- Do they have chores in Sicily?
- Are you kidding?
They invented chores in Sicily.
Crossing the street without getting pregnant
was a chore in Sicily.
(audience laughing)
- Rose, never mention Sicily.
(bright music)
- Picture it: Sicily 1922.
A young military officer stationed far from home.
He wanders the street, seeking a friendly face
and a glass of Chianti.
Finally, he happens into a dusty little cafe,
where he finds both.
The man laughs for the first time in months
and finds inspiration in a beautiful peasant girl,
wise beyond her years.
When the cafe is closed, she takes him home with her.
Three glorious days they make love and drink wine.
He returns to his command,
prepared to lead his people
through whatever battles need to be fought.
Dorothy, that young peasant girl was me.
And that young man was Winston Churchill.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, you made that whole thing up.
Now, what is your point?
- That I made it up!
Picture it: Sicily 1912.
A beautiful young peasant girl with clear olive skin
meets an exciting, but penniless Spanish artist.
There's an instant attraction.
They laugh, they sing,
they slam down a few boilermakers.
(audience laughing)
Shortly afterwards, he's arrested for showing her
how he can hold his palette without using his hands.
(audience laughing)
But I digress.
He paints her portrait and they make passionate love.
She spends much of the next day in the shower
with a loofah sponge,
scrubbing his fingerprints off her body.
(audience laughing)
She sees the portrait and is insulted.
It looks nothing like her.
And she storms out of his life forever.
That peasant girl was me.
And that painter was Pablo Picasso.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, I have a feeling you're lying.
- Be positive, Dorothy.
- Okay, I'm positive you're lying.
- Let me tell you a story.
Sicily 1912.
Picture this.
Two young girls, best friends who shared three things:
a pizza recipe, some dough, and a dream.
Everything is going great until one day
a fast talking pepperoni salesman gallops into town.
Of course, both girls are impressed.
He dates one one night, the other the next night.
Pretty soon he drives a wedge between them.
Before you know it, the pizza suffers,
the business suffers, the friendship suffers.
The girls part company and head for America,
never to see one another again.
Rose, one of those girls was me.
The other one you probably know as Mama Celeste.
(audience laughing)
- Sophia, what's the point?
- The point is I lost a fortune!
(audience laughing)
Picture it: Sicily 1922.
(audience laughing)
An attractive peasant girl who has saved her lira
embarks on a glorious vacation to a Crimean resort
on the Black Sea.
For weeks, she frolics at this seaside resort
and enjoys the company of many young men,
all of whom adore her.
- All of them?
(audience laughing)
- Shut up, Edna, I work alone.
All of them.
When it's time to return to Sicily,
three different suitors beg her to stay.
But she can't decide who to choose,
so she chooses none of them.
But she agrees to meet with them
at the same resort many years later.
To her trio of suitors, that eventful gathering
was referred to as Rendezvous with Sophia.
But to the rest of the world, it was better known
as the Yalta Conference.
(audience laughing)
Picture it, Sicily 1852.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, I am in no mood.
And besides, you weren't alive in 1852.
- What, we can't learn from history?
It was mid-century and a disillusioned Italy looked to
the house of Savoy for leadership.
Giuseppe Garibaldi, our courageous leader,
and not a bad dresser, thought,
"Let's regain some national pride
"and jump into this Crimean War thing."
(audience laughing)
Of course, there was a big kickoff party
at Giuseppe's beach house and everyone came.
Coincidentally, this was also the night his wife, Rosa,
hit her sexual peak.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, I am in here because of guilt.
This is not a story about guilt.
- This is a story about being a bad hostess!
While Rosa had Giuseppe in the bedroom,
with his saber around his ankles,
200 hungry guests were strip searching mice
for a piece of cheese.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, so, what's your point?
That Rosa and I throw bad parties?
- That's my minor point.
My major point is that, like Rosa,
you're screwing around in the bedroom
when there are important things to do outside.
(audience laughing)
- Yeah, I can't believe it, that makes sense.
I mean, you went the long way around,
but that actually makes sense.
- Maybe you can tell me a little bit
about your mother's history.
- Picture it: Sicily 1900.
An olive-skinned woman sets sail for the new world.
- I was talking about her medical history.
