Taking a detour from the usual Kennedy family pastimes such as politics and social activism, Robert F. Kennedy III is playing for laughs, shooting a semi-autobiographical comedy in Italy called “AmeriQua.”
Kennedy III, the son of environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and grandson of late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, says he is basically playing himself in the laffer that he wrote. He also got Italian entertainment entrepreneur Marco Gualtieri to shepherd the pic.
Shooting in Bologna, the pic also stars Giancarlo Giannini and Eva Amurri. Marco Bellone and Giovanni Consonni are directing.
“After I graduated, I started writing down ideas, little scenes, bits of dialogue, inspired by living in this classic dirty student apartment in Italy, with a really intense group of characters coming in and out all the time,” Kennedy tells Variety.
The filmmaker first pitched the project at President Obama’s inaugural celebrations in Washington. Gualtieri, who heads Italy’s TicketOne ticketing and entertainment marketing outfit and is on the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation of Europe, was a guest of Ethel Skakel Kennedy.
“Bobby … started talking to me about this film, and after 10 minutes I started laughing because he was pitching it to me, when the room was filled with Hollywood heavyweights,” Gualtieri recounts.
