2012 is looking to be a busy time, I have lots of projects working, some personal, some exciting ventures.

I wanted to break the ice on a new set of articles…sometimes twitter isn’t enough.

Ciao!

Daniel

The original Clarke Garrison from “The Bold and The Beautiful” has found love and a new life in Italy. A month ago he has experienced an immense pain: the loss of his son, Hank. Nevertheless he decided to join the italian version of “Celebrity Survivor”. He explains why.

The right words have not yet been invented. The words to speak about the death of a 22 years old son in a car accident, because that day it rained too much in Los Angeles, and the car, instead of keeping the road, crashed into a pole. The words to explain that “a sword has pierced your soul”, would say Luke the Evangelist. So, for the worst task for a father, the task of giving a proper burial to his eldest son Thomas Henry “Hank”, an engineer passionate about hip hop, Daniel McVicar has chosen the speech that Robert Kennedy delivered for the death of Martin Luther King.

Impressive in his gray turtleneck, with dark circles caused by long weeping, the man takes his Iphone and reads: “Even in our sleep, the pain that can not forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our despair, against our will, comes the wisdom through the awful grace of God”.

January 3, 2011. Three weeks after “that” date, a father feels obliged to explain to a journalist why in a few days he will put in stand-by his mourning and start, along with the other competitors, the new edition of “Celebrity Survivor”. This is a great gift. “Gift” is a word that McVicar pronounced several times, managing to hold back the tears.

Let’s start from that day.

I was in Italy, in Turin, where I live with my fiancée (Virginia De Agostini, met during the reality “Nights on Ice”in 2007). I got a call from my daughter Maisy, who is 20 years old and studies in New York, but in that period she was in Los Angeles for holydays. I immediately took the plane.

Hank, then.

He was a good man. He had a degree in engineering management but he also wrote Hip Hop songs. It has been a gift to be his father. I know that he’d rather be here with us, but obviously this was not God’s plan.

Are you a believer?

Yes, I am a Catholic, although I don’t go to church every day like my mother does. I believe that we are not only our bodies, we also have a spiritual side.

Catholics are a minority in the U.S.

I am the fourth of 12 brothers, 7 males end 5 females. To make 12 children, my parents have to be catholics.

How is it to live in an home with 12 children?

We have grown in Colorado, in a town with 5000 inhabitants where my parents still live. My father expanded the house as we increase. Meals were buffet:everybody waited by himself.

How many bedrooms did you have?

Six. We were 3 or 4 in each room, until 20 yrs I’ve never slept alone. My family had a tradition: every time a child was born, we gather in the living room where my mother did pass the newborn from the eldest brother to the youngest.

The typical American happy family.

Yes. But now, I share something else with my father. The name Thomas Henry McVicar, was not only the name of my son, it was also the name of my father and my eldest brother, Tommy, who died in a car accident at age 17. During Hank’s funeral, my father, who is 79, told me: “Now I’ve lost two Thomas Henrys”.

Why did you decide to do “Celebrity Survivor”?

Negotiations were closed in December. I had spoken about it with my children and they liked the American version of the show. I took them camping in Sierra Nevada from early age. It has always been important to me to share this type of experience, an almost primitive experience.

So, you are following the advice of Hank?

After the accident, Giorgio Gori sent me a SMS where he told me to be quiet and reflect. My daughter told me : “Go Dad, go!”. And you know the truth? “Survivor” is saving me.

How?

I go there to survive day after day. The important thing for me is the game, not the fights. I also know it can be dangerous for me, because I’m full of emotions. But I will try not to be heavy. Of course, I’m living a deep mourning and I will try to keep it inside of me, but I want to do that with dignity. “Celebrity Survivor” can be a noble game and I have the courage to challenge myself .

So, “Survivor” like a therapy?

This is not therapy, it is a game.  Therapy is something else.

Don’t you fear that your grief may be exploited during the show?

It’s a risk. But my grief is too true to be exploited. It is not an argument about getting enough rice, or about who should cook.

Are you ready for the tough life in Honduras?

I’ve read the U.S. Army Survival Manual.

This is not your first Reality in Italy. You were in the cast of “Nights on Ice” in 2007, a show that changed your life.

During that show I met Virginia, who was my “maestra”. At the time she did not know that she would have found this “monster” on her way. She was a great gift for me. When she was young she was a skating champion, now she is an international judge and works as a dentist in Turin. We’ve trained together 12 hours a day and we fell in love. Since then we have not looked back.

So you’ve decided to move to Italy.

In fact I still have an home and base in Los Angeles, but our life together is in Turin, where she works. I also have a branch of my company, Magmawave Media: we deal with video and TV production.

You are a member of Mensa, the club of the smartest people on Earth. Why didn’t you choose to be a scientist?

I decided to become an actor when I was 15 beacause I had a great need to communicate. At first I always used to play a soldier due to the typical american square-jaw. Then came “The Bold and the Beautiful”.

Is it true that you don’t like to talk about Clarke Garrison, your character in “The Bold and the Beautiful”?

I owe a lot to “The Bold and the Beautiful”, but now I have a different life. The cast and the crew continues to be my family: to be close to me during Hank’s funeral they have closed the studio, which cost more than an arrangement of flowers.

