Marcello, Depardieu, and a baby monkey: When ‘The Stanley Siegel Show’ celebrated Ferreri's ‘Bye Bye Monkey’

From the 1950s through the ’70s, foreign films weren’t so “foreign” at all. Average city-dwelling Americans had ready theatrical access to the most notable foreign titles, went to see them on “date nights,” and thus foreign movie stars were interviewed on American TV. Now, seeing foreign movies is considered a “niche” interest, a “boutique” kind of cult pursuit that does have its cadre of followers but is of absolutely no interest (the fascination with Parasite aside) to the “Netflix and chill” American viewer.

Thus, imagine a time when a local talk show in one of the country’s key markets would invite on the cast of a film being made by an Italian director. Yes, the film was being shot in English on the streets of NYC, but it starred a Frenchman (who was, by chance, the biggest up-and-comer in France and had already been in a bunch of top-notch European features) and an Italian superstar, who was known over here in a way then that no European star is now. 

Imagine, too, that the show in question is hosted not by Dick Cavett, who was the premier interviewer of foreign stars and filmmakers, but instead one of the most notorious of all Seventies talk-show hosts — pretty much the living embodiment of Wolfe’s “Me Generation.” And the film that is being shot is an art film that pretty much flopped (this, again, when foreign films did indeed have a ready viewership) and has received only cursory recognition since — despite the efforts of yours truly on this blog and the Funhouse TV show to draw attention to its writer-director, Marco Ferreri. (Why? Because it’s very odd and wonderfully crazy.)

The talk show host in question was Stanley Siegel, a brash interviewer who liked to do attention-grabbing stunts on the air but who also did embody the self-absorbed Seventies ethos (which hasn’t disappeared — basically Wolfe was only wrong in that ALL generations that appeared after the Sixties have been “Me Generations”). For Siegel’s most famous stunt of all was to bring his therapist onto his morning talk show in NYC and do a “session” with her on the air. No full record of this is available on YouTube, but it remains in the memories of all who saw it back then. 

And the film in question? Well, it’s none other than a Funhouse favorite, a bizarre sci-fi dystopian view of NYC that deserves a cult but is too downbeat to get one, Bye Bye Monkey (1978). The film is a study in strangeness, as it seems to anyone who lived through the Seventies to be virtually a documentary on what the lower part of Manhattan looked like in the late Seventies; to its maker, though, it was a fantasy about a world that is “constructing and deconstructing itself” (per the interview I did with Ferreri in the mid-Nineties). 

Herewith, a brief bit of an intro: a snippet of star stars Gerard Depardieu and Mimsy Farmer in the presence of a giant dead ape (supplied to Ferreri by, you guessed it, Dino De Laurentiis). Then, the scene that took on a whole different meaning in 2001 — the nursery rhyme about the baby falling (“cradle and all”) being sung by supporting star Geraldine Fitzgerald with the newly completed World Trade Center looming in the background. Finally, one of the most bizarre moments, Gerard noting his “baby” monkey (the child of the big, dead one) is dead, to his boss at a wax museum depicting scenes of ancient Rome (played by James Coco).

 

The Italian superstar who is seen briefly in that montage is, of course, Marcello Mastroianni. Who, it seems, is the person Siegel really wanted to have on this talk show, since he devotes the lion’s share of time to him — one assumes the publicist made a deal that, if Siegel promoted the film as it was being shot, he could have Marcello.

Many fascinating things are said. Firstly, that Marcello hadn’t read Ferreri’s script by the point he stepped off the plane from Italy to the U.S. to appear in the film. (He was very good friends with Ferreri; the two lived near each other in France.) He then notes the film is about obsession — which is amazing (and certainly accurate), since when I conducted my interview with Ferreri I started with that notion (that the majority of his protagonists, and certainly all his male protagonists, have a singular obsession of some kind), and he denied it entirely. 

Here are Ferreri’s comments on the film in question:

 

Siegel clearly was in search of some personal revelations and so he keeps digging with Marcello, and ends up asking him questions of the sort that Marcello would *never* answer for European journalists. One can see in the four-hour-long feature doc Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember (1997) that MM did NOT want to talk about the ladies in his life. 

