Fellini Quotes

(on Federico Fellini) His films are a small town boy`s dream of a big city. His sophistication works because it is the creation of someone who doesn`t have it. But he shows dangerous signs of being a superlative artist with little to say.

I believe (Ingmar Bergman), (Vittorio De Sica) and (Federico Fellini) are the only three filmmakers in the world who are not just artistic opportunists. By this I mean they don`t just sit and wait for a good story to come along and then make it. They have a point of view which is expressed over and over and over again in their films, and they themselves write or have original material written for them.

New York`s like a boxing match. In Hollywood, it`s like a Fellini movie or something.

(On shooting in London, 2004) In the United States things have changed a lot, and it`s hard to make good small films now. There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it`s taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we`d get a Federico Fellini or an Ingmar Bergman or a Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn`t care less about good films - if they get a good film they`re twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100-million pictures that make $500 million. That`s why I`m happy to work in London, because I`m right back in the same kind of liberal creative attitude that I`m used to.

I was just a poor student. I had no interest in it. When I make a film the tacit contract with the audience is that I will give them some entertainment and not bore them. I have to do that. I just lay a message on them. Great filmmakers, like Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa or Federico Fellini, they`re very entertaining, their films are fun. Well, in college they never made it entertaining for me, they just bored me stiff.

The directors that have personal, emotional feelings for me are Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini, and I`m sure there has been some influence but never a direct one. I never set out to try and do anything like them. But, you know, when you listen to a jazz musician like Charlie Parker for years and you love it, then you start to play an instrument, you automatically play like that at first, then you branch off with your own things. The influence is there, it`s in your blood.

(On Federico Fellini) He is enormously intuitive. He is intuitive; he is creative; he is an enormous force. He is burning inside with such heat. Collapsing. Do you understand what I mean? The heat from his creative mind, it melts him. He suffers from it; he suffers physically from it. One day when he can manage this heat and can set it free, I think he will make pictures you have never seen in your life. He is rich. As every real artist, he will go back to his sources one day. He will find his way back.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

But, I`m a big Johnny Cash and a big Lou Reed fan and a Fellini fan.

My favorite favorites are people like Bunuel, Fellini and Charlie Chaplin.

People talk about my signature. But I ask them if they ever saw Howard Hawks` films. They`re filled with overlapping dialog. Everything I`ve learned has come from watching other directors: Bergman (Ingmar Bergman, Fellini [Federico Fellini), Kurosawa (Akira Kurosawa), Huston (John Huston) and Renoir (Jean Renoir).