Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040120
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: tom shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Fellini died on Sunday in Rome at the age of 73. American movie czar Jack Valenti, on a local Washington TV station, called Fellini one of the two or three greatest film directors of all time. It hardly seems an exaggeration. Fellini's films had a way of going directly from his subconscious to yours.
Twenty years ago, when Fellini made a rare visit to New York to publicize his movie memoir "Amarcord" ("I remember"), I got to meet and interview him. He was ensconced in a suite at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, and here was a man who knew something about ensconcing. Two beautiful young actresses kept him company, laughing at all his jokes, during the entire session.
Fellini did not like to, as he put it, "make interview." And he didn't really like talking about his work. When I asked what question he would like me to ask him, he suggested: "Are you tired, Mr. Fellini, with your interview?" Then he laughed. "I am kidding. I am just wanting to have a nice time."
He was also uncomfortable with questions about how he accomplished certain effects in his films. One of the unforgettable images of "Amarcord," which is set in the kind of small town in which Fellini grew up, was that of a peacock flying into the village square during a snowstorm and eerily, elegantly spreading its wings.
"Everybody ask me, how I convince peacock to open its tail," Fellini said. "How do you think it is possible to force a peacock to open his tail in artificial snow with motor of airplane making a lot of noise and 200 people around?"
Fellini said he would like the explanation to be, "That is a movie of Fellini. Everything is possible." Then he fessed up. "That is an electronic peacock," he said. "But don't disappoint the readers and the audience. Say that it is a real peacock, a peacock who has a lot of admiration for Fellini."
Believe it or not, Fellini once made a short film for American TV. It was back in the '60s, when NBC offered a weekly Sunday showcase called "NBC Experiment in Television." In those days, the networks tried to have a few token cultural offerings for the sake of prestige and public relations. Fellini's film was a mischievous self-spoof about his casting sessions - the fat ladies, the midgets, the gallery of fabulous faces he adored and immortalized.
But television was not something Fellini loved. He satirized it in his later film "Ginger and Fred." And when I asked him if he'd been perhaps too gentle in his portrayal of the fascists who take over the village in "Amarcord," he compared the power of TV to fascism.
"Fascists like that do not exist any more," he said of the characters in the film. "There is a different power now, a power much more dangerous, a new power made from TV power, the culture of consumerism, which expresses itself through TV and gives an image of life in which you have to buy this certain kind of shoes, this certain kind of butter. That is the real power, the kind that becomes psychologically dangerous."
Nevertheless, Fellini adored America and loved Americans. "For people of my generation, they are still the Americans that for the first time I met in movies when I was 12 years old. They are still Gary Cooper. When I think about Americans, I think about Fred Astaire, or Alice Faye, that I like very much."
Fellini also said of his work: "I start to make a picture 30 years ago and I am still shooting that picture." To him, it was all one long film.
In person he seemed an unpretentious man, prankish and yet kind, full of delight with the discoveries he probably kept making until his death. He also knew he was a difficult interview, and so when I asked him to autograph a book version of "Amarcord," this is what he wrote: "To Tom, With a friendly feeling of sympathy. Federico Fellini." Washington Post Writers Group
Tom Shales is TV editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post.
by CNB