Howard and I sat at a table with three or four American friends. Huge plastic fish were on display in tubs. Tables and benches were scattered around the square. It was a freezing February night, but we were all dressed in summer clothes, pretending it was the August Trastevere festival of Noantri. My scene was shot in a small square off Via dei Coronari. The … I have one question I will ask each of you, who can live anywhere, Why you live in Roma?”… “Magnani is Rome.” He realized his mistake. “Because,” he said, “you all live in Rome and you are all from outside.” I laughed. He blinked his eyes as if in thought: Why? We were in the restaurant of the Grand Hotel, where he would establish himself at a special table set in what looked to be an opera box. He was a droll and inventive liar and his verbal arabesques were for the most part entirely wasted on flat-footed showbiz interviewers. ” I asked Why? This was Fred’s least favorite word. I want you and Alberto Sordi and Anna Magnani and Marcello Mastroianni. Suddenly, one day in 1971, there was Fellini on the terrace of our Largo Argentina flat. Soon he was calling me Gorino and I was calling him Fred… Several times we had lunch together in the commissary.

He was fascinated by our huge Hollywood production. Farther down the corridor from my office, Federico Fellini was preparing what would become La Dolce Vita. During the late 50s I had worked on the script of Ben-Hur in an office next to that of the producer Sam Zimbalist.

Also during our first Roman years, in the Via Giulia and later in the Largo Argentina, movie production was at its peak, and, for a few years, many movies were made at Cinecittà, the principal Roman studio. After the election of 1960, my friend Howard Austen and I moved to Rome not far from the classical library of the American Academy, where I daily worked on a novel about Julian the Apostate.

Largo federico fellini roma