Tag: Clint Eastwood

“On Top of Spaghetti” (And the Italian Westerns!)

On top of spaghetti
all covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball
when somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table
and onto the floor
and then my poor meatball
rolled right out the door!

It rolled in a garden 
and under a bush.
Now my poor meatball
was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty
as tasty could be, 
and early next summer
it grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered
with beautiful moss.
It grew lovely meatballs
in a tomato sauce.

So if you like spaghetti
all covered with cheese
hold on to your meatballs
and don't ever sneeze!

But speaking of Spaghetti Westerns, do you know how they got that name?  You guessed it – because they were filmed in Italy (some in Spain or France).  They were also called Italian Westerns and Macaroni Westerns.

These films were popularized in the mid-1960s thanks to Sergio Leone. His film-making style and money-making success ensured that 500 of these films were made in Italy between 1964 and 1978.  He made Clint Eastwood famous with his trilogy of “Dollar” films. (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More. and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.)

Spaghetti Westerns were made with relatively low budgets. To save money they were shot at the Cinecitta Studios (like Universal Studios in Rome) and various locations in Italy and Spain.  (God’s Gun was filmed in Israel.)

Spaghetti Westerns were originally released in Italian.  Most featured multilingual casts.  To get around this, sound was NOT RECORDED at the time of shooting. Dialogue and sound effects were added post-production. 

Some of the sets and studios built for these Spaghetti Westerns are now theme parks that the public can visit. (The photo at right is in Andalusia, Spain.)

There you go.

Now you know. 

Does this encourage you to, 1) Write a funny poem? 2) Try your hand at writing a film script? or 3) Write another Western series that becomes wildly popular, like, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry,  the Sundance Westerns series by Peter McCurtin, or the multiple Westerns by William J. Johnstone. 

Happy writing!

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 https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western