Here, Siegel launches right into the affair Mastroianni (who remained married to his Italian wife — his only wife — until his death, although he had Deneuve and his daughter by her at his bedside when he died) had with Faye Dunaway. Marcello directly answers Siegel’s question, saying that Catholicism made life “difficult” for Italians. 

Marcello notes he doesn’t “believe [any] more” in marriage — although he’s still married to his wife of 27 years. (He says his wife is “a good friend.”) Siegel continues by bringing up Deneuve. Marcello is quite open that he finds marriage to be “a prison.” Siegel keeps digging, but Marcello is laidback in his attitude and doesn’t want to focus on any specific woman — although, again, the fact that he answered these questions, ones he forbade in later interviews, is what’s both bizarre and fascinating about the episode. 

The funniest bits throughout this are Siegel’s intros to different topics (as in “Frank Sinatra — he’s Italian, like you – once said...”). He also ignores the other three cast members until the second half of his one-hour show. He notes that Marcello is the one man he’d most like to be, besides photographer Robert Capa — since the show was, no matter who the guest was, primarily about Stanley and no one else. 

When he does finally get around to the other cast members, it’s more of Stanley’s truly eccentric mode of in-your-face (but off-kilter) interviewing. He wants to find out about the “real” side of the panel, so he probes their attitudes (and the work itself, their acting, is never discussed; the film they’re making is of virtually no interest to Siegel). The main topic is guilt in different cultures — and the most refreshing answer comes from Gerard Depardieu, who says he doesn’t feel the French have a lot of guilt. 

Depardieu then reveals that, like Mastroianni, the script of a given film isn’t important to him if he wants to work with a director. He will lose it (as he has done on Bye Bye Monkey and on Bertolucci’s 1900). Siegel ignores that revelation entirely and then asks him to recite dialogue from the film, which does confuse the hell out of Depardieu. James Coco has to note that what Siegel has asked is “very difficult for an actor…” 

Siegel, in one of his blunt-to-the-point-of-openly-rude moments, veers off into asking Depardieu and Marcello about France and Italy “losing wars.” Then, because Stanley was Stanley and NOT Dick Cavett, he asks Marcello and Gerard to play on-air with the baby monkey seen in the film. 

My brain exploded watching this.

 

NOTE: Thanks to Donica O’Bradovich for this senses-shaking discovery.

Living in his dreams: Deceased Artiste Michel Piccoli

In America, A-list performers don’t often challenge themselves — the safest bet is the best bet for them. In Europe and the U.K., perhaps because more actors have a solid grounding in theater and are aware of the other arts in general, A-listers often take on the most peculiar roles or guest star in films that are doomed to fail at the box office, in order to test their skills and take on a more difficult role or work with an odder filmmaker. The late Michel Piccoli was a sublime example of this, as he chose  quality over quantity (read: a big paycheck) and was willing to be unlikeable (something American stars never want to do) if it meant working with a great director.

The list of filmmakers he worked for is a who’s who of European greats. When he worked in English, he either acted for a European director (as with Louis Malle on Atlantic City) or took a part to be directed by a legend — the best example being Alfred Hitchcock, for whom Piccoli worked in the underwhelming Topaz (1969).

Younger Michel (with
last name spelled wrong!)

I would like to focus in on the stranger titles that Piccoli appeared in, but first a short list of the Euro cine-gods and goddesses he worked for, who hailed from Greece (Angelopoulos), Poland (Skolimowski), and Portugal (de Oliviera). He also acted quite a bit for Italian directors — among them Bellochio, Bava, Nanni Moretti, and Marco Ferreri.

But he most often worked in French, for the crème de la crème of French cinema. The auteurs from his homeland that he worked with included: Renoir, Melville, Godard, Varda, Resnais, Demy, Chabrol, Malle, Rivette, Sautet, Lelouch, Claude Miller, Bonello, Blier, Jane Birkin, and Leos Carax.

A little “resume” for Piccoli (no English subs):

Throughout his career Piccoli was very willing to appear in unusual fare. After years of stardom in big-budget features directed by legendary directors he was still willing in the Eighties, Nineties, and even 2000s to play leads in lower-budgeted films made by new, young talents.

