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.

What’s in the Boxes? A livestream performance by Alan Arkin and Robert Klein

Little heads in little boxes — I’ve been driven nuts by Zoom visuals, which have reduced discussion, entertainment, art, and just plain silliness into the home game of “The Hollywood Squares.” But when this pandemic finally ends (probably in 2024, just in time for the next pandemic and a surely chaotic Presidential race, in which the Duopoly will play its preordained game once again), I will remember fondly some of the cultural events that were done over the bizarro Zoom platform, a place where two people can’t properly talk at the same time. (But the second person’s “box” will indeed light up like crazy if he/she does want to interject.) 

An example of a one-time only event: a livestream I caught this past weekend starring two of my faves of long-standing, Alan Arkin and Robert Klein. The duo (who are both grads of early Second City companies but have never worked together before this) performed an un-staged (at their respective homes) reading of two one-acts written by Arkin, to benefit The Schoolhouse Theater and Arts Center in Westchester County, New York.

The first play, a somewhat preachy jaunt in which the Amazing Randi (Klein, playing the real-life magician and skeptic) meets a very welcoming Jesus (Arkin), was very obvious in its writing and allowed for no great characterizations. Arkin and Klein were joined for this and the second play by Jon Richards as the narrator (and necessary stage-direction reader).

The impetus for the play was apparently that Arkin is a spiritual person and wasn’t fond of Randi’s debunking not only magicians, but all kinds of spiritual schools of thought. The idea of Randi being seated next to the big JC on an airplane — and then being reduced to tears at the play’s end (when he arrives at his hotel room) did not make for a really resounding statement on either faith or disbelief.

On the other hand, the second one-act, “Virtual Reality,” was a great blend of comedy-team crosstalk and Theater of the Absurd (a NYC Jewish “Godot” with shady workers as the two-man cast — or are they crooks?). Klein did a great Bronx accent as a guy whose job is to unload three crates that are to arrive from an unnamed source. (Are they filled with stolen goods? Will the contents be sold or exchanged for something even stranger?)

Arkin wrote a terrific “Alan Arkin” role for himself — one where (true to form) his “new recruit” character doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to do in helping Klein, and eventually ends up yelling (in Alan’s classic fashion) about him not knowing what the hell is going on. The play begins with Arkin’s character showing up to his new “job” (or is it a caper?) and being told by Klein that the crates haven’t arrived, and they will prepare for their job by pretending the crates are there and making note of the contents. The piece supplied perfect roles for both of them and was a well-crafted absurdist one-act. (That ends, of course, just where the actual action in a traditional play would begin.)

The livestream was followed by a “talk back” segment in which both actors were willing to answer questions about the plays, or basically anything. The always-terrific Arkin seemed pleased with the whole event, but Klein lamented that he kept looking down at the text (because he saw that Arkin was interacting with the camera). Arkin was far more adept in his performance — this is true. But the odd nature of the second play made it okay that Klein wasn’t fully “engaging” on a visual level. (Plus his tough-guy Bronx accent sounded pretty damned authentic.)

I asked two questions in chat that were answered on the “Talk Back” afterward. The first was about Arkin’s influences for the second play — he honestly admitted “Virtual Reality” came out of him playing around with a playwriting app a friend of his couldn’t get to work. (Turns out I missed him performing it with his son Tony off-B’way in 1998; it was produced at the Manhattan Theater Club with what he said was a one-act starring Elaine May and Jeannie Berlin — then one with Arkin, May, and their children! Jeezis...)

Barbara Harris and Alan Arkin.

The second question was about the late, very great Barbara Harris, whom both men worked with. (Arkin in the initial Second City cast; Klein in the B’way play The Apple Tree.) Arkin responded instantly by saying, “She was brilliant and she had emotional problems. She had difficulty with staying in something [theatrical]. She would have problems and have to leave. But she was unquestionably a brilliant performer.”

The Apple Tree
(Harris on right;
Klein in cast)

Klein noted he had a big crush on her and (some of this is in his memoir) he befriended her and brought her to see his old neighborhood in the Bronx and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. He remembered that, at the time, Harris was lamenting that "Warren Beatty won't leave me alone!" (Post-Second City, she had made a big splash with both her theatrical work and her first film, A Thousand Clowns.)

He was there the night when she “went up” onstage in The Apple Tree: “Alan [Alda] was standing there dumbfounded and Barbara starts addressing the audience. ‘Hello, how are you?’ and she’s not making sense. She’s not crying but she’s not ‘in it’….” Her understudy took over for the rest of the first act and the second act, and an emergency call went in to Phyllis Newman, who took over for the third act and filled Harris' three roles afterward. Klein calls it one of the most “extraordinary” things he had ever seen onstage. (Barbara returned to the show two and a half months later; she stayed with it until after Alda had gone and Hal Holbrook took his place.)

All in all, it was wonderful to see Arkin functioning on all cylinders at 87 and Klein doing some comic bits during the talk back. (He’s a kid of 79.) When the pandemic really does end someday, I won’t bemoan the loss of its jerry-rigged entertainment — but I will indeed have some pleasant memories of these one-time-only livestreams. And yes, some screenshots to prove the damned things really took place.