If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’D Do It All Over You

Guido Mina di Sospiro started out as a filmmaker. One of his juvenilia, shot in 16 mm in 1981 in Los Angeles in a decidedly New Wave vein while attending USC’s School of Cinema Production, is If I Could Do It All Over Again, I’D Do It All Over You. An official entry in the Short Films category at the 32nd International Berlin Film Festival, it features a few very young talents: Lisa Jane Persky went on to act in dozens of mainstream films and TV shows, among the former: American Pop, The Big Easy, When Harry Met Sally…, Coneheads, The Cotton Club, and Peggy Sue Got Married; Marzio Rusconi Clerici has become a world-renowned architect and designer, based in Milan, Italy; Atila Sikora’s paintings (the divine postman) are on permanent display at the Los Angeles Punk Museum. Also noteworthy is the participation of John “Jack” Wills Jr., the eminent scholar of Chinese history, whom the filmmaker somehow persuaded, back then, to star as Lisa’s character father.

Photos from the set:

Heroes and Villains

a film by Guido Mina di Sospiro

Filmed in 1978-79; first showing: Cineteca Italiana (Italian Cinémathèque), Milan, May 21^st, 1979. Restored and remastered by Francesco and Domenico De Magistris, Torino, in 2018-19.

Guido Mina di Sospiro: director, screenwriter, producer, occasional actor.
Andrea Mundula: actor, editor, sound-mixer, resourcefulness incarnate.
Luca Rolla: assistant director (with much influence on the film), actor, tantrum fit specialist.
Marzio Rusconi-Clerici: actor and textbook prima donna.

The four of them used to call themselves “La scuola di Milano” (The School of Milan) but, as a quartet, they got on each other’s nerves, so much so that it was impossible for them to be together in the same room: an altercation would invariably occur, generally severe.

Gianni Micheloni and Guido Gallia: cinematographers, and drivers.

Acting:

Girls: Susan Mele, Guenda Lazzaroni, Benedetta Reiser, Elena Lingeri.
Boys: Erminio Beretta (also overdubbing in falsetto the girl in the “love scene”), Carlo Romagnoli, Francesco Scullica, Cino Raffa Ugolini, Lorenzo Altamurra.

Many others were involved in the making of the film, technicians and such, but their names are now forgotten. Shot mostly in Lombardy, except for three scenes in Liguria.

As Mark Twain warned, and as it is related in the film credits: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”