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The chaos swallowed him as soon as he hit the grass. “Grab his helmet!” yelled a voice from somewhere in the mass of people surrounding him. Hands were thrust upon him from all angles, peeling his parachute backpack and helmet away from his body. It was hot, heat advisory hot, and the commotion was a bit disorienting. Within a matter of seconds, Rian Kanouff was left standing in nothing but his sneakers. That’s when they hit him with the pies.
“My entire body was pie-d, private parts, buns, everything...” Kanouff remembered. “They just rushed me, and they did it right, too. The guys who were taking off my gear were distracting me, and all the people who I thought were celebrating behind them all had pies in their hands and came through and just machine-gunned me with pies.”
The dessert fusillade was the culmination of a record-breaking day when Kanouff secured the Guinness World Record for most naked skydives in 24 hours. He completed 60 jumps between 5:45 a.m. and 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Sport Parachute Club in Weeping Water, Nebraska.
Kanouff, who is 33, began skydiving six years ago. He grew up in South Omaha playing hockey and football, racing motocross, and wrestling. He continued playing hockey into adulthood, and when a teammate invited him to go skydiving for that teammate’s 29th birthday, he was hesitant.
“I was terrified,” he remembered of the buildup toward his first jump. “My No. 1 fear in life is heights. I did not want to do it even a little bit, zero desire to jump out of an airplane.”
On August 26, 2016, he forced himself into the plane and, once it was up in the air, jumped over the threshold toward the world below. As soon as he was airborne, his life changed forever.
“The second we left the airplane I was like, yep, this is what I want to do,” he recalled.
When he hit the ground, he asked the cameraman who had jumped alongside him how he could get a similar job. The cameraman suggested a training course being held the following weekend. It was the last session of the year, so Kanouff registered. A week after his first jump, he was on his way to making a career out of skydiving.
At the time of the interview, Kanouff had completed 704 jumps—most of them clothed—in nearly a dozen different states. He has become a sought-after motivational speaker and positioned himself at the sport’s vanguard. But when he decided to go after the world record, he didn’t want to make it about himself. It wasn’t even about skydiving. Kanouff used the platform to raise awareness for another cause close to his heart: men’s mental health.
Within a five-month span leading up to his record-setting day in June 2021, Kanouff lost four people close to him to suicide: his grandfather, his childhood neighbor, his high school best friend, and a fellow member of the skydiving community. It is tradition in skydiving culture to complete one’s 100th jump in the buff, but the man who has set naked skydiving records declined to make his century-milestone in this traditional way. “I jumped naked for the first time filming another jumper’s 100th celebration,” Kanouff said, noting that it was for his jumping buddy, who took his own life just before his own century milestone. That’s when Kanouff decided his record would be set naked. The folks at Guinness told him he needed to jump 24 times to set the record. He chose 60 to represent the number of men who die of suicide every hour.
He contacted the men’s health nonprofit Movember Foundation, and the organization agreed to back the project. A team of volunteers from the Lincoln Sport Parachute Club, Kanouff’s home drop zone, helped plan and execute the day without any hiccups, repacking his parachutes after jumps, monitoring his hydration, and even cooking him bacon and eggs for sustenance. Kanouff alternated between five different parachutes, each re-packed by his team between uses, and two aircrafts. He typically jumps from 10,000 and 14,000 feet, but in order to maximize his total, all of his 60 record-setting jumps were from between 2,500 and 3,000 feet. He estimated that each jump took between seven and nine minutes. And Guinness World Records wasn’t the day’s only governing body to sanction the event. Jeff Dawson, the founder and president of the Society for the Advancement of Naked Skydiving, drove in from Milwaukee to serve as a verifying official. On jump number 37 of the day, Dawson stripped down and joined Kanouff.
“It’s freedom, it’s breaking the rules, being naughty, doing things that the rest of society wouldn’t normally accept,” said Dawson, who also holds the world record for number of cumulative naked jumps. “But mainly it’s the sense of freedom and just being able to go out there and enjoy the skydive without any clothes on with friends who are doing the same.”
Kanouff and Dawson even joined hands briefly during their jump to set the Nebraska state SANS record for a formation with two people—yet another accomplishment during a day that raised nearly $13,600 for Movember, set a World Record, and launched Kanouff’s career to new heights. There would be more than 500 news stories about the feat appearing across 25 countries. The Hollywood mainstay Skydive Perris would take notice, and recruit Kanouff to California to serve as a cameraman and instructor. There would be agents and PR teams and podcast appearances. But as soon as his feet hit the ground for the 60th time, none of that was on his mind, only jubilation, fellowship, and pie.
He hasn’t stopped yet. In late February, Kanouff set the record for largest naked formation jump, bringing his total of naked jumps (at presstime) to 84.
“It was surreality is what it was,” he said of the sugar-soaked culmination in June. “I couldn’t believe it was happening.”
Visit 1011now.com/2021/06/17/nebraskaman-sets-world-record-naked-skydiving-cause to watch Kanouff skydive or movember.com to learn more about the cause.
NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST Kelly Madigan Walks Hi and Lo Trails S Something’s afoot with Kelly Madigan. When Madigan visits the great outdoors, she prefers to walk rather than ride in a car. “I think our brains evolved at the rate of just walking,” said Madigan, a wellpublished writer and poet who shares her experiences in journals and magazines and has authored two books of poetry and one nonfiction book.
From when she was a child, Madigan has always found herself restored by nature. “That was taught to me by my family, who were nature lovers,” she said. “Nature is where I rejuvenate, get grounded. What’s going on in the natural world around me fascinates me. I’d rather be outdoors than indoors.”
Walking through the world is what appeals to Madigan the most. “It’s like we’re aligned at that speed to go through a landscape. It feels so right to experience those things on foot,” said Madigan, who, after traveling across the country in an Air Force family, graduated from Bellevue East High School in 1980. Afterward, she attended the University of NebraskaLincoln, concentrating on creative writing and drug and alcohol counseling.
While working as a writer and counselor for 30 years at Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, she took to experiencing the world on foot after being inspired by friends who had hiked El Camino de Santiago. Also called the Way of St. James, El Camino is a network of trails in Europe that were begun by religious pilgrims walking to the cathedral in Santiago De Compostela in northwest Spain. Some of the trails are 500 miles long.
Madigan said learning about the Camino put the idea of making long walks into her head, but she hadn’t been walking long distances yet. When she visited her sister, who had been walking on a regular basis, Madigan wasn’t sure she could keep up with her. “She invited me to go on a walk with her,” remembered Madigan. “She had been walking five miles at a time, and that sounded impossible to me. But with her encouragement, I did, and that was a turning point in my head. Prior to that, I didn’t even know I could do that, and then I went on to walk longer walks than that.”
Around 2010, Madigan began walking through parts of Lincoln, especially Wilderness Park with a friend. They would walk there three times a week at sunrise. “We called those walks our ‘Going to Tree Church,’” she said. When visiting Florida in 2013, she walked long distances on the beaches there. That A same year when in Lincoln, she and some friends walked across the city from its northern boundary to the southern city limits. She followed that with walking 21 miles around parts of Omaha. Then she walked across Nebraska that year…sort of. “I wanted to say I walked across Nebraska. But I didn’t want to walk 500 miles,” said Madigan about Nebraska’s east-to-west length with a laugh. “So, I began at the South Dakota border north of Gordon and basically walked south across the panhandle with a little variation, entering Colorado at Julesburg.”
Madigan walked 17 days to cover those 180 miles, reaching Julesburg on the Fourth of July. On some days, she’d walk in the cool of the mornings and the evenings to avoid the midday heat. Because she carries snacks and water—but no camping gear—when she walks, friends and locals helped shuttle her so she could sleep in places other than where she would end a day’s hike or eat in a diner or with friends. However, on one night, about 30 miles south of Gordon, she slept near Nebraska novelist Mari Sandoz’ hillside grave, which overlooks the ranch created by Sandoz’ father, Old Jules.
Madigan does not like to walk back and forth on a trail. She prefers to go only in one direction, no return trips for her. “My hikes are almost all where I get dropped off somewhere,” she said. “I want to keep going. I don’t want to walk somewhere and go back.” During her walks, Madigan observes the world through the senses of a poet. “When you’re driving a car in beautiful areas, you see beautiful things but you miss so much because of the speed you’re traveling,” she said, adding that she also just likes to sit and observe. “If you sit still in a beautiful place for a long time, you’ll see things you’d never see even if you were walking.”
The themes of her writings and poems revolve around the environment. “I say my purpose in life is ‘I’m here to adore the world,’” she said. “I celebrate the things I see. I’m an enthusiast. I’m like, ‘Hey, look! There’s this really cool thing. Everybody should come look at it.’”
Basically, anywhere Madigan visits, she wants to walk around to explore it on foot.
Madigan sees herself as a long-distance walker rather than a hiker. In recent years, she has also explored parts of Nebraska by canoe and kayak. So far she has paddled in the Missouri, Platte, Middle Loup, Dismal, Elkhorn, Little Blue, Cedar, Calamus, Niobrara, and Big Blue rivers.
When visiting extended family about 40 years ago in western Iowa, Madigan became acquainted with the Loess Hills, a slim line of hills that front that state’s western edge along the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers. Formed by wind-blown soils called loess about 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, the hills are between three and five miles wide. Only China has similar loess formations as tall and taller than Iowa’s. Fascinated by the hills, Madigan kept learning about them, including how unique they are.
In 2007, she bought an acreage in the hills in Monona County, Iowa, a bit more than 50 miles north of Omaha. A few years ago, she moved permanently into a century-old farmhouse there with her partner, Doug Chafa, and his daughter, Isabel. Across a gravel road from their place, a long line of grassy hills overlooks a pond with a small dock.
One of Madigan’s goals is to teach people about the importance of the Loess Hills. “We have this slender place where we still have hundreds of forms of life that we have all but wiped out to the east and west of here because of our monoculture, basically two crops [corn and soybeans],” Madigan said.
To show others the importance of the hills, Madigan made another of her long treks in summer 2020. This one was from the northern end of the hills in Plymouth County, Iowa, to the Missouri border, 270 miles to the south. Not worrying much about COVID-19 in the outdoors, she preferred to walk on dirt and gravel roads, and public lands, rather than use paved highways. She crossed private land only with permission. Friends shuttled supplies to her as she hiked the region in segments over six weeks that October and November.
Occasionally, a driver offered her a lift, which she politely declined with thanks. At least two people called the law to investigate this solo walker with long, dark, curly hair, but all was fine in the end.
She logged her adventure with text and photos on a Facebook page she created and named for her route: the LoHi Trail, which represents the Loess Hills and the low and high elevations she traversed. Madigan explained she wasn’t trying to establish a real trail by any name but just wanted to explore what’s in the hills for herself and made up the name for her walk. People soon began to ask how to find the LoHi
Trail. “It’s not a thing,” Madigan explained. “It’s a route, a passageway. It’s one person exploring to see if [the hills] can be walked.”
Over the years, some people have wished for a continuous trail through the hills, similar to the Appalachian Trail. But Madigan thinks not. “I actually don’t think that the Loess Hills are well suited for an Appalachian Trail-style trail. But they are suited for something akin to El Camino De Santiago where some of it is a trail, some of it is walking on a road, and some of it is walking through a village.”
Part of educating people about the hills, Madigan said, is making them aware that the hills cannot support much use— including foot trails—because of the fragile nature of the loess soil which, when not covered by vegetation, can practically melt away in the rain. That trait has caused some residents of the hills to call the easily eroded soil “sugar clay.”
Coordinating her efforts with other groups, including Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Madigan said, “We don’t want this to be Disney World.”
To help people understand the Loess Hills, Madigan has hosted online writing workshops about them. She also worked with some private and government agencies to promote a four-day trek for about 30 people to walk through parts of the hills last June. Although high temperatures forced changes in the routes and activities, the group passed through shady woods, crossed sunny meadows, walked along ridges topped with waving prairie grasses, and camped under starlight. Some heard whippoorwills for the first time. The group enjoyed spending two nights on Madigan’s property, swimming and kayaking in her pond, standing under an outdoor shower, and savoring ice cream.
During their trip, they met people who Madigan had arranged to talk about the hills. Chafa taught about native prairie plants. Farmers talked about how their families have been in the hills for generations. One person described how prescribed burns rejuvenate the prairie plants and push back invasive trees. “The walk was an immersive experience,” Madigan said. “We brought neighbors to sit at the campfires to talk about their lifestyles in the hills.”
Cynthia Ybarra, who lives in Omaha and is a registered nurse with the Veterans Administration Hospital, said she learned that brome grass is an invasive plant and more. “Every single person who visited us was passionate about the land,” Ybarra said. “One man said he decided to live in them when he finally saw them for what they were.”
Patrick Swanson, a professor in microbiology at Creighton University who has a strong interest in the parcels of prairie in the hills, was a participant of the hike and talked to the group about prairie restoration. At times the Omahan identified some flowers seen by the participants. “Kelly has a great project…” he said. “… getting people to understand that, one, the hills are fragile. Two, people can enjoy them. Three, they need to be protected, and four, there’s a potential for economic development here. It’s all for the good of the landscape.” “My question is, can a person on foot safely walk this distance?,” said Madigan of ways through the hills. “Then that lends itself to the question of, is there safe passage for other creatures? So walking with the idea of, ‘If I was a salamander, if I was a snapping turtle, if I was a hummingbird, if I was a dragonfly, if I was a grasshopper…how could I expand my range and what are the limits of that range?’ What we’ve ended up with are these little pockets of existing and rare species that can’t make it across the road to get to another protected area and become more genetically diverse.”
She continued, “That’s what I want to bring awareness to, can we support human habitation and thriving small economies and also do it with an eye on safe passage for humans and wildlife?”
Madigan hasn’t reached her limit of places to hike. She still would like to walk a lesserknown stretch of El Camino De Santiago that passes along the coast of Portugal on the way to Santiago de Compostela, and she has thoughts about elsewhere. “I’ve known that there are some historical walks across Scotland and Ireland as well. I think Ireland’s like walking the Loess Hills,” she said with a smile.
The 2022 LoHi Trek, a three-day, 25-mile trek through the Loess Hills State Forest, will be held May 28-30. Shuttle and food provided.
Visit visitloesshills.org/lohi.html for more information.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL SITZMANN // DESIGN BY MATT WIECZOREK
MAURO FIORE VIEWS INTERESTING STORIES
FEATURE | STORY BY SEAN McCARTHY
n Feb. 15, the 3D Academy Award-nominated blockbuster movie Avatar moved down one notch to become the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time in the United States. It’s a number that the film’s cinematographer, Omahan Mauro Fiore, doesn’t obsess over. Even if he did, Fiore could take comfort in the fact he was also o cinematographer for the movie that overtook Avatar—Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Fiore’s friend Ben Drickey dubbed him “the two billion-dollar man” because those films each grossed more than a billion dollars globally. Sitting down and ordering a mini Denver omelette at an Omaha restaurant, Fiore said he didn’t think in terms of box office when selecting a project. His extensive resume has included big-budget action films and small, intimate dramas… and nearly everything in between.
Fiore emigrated to the United States when he was 7 years old with his parents from his birthplace of Marzi, in southern Italy. His uncle, Vincent Fiore, sponsored their emigration. He attended high school in Palatine, Illinois. “It was very suburban,” Fiore said.
The high school was modern for early 1980s standards, complete with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a full photography studio, and a darkroom. That’s where his love for film began. Fiore took other art classes and dabbled in sculpture, but photography was the area that struck the deepest chord. He joined the school’s photography club.
“The whole ‘images appearing on paper’ was a real magical thing,” Fiore said.
After graduating high school, Fiore went to Harper College in Palatine. There, he played soccer and began taking art classes. After earning some credits in art and film, Fiore had a choice: go to Northwestern or Columbia College Chicago. He chose Columbia for two major reasons: his credits at Harper could transfer to Columbia, and his girlfriend was already a dance and theater major there.
While at Columbia, Fiore took lighting and cinematography classes. The majority of the films he studied were French and European. Fiore said American cinema wasn’t given a huge focus in film school in the late 1980s when he was a student. While studying, Fiore began connecting with Italian films, specifically from directors such as Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. While watching those films, Fiore said he felt like he had “just uncovered this incredible heritage of filmmaking.”
For leisure, Fiore played soccer with his friend Jeffrey Wisniewski, who was studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. The two friends also formed an art-punk band called Anonymous Noise Production (ANP).
W“ E WOULD SPEND ALL SUMMER JUST PLAYING AND CREATING ORIGINAL
SONGS,” FIORE SAID. “WE ONLY HAD TWO REAL PERFORMANCES.”
After graduating in 1987, Fiore moved to Los Angeles following a call from fellow classmate and friend Janusz Kaminski. Kaminski had been living in Los Angeles for a few months and had secured work on a film by Roger Corman, widely known for his campy B-movies, some of which were later mercilessly mocked in Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. However, high-profile directors have praised Corman. He has been credited for jump-starting the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Jonathan Demme. been years since Hollywood had made a serious effort in embracing 3D. For nearly 20 years, 3D films were usually shown in museums and zoos (Wild Safari 3D, or director James Cameron’s own Ghosts of the Abyss, whose theme revisited Cameron’s then-biggest cinematic achievement: Titanic). Before that, some of the most notable Hollywood 3D movies were novelty sequels like Friday The 13th Part III and Jaws-3D. Cameron, however, aimed his Titanic-sized ambitions at nothing less than revolutionizing the moviegoing experience.
In a phone interview from Hollywood, Kaminski said Corman needed a gaffer and a key grip for his movie. When the original gaffer quit, Kaminski took over that person’s job. Kaminski then asked Fiore to be a key grip. Fiore’s Hollywood career was born, and from 1987 through 1994, Kaminski and Fiore were roommates, along with Kaminski’s ex-girlfriend. The three shared a small studio apartment while their careers took off.
“The boundaries between work and personal life were nonexistent,” Kaminski said. “It was always about work, particularly making movies.”
Kaminski is now one of the most celebrated living cinematographers. He won the Academy Award for best cinematography for Schindler’s List in 1993 and for Saving Private Ryan in 1998—both directed by Steven Spielberg.
Kaminski and Fiore’s paths oftentimes intersected in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the late ’90s, Kaminski was finally given a chance to direct a major studio motion picture, 2000’s Lost Souls, which starred Winona Ryder as well as Omaha’s own John Beasley. Kaminski chose Fiore to be the film’s cinematographer. Kaminski said Fiore did a fantastic job as a cinematographer, but he had less kind words to say for the script writers.
“In the end, if you don’t have a strong story, great visuals will not improve the movie,” Kaminski said.
Avatar is recognized for ushering a new era of cinema. Before its release, it had Fiore said before Avatar’s release, Cameron had a meeting with some of the owners of the largest theater chains—as well as big-scale directors like Robert Rodriguez, Stephen Spielberg, and Peter Jackson—to discuss how 3D could bring more people back into the theater.
“For Jim [Cameron], [filmmaking] is a business program,” Fiore said. “His technology…how [the movie] is going to be perceived—he has done quite a bit of research on what was jarring to the eye.”
To film a movie that takes place primarily in an alien forest, Cameron sought out Fiore, who had filmed a movie that took place in a jungle on Earth: 2003’s Tears of the Sun. That movie, starring Bruce Willis, was filmed in Hawaii. Cameron liked how Fiore shot the environments and brought him in for an interview. Fiore spent two hours interviewing with producer Jon Landau.
Up to that point, Fiore had been filming for two-dimensional environments. Now, his talents were being tested to film in another dimension. New cameras were developed just for the environment, and, because many actors’ roles required 3D, motion-capture technology, Fiore had to film extremely close to them. While the final product was a showcase of innovation, Fiore faced some limitations in how he could film.
“You are creating the perspective of 3D with just color and lights,” Fiore said. He also asked, “How do you create a frame in a two-dimensional plane that looks like three-dimension and fools the eye?” To answer that question, Fiore worked on Avatar for more than a year. When he joined the project, Cameron had already worked on the motion-capture part of the film for nearly two years. After Fiore’s work was finished, Cameron put yet another year into refining the motion-capture. Fiore saw a rough cut of the film and he remembered being overwhelmed at the thought of the work that the film still needed. Those gaps made seeing the final product all the more special for Fiore.
“It was kind of mind-blowing. It’s still mind-blowing for me to see that,” Fiore said.
Avatar is one of those rare movies that can translate big box office into Academy gold. The movie was nominated for Best Picture as well as Best Director. While it lost both respective awards to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, it won three technical awards, including that for Best Cinematography. In his acceptance speech, in front of 42 million viewers in the United States alone, Fiore began speaking in Italian. Fiore said he still regrets being so caught up in the moment that he forgot to thank his wife, Christine.
Parts of Avatar were filmed in Hawaii, others in New Zealand. Some of Fiore’s favorite locations to film include Morocco, Tuscany, London, and Berlin. He preferred filming on location as opposed to a set because that’s where the surprises happen in filmmaking.
One such surprise came while filming the 1998 dramady Love From Ground Zero.
Fiore was the cinematographer for that film, which was partially shot in Nebraska. While filming, he struck up a friendship with Christine Vollmer, the movie’s costume designer. Fiore admitted with a chuckle to have been taken by Christine’s looks, but after the movie’s wrap party, the two agreed to keep in contact. They dated for about two years before marrying in 2000.
“It turned out to be a more important film for my life than just my career,” Fiore said.
Mauro and Christine continued to try making a life in Los Angeles while raising a family. Their two children, Olivia and Tessa, were born in Los Angeles. Christine began traveling to Omaha to get help from her family when their work demands overlapped. There were times when Fiore had
to travel frequently to Vancouver and Toronto to film.
“When I left, Christine was basically by herself,” Fiore said.
Christine and Mauro talked about getting a place in Omaha. They needed help raising their children. Despite having a support system in Omaha, Mauro said he was hesitant about moving.
“What am I going to move to Omaha for? What am I doing?” Fiore asked himself.
Omaha eventually won Fiore over, so much so that Fiore gave a shout-out to the city in his Academy Award acceptance speech. He said he retains a house in Los Angeles for when the demands of filming require him to be in Hollywood.
Fiore’s post-Avatar work is similar to an actor who chooses smaller, more intimate roles before going back into the world of big-budget action movies. He was cinematographer in 2013’s Runner Runner (starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake) and 2015’s Southpaw (Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker) before doing 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
As X-Men: Dark Phoenix was in theaters, plans were well underway to film a third Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland as the web slinger. Fiore was not planning on working on the film, as Seamus McGarvey was tapped as the initial cinematographer. Then, 2020 happened. Like those of everyone else on the planet, Fiore’s plans changed.
McGarvey had to step away from his filming duties in Spring 2021 as he revealed he contracted COVID-19. Fiore stepped in for McGarvey and finished filming the Marvel blockbuster.
A good portion of Spider-Man: No Way Home takes place in Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) Sanctum Sanctorum, specifically the undercroft, a dank, dungeon-like environment. It was the area where Doctor Strange locked up all of the foes from various dimensions that Spider-Man captured in the movie. While filming, the directing team stressed the importance of conveying the darkness of the area. It was one of the most challenging things to film in the movie, Fiore said.
“How do you light darkness?” Fiore asked rhetorically. “That’s the tough thing. How dark is dark? And darkness is really nothing if you don’t have light.”
Fiore and his team eventually settled on drilling holes into the set, which was primarily made of solid foam, to achieve some subtle levels of light on the walls. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, more than 90% of the exterior locations in the movie were filmed outside the film studio lot. For scenes that took place in New York City, they filmed the backgrounds in New York, and then matched the lighting conditions in Atlanta, where the film set was located.
Fiore’s next project is a much smaller endeavor from the blockbuster SpiderMan: No Way Home. Titled A Good Person, the movie centers on a woman who tries to rebuild her life after being involved in a deadly accident. Written and directed by Zach Braff (Garden State), the movie stars Morgan Freeman, Molly Shannon, and Florence Pugh.
The shift from filming a movie with a near-unlimited budget to a small, independent film can be jarring. With smaller movies, cast and crew are far more likely to work closely with the director when it comes to making creative decisions, Fiore said. As the film budget shrinks, good storytelling and simplicity becomes the focus of the picture.
“If I’m interested in the story, I do find a way to make it work,” Fiore said.
Fiore spent more than six months filming Spider-Man: No Way Home. He jokingly referred to any similar length of time getting reacquainted with his Omaha home as his “re-entry period.” When he’s not on location, Fiore gets up early and makes a latte. He then reads the news on his iPad before going to the gym.
Fiore gets back to his hometown of Marzi at least once a year, where he shares a house that he inherited from his parents. When asked where he goes in Omaha to eat when he gets homesick, Fiore said he preferred to cook at home.
“There’s no reason for me to go eat Italian because I know I can cook it better,” Fiore said.
Shopping for ingredients can be difficult. Fiore said there were some Italian delis in Chicago and Los Angeles, but there is such a need for a local Italian deli that he and Christine occasionally talked about opening one in Omaha. In the meantime, he said he settles for bringing back suitcases of cheese and salami after each visit to Marzi.
“Illegal salamis,” Fiore quipped.
Drickey shares Fiore’s love for cinematography. As founder of the Omaha-based multimedia and content creation company Torchwerks, Drickey was already aware of Fiore’s work when he found out that their children attended the same Montessori school. When asked about his favorite movie featuring Fiore as a cinematographer, he quickly said the gritty police drama Training Day, for which Denzel Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor. Drickey admired the raw and claustrophobic mood of the film, and how Fiore’s camera work brought the viewer into Washington’s character. Drickey said as a viewer, he felt like he was living inside Denzel’s car for two hours. Being able to establish such a mood is a reason Fiore is so respected in his craft, Drickey said.
“In the business, we call them the ‘one-percenters,” Drickey said. “Less than one percent of people get to that level.”
Visit imdb.com and search for Mauro Fiore for more information.
