Aurelio De Laurentiis comes from a family of film-makers – he is used to putting on a show.
The cinema mogul knows all too well that while romance works well on the big screen, drama and controversy capture attention like little else.
And so as hard as he tries to promote the contrary, De Laurentiis is the villain of this Napoli blockbuster, the divisive figure in Italy's south that has ultras on strike and players ignoring his orders like a rebellious teenager.
Take this past week as a case in point. The club's players and manager Carlo Ancelotti are in a furious stand-off with De Laurentiis — who reportedly wants to dock wages by a quarter — which is threatening to engulf their season.
This mutiny, which has transcended the news agenda across the rest of Europe, all started when the disenchanted squad refused to enter lock-down at a training retreat organised by the chairman following their Champions League draw with Red Bull Salzburg.
Not that it should come as any great surprise.
De Laurentiis famously made Gokhan Inler wear a rubber lion's mask for his unveiling, once fined a player for posing in underwear for a gay magazine and incredibly tried to put his players off moving to the Premier League by claiming that 'English women don't wash their genitalia'.
It is a wonder his 15 years at the club has not been dramatised for the big screen, that much has happened.
Passion and pain has long been a soundbite associated with Neapolitan football fans. They had the Diego Maradona years, a period where the streets would be deserted whenever the team would play, but ultimately that came to a sour ending.
Then came bankruptcy and demotion to Serie C1. More pain. But arriving at the Stadio San Paolo as the knight in shining armour in 2004, De Laurentiis pumped millions into the club with an almost god-complex like no-one in Naples has earned since Maradona.
A court was handed £25million by the brass De Laurentiis two years after his takeover and 'Napoli Soccer', as they were temporarily known in the record books, returned to being known as 'SSC Napoli'. It was a positive move, but the asininity of their cinematic owner would soon rear its head.
Success followed Napoli under De Laurentiis, feeding into his heroism. Promotion through to Serie A was swiftly followed by a return to European football; it was 2011 when the club returned back to the Champions League and they have rarely looked back since.
But De Laurentiis is rarely satisfied, and so it proved.
Players, in recent years, have felt the full force of his presence, with many pinpointing the era of the Marek Hamsik, Edinson Cavani and Ezequiel Lavezzi front three.
They were as vibrant and exciting as fans had seen since Maradona's acrimonious exit in the nineties, and the thought of having it broken up was difficult to accept.
De Laurentiis is the boss and, having previously voiced his desire to see agents axed from the game, made his position on transfer talk abundantly clear.
It was one of the first public outbursts against his players – many more would prove to follow.
'If these players p*** me off then, OK, they can p*** off to England. But they need to understand this: the English live badly, eat badly and their women do not wash their genitalia. To them, a bidet is a mystery.'
The main thing to grasp with De Laurentiis is that he hates to be wrong, and even worse, hates to be seen as being in the wrong. His answer? Just blame everyone else. Always.
While he admitted hiring Rafa Benitez was a 'mistake' in a furious tirade against the former Chelsea and Liverpool boss, De Laurentiis' opinion of managers has always been spicy.
Even 'communist' Maurizio Sarri, who brought the club closest to winning the Scudetto ahead of Juventus than any other man in the past decade, could not escape a feud with the fiery owner.
“I came to understand he was so dissatisfied with his past,' the Napoli owner said, as per Bleacher Report. 'For a Communist to base his profession on the evils of money brought him to suffer from a syndrome of dissatisfaction."
And so his latest grumblings with Ancelotti, who reporters in Italy feel may have taken charge of his last game at the club following a drab 0-0 with Genoa on Saturday, should come as no shock.
The Italian is the sixth manager to sit in San Paolo hotseat after Edoardo Reja, Roberto Donadoni, Walter Mazzarri, Benitez and Sarri. He must have known what he was getting himself in for.
So where are we now?
In short: at one of the lowest points in the entire De Laurentiis era. The days of fans flocking to the city's airport to greet the players after they beat Juventus to take control of the title race seem a lifetime ago.
No, now supporters are sick of this team and sick of this owner. The team bus was jeered on arrival on Saturday, cries of 'SHAME' clearly audible as fans huddled beneath umbrellas in the pouring rain.
Swathes of empty seats confirmed what many expected. Poor form, high prices and caricature ownership has turned many floating fans off while Curva B ultras dished out leaflets to promote a boycott in response to what they feel is repression from the club and local police.
For all the animosity aimed at De Laurentiis, this underperforming team are now also being dragged to new depths.
Lorenzo Insigne, labelled as one of the main aggressors against the De Laurentiis regime, saw his name roundly booed when the PA system read out the teams on Saturday. He was heavily criticised by the owner after a Champions League match in February. In truth, the crack that made never did heal over.
And so now we are here, an owner threatening legal action against his own players. A mutiny in their ranks, Napoli are making a mockery of one of Europe's long-standing leagues.
What happens next is anyone's guess. This, after all, is the crazy world of De Laurentiis where anything seems to go.
The cold hard facts are this: Napoli are regressing in a provocative regime that has desenistised those involved. The Partenopei are seventh and will be 13 points adrift of Juventus, should they overcome AC Milan on Sunday.
De Laurentiis opted against cancelling his pre-planned trip to the USA in the wake of the draw to Genoa and the subsequent jeers and protests at a rain-soaked San Paolo. Many are grateful for what he did to salvage a club on their knees 15 years ago, but that appreciation has waned considerably.
When the bright lights of Hollywood fade, expect De Laurentiis to put on another show upon his return. Fans, players, rivals or Ancelotti can expect an ear-bashing or a wage-bashing, who knows? After all, putting on a show is what he does best.