Essential Fellini

“Fellini box set. When Criterion came out with this, it made my year. I was so happy. This is the first movie I actually saw someone masturbating and not in the theater but like in the actual movie. Great movie.”

“Oh, they’ve got a box set, the Essential Fellini. Look how pretty it is. Every movie is more beautiful than the next. Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, Roma. The Ship Sails On I love because there’s this gorgeous ship, it’s all painted and it’s just beautiful. This is going to be amazing.”

“There’s a box set here by Fellini. Oh my God, Fellini. How can you miss Fellini? Once in your lifetime, you should watch at least one Fellini and there’s cinema already.”

“I do want to start, actually, with this incredible Fellini box set. I came in here wanting to get I vitelloni because I saw that film for the first time a couple years ago at a Fellini retrospective in Eugene, Oregon. It felt like a really special moment because it’s kind of about a band of slackers that are stuck in a small town, and I feel like that was very much who we were as teenagers. And this is an incredible box set that looks like it’s filled with records, but is filled with films.”

“And guess what, they said in case I’m interested... Ha! I’m taking this one home, y’all! Okay?”

“One of my favorite movies is The Nights of Cabiria which is in this set which is the Essential Fellini set. I actually got to meet Fellini when I was 13 years old when I did my first movie which was Paul Mazursky's Tempest with John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. We filmed a month at Cinecittà and this guy came in and kissed me on the top of my head and I was like 'who's that?' It was Fellini.”

“I made a film on the history of country music, and we interviewed Kris Kristofferson and he told me the inspiration for 'Me and Bobby McGee' was, in many ways, La strada. Everything that Fellini touched I want to be part of and I understand that there may be a collection and it might be possible not just to pick out a single La strada but to have… the essential Federico Fellini, one of the great, great masters of all time.”

“Alors ça c'est mon copain Federico. La strada c'est comme si ça venait du cinéma muet justement, c'est un film complètement expressionniste. I vitelloni ça raconte l'histoire de jeunes crétins bourgeois dans la province italienne et c'est assez autobiographique. Fellini c'est l'inverse, il y a une profondeur devant les personnages, c'est la profondeur de la vie même et c'est bouleversant.”

“If I’m talking about actresses, I have to talk about Giulietta Masina. And I see this… extraordinary gift of Fellini, but within Fellini’s work with his amazing wife and muse, we have La strada, one of the most important female performances of all time.”

“There’s some big box sets, Juliette, at the end. Look, I’ve already earmarked... This. Oh, wow. That’s amazing. There’s only one.”

“Check this out. Besides having the best artwork of any of the films here, I've always been a fan of Fellini's and all of the music of Fellini. It's like Juliet of the Spirits. There was this other instrument called a Novachord and it's most beautifully used in Juliet of the Spirits. I just have this box set. I saw Satyricon and it blew my mind and it made me realize that the film scoring was just totally open because it was one of the most imaginative and a pioneer in creativity.”

“One of my absolute favorite filmmakers, Fellini. Fellini, postwar Italy somehow really resonates with me for working-class Black America. Something about, okay, we’re rebuilding our life out of the ruins and we’ve got so much flavor and we embrace the surrealism of our lives, and it’s comedic and it’s tragic and it’s heroic. It’s all the things at once. He’s always been a giant hero to me. When I was in film school, I remember writing a paper on 8½.”

“I need to watch more Fellini. I don't know a lot about Fellini. I don't know a lot about movies. I just kind of bumble along and find stuff that I like and I try not to make rules about it and I just watch what I like and steal what I like too. But somebody said that my stuff is Fellini-esque. And so now I gotta watch this stuff to see what I'm doing.”

“This is the best of Fellini. Well, La dolce vita. And I think I remember I was at a premiere of it on Third Avenue at the Baronet or the Coronet, and I was there watching, you know, him come in. Of course, big fan.”

“Oh, and then, of course, look, darlings, if you leave here without this, you’re just being crazy, because a Fellini compilation, you have And the Ship Sails On, which is very underrated and so incredible. Right, the chicken standing on one leg for the entire thing. That’s so funny. It’s hilarious.”