Giò Stajano's secret to face life was and is that of never having taken himself too seriously. Already the fact of being born homosexual in a village in the deep south, in the middle of the Fascist period, and moreover in the Storace house, choosing as a mother an unsuspecting daughter of the "very virile" right arm of the Duce, and then peeing in his arms of the latter, at the tender age of one year, speaks volumes. Then in the 1950s, a young man of high hopes, he arrives in Rome and with his nonconformist lifestyle and his book Roma capitolina on "excellent" homosexuality in Rome, immediately kidnapped, becomes a "character" and is called by Fellini to interpret himself same in the film La dolce vita. Then suddenly in '81, after having been an assault journalist, having continued to write books and interpret films, tired of this role, he flies to Casablanca, and becomes Maria Gioacchina, thus confirming his innate tendency to provocation and mockery, towards life and himself.