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:

Have yourself a noir little Christmas

Go ahead, "Baby Boy Frankie Bono," revisit the Blast of Silence I put up on YT earlier this year as part of a review of the Criterion release.

Allen Baron's film was shot on location in NYC, and its Christmas sequence in Rockefeller Center gives a gorgeous portrait of what the city looked like in the early Sixties — and also offers a terrific opportunity for our hitman anti-hero (played by Baron) to feel even more isolated from the rest of humanity. The awesomely hardboiled voice delivering the second-person narration is that of the late, great Lionel Stander.