New Humor by Jay Goldin
Preface to Volume 1
Dederico Felloni (1924-78) is largely forgotten today, his work rarely watched or discussed, his name often confused with that of another film director, Akira Kurosawa. In his own time, however, he had a worldwide cult following of literally dozens, who lauded his work as examples of movies made by someone. Critics, though, were divided, with some calling him the worst director who ever lived and others arguing that he was the worst director in history. But just who, really, was Dederico Felloni? This two-volume biography — the greatest ever written about Felloni — provides the answer and restores him to his rightful place in the history of world cinema.
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I first encountered Felloni’s name while reading the memoirs of Max Awfuls, the great Mongolian kickboxing superstar, as research for my doctoral dissertation, “Baroque-Destructive Paradoxes Of Deliquescence: The Role Of Hernias In Postproduction Mise En Scène Rear Projection Reverse Angle Steadicam Tracking Shots.” Awfuls mentions Felloni only in passing, but I was intrigued and vowed that my first project after I graduated would be to learn all I could about him.
I did, but it wasn’t easy. The trail of this reclusive, enigmatic figure led me through libraries, museums, galleries, monasteries, carwashes, dive bars, strip clubs and shopping malls in thousands of countries on eighteen continents. I also scoured hundreds of archives; conducted millions of hours of interviews with thousands of people, virtually none of whom had never known, or even heard of, Felloni; broke into both public buildings and private residences; extorted information from countless sources; and committed far more acts of theft, arson and grave robbing than I care to recall. In the course of my research, I was mugged, stabbed, killed, cursed, cursed at, robbed, shot and shot at, all the while dealing with personal problems including two marriages, four divorces and the removal and replacement of all of my vital organs and those of a few other people. It was, in short, the most harrowing seven and a half months of my life, at the end of which I knew little more about Felloni than when I’d started.
Then I stumbled on a huge cache of his personal papers — how or where I refuse to say, for the sake of my own safety and that of others — and soon after stumbled on a trove of research materials compiled by other people but never published — again, the details must remain a mystery, or great suffering would ensue. So thanks to my intrepid and indefatigable work, for which I have never received the credit I deserve, Felloni’s life is finally starting to come into focus.
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Felloni was born in Vukojebina, capital of the little-known country of Bandrika. He never knew his parents, who had killed themselves and then each other before he was born. Felloni was raised in a series of orphanages and foster homes, never staying in one place for long because no one could stand to be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes. From an early age, he was fascinated with film, getting his first movie camera by beating up and robbing one of the five tourists that Bandrika welcomed every year. At age 16, he was apprenticed to a film projectionist at Bandrika’s movie theater. The projectionist treated Felloni like a son but two years later mysteriously disappeared. Only a few parts of his body were ever found. Coincidentally, at about the same time, Felloni made his first film, a short called I Killed a Projectionist and Ate Most of his Body, shot inside what seems to be a projection booth and starring only one actor, playing the projectionist. Having taken over the job of film projectionist, Felloni showed his movie at the theater, but it drew virtually no notice. Still, the experience gave Felloni a taste for filmmaking that would never leave him.
When a mysterious fire destroyed the theater, Felloni was left unemployed and penniless. He took to living on the streets of Vukojebina, supporting himself by working the oddest jobs he could find; robbing the homeless, whom he frequently lived among; and selling a kidney and his blood, fingernails and toenails, all of which were used in the manufacture of Bandrika’s main export. He continued his film work, too, but only two short movies of his survive from that time: Study of Some of Vukojebina’s More Interesting Pigeon Droppingsand How to Subsist on a Steady Diet of Pigeon Droppings.
Felloni was rescued from his marginal existence by a job in the country’s fledgling film industry, which Bandrika’s government began funding. Felloni could now afford food most days of the week and an apartment with guaranteed intermittent electricity and water. The price for financial security, however, was being forced to make government propaganda films, most of which aimed to make other countries aware of Bandrika’s existence. Still, Felloni gained valuable experience and made important contacts, especially top government officials, all of whom also held key Cabinet positions in Bandrika’s mafia.
After a few years, Felloni quit his job so he could make the kinds of movies he wanted to. The mafia offered to fund him, but Felloni was too lazy to commit the unspeakable atrocities required. He now had artistic freedom, though, and he used it to make his so-called “Trilogy,” widely considered his greatest achievement: the sports porno western musical road movie Nothing Kills like Death, the medieval fantasy E = mcdeath!, and his masterpiece, Fatally Dilled to Death, at once a romcom, a snuff film, an ironic commentary on snuff films and an even more ironic commentary on actors who have no idea they’re appearing in a snuff film.
The “Trilogy” brought Felloni attention, and other projects followed. For Nuclear Lollipop, for example, Felloni bought a used atomic bomb at a Bandrikan military auction. Despite Felloni’s high hopes, it flopped, as did his next effort, I Can’t Stop Killing Myself, shot entirely in white because Felloni refused to pay for the black. Felloni next turned to writing an epic novel based on John Cage’s 4’33’, then burned it, then made a movie based on the novel, 94’33”, consisting of a blank screen shown for 94 minutes and 33 seconds.
The popular and critical failure of 94’33” surprised and dismayed Felloni and signaled the start of his long decline. He went on to make a string of largely forgettable films, the best-known of which is Suicide by Puppy. Talks with an American studio to direct a comedy, Lust for Cancer, came to nothing.
