August 12, 2007

"I don't want an egg at this hour."

Eating while driving

DSC03904.JPG

Eating while driving

Eating while driving

ADDED: It's always a Fellini film chez Althouse. We're watching this one.

MORE: Martin Scorsese has this in today's NYT:
[Michelangelo Antonioni's] “L’Avventura” gave me one of the most profound shocks I’ve ever had at the movies, greater even than ... “La Dolce Vita.” At the time there were two camps, the people who liked the Fellini film and the ones who liked “L’Avventura.” I knew I was firmly on Antonioni’s side of the line, but if you’d asked me at the time, I’m not sure I would have been able to explain why. I loved Fellini’s pictures and I admired “La Dolce Vita,” but I was challenged by “L’Avventura.” Fellini’s film moved me and entertained me, but Antonioni’s film changed my perception of cinema, and the world around me, and made both seem limitless. (It was two years later when I caught up with Fellini again, and had the same kind of epiphany with “8 ½.”)...

I crossed paths with Antonioni a number of times over the years....

But it was his images that I knew, much better than the man himself. Images that continue to haunt me, inspire me. To expand my sense of what it is to be alive in the world.
I'm in the Fellini camp -- can we go to a place called Fellini Camp? -- where the images continue to haunt me and inspire me and expand my sense of what it is to eat an egg or a banana.

AND: Right under Scorsese's piece, Woody Allen writes about Antonioni's death partner, Ingmar Bergman:
To meet him was not to suddenly enter the creative temple of a formidable, intimidating, dark and brooding genius who intoned complex insights with a Swedish accent about man’s dreadful fate in a bleak universe. It was more like this: “Woody, I have this silly dream where I show up on the set to make a film and I can’t figure out where to put the camera; the point is, I know I am pretty good at it and I have been doing it for years. You ever have those nervous dreams?” or “You think it will be interesting to make a movie where the camera never moves an inch and the actors just enter and exit frame? Or would people just laugh at me?”...

I learned from his example to try to turn out the best work I’m capable of at that given moment, never giving in to the foolish world of hits and flops or succumbing to playing the glitzy role of the film director, but making a movie and moving on to the next one. Bergman made about 60 films in his lifetime, I have made 38. At least if I can’t rise to his quality maybe I can approach his quantity.
Because, among other things, size matters:

Woody Allen and the banana

Woody Allen and the banana


That's from "Sleeper," and note that Woody Allen also made a film called "Bananas."

Now, let's compare two men -- Woody Allen and Marcello Mastroianni -- as they encounter the banana:

Woody Allen and the banana

Eating a banana

It's true that Woody has the bigger banana, but I'm going with Marcello!

AND: The weirdest part of it is that Woody Allen has a movie that is entirely about a recipe for egg salad!

7 comments:

Ron said...

Were you Anita Ekberg in the "La Dolce Vita" clip, and now, Marcello?

Didn't Woody Allen refer to egg salad in "Take the money and run"? A recipe I think...

Swifty Quick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bissage said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ruth Anne Adams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tjl said...

Who knew that Bergman shared film tips with Woody Allen? Too bad it wasn't the other way around. Some of Bergman's Let's-Be-Bleak works might have benefitted from a few Allen concepts. "Scenes from a Marriage" would have been a totally different flick if they'd had the Orgasmatron from "Sleeper."