Q: Well let's get back to cinema. I think this is a very interesting theme about adversity creating great art while prosperity creates decadence. I found a similar theme in the book:" Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi when she talks about Nabakov, postulating that when an idea like communism or Islamic fundamentalism is forced upon reality then reality as you knew it or want it to be becomes an idea. That is a situation in which, horrible as it is, a lot of great artistic achievement can be produced.

A: I agree. However I do not mean to suggest that there are no current great Italian directors. There was: "Intolerance: The Story of Griffith" by the Taviani Brothers and there are Oscar winning films by Giuseppe Tornatore like "Cinema Paradiso," "Everybody's Fine" and "The Star Maker" and Bertolucci has won Oscars too.

Q: By the way, what did the Italians think about the Nobel Peace Prize going to Shirin Ebadi?
A: Many Italians were mad that the Pope didn't get it but I say, the Pope is supposed to make peace his business and he doesn't need a prize for that. The Italian leftwing were very happy for her! I think that there will come a day when the President of Iran will be a woman!

Q: So let's talk for a few minutes about some of the film celebrities whom you have known personally?
A: I came into lots of contact with Vittorio De Sica when he was still mostly acting at Cine Citta. Whenever he saw me he would always call out: "Long Live Persia!" De Sica was very polite. While he was making:" Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" he introduced me to Marcello Mastroiani who was a wonderful human being. De Sica's son Manuel was a musician and a good friend of mine. He always went with me to see Horror films to get the chills esp. in the summer heat.

Q: You're kidding! I never realized that you liked Horror films!
A: Oh Yes. I love Horror films...all of Hitchcock. My all time favorite Horror film is "Shining" with Jack Nicholson.

Q: No way!
A: Yes! I have seen "Shining" at least 15 times and it still scares me every time. I have to cover my eyes. I never stop being scared by this film. I love the end of the film with the old photos from the '20's. I love "Vertigo" also with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart!

Q: Did you know that that was filmed right near where I live in Northern California? There were scenes from San Francisco but the mission with the tower was San Juan Bautista, which is about 45 minutes south from where I live. That tunnel of Eucalyptus trees they kept showing in the movie is still there on Highway 101 and in fact I love driving through it because it smells like cough drops. Hitchcock use to live in the Bay Area. His "Birds" was shot north of here at a town on the ocean called "Bodega Bay." So how did you develop this passion for Horror films?
A: When I was six years old I went to see: "The Wizard of Oz!" with Judy Garland. That was my first scary film. I don't know why but I have always liked them from the time I was a little girl.

I would like to make a Horror film around here where I live. You should see the woods around me when they become filled with fog! And there is an old castle on the top of a mountain peak you can see from my window...

Q: Well if you do decide to make that Horror film then I definitely want a part in it!
A: Surely! Well let's see...as far as greats that I knew there was Gian Maria Volonte who made all those Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood and there was Alberto Sordi. Sordi really made me laugh. I loved his sense of humor. You know when Sordi died they made it a national holiday and closed down everything in Italy. There was a huge parade that went right through Piazza Del Popolo complete with airplanes trailing banners over head.

I was a very close friend of Anna Maria Pier Angeli and I was very sad when she died (Suicide in Hollywood.) She was my neighbor in Rome and in the evening she would come over to my house for cocktails and tell me the story of her life. She had been married to the singer Vic Demone at one point. She had debuted in a French film called:" Tomorrow is Too Late" which gained her enough recognition to be picked up by a 7 year contract with Hollywood.

She went there with her mother who was very bourgeois and a "stage mom..." There she shortened her stage name to Pier Angeli to make it easier for the Americans and she acted in films with Paul Newman and also she fell in love with James Dean. Her mother did not like James Dean. She thought he was a slob. When he came over to their house in Hollywood, he would always wear the same dirty jeans, put his feet up on the furniture and go into the refrigerator uninvited and help himself to their food and drink milk out of the carton. Her mom did not like Dean's bad manners and she was the one who put a stop to the romance.

