Diego Cugia
Jack Folla - Alcatraz

228 days to execution:

"Jack Folla, the DJ on death row. You say it's absurd? No, brother, the absurd thing is not that I'm an Italian on death row in a maximum-security prison in the United States. The absurd thing is that you're out there. That all of you are free and in a mess. Where's your freedom, darling? In the concentration camps of those shitty neighborhoods they've stuck you in like cattle, what do you expect to become, honorable? They keep you alive only because you need to buy. Shopping advice? Screw it. And your first paycheck - when they decide to give it to you - will be sized up to buy the needs they've shot into your brain on television. You feel like you're dying, and what do they offer you? A Magnum. And they have a girl with an anteater's tongue licking it. Try offering her a creamy one and see where she sends you. So you're scared shitless, but you joke and pretend nothing's wrong. Pretend nothing's wrong. Pretend nothing's wrong. Your father is an alcoholic, pretend nothing's wrong. Your mother is dying of cancer, pretend nothing's wrong, pretend nothing's wrong. Damn, maybe I have AIDS. Pretend nothing's wrong. You make love to her and pretend nothing's wrong, because you have nothing left inside, nothing, they haven't left you anything, they've screwed you over, thrown you in and tossed the keys. Which of us is on death row? Me or you? Welcome to Alcatraz, darling."

Jack Folla is a former DJ, condemned to death in the United States, who is allowed to broadcast the "music of his life" in a radio program.
He's in his forties and lives in this two by three-meter cell on death row at the "Alcatraz" maximum-security prison, on the island of the same name in California. Every afternoon, between "Blowin' In The Wind" and a "Downtown Train" - ranging from De André to "Take On Me" by A-ha -, he vents his indignation against the world around him. And the world in question is not the four walls that cut him off from society, but society itself, politics, the Italian misconduct, and the true psychopaths walking free. He denounces a socio-political reality that he's known, throwing it in our faces for what it is, as trivial pseudo-news programs that trample over lifeless bodies to show off how big their newsroom is would never do.
Jack has a tense, angry, but warm, motivated, and emotional tone at the same time. He is just a man understandably outraged. A disenchanted man who has traveled the world and tasted the filth. He knows what really counts in life, he knows what only deserves disdain. What must be fought by instilling consciousness in consciences.

Put that way, people would wonder why they should ever listen to the thoughts of a dangerous convict, maybe a serial killer, and to top it off, a megalomaniac.

Jack is an Italian, born to an Italian father and a New Yorker mother. He grows up in Rome, in the Centocelle neighborhood, and migrates to the United States following the severing of ties with his brother (who, always at the opposite of Jack's rebellious character, sold, unbeknownst to him, the entire record collection of his brother) and, above all, the climate of tension and the winds of drastic change looming in Italy at that time.

One April night in 1994, an armed criminal tries to rob the day's takings off poor Jack, who owned a small restaurant near Central Park at the time. A scuffle ensues, a shot is fired. The criminal dies. Jack turns himself in to the police, reports the incident, and is tried immediately. The sentence condemns him to death. Jack is locked in a maximum-security prison that same April of '94. The execution is set for June 25, 1999.

So, in 1998, the radio program begins. Jack tells, debates about the hypocritical world he has come to know, the heartbreaking realities he discovered, the lies, and the real scavenging, the legalized kind, that effortlessly populates our country, the entire global community, and constantly attempts to shove bullshit into social minds to manage them as they please, or rather, at their convenience. Scavengers far more dangerous than those Jack encounters in that penitentiary. He tells of the unimaginable money deals that hide behind equally unimaginable masquerades. Of indignation. Ingratitude. And finally, he denounces the infinite and unfounded collective dissatisfaction, when all it would take is to be pushed to the edge, like him, to bring out the best in oneself and improve by improving oneself. Give a kick in the ass and walk straight, without breaking the balls with cheap spoiled whining and prima donna delusions. Just rolling up your sleeves and fighting.

