I was lucky enough to have Ms. Gieri as my Italian cinema teacher last year at the University of Toronto and have her book as one of the classes' texts. This book covers so much ground yet manages to remain focused and insightful. Gieri is truly passionate about her work and research and it shows.

There is no better way to get into the mindset of Fellini than through his own words. This unassuming book is full of the director's thoughts and motivations. From behind the scene anectdotes to descriptions of scenes never filmed this is an excellent place to start learning about the movie world's best director ever!

This book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in cartooning and humorous illustration in general. I had the first edition of this paperback (published in 1973)... that edition has a different cover and shows up in used bookstores occasionally. The chapters about Jack Davis and Mort Drucker were great... two very good Mad Magazine artists (along with Sergio Aragones and Al Jaffee). But my all-time favorite part of this book is the chapter that focuses on Bob Jones. Bob is a great funny animal (anthropomorphic animal) illustrator who created the cartoon Exxon Tiger (also known as the Esso Tiger), a famous icon in America and around the world. There are several great pictures of the Exxon tiger in this book including a model sheet with different expressions! This part of the book alone is great because it's so hard to find pictures of the cartoon tiger like unless you go to the Exxon web site or find old advertisements for Exxon/Esso with pictures of the tiger. In fact, you can go to the Exxon (or ExxonMobil) web site [...] and enter "tiger" in the search field for info from the company about the character. Exxon introduced its cartoon tiger in 1964 as the star of its 'Put a Tiger in Your Tank' ad campaign. (May be hard to find cartoon images now because of the Kelloggs vs. Exxon Lawsuit lost by Exxon in 2000). Anyway, other artists featured in this book are Federico Fellini, Paul Coker, Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, Gerry Gersten, Johnny Hart, Donald Reilly, Norman Rockwell, Arnold Roth and Maurice Sendack.

This book was written with love over 14 years of friendship. Fellini speaks all, and I mean everything about his life in the movies. Charlotte Chandler records and organizes interviews with the director so that the entire piece (except one little chapter at the end) is Fellini talking to a friend, and the reader becoming that friend. I believe this to be the most beautiful biography ever written about Fellini. A touching and profound book that any film lover, and for that matter, any artist wouldn't want to miss

I interest manara's illustrations. and I want to buy this book

There can be no doubt that the maestro was a magnificent talker: frank, witty, engaging, poetic.... Need I go on? Truly blessed with the gift of gab - amongst so many other talents, in fact, the way in which he chatted up his films was, at times, more entertaining than watching some of them.

Fellini was a marvelous, uniquely fascinating character, all this is clear from reading these fragmentary interviews. Unfortunately, what is sorely lacking from the questions Constantini asks is what most readers would primarily want to discover in reading this book. Yes the incidentals of his life are important, and interesting, and necessary. Yes the anecdotes about Mastroianni and Eckberg and so on are amusing. But what about the hows of his approach, the whys of his style? There is just too much missing here to really make it worth our while. Federico Fellini the filmmaker is actually under-represented!

Though he probably would not have answered those sorts of questions all that directly we would still learn a little more about, for example, why Fellini always liked to loop his dialog in such an offbeat way, or why he chose to dolly and pan through his scenes so busily, or how he came to prefer so peculiar a rhythmn to his editing. THESE are the kinds of questions I think any real admirer of his work would love to try teasing answers from him about. Too little about the way of the art, too much about the way of the career.

The maestro deserves better -- and got it! Read I, FELLINI instead. On the plus side, though: nice cover, excellent font and print size on good quality paper with some decent pictures.

Im still new to the films of Fellini but this book lets give us an glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest directors of all time. Like in his films, Fellinin is as always ephemeral and sublime, always dealing in memory and imagination, not in reality.

I'm still new to the films of Fellini but this book lets give us an ephemeral glimpse into the mind of one of the greatest directors of all time. Like in his films, Fellinin in this book deals in memory and imagination more than reality.

I don't believe I've seen more than two of Mazursky's films but I enjoyed his book, especially the juicy chapter on his adventures with the increasingly more bizarre Peter Sellers. This is not a biography, but rather a series of essays about his involvement with different Hollywood people and some chapters about his current life and childhood. Recommended.

An interesting, light and witty Summer read that gives you insight into Mazursky's career and tales of movie production. Mazursky, born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn started out as an actor (Blackboard Jungle), moved on to be a comedy writer (Danny Kaye, I Love You Alice B Toklas) when acting parts were infrequent, and made his directorial debut with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. My favorite scenes in the book? When a young Mazursky catches his zade eating his bubbe's herring on the afternoon of Yom Kippur; when Eisner and Katzenberg ask Mazursky if he thinks that the I.B. Singer story (Enemies, A Love Story) is too Jewish... maybe it can be about the Cambodian Holocaust instead of the WWII one; when Richard Dreyfus pulls out of the Enemies project; and the creation of Down&Out in Beverly Hills.

I loved reading this book, both from the standpoint of appreciating Paul Mazursky the director of many of my favorite films and reveling in Paul Mazursky the no-holds-barred storyteller. But--and, I'm sorry, there is a 'but'---why devote one sentence to the great Art Carney, who Mazursky calls the most pure actor he'd ever worked with, and then not tell the reader WHY he feels that way about Carney? There are no anecdotes to share about Jill Clayburgh or Robin Williams? Come on, Paul, give! This lapse is mostly compensated for by Mazursky's tales of traveling in the "then" Soviet Union and South America, his memories of working for Danny Kaye and his sharing the bitter and the sweet about his family, his friends and the ups and downs of his life. The chapter about Mazursky's relationship with his mother is especially powerful and a reminder that much of the pathos within even his funniest films came honestly to him. So, five stars for what's here---just would've liked to have seen more!