- So was I.
You think that was a pleasure cruise?
(audience laughing)
There was smallpox, scurvy, typhoid.
And that was business class.
(audience laughing)
In Sicily, we never went to the doctor.
We went to the Widow Caravelli.
Whatever you had, she had a cure.
She was best known for this green salve she used to make
to treat ear infections.
One day she gave a batch to Salvador, the village idiot.
(audience laughing)
He misunderstood the directions
and put it on his linguine instead of in his ear.
(audience laughing)
- I guess if you're an idiot with a hearing problem,
you do things like that.
(audience laughing)
- As it turns out, it wasn't such a bad thing to do.
The stuff tasted great and Salvador decided to market it.
And first it didn't move so well.
Linguine with ear salve on a menu
doesn't look too appetizing.
(audience laughing)
But once he changed the name to pesto sauce,
it moved like hotcakes.
- Ma, you're making this up.
- So what?
I'm old, I'm supposed to be colorful.
- It's really a shame you and Ma don't live
closer to each other.
- Dorothy is right.
How many years do we have left?
20, 30?
(audience laughing)
We should live in the same town.
- You want to come back to that little village in Sicily?
- Please, do I look like a woman who
beats her laundry on a rock?
(audience laughing)
Why are we cooking outdoors?
- Ma, we're having a barbecue.
- Do you know what they call cooking meat
over an open fire in Sicily?
- No, what?
- Poverty!
What's going on here?
I walk into the bathroom and instead of a toilet,
there's a hole in the ground.
For a minute, I thought I was back in Sicily.
(audience laughing)
- Look at this pop-ups.
Isn't that wonderful?
Mm, remember when we had to use cotton and fish ointment?
- That's nothing.
In Sicily we use a leaf and the river.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, you never had a baby in Sicily.
- I was a baby in Sicily.
- Ma, you don't know anything about football.
- Please.
What's to know?
You hit a guy, you drop the pigskin, you run like crazy.
It's like shopping in Sicily.
We had comic books in Sicily.
My favorite was Benito the Hood.
He lived in the forest with his band of merry thugs.
Benito was very popular.
- You mean because he stole from the rich
and gave to the poor?
- I said Benito the Hood, not Benito the Idiot.
(audience laughing)
He stole from everyone and kept it for himself.
(audience laughing)
Didn't even share it with his band of merry thugs.
He was the idol of many a Sicilian youngster.
Hey, in Italy for $5 you got a woman, a manicure,
a cappuccino, and a box of Milano cookies
to take home to your wife.
(audience laughing)
A fact, use it as you wish.
Here it is, my old address from Sicily.
(audience laughing)
Two miles west of Palermo underneath the old bridge.
(audience laughing)
- You used to live under a bridge?
- Yeah, we were wealthy.
Most people didn't have a bridge to live under.
(audience laughing)
- Goodnight, Ma.
Goodnight, Moe, goodnight Larry.
(audience laughing)
- I'm not going to be able to sleep.
I'm on the wrong side of the bed.
- Well, I usually sleep on the right side
and I want to be on the right side.
- What the hell is everyone so particular about?
In Sicily, four in a bed is a treat.
(audience laughing)
It means half your family is on vacation.
(audience laughing)
I slept with my two brothers until I was 17.
I was engaged to one for a very short period of time.
(audience laughing)
But that's a separate story.
- I hope everything works okay for Gina.
- Why shouldn't it?
She's got a man waiting for her back home who owns a goat.
(audience laughing)
In Sicily, that makes you a yuppie.
(audience laughing)
When I was 14 in Sicily,
my father arranged a marriage with a neighbor's son.
My dowry was two chickens, a ladle,
and a goat to be named later.
(audience laughing)
- We came from a wealthy family.
- The day of my wedding, as I stood at the altar,
the boy I was to marry was on a cattle boat
headed for America.
That night, on a tear-stained pillow, I put a curse on him.
- A curse?
- Nothing fancy.
I remember I said, "Giuseppe Mangiacavallo,
"from this day forward may you and
"all your future generations never know true love.
"May you be sterile and may all your offspring be sterile."
(audience laughing)
"May your hair never lie flat.
"And may your socks always slip down inside your shoes."