All these people lived in Rome in those days and we use to see each other at parties all the time. Anthony Quinn and Elizabeth Taylor lived in Rome then too. It's not like that anymore. I don't want to know any of the new players. It is not that I think I am better than anyone else. We are not better than others and in fact it is we who become worse, not the others. We were just more social when we were younger; it's human nature.

Q: I would like to mention here that not only was Hitchcock living and filming around Northern California but John Steinbeck lived in Salinas, 45 minutes south of me and it was during the filming of either the Steinbeck story:" East of Eden" or "Grapes of Wrath" on location that James Dean died in a car crash near Salinas. So back to the interview: What do you do to pass your time now?

A: Now I must have periods of intellectual solitude rather than gregariousness. I spend time alone in Rome seeking out evidence of the Renaissance in architecture and artifacts. Today's actors are superficial and undignified. I knew Luchino Visconti from a distance. He was serious and aloof... a count. He was influenced by the German romantics, Expressionists and authors like Thomas Mann with his struggle between the timeless spiritual, mythological, mystical and artistic perceptions versus the contemporary reality, comfort and familiarity of day to day bourgeois life. ("Death in Venice," 1971 adapted from Mann's novella.)

I also knew Antonioni quite well. These days Michelangelo Antonioni ("The Passenger" 1975) due to strokes can now no longer even speak and he directs films by writing. I know a lot of people still but everything has changed. Rome used to be like a living room. It was personal and comfortable. Remember when we would go to Rosati's Bar in Piazza Del Popolo? We would always see someone like Alberto Moravia there or Pier Paolo Passolini. There were always a minimum of 2 or 3 important film directors in there. Now it is crowded with strangers and only the nouveau riche and it is all about politics.

The world changes yes but we are too crowded now. Everyone is "more important" than you. No more limits or boundaries. People know everything but not profoundly, only superficially and everything is political; not as before.... I hate trends and fashion. Trends exist to make money for the producers. Trends are not profound.

There are a few of the new generation of Italian directors who have won many prizes like:
Nanni Moretti and Gabriele Salvatores who have had their works nominated for Oscars 8 or 9 times. Salvatores's "Mediterraneo" was sent to the Oscar committee... I keep up with my old friends. I think it is superficial to know too many people. Fewer is better.

The American Director Paul Bartel was a very close friend to me in film school. I went to visit him in New York City one time when he was making a film with Krzysztof Zanussi ("A Year in the Quiet Sun," 1985.) Paul showed me all around NYC and took me to movie theatres in Harlem where we could see all the little street urchins making all kinds of noise in the audience when they got carried away by the film, which reminded me of Tehran. Paul had me over to his house for dinner in New Jersey at that time and he cooked everything himself. He was a good chef!

He died 3 or 4 years ago under mysterious circumstances. He was gay. One time I remember he came to see me in Rome at twelve o'clock midnight. Paul Bartel made a lot of movies in Hollywood too like "Escape from L.A."

Q: I know. I loved his first film which was really low budget and dark humor: "Eating Raoul!" in which he directed and acted. He was a very funny man. He had a lot of Cameo appearances in movies too like "Caddy Shack II." He was great! He made about 50 independent films.
A: You know in all these years I have only had two really close American friends and that would be Paul Bartel and You!

Q: I am honored. So what ever became of our friend Romina Power? (Tyrone Power and Linda Christians older daughter.)
A: Romina left that rock singer Al Bano whom we Persians nick named "Albaloo!" and for a time she became a painter. She had a daughter who at age 22 ran away to the USA and disappeared. The daughter went to live with some drug addicts in New Orleans for a time and then she disappeared.

Q: I am sorry to hear it. It seems a far cry from those innocent days when she and I and her sister Taryn would meet at that club: Helio Cabala outside Rome for the tea dances. Do you remember how Anthony Quinn was always there swimming in that ice cold stream fed pool? The water was so cold that he and I were usually the only ones in the pool. Also I never forget that when I was 17 you taught me how to dance the Cha Cha and the Bosa Nova at Helio Kabala.