In 1986, he starred in Carax’s second feature, Mauvais Sang, where he plays a brutish hoodlum. Carax crafted the film as a kinetic crime picture in the manner of French New Wave, but he also included dialog-less moments that were surely inspired by silent cinema. More recently, Piccoli showed up in a small part in Carax’s amorphous oddball gem, Holy Motors (2012).

Going back to his “golden years,” we need to consult the two books he wrote. The first was an item called Dialogues égoïstes (1976), which contains “various writings, intimate diaries, souvenirs, and memories.” That book isn’t easily found, but his more recent memoir, composed as a series of inquisitive letters from his longtime friend, Giles Jacob (former president of the Cannes Film Festival), is available. In that book he discusses his life, career, and thoughts about acting in an informal but cogent fashion. (Actual correspondence between Jacob and Piccoli is found in the back of the book — Michel’s handwriting is florid and barely readable.)

The Piccoli-Jacob “letters” book is called J'ai vécu dans mes rêves ("I lived in my dreams," Grasset, 2015). In it he does provide some wonderful anecdotes about the directors he was most impressed by. The first one, of course was the master-director whom he became a regular collaborator with — none other than the peerless Don Luis Bunuel. Piccoli acted in six of his films and incarnated the perfect bourgeois for him, looking elegant while often evincing darker undertones.

A famous scene from Belle de Jour (sans English subs, but you don’t need them):

To give a semblance of what it was like working with Bunuel, he provides us with some of the odd on-set badinage he used to have with Don Luis. Hence his account of this discussion. (He doesn’t identify which picture they were making, but includes it among his memories of Death in the Garden.)

One day, I asked him how his wife was. He told me that she was well, and that she had a lover. Is he kidding? I began to laugh and asked him if he knew the lover. “Yeah, it’s a priest.” I laughed more. He told me to stop laughing, that this situation could happen to me. A few days later I asked him how his wife’s lover was doing. “It’s over,” he told me. “My wife is dead.” [pp. 64-65, translations are mine — a few are looser than others]

From Death in the Garden (1956):

A much less fruitful collaboration was his work with Hitchcock on Topaz. He formed a bond with the director — as he seemed to with most of the mega-talented artists he worked with (except for Philippe Noiret, whom he admired but describes as being solitary on the film sets they shared, and Yves Montand, whom he apparently was not fond of at all). Topaz was indeed a dud, but it allowed Piccoli to see that Hitchcock preferred the actors to not ask him “contextualizing” questions about their work:

I went to see Hitchcock, who described the scene to me. I looked at him and asked him [in English], “OK, yes, but what is the big meaning?” He laughed and said to me [again, in English], “Your motivation is money.” I then laughed. “You won’t explain my character to me?” “Not a chance,” he responded. “You actors, you earn enough money. You even want me to explain your character! Do you think I explained characters to James Stewart? Thank god he never asked that question….” [pp. 66-67]

Jean-Luc Godard, currently the world’s greatest living filmmaker (without question), used him three times. Most viewers are familiar with Piccoli’s lead role in Le Mepris (aka “Contempt,” 1963), but are not aware of his starring role in the gorgeous Passion (1982), and his terrific role as a straight man for Godard in the filmmaker’s salute to the 100th anniversary of the cinema, 2 x 50 Years of French Cinema (1995).

The last-mentioned was part of the TV series “Century of Cinema,” produced by the BFI and Miramax. Since Miramax had absolutely no interest in letting the films other than the Scorsese epic doc be widely seen by the public, they played briefly in theaters and museums and then disappeared in America – no VHS or DVD release ever. Which is a shame, as Piccoli and Godard function as a sort of deadpan comedy team in this video essay.

MP and JLG.

Piccoli has the status of the “president” of “France’s Century of Cinema,” and so Uncle Jean feels it necessary to pose many questions to him about the history of cinema — and basically how it’s been forgotten by the average Frenchman. Piccoli argues that this history should indeed be celebrated. But, Godard, counters, it’s not actually the centennial of the public showing of the first film that is being celebrated, but instead the first time that someone *paid* to see a film. The short feature is well worth seeing, and not only because Godard takes a verbal swipe at everyone’s favorite “appropriator” of other artists’ ideas, Quentin Tarantino.

