In the spring of 1993, I spent ten very happy days in Rome.  It was my first trip abroad and I was the guest of a friend of a friend, an architect who owned a sprawling apartment in the heart of Old Rome.  Walking out of the door of his place on the Piazza Aracoeli, you had only to turn a corner in any direction and find yourself in a setting you’d seen a thousand times in travelogues, in books and of course at the movies.  Go one way and there was the Roman Coliseum from Elio Petri’s THE 10TH VICTIM (1965), FELLINI’S SATYRICON (1969) and Bruce Lee’s  RETURN OF THE DRAGON (1972); go in the opposite direction and you’d encounter Piazza Navona from Mario Bava’s THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1963), Armando Crispino’s AUTOPSY (1975) and Peter Greenaway’s THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT (1987); make a few more turns and you’d run smack dab into The Spanish Steps (Damiano Damiani’s THE EMPTY CANVAS), The Trevi Fountain (Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA) and The Vatican (Michael Anderson’s THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN).   And just across the street from my temporary digs was Il Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, the white marble monstrosity dedicated to the first king of the unified Italy which can also be seen in THE BELLY OF AN ARCHITECT and a decade after my visit was destroyed in the sci-fi movie THE CORE (20o3).  I got around to all of these attractions but even if I hadn’t been able to make time for all of them there was one movie location I would not have missed.

La Bocca della Verità (or The Mouth of Truth) is believed to be a 1st Century sewer grate depicting a pagan god, most likely Oceanus (aka Okeanos), a full statue of whom also adorns the Trevi Fountain.  Chiseled out of marble, the object is propped up in the portico of the 6th Century Basilica of Saint Mary.  This relic was put to immortal use in the 1953 Paramount production ROMAN HOLIDAY, directed by William Wyler and starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  The film’s most famous scene has Hepburn’s European princess-in-disguise and Peck’s American reporter, effectively strangers to one another, visiting the basilica and encountering the Mouth of Truth.  To learn a little something about this young woman of mystery, Peck dares Hepburn to put her hand in La Bocca.  She does, somewhat skittishly, and then dares him right back.  (The expression on Peck’s face always gets a big laugh with revival audiences.)  Peck slowly insinuates his hand into La Bocca, screams in agony, and pulls back an empty sleeve.  Peck’s reveal was ad libbed (reportedly based on an old Red Skelton gag) and Hepburn’s reaction genuine.

I had to wait for some Japanese tourists to clear the portico before I went in, as I had prepared something for my visit.  Once I was sure I was alone and not likely to be disturbed, I stuck my hand into The Mouth of Truth (and I’m here to tell you, it looks easy until you have to actually do it) and recited something I had spent an hour or so practicing earlier that day:

“Sono un grande escrito Americano!”  I am a great American writer.  Mind you, at this point in my career arc, I had had a few plays produced in New York and that was the sum and substance of my legacy, so it wasn’t really true that I was a great American writer by any stretch of the imagination.  And yet I knew, when I was safely back in New York in possession of both of my hands, I’d have exclusive bragging rights to the story of how I declared to La Bocca della Verità that I was a great American writer and I was not contradicted or maimed.  So I said it a few times:  “Sono un grande escrito Americano… sono un grande escrito Americano.”  And that was that.  I walked the short distance back to where I was staying, both thumbs tucked proudly into my belt.

It was only when I was back in my room that night, alone with my Italian phrase book, my belly full of wine and gourmet Italian food, that I decided to double-check my tourist Italian.  After I went over the glossary a few times, I realized that what I had told the Mouth of Truth was that “I am a fat American writer.”  And I had not been contradicted.

I really have to get back to Rome one of these days.  I think I owe myself a do-over.