A NEW PADRE PIO MOVIE?!!

 Yes! I wholeheartedly advocate for a brand new Padre Pio film to be scripted, produced and screened worldwide. Thankfully, my book on Padre Pio has been well-received, and while quite a few people have said they’d love to see a good movie made about the Stigmatist, certain others have cautioned me against any involvement because the films they’ve seen about his life, “Don’t work”.

The key just might be seeing where other filmmakers have gone wrong and then doing the opposite to get it right.

Far be it from me to criticize anyone who has endeavored to put Pio’s life on the big screen, but I feel movies about his life have failed because of a lack of accuracy. 

I have written a pitch and an outline of a screenplay, and my guiding light is painstaking attention to detail, my aim is that every word that comes out of the mouth of the actor playing Pio is something Pio actually said. 

Too many pieces of art about Padre Pio get lost in the debate between what is true and what is false. Hard-core honesty is the only way and can be assimilated by the human soul as wholesome and truthful.

The plot I’ve devised is structured around his relationships with his fellow priests, including the popes and how his enemies hindered his relationship with the penitents, the 1 million souls who came to him for confession. Oh, I know we can’t give an account of all these confessions. But there are a few that can be put on film very easily, and they show his character as well as inviting the viewer to see themselves in the person confessing giving them a picture of their own soul.

I don’t believe the film needs to be set in Italy, but Pio needs to be played by in Italian, I think. And the score? Opera, of course! 

I had a leading from Padre Pio that my friends would introduce me to two certain film directors who want to make movies about Padre Pio. I thought this message from Pio might be too far-fetched, and I kept it to myself for fear that it was my imagination and grandiosity, but friends of mine have made it known to me that they do know these directors who want to make a film about Padre Pio! Well, I know just because they want to make a successful movie about Pio that moves people to sanity and sanctity doesn’t mean that they’ll give me a second thought. 

I’m not interested in making a film for the sake of making a film and I do think for it to meet with the approval of even a small audience it needs to be scrupulously true to life. 

I live a simple, hidden life in my shack by the sea, and  if a call from the director in Malibu should come, I’ll hop on the bus and have a meeting. That I take public transport as often as I do will either impress or intimidate him, here in L.A. it’s called truly living dangerously.