In Rêves Piccoli offers his detailed memories of Le Mepris. He notes that he, Bardot, and Fritz Lang all loved doing the film. For his part, Jack Palance was annoyed – which, Piccoli notes, worked very well for his performance.

In the book Piccoli offers lovely little mini-portraits of Godard, Lang, and BB (whom he says possessed “innocence and spontaneity...” and “a formidable energy”). He maintains that, even at this early stage in the game, Godard “had a great authority about him.”

He sometimes gives actors the feeling that they have to fend for themselves. As if there is nothing to do but just do it, without furnishing them with hours of lengthy explanation — the kind of explanations we’re used to from most directors.” [p. 74]

During the shoot, which was “both very pleasant and very serious” Piccoli had “some of the most beautiful moments that I have ever lived through with my director and my fellow performers.” He also, true to form, had at least one memorably colorful conversation with Uncle Jean:

...Godard asked me what I was going do over the weekend, and I told him I was going to stay in Italy and would no doubt visit Pompei. Knowing that I had a woman waiting for me in Paris, he asked me “You prefer dead cities to living women?” [p. 70]

From Godard, a director whose works are poetic but which can usually be deciphered, his discussion of his directors moves on in the book to that master of bizarre allegory, Marco Ferreri. (Whom I interviewed for the Funhouse in 1996, in his only American TV interview.)

“For me, Marco Ferreri has been one of the most important directors and also a very good friend…. He can be contemptible if he thinks you’ve wasted his time, and he’s not wrong. With him, you have to go! ‘We should do it now —What? —What we have to do!’ [pp. 76-77]

He calls Ferreri’s minimalist masterwork Dillinger Is Dead (1969) both “a beautiful film, stunning….” and “a crazy film that one can’t explain….” It also boasts a wonderful score with ample vocalese.

He also discusses the dynamic between the four actors who were the leads of Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe (1973) – Mastroianni, Noiret, Tognazzi, and he – and also veers off into a discussion of the auteur theory.

I was the marionette de Ferreri…. You’re mistaken, Gilles, when you say that film is based on the actor’s art. No, it’s not the actor’s art, it’s that of the auteur, of the director. It’s their art that is most important. I am not alone on the screen because I’m with the director. It’s Ferreri that we see….

Piccoli and Ferreri.

If I get it right, it’s because I have a passion for my metier, for this singular work, and most of all for the director who has offered me the “musical score” for which he has invented this whole miraculous game. I do invent something, but I am certainly not the author or the coauthor. Even if I could think that I succeeded admirably, was I really the one who succeeded? Isn’t it first and foremost the director I’m working for, and whose genius can be seen immediately? [pp. 78-79]

Piccoli’s memorable death scene in La Grande Bouffe:

It’s most pleasing that Piccoli highlights perhaps his strangest film not in the “cinema” chapter but instead in the one on acting. Themroc (1973), directed and written by Claude Faraldo, is a remarkably singular film that one couldn’t *ever* imagine an American actor starring in. (Well, perhaps Nick Nolte in his prime… but, even there, he’d have probably wanted the character to have some dialogue.)

A perfect “Sixties movie” (since the Sixties lasted well into the Seventies), Themroc is a study in personal revolution. The fearless M. Piccoli plays the lead character, a grunting, yelling worker (the whole film is in a made-up language that has a little — but not much — to do with French) who goes mad one day. He is fired from his job, so he goes home, sleeps with his sister, bricks up the door to his room, bashes a hole in the wall leading out to a courtyard, tosses furniture out the newfound hole, repels the cops (even roasting and eating one), and then has a mindblowing orgy (which includes the great Patrick Dewaere in one of his first “adult” roles as an undercover cop).

The film is a brazen act of provocation that defies laws of logic, language, and linearity. It’s truly rebellious and not a little nuts, and is proud to be so. Piccoli rhapsodizes about it, again, in the chapter on acting in Rêves :

… a unique, wordless film that I love a lot, a strange film, strongly anarchic and at the same time heavy and serious, very honest, mocking and elegant at the same time. It’s strange and sad that a filmmaker as unique as Claude Faraldo remains so little known. He had a great authority, a passion for creativity, and a lot of nerve. I love watching Themroc, I have a great passion for that film. [p. 105]

The whole film is currently "tucked away" online. [To watch this video, click the words "Watch on Odnoklassniki."]

