Page 177 of Marcello

Because I watched Seven Samurai, Netflix recommended The Magnificent Seven, an American Western remake with cowboys instead of samurai.

The moment I saw Steve McQueen, I instantly had a new movie boyfriend.

From there, I watched Bullitt, which was thrilling for its car chases on the streets of San Francisco…

The Sand Pebbles, an anti-war film which earned him his only Academy Award nomination…

And finally Papillon, which also had Dustin Hoffman (who I loved in The Graduate).

Papillon is about a safecracker in 1933 who’s falsely convicted of a murder by the French government and is sent to a brutal penal colony in French Guiana. He spends the entire movie enduring horrifying punishments and trying to escape.

It’s called Papillon because that’s the French word for ‘butterfly,’ which is McQueen’s nickname because of the butterfly tattoo on his chest.

The whole movie is about the indomitable human will and the yearning to be free –

And it ends with McQueen finally escaping Devil’s Island by jumping from a high cliff with a sack full of coconuts, which lets him float away out to sea.

I was on the edge of my seat the last ten minutes of the movie.

When it was over, I was fired up.

I lived in my own version of Devil’s Island, even if it did come with fancy meals, designer clothes, and million-dollar paintings on the walls.

But if Steve McQueen could escape –

Then by God, so could I.

The only question was How.

I had to find a hidden weakness in the castle’s defenses.

Luckily, I had a bit of experience in that regard.

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When I was seven years old, I was bored out of my mind.

My mother read to me at night when I was younger, but mostly I was raised by a string of nannies who were brought in from other Italian cities. Just like with priests, Papa didn’t trust anyone from Naples because he feared the Camorra might use them to get to us.

My nannies were forced to entertain me. After all, they did not want to incur the wrath of a mafia don (which I didn’t know about at the time, but they surely did).

Since I hadn’t gotten access to streaming accounts yet, we played house…

Baby dolls…

And my favorite: hide-and-seek.

Over the course of several years, I investigated every nook and cranny in the castle.

The place was so big, we had to limit hide-and-seek games to specific sections of the mansion.

First floor to the left of the stairwell…

First floor to the right of the stairwell…

Second floor to the left of the stairwell…

And so on and so forth.