Q: When people think of Ferruccio Lamborghini, they associate the name with the fancy sportscar Lamborghini Countach or Lamborghini Miura. But he establish his career by making a tractor and an air conditioner. There are so many layers and elements of Lamborghini that we don’t know about initially. What was the genesis of your attraction to doing this film? 

BM: Well, first of all, the movie was brought to me, as opposed to me coming up with the idea. It was brought to me by Andrea Irevolino(Producer). They were going to give a party and asked me if I would consider writing and then directing the movie. Later on they asked me to direct. I said it sounds really fascinating. Everybody knows what Lamborghini is, and people thought they knew who Lamborghini was. 

But after doing the research, I found an intriguingly complex character: somebody who thought like a genius, somebody who saw and envisioned things that other people said “No no no, that can’t happen” and then he’d say “Yeah, it can happen” and they’d say “How?” and he’d say, “You never know. We’ll figure it out.” Trying to understand that character when you are not a genius, or you’re not someone who thinks like that — that was the first thing that intrigued me.  

The second thing that intrigued me as I’d begun to do the work was, well, if you do think like that, if you are a genius, what’s the price one pays for that? Those are the two ideas that generated what ultimately became the script. 

Q: After graduating college in 1939, Lamborghini got into the army and was assigned to the automobile department and sent to the Italian colony of Rhodes Island in Greece. He was even taken prisoner in 1944. How do you focus a two-hour film on gathering all those elements to capture his essence of life? 

BM: Well, thank you for asking that. It would take a long, long time for me to really answer it with a complete look at how that happened. But in a nutshell, I mentioned I did about six months of research, and all the things you just spoke about I also found. Somewhere along the way, you say to yourself, oh, here’s what the movie could be, What is it like to be a genius, to see somebody else to see things that other people don’t see? And then to fight like hell to get what you’re after even though no one else believes in you? Then, what’s the price of being like that and thinking like that? 

That’s the idea. Now where do you start the storytelling? And you just mentioned the answer. It was in the war, he was in his twenties, he saw people all around him die. He was the son of a farmer, a hundred years of family farming, he knew that he was going home to tell his father, “I learned something different about myself. I understand mechanics in the way that I never knew that I could. And I understand something else: I’m going to die someday, and I don’t want to die the anonymous person who just lived and did nothing.”

So he had to break his father’s heart I thought that’s a good way to open up this movie about somebody that’s different. Let him start the movie off by being different than what everyone else expects him to be. Now you have a starting point. Eventually you’ll ask yourself — at least I did — if that’s the starting point, what’s the end point? Well, I guess the end point is to achieve that one thing that everybody said he couldn’t do. And once you have what you feel is a beginning and what could be an ending, then it becomes a matter of coming up with the incidents that string all of that back together. 

Q: What’s amazed me about the relationship between Ferruccio and his father is that even though Ferruccio doesn’t follow his father’s footstep as a farmer who grew grapes, he has his way of showing respect by creating the tractor. What were the things that fascinated you about their relationship?

BM: For me, that was the most fascinating thing. No one wants to disappoint one’s father — I don’t think, anyway. We all need to earn the respect and the love of our parents before we gain the respect and love of the outside world, and at some point you grow up and you realize, “Oh, I have to disappoint them. Because if I don’t, I become them as opposed to myself. 

As a young actor myself, I left New York to go live in Los Angeles to try to make my living as an actor. I left my mother and father behind.

Most people do, and it’s heartbreaking to have to do that. It would be heartbreaking talking to my mother asking me when I’m coming home. So you dealt with your own experiences, and I thought, it had to be hard for him. And you know he loved his father. His father was a great man, a wonderful man, who took care of his family.

I guess I dove into my own experiences and my own disappointments in my own parents, and tried to extend that to what it might have been like to him. 

Q: Could you take us through the casting process for Frank Grillo? He seems perfect to play Lamborghini. 

BN: Yeah. I think the world knows that we began this movie years earlier with two different actors involved. And then Covid came, we shut down, and then actors’ schedules changed and we had to re-cast the movie when we were ready to shoot after Covid. At that point, a lot of actors were presented to me by the producers that they might have an interest in playing a role. 

None of them were quite right. Being good actors all, a lot of them were not Italian, a lot of them were not the right age. I felt we needed to make the differences work in terms of time. We open up he’s in his twenties and we go into his seventies. 

Then when Frank [Grillo]’s name was brought up — and we were very late in the process, probably a week before shooting, the producers were getting nervous because I wouldn’t sign off on an actor. But I had to sign off on an actor who’s right. They kept giving me different names and I kept saying “The movie won’t work and you can’t make a bad movie. We have to have an actor who’s right for the role of Ferruccio. 