(audience laughing)
- Oh, Ma, don't you think this feud between you and Angela
has gone on long enough?
- It's 26 years.
In Sicily that's not a few.
In Sicily, people scream at each other for centuries
and they throw pasta at each other.
Pasta and sauce.
Rich sauce with delicious seafood.
Mussel, shrimp.
Wait a minute.
I think I switched from feud to food.
(audience laughing)
In Sicily it wouldn't be Christmas without a plate of eels.
Eels and larks.
- Larks?
Well, honey, larks aren't eating birds,
they're singing birds.
- They don't sing long in Sicily.
(audience laughing)
- Well, Mrs. Claxton isn't going to have a funeral.
She had no friends and no relatives.
- Then we'll pop for her funeral.
- Why?
- To show the man upstairs
that we have some regard for human life.
- No, no, no, it's an old Sicilian custom.
It's good luck to bury somebody you hate.
- You know, I always wanted mink.
I thought it would make me look elegant and impressive.
- We didn't have mink in Sicily.
You wanted them to impress someone, you shot their brother.
There's no such thing as being trapped in a marriage.
In this country, you can get divorced.
In Sicily there was no divorce.
If you wanted to end a marriage,
you had to resort to the Lupara.
- Is that some kind of legal loophole?
- It's some kind of sawed off shotgun.
- Stapling a $20 bill to the petition is illegal.
It's bribery.
And don't tell us that's how you got things done in Sicily.
- That's not how we got things done in Sicily.
Bribing people with money
is how we got things done in New York.
(audience laughing)
In Sicily, you cut off a horse's head
and put it in somebody's bed.
(audience laughing)
- Oh, Sophia, you're making that up!
- Like hell.
Our garbage commissioner, Fredo Lombardi,
went on strike once.
He woke up the next morning sharing a pillow
with National Velvet.
(audience laughing)
At 7 AM he was out cleaning the street with his tongue.
- I'm a little nervous about tomorrow.
I've never cooked for 300 people.
- Please, in Sicily, we did it all the time.
And we didn't have the modern conveniences you have today.
We had to slaughter our own meat,
prepare our own seasonings,
and if the food wasn't perfect after cappuccino,
they shot the cook.
(audience laughing)
The Sicilians take these things very seriously.
You know what might happen to me if I didn't do my duty?
- What?
- Free swimming lessons with a cement kick-board.
Sicilians have a hard time with apologies.
(audience laughing)
- They also have a hard time passing wet cement
without putting someone in it.
(audience laughing)
- There are worse things in this world
than hurt feelings, Dorothy.
- That's true, pussycat.
As we say back in Sicily,
sticks and stones can break your bones,
but cement pays homage to tradition.
Well, big shot, did you get tickets?
(audience laughing)
- Look, Ma, don't start with me.
I've had a very rough day.
The only scalper I could find
had funny things moving in his hair.
(audience laughing)
And he wanted to bargain in a dark alley.
- So what seats did you get?
- I didn't get any tickets.
I didn't think it was exactly safe.
- I can't believe you were such a baby.
In Sicily, we did all our bargaining in dark alleys.
How do you think I ended up with your father?
(audience laughing)
- Who was Augustine Bagatelli?
- Nobody, just a boy I knew from my village in Sicily.
That I was engaged to once.
- What?
- Well, what do you know, Sophia has a past!
- Ma, you never told me you were engaged.
What happened?
- The war happened.
Augustine went off to fight
and I never heard from him again until today.
- I wonder why he looked you up after all this time.
- Are you kidding?
He was crazy about me.
I was the only girl in the village
who didn't want to be a nun.
Sometimes these things aren't meant to be.
Like me and Fabrizio Rubino.
(audience laughing)
We were on the verge of a passionate love affair
when destiny intervened.
- Don't tell me.
His wife, Destiny Rubino.
(audience laughing)
- Right.
Boy, did she have a temper.
She dragged him away by the hair on his back.
(audience laughing)
That's a Sicily you don't see on postcards.
- Sophia, I forgot to give you this letter.
- Oh, from Sicily!
(envelope rustling)
A gift from Cousin Vito.
- A feather.
That's a message of some kind, isn't it?
- What are you babbling about?
- Don't play dumb with me, Ma.
