LOS ANGELES—Rocco Siffredi reveals he went through more than 20 drafts of his monologue for his new one-man show titled “Rocco Tells Rocco.”
The legendary performer/director launched his tour in Italy in July with plans for future shows in Paris, Switzerland, London and New York.
In “Rocco Tells Rocco,” the Italian superstar shares stories about his life and career in an hour-and-a-half monologue complete with pictures and video. During the last 10 minutes of his presentation his wife of thirty years, Rosa, joins him on stage.
“I wrote it the whole summer,” Siffredi explains. “It’s about porn, my work, the whole up and down life. I don’t talk about bad stuff, mostly it’s fun and light. Many people laugh... I talk about the '80s and '90s and today's porn and the difference. People love it. I’m starting in Italy and then I start to go around Europe.”
Siffredi entertained over 2000 people at his show at the Arcimboldi Theater in Milan on Oct. 29. On Monday night, he presented to another packed house at the Alfieri Theater in Turin.
On Nov. 18 he’ll take his show to the Brancaccio Theater in Rome followed by a stop at Celebration Theater in Bologna on Nov. 20; then he'll visit Verdi Theater in Montecatini Terme, a town in Tuscany, on Nov. 22 with many more to come.
Rocco says he experimented with the format during three “pre-shows” beginning on July 15 in Livorno, followed by outings in Milan and Varese.
“I did three pre-shows before I started the main one,” Siffredi tells AVN from his home in Budapest, Hungary. “I did Firenze [Florence] 10 days ago [on Oct. 22].”
The first version of “Rocco Tells Rocco” clocked in at over three hours—and he knew it had to be trimmed.
“I had so many stories and I had to make a choice, I had to make a balance,” Siffredi explains. “My main goal was not to point any finger toward anybody and not to be political.
“I wanted to be very humble and tell my story the way it’s been with only the truth. Of course I’m talking about sexuality. But only how sex in porn changed from the 80s until today. I talk about all this in a sincere way.
“Finally, people love it.”
Siffredi tells AVN he was inspired to create the show after seeing former world heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson do something similar.
“The whole idea comes from Mike Tyson’s show directed by Spike Lee,” Rocco says, referring to “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.”
Shot in 2012, Tyson performed the show on Broadway in New York and in Las Vegas—he later filmed it for HBO.
“I saw Mike Tyson where he was telling his life and laughing and crying and joking. I was like what the fuck, I’m big fan of Mike and I said this is incredible. Right away, I was like mamma mia! I want to do the same,” Siffredi says.
"Because it’s people with a special life and if you are this kind of person who is able to put himself naked in front of porn movie, I’m sure you’re able to put yourself naked with your sentiment and emotion in front of people as Mike did.
“Mike doesn’t do porn but he knows how much sufferance he was going through in his life in boxing, in training and bad luck. He had so much things to say.”
Siffredi, who won the 1993 AVN Male Performer of the Year award in the first year it was presented and has collected more than 40 individual AVN trophies, says ticket sales did not pick up right away.
“I have to tell you at the beginning we were a little bit down psychologically,” Siffredi says. “Because of people in Italy the producer said it would be a huge success, ‘because what you wrote is nice and you are so popular.’ But when we started to put together dates, the pre-sale was so bad and we don’t understand why.
“There is still a lot of prejudice toward porn people. People love to see me in TV, and see me in a laptop, but they don’t want to come personally to see me with their girlfriend or with their wife because maybe they get prejudice from other people.
“So because of this I had to go on TV and really explain what I was doing. I had to really work hard. The producer said it will not be easy.
“He said, ‘Go out there and talk about your life with love and with respect.’ We don’t go to make a porn show. That’s another type of show.”
Rocco, who owns a record eight AVN Male Foreign Performer of the Year awards, shares several insider anecdotes from the set despite some people advising him not to give away too many industry secrets.
“We should give back something,” Siffredi reasons. “Just to give back some of the truth. We are not educational but I told how porn has changed in a very nice, realistic way.”
One notable change from the '80s-'90s era is how many of the guys use performance enhancers such as injections and pills for their erection, Siffredi says.
“And now everything is possible, [guys] can do any kind of positions for many hours. Before, you need a gift. Today, you don’t anymore,” adds Rocco, who even discusses how he dealt with his sex addiction.
Siffredi also devotes a segment of his show to his late cousin Gabriele Galetta, who was known professionally as Gabriel Zero and collaborated with him for more than three decades on hundreds of movies before his untimely passing in 2020 at 58.
An unsung creative force behind the scenes for Rocco Siffredi Productions since 1988, Galetta wrote all of Rocco’s major movies and shot most of his scenes.
“All of this is connected between pictures and video,” Siffredi says. “I am talking very much about my sexuality, when I came to America in the 80s and why I became famous.”
He adds, “My producer says, ‘You can tell it’s all true and you can see the way you tell your stories it belongs to you.’ That makes the difference.”
Siffredi tells AVN it only made sense to invite his wife Rosa on stage with him at the end because some of what he was writing was about her.
“She wrote her part when she comes out,” Rocco says. “This year is thirty years we have been married, so that was great way to celebrate.”
Siffredi says when he first started writing his monologue that he thought maybe a few hundred people would buy tickets to any given show, but playing to a crowd of over 2000 last week in Milan was “a huge achievement.”
“I was very proud,” he tells AVN. “And there was a huge line afterward and I stay one-and-a-half hour to make pictures.
“For me, it’s a new experience... I love it.”