J'ai vécu dans mes rêves is quite a moving little tome – it’s not a solid autobiography but, as its conversational structure indicates, it’s intended to sound like two friends speaking to each other. When Piccoli compares himself to a “pen that’s run out of ink” in the final pages, one can only think of the great late-career films he made. These included I’m Going Home (2001) by de Oliviera, We Have a Pope (2011) by Moretti, and the exquisite You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (2012) by Resnais.

Resnais made several “farewell” movies, but of the bunch, Nothin’ is clearly the best. In it, a group of actors (who use their own names and are essentially playing themselves) gather at the home of their dead director for a memorial service where his final video message to them will be shown. The guests are comprised of two sets of performers, who did two different productions of Eurydice with the director, in two different eras.

In You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet! (2013),
at the age of 88.

The director asks them to watch a recording of a young theater troupe performing Eurydice and suddenly the lines between the different productions blur, and the actors are both reliving the play and their own past relationships with each other. It’s a masterful final work (which, naturally enough, given Resnais’ boundless energy, was followed by another final work, Life of Riley).

It’s also quite naturally the place to end any tribute to M. Piccoli, since it features him as the “elder statesman” but also as part of an ensemble. And, as distinguished as he became and as distinct as his starring roles were (in films like Rivette's beautiful and timeless La Belle Noiseuse), he always seemed to blend most beautifully into ensemble pieces. One thinks of his memorable moments in The Young Girls of Rochefort, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and La Grande Bouffe, among many others.

Marco Ferreri on the Funhouse, all boxed up

My 1996 talk with the man who gave the world some of the strangest, craziest, funniest allegories about sex, politics, religion, and (his fave) the end of civilization can now be found subtitled as a supplement in The Marco Ferreri Collection from Koch Lorber. I’ve posted a few clips from it on YouTube. The video resolution isn’t as pristine as that of the original VHS, but you do have yellow subtitles (I for one am a fan of yellow subs) giving precise translations of Signore Ferreri’s sometimes cryptic and often evasive but always fascinating answers — and how incredibly beautiful is it to hear him say the English phrase “Bye Bye… [he pauses dramatically, to consider] Monkey”? I love this man’s work and was glad to be a small part of this ambitious box. Denying his characters are obsessive (I have so many clips from the films themselves that counter his answer…)

 

On the politics in his films:

 

And yes, discussing our Funhouse favorite, Bye Bye Monkey:

The cineaste that time forgot: Marco Ferreri

This week on the show I’m happy to reach back and air segments from an interview I did back in 1996 with Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri. The twist to this episode is that it’s not a rerun: that interview was licensed for use in the new Marco Ferreri Collection, released by Koch Lorber. Thus I'm showing the interview, now with English subtitles, rather than its former on-site translation (which was good, but way too polite). The Ferreri box in which the interview appears includes eight movies, five of which have never been on DVD before, and two of which had never reached these shores, even through the mail-order VHS channels I’ve been monitoring for so long.

On the episode I run through the themes common to Ferreri’s cinema: allegories about the ends or beginnings of civilizations; absurdist, dark humor; parables about the birth of feminism in the Seventies; and the inevitable sight of major French and Italian stars in embarrassing and bizarre situations. I am devoted to Ferreri’s work, and have had to scramble around to find copies of his films on VHS over the years. As for DVD, there were three Image releases of titles that appear in this box, but nothing else has seen release until this Koch box. To celebrate this, I thought I’d do a survey-post showing the little of Ferreri that has cropped up on YouTube. I plan on uploading scenes from my interview, but for the instant, these clips are your best immediate fix for Marco-mania.

The rare Italian video documentary Marco Ferrreri: The Director Who Came From the Future, included in the box, is excerpted here with English subs. It is the best (and I believe only) introduction to Ferreri on video.