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Felloni took a hands-off approach to directing. He never read the scripts of the movies he made. He also disliked telling actors what to do or speaking at all once the cameras were rolling, giving actors extraordinary freedom to improvise. (“Who do they think I am, anyway? A director? A filmmaker?” he is allegedly rumored to once have whispered to himself.) Felloni was so quiet that few noticed when he put a cardboard cutout of himself on sets while he took one of his famously long naps. When he was present for shooting and communicated at all, it was through a series of slight nods and nearly inaudible grunts that different people interpreted in wildly different ways, leading to frequent arguments, fistfights, and even knife fights that Felloni seemed to enjoy and that he may have been trying to provoke.
Because of his projects’ shoestring budgets, Felloni couldn’t afford more than one camera or more than one take of any scene, which was his preferred style anyway. Nor did he have any interest in or means for editing, so the finished movie consisted of whatever footage Felloni managed to shoot, in whatever order it was shot in. The result was a “unique kind of cinéma vérité,” in the words of a critic who was never heard from again.
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Much of Felloni’s personal life was and still is shrouded in mystery. Some say he was celibate and asexual all or most of his life, but with occasional weeks-long orgies during which he had hundreds of partners of all genders and orientations. According to other accounts, Felloni had 18 sets of genitals, male and female, human and non-human, but reproduced asexually, though no one has yet admitted to being his offspring.
Because Felloni always wore dark glasses, he may have had no eyes, or his eyes may have fallen out at some point because of his drug habit. Even the number of limbs that Felloni had is in dispute. Some say he had five; others believe that the number varied by season, month, or time of day; while still others are sure that the correct number was three, as a result of a birth defect or an accident that happened while Felloni was thinking about a never-realized project titled either I Have Only 3 Limbs or I Have Only 7 Limbs. Felloni also may have had more than one head.
The manner of Felloni’s death is likewise unclear. He may have killed himself by drowning or by poison or by gunshot, or by jumping from a bridge, or by jumping from a building, or by slashing his wrists, or by slashing his throat, or by slashing his wrists and then his throat, or by slashing his throat and then his wrists, or — as seems almost certain — some combination of all of the above. There are also rumors that Felloni was killed by an enraged key grip or best boy on the set of what must have been his last film, never completed or even titled. Or Felloni may have disappeared and eventually been declared dead. Or he may have died peacefully in his bed.
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The publication of this first volume of my biography is timed to coincide with the release, by Greasy Fingerprint Films, of Fatally Killed to Death and Beyond: The One-Disc, Limited-Edition Collectors’ Set, which brings virtually all of Felloni’s surviving work to home video for the first time and also offers a wealth of bonus material, including mimed commentary on many of the films and two documentaries: Felloni: Director (an extended and brilliantly insightful interview with me) and Kurosawa: Also a Director. For 94’33”, bonus features include the never-before-seen director’s cut, 104’33”, along with a commentary by leading Felloni scholars, outtakes, deleted scenes, an alternate ending and a five-part documentary on the making of the film.
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Preface to Volume 2
The release last year of the first volume of my monumental biography of Dederico Felloni sharply divided critics. Some called it “unnecessary,” “pointless,” “absurd,” “flagrantly unnecessary,” “stupid,” “idiotic,” “a goddam mess,” “a waste of ink and paper,” “horrifying in the worst sense of the word,” and “brutally unnecessary.” Other critics, however, called it “mind-numbing trash,” “a work of fiction written by a pathetic hack,” and “a grave insult to film, books, biographies, and the very concept of language.” One critic wrote that the book “gives shit a bad name” and “only occasionally and accidentally rises to the level of a word salad,” while another said that “I couldn’t read past the first chapter because it made me so despair of humanity’s future that I was forced to burn the book to keep from taking my own life. Stop this man before he writes again.” Dozens of organizations of writers and filmmakers have banded together and put a $50,000 bounty on my head. In short, the jury is still out, and it must be left to future generations to give this work of consummate genius its due.
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You might be asking yourself, is a two-volume biography of Felloni really necessary? In a word, hell yes. Because if, during my many years of painstaking research, I went to the trouble of finding all those facts, then you’re going to damn well go to the trouble of reading them. Besides, huge biographies signal to readers just how incredibly fucking important the subjects are. That’s why so many biographies these days are, and must be, so long. No ridiculous 300-page job is going to impress anyone. How important could that person possibly have been, readers will ask themselves, if so little was written about them? An 800- or 900-page doorstopper, though — or, better yet, a biography in multiple volumes — now, that’s a different story. And my Felloni biography sure qualifies on that score: 1,031 pages of Volume 1 followed by 9,277 pages of Volume 2 (the box set comes with a free wheelbarrow).
Besides clearly showing Felloni’s vast importance, my work will be absolutely definitive, the last word on the subject forever. No one else will ever say anything consequential about Felloni again. Don’t believe me? Read both volumes and then come up with something consequential about Felloni that I didn’t write. I’ll wait. See? You can’t. Any future potential biographers will look at my volumes and be intimidated, concluding (rightly) that nothing else can be said about Felloni in print because there is nothing else to say.
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Jay Goldin works in academia and journalism. He has published poetry, fiction, film essays, book reviews and photos. His humor last appeared in Oblivioni in April 2024.
Image by Kalyee Srithnam