1 day to execution:

"The albatross 3957 of Alcatraz that spreads the wings of freedom to come looking for you one by one, in thoughts, in memory, and in your nights. Let's try to meet this one last time. Sit cross-legged, in silence, when everything is asleep. Look at yourself in the mirror. Breathe regularly and without making any sound. At first, you'll feel a slight discomfort, overcome the unease, keep going. The strongest among you will see the profile of a face similar to yours. Don't be afraid. Continue to gaze into the mirror while breathing regularly. When you feel observed by the self you’re looking at, you'll have found me. Goodbye brothers, goodbye mirrors.
Hasta siempre."

The hour of execution was imminent. Meanwhile, his words were becoming law, his name an icon. They already were. Everyone wanted him. Everyone wanted him free. But on May 13, 1999, two days before the execution, Jack escapes from prison. He disappears.

Jack Folla is a fictional character, created by the writer, director, and TV author Diego Cugia. Thus, between 1998 and 1999, the program named "Jack Folla: a DJ on death row" begins (later mutated into a couple of variants).
The radio broadcast achieves great success, so much so that "Alcatraz" lands on television in 2001.

So he returns, but this time no longer on the frequencies of Radio Due but on those of Rai Due (!).

Even in this case, the program is immediately successful. The style is the same, but now there are also raw images to accompany thoughts and words.
Jack is never framed. He sees what his camera frames, and it is Cugia's words that the voice of Roberto Pedicini recites.
From the long escape from Alcatraz, he had landed in Cuba. Fugitive in Havana, a guest of a Cuban family. There he finds his woman of always, a beautiful Francesca Neri in the role of Francesca.

The harangues on the piss of our era, on the grim realities surrounding us, and on the Italian misconduct, always accompanied by the intermissions of the music of his life - now with the addition of live excerpts and video clips - resume. But for how long?

The contents are hard, but nothing shocking. Naturally, when the center-right government came in 2001, the program was first moved to a late-night slot, without the transition being publicized, and then, following the logical (relative) drop in audience, shut down.

Among the most emblematic and significant moments of the broadcast, I want to point out the one on loneliness, on the elderly. In the opinion of the writer, one of the most touching and culminating moments of the entire broadcast. Accompanying it is a series of fragile images, more eloquent than a thousand words, but no more than those few, wise, and truthful words curated by Cugia:

"Well, the great Italian elders have decided to close their shop of wisdom earlier than expected.
Just this year 1,180 suicides. 1,180 life stories thrown into the landfill. People unbeaten by the two World Wars. People who witnessed Kennedy's assassination, the Ustica massacre, the Vietnam War, and all editions of Canzonissima. Brothers, think about it. Are you aware of the despair in a man who has few years of life ahead and decides to prematurely close his story? Imagine a rope. Make a noose. Attach it somewhere and tighten a neck already full of wrinkles. Take oxygen away from a head that has thought, loved, decided, helped, hated. Physical, psychological illnesses? No. Not only. They are consequences. Consequences of loneliness. Of feeling useless. And of a damned barbaric system that “thinks young,” “produces young,” “sells young” and considers a wrinkle a disgrace. Brothers, I am not the Barbanera Almanac, I cannot tell you that aging is a challenge and you must do charity work. It's you, damn it, who needs the old people (the foul word was “elderly,” and I was careful not to say it).
Talk to the old people. Tell them about your problems. About the girlfriend who dumped you. About the failing grade in mathematics. About your father who drinks. About your sister who snorts. Courage. Tell them how every day you cross the flames and burn your skin in an attempt to live.
The old people, they have crossed those flames hundreds of times. They know how to do it. How to bear the pain of living (I know no other definition of happiness). You’ll see, they’ll tell you that once, in 1938, the same thing happened to them. And today they laugh about it. They will help you.
And you, unknowingly, will help them."