Then when they brought Frank’s name up, I had known Frank from my first television show he  auditioned for called “Falcone” [CBS, 2000] that I created. I remembered him. I remembered him being a good actor, and he became this kindof action star. I knew he was a really good actor and he was Italian, and he was the right age, and he was a good guy. So I said right away, “Get Frank.” And Frank remembered me from “Falcone” right away. I think it was a marriage of a really good role to a really good actor. 

Q: Yes, he really deserved this because we’ve seen his action films, but know he can do drama as well. I hope this is going to be a great transition to get more dramatic acting roles.

BM: Yeah, he feels like this might be his best work as an actor. I feel the same way. I think it will prove to people that he’s more than just some buy who fights people and shoots people. He’s a good actor. 

Q: Lamborghini Lamborghini gathered a team of great mechanics that used to work with Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Maserati. What’s fascinating about his character as a leader gathering a team? 

BM: Well, the thing I had to tackle was why would these other mechanics who made a good living, who supported their families, who already worked for some of the best car makers in the world, come work for this guy who made air conditioners? Who made tractors? 

I think the answer is — and which I try to portray in the movie, I hope people get it — is that he was indomitable in his spirit. He had a vision, he knew he could get there, and no matter what the obstacles were, he was ready to support them, whatever they needed to get — get where he needed to get: something new. When someone has that kind of spirit, who says “I will not lose this and I will not let you lose it”, people go “Oh boy, I think I might jump in with him.” 

I think that’s different. We’ve both seen in other areas people like that — in sports, always there’s a football quarterback who says “Come on, team, I’m going to put you on my back.

” There’s a pitcher in baseball who says “I will get this done for us, trust me, guys.” There’s a fighter like Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraser who refuse to give up. Those people in the world we all admire and we all want to be around because we know they can do it. 

None of us really believe we can do anything. But when we see someone who really believes he can do anything, we want to run there with that guy or that girl. 

Q: I heard that you guys used authentic and original Lamborghini cars and the actual boat that Ferruccio used to own. They are not registered to drive, they are like museum pieces. Can you talk about gathering those items together for authenticity? 

BM: Well, that was not my doing. That was, number one, the producers giving us enough of a budget to be able to afford to go get them. Number two, we had a great car expert who went out and found them, and in finding them then he had to make the deal with the people that owned those cars. 

Don’t forget, the people who own those cars, they’re like their babies. These are like things that can never be replaced. To be able to talk them into it saying “We will take care of it. We will not hurt your baby, I promise you.” It was something really special. 

Then they all came along, and many of them became the drivers of their own as well. Because they were all interested in also showing off their babies. The big issue was making them understand that we were professionals and that we were not going to damage anything that they loved, because we loved it too. 

Q: It is surprising that Enzo Ferrari didn’t make the partnership with Lamborghini. Lamborghini is a very shrewd business man, considering the future of the company. So why didn’t they work together? 

BM: Well, I wasn’t privy to what legend has it was a real conversation that I make up in the film, because nobody was there. But we all understand that that really took place. The only thing I can imagine is that I just spoke about how Lamborghini is a man with a vision and will not give up that vision. And I could only imagine someone like Ferrari, who had been a huge, huge — maybe the biggest success in the automotive industry, in Italy anyway — had to think the audacity of the guy who made tractors and air conditioning units to come and “tell me he’s going to help me make my next car?” 

There’s a certain [audacity] in that, and maybe a guy like Ferrari would not respond. Now I’m guessing that, because whatever that meeting was and whatever took place, the rest of us can only guess. As a screenwriter I had to make up what it might have been. 

Q: It’s really nice to see Mira Sorvino in this film. There was a very engaging fight scene between the characters Ferruccio and Mira’s character, his wife Anita, at the table. Can you talk about creating that bond there and the great energy in that sequence? 

BM: She wonderful, as you see, and I’m glad you think so. Everybody’s going to love her in this movie. Mira’s a professional like Frank, and like everybody else in the movie. 

We had that dinner scene and it’s the heart of the relationship of the characters in the movie. I had written a scene that was not quite what you saw on film.

When I shot it, I realized something else had to happen in the scene. Not say “happen”, somebody had to do something. So I made a suggestion to Mira, “Why don’t you try this?” Not only did she try it, she owned it. 

I don’t want to give away what happens in that scene, but of course Frank responded in kind. And there were all these fireworks where before it was just dialogue and suddenly it was this great, big, wonderful emotional scene. I made a suggestion to Mira and she ran with it and boy, the scene began to work. 

Q: Thank you. 

Exclusive Interview with Actor Frank Grillo on “Lamborghini : The Man Behind the Legend.”

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Here’s the trailer of the film.