Happy Birthday: Federico Fellini (1920–1993)

We don’t really know who woman is. She remains in that precise place within man where darkness begins. Talking about women means talking about the darkest part of ourselves, the undeveloped part, the true mystery within. In the beginning, I believe man was complete and androgynous-both male and female, or neither, like angels. Then came the division, and Eve was taken from him. So the problem for man is to reunite himself with the other half of his being, to find the woman who is right for him-right be she is simply a projection, a mirror of himself. A man can’t become whole or free until he has set woman free-his woman. It’s his responsibility, not hers. He can’t be complete, truly alive until he makes her his sexual companion, and not a slave of libidinous acts or a saint with a halo.

Happy Birthday: David Lynch

Dune (1984) I didn’t have final cut on. It’s the only film I’ve made where I didn’t have, I didn’t technically have final cut on The Elephant Man (1980) but Mel Brooks gave it to me, and on Dune (1984) the film, I started selling out even in the script phase knowing I didn’t have final cut, and I sold out, so it was a slow dying- the-death and a terrible terrible experience. I don’t know how it happened, I trusted that it would work out but it was very naive and, the wrong move. In those days the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that’s what the film is, so they wouldn’t lose a screening a day, so once again it’s money talking and not for the film at all and so it was like compacted and it hurt it, it hurt it. There is no other version. There’s more stuff, but even that is putrefied.