Italy's Love Affair with George Clooney

Somewhere between his purchasing a house on Lake Como, starring in Siriana, the release of Vanity Fair in Italian, and winning the Oscar for Michael Clayton, George Clooney morphed into the new Italian version of Marcello Mastroianni.

No, that’s not a typo. I think that the Italians think that he is actually one of their own. I don’t believe he has any Italian blood in him, although they’ll – no, scratch that – they’ve already – let that little oversight go, too.

But, seeing that the Italians haven’t come up with a new Mastroianni since, well, Mastroianni, they’ve decided, like the entire Italian soccer team, to just import one instead.

You cannot turn a corner, open a magazine, look at a TV, bus, newspaper or website without seeing Georgello’s mug. As nice as it is to look at, could he really be that crazy about Omega watches, Martini Red, Toyota, Martini White, and Nespresso caffè? And, all at the same time?

This week he was stumping for Walter Veltroni, called to Venice to stump there, too, his latest film (as Actor-Director no less) In amore niente regole (Leatherheads) is plastered all over town. Sky TV and Fox use his movies regularly to promise you terrific films all the time. Too bad they’re all Ocean’s 11 – 12 or 13 24/7.

Even tonight they managed to pull out a 1995 flick, Accerchiato, in case we were missing him between 9 and 11 pm, since he’d already been on 4 other channels and all the ads in between.

This amore has gone so far that he’s slotted to play the head of the Italian P2, the high stakes men's club filled with Italy’s politicians and businessmen which eventually fell apart after the Tangentopoli scandal. Hearing him speak Italian, I just hope the script's in English.

At this point, I say he change his name, keep dating hot models, perhaps have a kid with Chiara Mastroianni, and maybe make a few remakes of Marcello’s movies—at this point, nobody would be able to tell the difference.