At the end, do you want to win “ Celebrity Survivors”?

I just want to listen to my children: “Dad, stay cool”, because I tend to command a little bit. Maybe they will call me “General Dan” but I will be a kind general, because I will not be alone: an angel will guide me.

]]> http://danielmcvicar.com/2011/02/vanity-fair-interview-with-daniel-mcvicar/feed/ 0 http://danielmcvicar.com/2011/01/rest-in-peace-hank-mcvicar/ http://danielmcvicar.com/2011/01/rest-in-peace-hank-mcvicar/#comments Sat, 15 Jan 2011 03:58:55 +0000 dansiphone http://danielmcvicar.com/?p=178 On Friday January 7, 2011 we laid to rest our beloved son and brother Thomas Henry “Hank” McVicar in Santa Monica California. We celebrated his life and prayed in his passage in a beautiful funeral Mass at St. Monica’s with so many friends and our families.

We are still in mourning, but I wanted to express the family’s deepest gratitude for the love, support, sympathies and wishes from all corners of our lives.

Hank grew in strength, intellect and culture into an inspiring and compassionate young man who always retained the sweet purity of his boyhood. We cherish his memory and feel him with us.

We will also continue to feel the wishes and love from so many in our lives. Thank you.

Had a great time hosting SNL from Milano.

Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night! Or in this case from Milano!

Hosted SNL Italia this weekend. It was a blast and with it I returned to my early days in LA at the Comedy Store and trying to make something wonderful right away.

Director Fausto Brizzi with American Actor Daniel McVicar

I just finished work on a film here in Italy, Maschi contro Femmine.  I played the part of Captain William T. Bell in the romantic comedy directed by Fausto Brizzi and produced by Italian International Film for RAI Cinema.  It will be in the theatres in late October here in Italy.

My scenes were part of a story with Alessandro Preziosi, the delightful Paola Cortellesi, and Paolo Ruffini.

Fausto Brizzi is one of the premiere directors in Italy who succeeds at the box office and with critics alike.  To me, his movies have the heart of a Frank Capra, with a very modern sensibility.  And they are wonderful to go to with a date!

getting the charge on

I arrived to the Ischia Global Fest, and saw Eric Lewis, now known as ELEW.

First saw him at TED and I catch up with him on TechCrunch.

Amazing.

Watch from TED:

Here are the comments that I left on archive.org:

PRODUCT OF A PLANNED COMMUNITY

This was amazing to see and to find.  I was raised in Broomfield.  I was 5 years old when my family moved there, and started attending Kohl Elementary School, and later attended Nativity School.

Now looking back I see that I am a product of a planned community.  The documentary brought back early memories, and I must say that growing up in Broomfield at that time was a special experience.  Front doors unlocked, parks to play in, the city within the highways was open and safe.  The ideals that were expressed in the documentary are some of the best things that I carry with me now.

I have now moved around the world a lot, seen many things, filled my head with ideas and information that was only available at the time from Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, right next to the Dentist Office and the Broomfield Star Builder Newspaper office.

It was a town where we had “The Bank”, “The Grocery Store”, “The Drug Store”.  The city fathers put gas stations at the entrance to the town, so we could get our car filled coming and going.

Mostly it was a place to grow a family, and as our large family grew we had a safe place to go all over town.  The bowling alley was considered dangerous.  They had pinball machines.

My parents are still in the house that I grew up in, and looking at this documentary I see them searching for a place to raise a family, choosing Broomfield, and moving us there. I see my mother and father in these images, with the clothes of the era, and the hope and ideals that were from a time that Eisenhower passed the Presidency to Kennedy, and a torch was passed to that generation.

Looking at this did not make me want to return to the past.  That is never possible.  It was also a past where in first grade the whole town had regular drills with air raid alarms that “warned us” of a nuclear attack, and we were instructed to duck under our desks at Kohl School and cover ourselves from broken glass.  Of course, our skin would have melted, but we were prepared.

No, we can’t return to the past.  I am cautious about that idea.  That was then.

Now we can plan our own communities, in whatever manner we are able to arrange them.  Hopefully with tolerance and open hearts.

This documentary makes me appreciate the gift that I had to be raised with an ideal, albeit naive, that I can carry with me now.

Carlo Verdone Daniel McVicar foto by Roby Buscemi

I attended a marvelous screening from the Museum of Cinema here in Torino yesterday. Jacques Tati’s “Playtime”, an extraordinary film achievement that had recently been restored. The great film, putting Tati’s character Hurlot in a “modern” Paris was introduced and presented by one of Italy’s modern filmmaking treasures, Carlo Verdone.

Carlo Verdone has consistently been an inventive and successful filmmaker. His latest work, Io, Loro e Lara (Me, Them and Lara) is a great critical and box office success.  He was elegant and intelligent, and talked about “Playtime” in a way that put it in perspective with works today, as well as the great works of Buster Keaton.

It was a pleasure to great the Maestro, and enjoy a delicious evening of film magic.

Carlo Verdone Daniel McVicar foto by Roby Buscemi