Everything from Sicily means something.
A black rose means a family member is dying.
A white Carnation means a newborn is on the way.
A dead rabbit means my husband knows, get out of town.
(audience laughing)
- Just because a man's in a wheelchair
doesn't mean he can't satisfy a woman.
- What do you know about this, Ma?
- Picture it.
(audience laughing)
Sicily 1914.
A man in a wheelchair satisfies a woman.
It's a short story, but I think it makes my point.
(audience laughing)
- What was all that stuff with Harry?
You know, the man has not dated since his wife died.
- Well, you can't spend your whole life in mourning,
especially when you're the most eligible bachelor in town.
- In Sicily we have a simple rule.
If your husband dies, you wait 20 years
or until you grow a mustache.
(audience laughing)
Jab! Left!
Jab, jab left!
- Ma, what are you doing?
You don't know the first thing about boxing.
- Please!
I used to be known as the Don King of Sicily.
(audience laughing)
Of course, I used to wear my hair differently then.
(audience laughing)
(man speaking foreign language)
- Vincenzo says he thinks he has a solution to your problem.
- Really?
Well, translate for me, Sophia.
- Well, I'm a little bit rusty,
but I think he said, "Picture it: Sicily 1939.
"The war is on.
"A promising young architect is offered a job
"to spearhead construction of a new wing at the Vatican."
- Wait a minute, Ma.
You say your Italian is rusty,
but you know the word for spearhead?
- It was my brother's nickname for a while as a child.
(audience laughing)
Anyway, the young man is torn.
Taking the train to Rome means running the risk
of enemy bombs.
But staying home means passing up a chance to make history.
- Boy, he certainly packs a lot of meaning into a few words.
- Ah, shut up!
(audience laughing)
In the end, he chooses safety.
It's a decision he still regrets half a century later.
His conclusion:
Life without risk is no life at all.
- Sophia, tell Vincenzo that's a wonderful story!
Tell him he helped me make the most important decision
of my life!
I'm gonna call Al and
tell him I'll sail around the world with him!
- Sophia.
(door bangs shut)
Did Vincenzo really say all that?
- Of course not.
He's a carpenter, I'm a philosopher.
Picture it.
(audience laughing)
Sardinia 1932.
- I thought these stories of yours
always took place in Sicily.
- Can't a person go away for the weekend?
(audience laughing)
Picture it.
Sicily 1922.
- Sophia, I have a problem.
I just saw the guy I've been dating
out with another woman.
Now, what do you think I ought to do?
- I think you should sit down and picture Sicily 1922.
(audience laughing)
It was the worst of times,
it was the worst of times.
(audience laughing)
It was Sicily 1922.
- Oh, Ma, I have a problem.
- Just sit down and listen.
First of all, is everyone who lives in this house
here at this very moment?
- Yes.
- Then for the last time, picture it.
Sicily 1922.
A beautiful young woman with breasts not unlike
Brigitte Nielsen.
Except hers moved when she skipped.
(audience laughing)
She comes walking down a picturesque country road,
when suddenly a yellow Rolls Royce pulls up
and blocks her path.
- Oh, who was in the Rolls?
- Robert Goulet for all I know.
It's not important to the story.
Anyway, the Rolls Royce moves on
and the girl finds her pepperoni is missing.
(audience laughing)
- What happened to it, Sophia?
- Bambi ate it!
How should I know?
You keep missing the point.
The important thing is she has no pepperoni
to bring to her family's table.
She gets hysterical, she starts to run.
She runs through the field, the meadow,
over the hill until she comes to a raging river
filled with pepperoni swimming upstream.
(audience laughing)
- Ma, pepperoni swimming upstream?
- Yeah, I know it's odd.
Pepperoni is a land meat, but there it was.
(audience laughing)
She wades into the river, grabs an armful,
and races home to feed her family.
When she tells them the story,
they think it's an act of God.
But as it turned out, a disgruntled pepperoni stuffer
had blown up the factory in a neighboring town,
causing pepperoni to rain down over a hundred square miles,
which is where the old Sicilian saying
it's raining cats and pepperoni comes from.
(audience laughing)
Is this helping anyone yet?
Because this sure feels like an ending to me.
(audience laughing)