Pasolini was a celebrated Italian poet with a popularity that verged on the familiar. He was friends with everyone (I'm basing this observation on his love letters documentary. In it he asks folks intimate questions about their sex lives.) He was an incredibly friendly man and his familiarity led him to some dangerous individuals. The gay world, if you can even call it that, basically involving sexual contact with men, many of which you like without knowing, well, a man or a woman can want to throw themselves into the world, probably anyone with the desire toward being an entertainer, yeah, well, we also scare pretty easily. -- I throw myself out to the world for enlightenment and to open channels of communication. Pasolini received tremendous encouragement and his tremendous talent supported it. His work is a course in itself. There is much to learn, and yet I've fallen asleep, too. I remember the MOMA event with Isabella Rosellini and Jennifer Beals (and who, his actress friend, Laura Betti?) reading his poetry. They projected the Toto film, Hawks and Sparrows. In the midst of my awe I fell asleep.
He crossed often from popularity to outrage. Maria Callas's film appearance is his Medea. Was she all they say she was? I don't know. The stills look beautiful. The Oedipus movie begins and ends unforgettably in the present with the cute fellow, kind of like my Eddie Dimaio friend in the Ruins, wandering around the local landscape, direct from Thebes, and blind at that. Something personal connected for him. He opens the film in his father's home. He made Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, other colorful films. It's not the time to write right now, forgive me, well, I'll continue. He picked up someone and got killed, he had just finished what looked like the ultimate shambles of a film, Salo, and if you watch it clearheadedly, it actually represented a cathartic breakthrough. Unfortunately, and typically as we follow other artists who seem to make tremendous strides immediately prior to a permanent interruption, he was murdered at the peak of his creative powers. Other fun films include Pigpen, and the great Magnani Film, Mamma Roma, and Accetone, with his Eddie Dimaio friend, which I never saw.
Bernardo Bertollucci's father mentored Pasolini and Pasolini mentored Bertollucci? In English the film he wrote and Bertollucci directed is called "The Grim Reaper."
One of the nicest offshoots of the film Salo, was the sense of familiarity we had when we went there to visit. We would have stayed in Venice another day but there was not a room to be had, so we rented a car and drove to Salo.
A Return to the Galaxy: