Cernobbio underwhelmed by Pitt-Jolie wedding rumour

Like many residents of Cernobbio, a quiet northern Italian town, restaurant owner Holmes Sitta was unimpressed by rumours of a weekend wedding here of Hollywood glamour couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

To make his point, he recalled how Sylvester Stallone once got peeved at the locals for not asking him for an autograph.

“He was angry because he walked from here to there and no one stopped him,” Holmes said with a grin, as he reminisced about the episode about five years ago at his lakefront Holmes Lido restaurant.

The locals, he explains patiently, aren’t interested in the stars.

“We really don’t care,” he said.

That fact was evident on the eve of a possible wedding here of Jolie and Pitt - a rumour that sent journalists running all over this romantic little tourist town on the shores of Lake Como in search of a scoop.

“Who wants him? He’s an actor, not God,” said local resident Marco Berna, 26, as he sipped a glass of wine at mostly empty local bar last night.

Cernobbio Mayor Simona Saladini said she was contacted by a wedding agency last November or December that was interested in scouting locations for a possible wedding today of a “famous actor” who had filmed a movie at the town’s famous Villa Erba, the former home of the late Italian aristocrat and movie director Luchino Visconti.

“In the end we concluded that the movie was ’Ocean’s 12’ and they told me it was Mr. Brad Pitt,” Saladini said yesterday in an interview with AP Television News.

But as of mid-afternoon yesterday, she had heard nothing, though she added that she could marry them with two hours’ notice if they arrived with all the necessary paperwork.

Another possible location for the wedding is Cernobbio’s famous luxury resort, Villa D’Este, which often hosts stars and international conventions, but all was quiet there yesterday, and officials repeated previous claims they knew nothing of a possible wedding.

Also a possibility is George Clooney’s Villa Oleandra in the nearby town of Laglio. Clooney is a friend of the Hollywood couple.

“There nothing going on here, just a few journalists in the square,” Monica Mantero, wife of Laglio Mayor Giuseppe Mantero, said in a telephone interview yesterday morning.

Mantero had said on Thursday that Pitt and Jolie had not fixed a date with her husband, but that if they asked he could marry them at very short notice.

Mantero, who lives across from Clooney’s villa, said renovations were taking place on the grounds of the actor’s home. She said Clooney had recently bought more properties surrounding his villa and had been fixing them up for about three months now.

Clooney’s representative, Stan Rosenfield, has said he would not comment on the wedding rumours.

“There’s been wedding rumours for years,” he told the AP on Thursday. “Rumours are rumours.”

Pitt’s representative, Cindy Guagenti, also has declined to comment.

Speculation about an impending wedding at the lake was rife last year, but quickly fizzled after Clooney denied his friends were scheduled to marry at his villa.

Jolie, who starred alongside Pitt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, is expecting a child this summer.

In Cernobbio, all was quiet late yesterday, and residents interviewed said they were underwhelmed by the wedding talk. “The Comasco (native of the Como area) is cold. He doesn’t have a vocation for tourism,” said Gabriella Lupis, 47, a decorator from the nearby town of Ronago.

“I think Clooney chose this place because of it’s tranquillity and the fact that people here don’t bother him,” she said.

Plus, they’re used to the rich and famous, says Sitta.

Cernobbio has long been the weekend retreat of Milan’s wealthy, and was the home for many years of slain fashion designed Gianni Versace, whose VIP guests included the likes of Madonna. His sister, Donatella, still comes often, dragging behind her a posse of rich and famous, Sitta said.

“Naomi Campbell, you can see her shopping at the market,” he said. “Even Matt Dillon came to drink a cappuccino. And we recognised him only because of the (amount of) money he had in his hand.”