An extremely fat woman falls from the sky and lands on your car. And nobody believes you. You have to prove that this incredible thing happened and that you didn’t just dream it.
In the end you succeed, but in the process you are drawn into an adventure that involves not only fat, but also vengeful mafia members, men in love with statues, and people who frequently lose and regain their memories – or their lives!
There is a woman kidnapped and locked in a box, an apartment hidden inside a water cistern, a tiger that runs across the city’s rooftops... And what a city! The streets of New York - overrun by policemen, ambulances, circus performers and a film director, who talks to God. In short, this is The Incredible Odyssey of Daniel Flow. Everyone I tell my story to underlines the variety of events and characters. And every single one of them asks me what emotional connection I have with the changes of fortune suffered by an actor who watches his fragile life crumbling around him after an unpredictable and unexplainable crash.
Well, my connection is simple: fear, fear of facing the future. I experienced this emotion not long ago in relation to my writing.
At the very young age of twenty, my first novel – an autobiography – was published (born out of my juvenile arrogance), and just a year later I wrote a play that was produced by a theatre. At this point I withdrew and stopped writing. I wasn’t sure anymore if I wanted to be a writer. And I didn’t know what kind of writer I wanted to become. I was blocked and needed some kind of wake up call, but nothing happened. And thus Daniel Flow was born. I imagined a character being paralyzed, like me, and I gave him the push that wouldn’t come to me.
But you can tell that I was jealous of him because he was very lucky to be able to move past his stumbling block. As a result, I took out all of my anger on him and literally crushed him under the body of a fat woman who fell from the sky. And not being satisfied with that, I further complicated his life: gangsters, policemen, a tiger... But Daniel wasn’t intimidated. In fact, once he got the right push, he didn’t stop until he reclaimed his own life. And in my own world, I do the same: I have written a crazy, ambitious film, and I’ve had a great time doing it. And, I confess, I still have a certain arrogance left, which I’d believed lost: the arrogance of someone who believes that his stories are worth being told, heard, or - in this case – experienced on the big screen.