Eugene Rizzo

Eugene (Gene) Rizzo was educated at the Hackley School on the Hudson River and at Kenyon College in rural Ohio, where he studied English Literature and Italian Renaissance History. After working as an assistant editor first at Publishers' Weekly and then Opera News in his native New York, he was offered a job in Italy in the press department of the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds. He jumped at the chance. That experience, plus his work as a correspondent for VARIETY (numerous byline stories on the arts) opened the doors to Rome's then thriving movie industry. He subsequently worked on nearly fifty film sets in sixteen countries, starting with Pier Paolo Pasolini and finishing with Wes Anderson. In the same years he was active as a translator (Italian to English), most notably turning out the shooting script of Sergio Leone's haunting classic "Once Upon a Time in America". As a publicist, Rizzo is credited with helping the international launch of Italian filmmakers Liliana Cavani (Ripley's Game), Giuliano Montaldo (TV's Marco Polo), Giuseppe Tornatore (Maléna) and Franco Zeffirelli (Callas Forever, Tea with Mussolini). Other directors he worked with include Michael Cacoyannis, Marvin Chomsky, Harold Ross, John Frankenheimer, Terry Gilliam, Paul Schrader, Ivan Passer, Zhang Yimou, Pupi Avati, Danny Huston, and Shekhar Kapur. Since retiring from the film biz, Gene has operated a popular b&b with a striking view of St Peter's Dome.