Urbe airport or to the aviation school in Foligno, to the port of Fiumicino or to the Mercedes dealership. The least strict person in the world. When I was seven years old, I told him I wanted to swim. We went to Novella Calligaris. "But the child has to train two hours in the morning, before class, and two hours in the afternoon." "All right," he said. "We don't even talk about it, Peppotto, it would be a killing," he told me as soon as we were alone. We never talked about it again. But for him, the values of sport were fundamental: he was moved by remembering when, after the record in the 100m freestyle, his teammates gave him a new bathrobe," says Giuseppe Pedersoli, 62, screenwriter and producer for cinema and TV, one of the three children of Bud Spencer, who if you put a beard on him looks just like Piedone, although less imposing. "He was afraid that I would suffer in the confrontation. " You're not so much smaller than me, you know Peppottone?"

[Bud Spencer with his wife Maria Amato (left) and their three children: Cristiana, Diamante and Giuseppe]

He, on the other hand, was a giant.

"One meter and 92 for 120 kilos, then increased to 165. When he was young, he was beautiful, then he let himself go, but he had perfect analysis. He didn't look like a fat man at all, but rather a very strong man. He had thin legs, walked and danced lightly, and danced with Raffaella Carrà. He was athletic, despite his size."

As a child, did he scare her, so big and thick, with a dark beard and a big voice?

"Neither to us children nor to the smaller actors he worked with. His smile and his hands conveyed protection. Only once, in a curt response, did he slap me on the leg. I've never seen him angry for more than a minute."

There was little at home.

"From 1967 onwards he made three or four films a year, for ten, eleven months he was away. We hardly ever saw him. When he came back, he showered us with gifts. Electric trains and airplanes, which he liked. We rarely went to the set, not even to Campo Imperatore, in Abruzzo, where Trinità filmed. His and Terence's success was immediate and explosive, they were not prepared. Kidnappings were the order of the day then; he was afraid for us. When I was 15 he took me to Hong Kong, I remember the plane that swooped down between the skyscrapers. For my sister Cristiana's 18th birthday, she organized a party in the desert, next to the Pyramids, it was like that. He didn't talk much about his work as an actor, with detachment, as if every film could be his last, he reached 100. He was much more enthusiastic about sporting feats, about the adventure at the Olympics, perhaps the happiest moment of his life."

He wasn't too convinced about making films.

"I don't know, maybe he felt inadequate. He wanted to understand who he really was, after sporting glory. In 1957 he left for South America, where he stayed for three years, between Venezuela and Panama. As a young boy he had lived in Brazil with his family, working as a very young librarian at the consulate. "The Neapolitan is a sad Brazilian," he said. The family went through a difficult time, they lived by selling the sheets of the trousseau."

As a young man, he was also a musician.

With friends he set up a band, "Gli assatanati del ritmo", they animated the nights in Via Veneto. He sang and composed. A young boy from Polignano a Mare showed up. "Are you taking me with you?" He played the first songs, which were terrible." Forget it." A few years later he won Sanremo. It was Domenico Modugno."

Cinecittà noticed it anyway.

"He was engaged to Maria Amato, the daughter of Giuseppe, producer of La Dolce Vita. At the very least, Anthony Quinn was walking around the house. Mum would pick him up in Grandpa's car, maybe Gregory Peck was in the back seat."

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, "Trinity" and "Bambino".

"Dad called him Mario — the only one who could do it — he was Carlo. Off the set they were two big shy guys who didn't really know how to take each other. Terence is good and kind, but very introverted. And then, when he wasn't working, he lived in the United States. They must have gone out to dinner together three times in their lives. Every now and then he came to us for my mother's spaghetti dinner. On stage, however, they were transformed, there was real emotion between them, a perfect harmony was created."

[Bud Spencer and Terence Hill in the film “They Call Him Trinity”]

With so many cinematic fistfights, did he ever come back with a black eye?

"No, even though the action scenes were very amusing to him. Terence, on the other hand, scored a few points. Like when the villain in the film had to hit my father with a wooden plank, but he dodged and Trinity took the blow on the head."

Full-throttle pursuits.

"Dad was exceptionally nearsighted, he wore very thick glasses. To shoot he had to take them off, he could hardly see anything, yet he wanted to shoot those scenes without a stunt double, I don't know how he did it. In Piedone the cop there is him chasing a Lamborghini through the streets of Naples in a Fiat 130 coupé. Keep in mind that, a few years ago, at the airport, instead of the elevator button, he pressed the button of a soft drink dispenser."

He got his pilot's license.

"During the filming of Più forte ragazzi! in Colombia, while Terence, a marine, slept in a shack near the set, Dad went back and forth in a small plane twenty minutes away. After a month, he had learned how to fly. "Now I'm in charge." And off he went. They were all terrified, especially when, on landing, he performed a "quail" maneuver, hopping on the runway. Flying was an overwhelming passion for him. He slept perpetually with the radio on and connected to the local air traffic."

He had a lot of ideas.

"Bold undertakings that often turned out to be economic catastrophes. While filming Uno sceriffo extraterrestre... A little extra and a lot terrestrial, in Atlanta, he bought an airstrip, a two-kilometer dirt road, with a wind sleeve and an office. He had made up his mind to build airplanes. There. One day two guys dressed in black, with black ties, clearly two FBI agents, showed up. They had taken him for a drug dealer. He avoided arrest but everything was confiscated."

He even bought a tugboat.

"Another genius of his. A 36-meter iron shell, equipped for round-the-world travel. He never left Porto Santo Stefano. He had an almost childlike fantasy, until he was 87 years old. He gave me a pen to write upside down. "Astronauts use it." It's a gigantic magnet. "Just in case you drop an outboard motor." He was able to tell Mom, "I'm not coming back for lunch." And set off on an ocean flight. Once, two Swedes knocked on the door. "My husband is shipwrecked but she says don't worry, he'll be back soon." He reappeared after 4 days."

Diets were not for him.

"He always left with a load of spaghetti, oil and tomatoes. He once topped them with cornflakes. His trailer was crowded, the seamstress Ida was cooking. If you gave him two kilos of pasta, he could eat them all. He went to Messegue, Switzerland. They presented him with a tray with two cooked pears. Whereupon he jumped out of the first-floor window and ran off to the rotisserie. The second time they charged him ten days in advance, he resisted two. On the famous evening of Italy-Germany 4 to 3, with the producer Italo Zingarelli, also 180 kilos, 60 meatballs were made, and I don't know how many cod fillets”.

The last memory.

"You can have Superman as a father, but there comes a time when you see him become fragile. When he realized he couldn't play anymore, he let himself go. He hasn't been here for seven years, but it's as if it has been "virtualized". He’s still here. We hear his step, his voice, his scent, every other night we see him on TV. He was not a saint or a star, but one of the family. His last word was, "Thank you."

 

[Submitted by Michael Ferguson]