Here is an extremely groovy trailer for Dillinger is Dead, which has been restored and is rumored to be a candidate for a Criterion release in the near future:



This appears to be a handmade trailer for La Cagna, aka Liza, which finds Marcello Mastroianni on an island with Catherine Deneuve and his dog. In the film’s most memorable series of scenes, Catherine kills the dog, and takes its place (wearing a collar, heeling, fetching sticks). Only Ferreri got major European stars to tackle this sort of weirdness:



Ferreri’s only arthouse hit in America was La Grande Bouffe(1973), the tale of four jaded middle-aged men deciding to eat and fuck themselves to death. Here’s a suitably odd moment from the beginning of the proceeedings:



A scene from the same film, that I didn’t have time to include in this week’s episode. The distinguished Michel Piccoli suffers death by farting. The way this clip is cut on YT you miss the opening, where he plays the piano while expelling gas at a good clip:



There are no subtitles for this clip from the amazing Don’t Touch the White Woman(1974), Ferreri’s tripped-out Seventies Western satire, but you won’t need them to understand Marcello as a ridiculous Custer and Michel Piccoli as a puffed-up Buffalo Bill (speaking French with a pronounced American accent):



There are a few clips on YouTube that come from the films that are just simply impossible to get in the U.S. In fact there’s one whole film, The Banquet, that is offered (sans English titles) on the site. Here’s a totally comprehensible, unsubbed bit from The Future is Woman showing Hanna Schygulla and the perfect Ornella Muti enjoying themselves at a tacky Italian nightclub (for those who dig Eighties cheese, this is it):



During my film-fan years, the only Ferreri film that got major distribution was Tales of Ordinary Madness, his 1981 Bukowski adaptation that featured the super-cool Ben Gazzara as Bukowski’s fictional alter-ego. Gazzara was the perfect envisionment of the Bukowski hero, with the best-ever voice to recite his poetry:



And how could I resist the urge to end with one of the stranger but more compelling Marco fever-dreams, Bye Bye Monkey (1978). These are clips I uploaded to YT when I began doing this blog some months ago:

"Bye Bye Monkey": A Funhouse favorite (from the old blog)

Regular viewers of the Funhouse in Manhattan will be aware of my abiding love for the work of over-the-top Italian filmmaker Marco Ferreri. Best known for his film La Grande Bouffe (1973), in which a quartet of sophisticated, haute bourgeois gentlemen decide to eat (and screw, and fart) themselves to death, Ferreri made films about obsession — although he denied this in our exclusive interview with him a short while before his death. In any case, Ferreri’s filmography is littered with major stars doing strange, embarrassing things in the midst of allegorical storylines in which they become obsessed with some object or concept.

In the case of the masterwork of strangeness I’ve decided to inaugurate our “foreign fare” clips with, Bye Bye Monkey stars the always game Gerard Depardieu. Here Gerard becomes obsessed with his adopted “son,” a chimp that his friend Marcello (yes, that Marcello) has discovered near the body of a giant dead ape (Marco got a Kong from his pal Dino). The dead ape’s body is located right near where the World Trade Center used to stand, so the central clip I’m excerpting is an eerie moment in which a prescient lullabye is sung by the always-aged actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. I follow this with the exchange that became an early favorite on the show: Gerard’s revelation that his chimp pal has been consumed by the eternal inhabitants of our fair city. His tormentor/boss is played by the inimitable James Coco, he of Calucci’s Department and The Dumplings fame (there’s nothing sweeter than a failed sitcom to jog the memory, is there?). We will sample further works by Il Maestro Marco in the weeks to come, but now let’s help Gerard bid farewell to his monkey pal.

One postscript: To add to the eerie atmosphere surrounding this strange, surreal film (an allegory about --would you believe it -- feminism), I have to note that I have a still Ferreri autographed when I interviewed him. It’s a shot of him demonstrating the grand gesture (arms outstreched) that Depardieu performs in the clip above. The photo contains Ferreri, the giant “dead” monkey, and the sandy area beneath them -- with the late, lamented Twin Towers just out of the frame. For some whimsical reason, Signore Ferreri decided to sign the picture with the sentence “Il Posto Non Existe (This place isn’t here).” He was as inscrutable as his films -- and, since I had him write it with the only implement I had, a ballpoint pen, his pronouncement is slowly disappearing....


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