Inspiration
On the audio commentary for the DVD release of the film, director and co-screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola states that the Lucchesi character could be very recognizable for Italian citizens. The thick-rimmed glasses, the official police bodyguards, and the message that Calo whispers to him before he dies have led many to conclude that the character is based on Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time Prime Minister of Italy who had proven links with the Mafia and who is the source of the saying "Power wears out those who do not have it."
It is also suspected that Lucchesi's first name, "Licio" (and, indeed, his whole character), may be a reference to Licio Gelli, the prominent Italian financier and leader of Propaganda Due, who played a leading role in both the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the various conspiracy theories related to the death of Pope John Paul I, both of which inspired the plot of the film.
Read more about this topic: Licio Lucchesi
Famous quotes containing the word inspiration:
“As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognise the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’s daughter.”
—Alan Jay Lerner (1918–1986)
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)