Viaggio a Tulun/ Trip to Tulum.

Long fascinated by Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Fellini accompanied the Peruvian author on a journey to the Yucatán to assess the feasibility of a film. After first meeting Castaneda in Rome in October 1984, Fellini drafted a treatment with Pinelli titled Viaggio a Tulun. Producer Alberto Grimaldi, prepared to buy film rights to all of Castaneda’s work, then paid for pre-production research taking Fellini and his entourage from Rome to Los Angeles and the jungles of Mexico in October 1985.^[47] When Castaneda inexplicably disappeared and the project fell through, Fellini’s mystico-shamanic adventures were scripted with Pinelli and serialized in Corriere della Sera in May 1986. A barely veiled satirical interpretation of Castaneda's work,^[48] Viaggio a Tulun was published in 1989 as a graphic novel with artwork by Milo Manara and as Trip to Tulum in America in 1990.

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The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge was published by the University of California Press in 1968 as a work of anthropology. It was written by Carlos Castaneda and submitted as his master’s thesis in the school of anthropology. It reportedly documents the events that took place during an apprenticeship he claimed to have served with a self-proclaimed Yaqui Indian Sorcerer, don Juan Matus, between 1960 and 1965. The authenticity of the book, along with the rest of Castaneda’s series, has been a topic of debate since they were published.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section, The Teachings, is a first person narrative that documents Castaneda's initial interactions with don Juan. The second, A Structural Analysis, is an attempt, Castaneda says, at “disclos[ing] the internal cohesion and the cogency of don Juan’s Teachings.”

The 30th anniversary edition, published by the University of California Press in 1998, contains commentary by Castaneda not present in the original edition. In addition, it contains a foreword by anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt, who was a professor of anthropology at UCLA during the time the books were written, and an introduction by the author.

Kezich, Tullio (2006). Federico Fellini: His Life and Work. New York: Faber and Faber, 2006. ISBN 9780571211685

47. Kezich, 360-61

48. Kezich, 362

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It Was Like One Of Those Countless Dreams

“Comics and the ghostly fascination of those paper people, paralyzed in time, marionettes without strings, unmoving, cannot be transposed to film, whose allure is motion, rhythm, dynamic. It is a radically different means of addressing the eye, a separate mode of expression. The world of comics may, in its generosity, lend scripts, characters and stories to the movies, but not its inexpressible secret power of suggestion that resides in that fixity, that immobility of a butterfly on a pin.”

Federico Fellini.

At first it was like one of those many dreams you keep in a drawer and pull out when your imagination is stirred to revive the dialogue with the impossible. Fellini’s affinity for comics is common knowledge, but never until now—except in his youth—has the maestro from Rimini lent one of his subjects to an artist for a graphic novel. It all began in 1986 when Corrier della Sera serialized Trip to Tulum with the caption, “For the first time, the great director reveals the plot of his next film.” Of course, it wasn’t Fellini’s next film; in fact, he concluded the sixth and last episode with the comment, “I don’t know whether I will transfer this narrative to the form of images, or when. But the fact that I accepted the invitation to publish the story before making the film makes me suspect that I was following an unconscious instinct to put it in abeyance. The same instinct tells me that you patient readers who have followed this story to the end should be let in on a little secret: the journey and mysterious adventure that led to this tale, freely retold as cinematic narrative, really happened.”

Fellini expressed the desire to have the newspaper story include some illustratons by Manara, who had, a short time earlier, dedicated to Fellini a charming homage, “Untitled” (also published in Shorts; New York: Catalan Communications, 1989). Manara has expressed his affection for Fellini’s work more than once with visual quotations in his stories, and it’s no coincidence that he created the images for advertising Invertista and The Voice of the Moon. What followed was a dream come true: Manara asked Fellini if he could make a graphic novel out of Trip to Tulum and Fellini agreed. It is often overlooked that Fellini’s artistic career had early links to caracature and comics: Fellini does excellent drawings, an aspect of his art that the director in him prefers to minimize. He’ll scold me again for bringing it up.

When Fellini set out from Rimini in the late thirties on the adventure that would eventually land him permanently in Rome, the first step along the way was Florence, where he worked for the publisher Nerbini on (among others) two publications: the satirical weekly 420 and l’Avventuroso. During the era when fascism decreed rigid isolation, it was forbidden to import American comics, but certain characters from them were continued in adventures created by Italian artists. Legend has it that Fellini wrote several scripts for Flash Gordon, illustrated by the exceptional Giove Toppi. Fellini can only recall one title, Rebo, King of the Mercurians.

Trip to Tulum ends at the start of a new journey which augurs well for all. Little is left of Fellini’s original screenplay. What began with an amused and amicable glance over Manara’s shoulder evolved through the episodes into a veritable comics “set” like a film studio. Fellini didn’t stick to dialogue and plot; he intervened—especially in the final stages—in decisions about cropping, lighting and the characters’ expressions. Manara rose to the occasion with brilliance, adeptness and humility. The result is in your hands. Allow me a word of advice: read it the first time all the way through in the comics tradition, then go back and view each panel as a fragment of a huge fresco. There is the art of drawing, the art of invention, but also the art of looking, one we should cultivate to commune with the muse of the imagination.

You won’t see “End” on the last page. Fellini’s never used it in a film. He told me why, one day: “Ive rejected the word ‘End’ from the outset. Maybe because when I went to the movies as a kid, I always experienced it as a letdown and an annoyance: The party’s over; you have to go now; back to your homework…Beyond that, the ‘End’ seems to me like an aggression against the characters one has taken such trouble to make believable, as alive as possible—their lives continue behind the author’s back.” To which I’d add that I hope the absence of “End” in Trip to Tulum also implies that Fellini will decide to extend his venture into the realm of comics. Through some unknown means I became the first to read Trip to Tulum, a fantastic journey for all readers of good will who’d like to make a spirited, imaginative stand against the reigning decadence of our times.

Vincenzo Mollica

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Trip to Tulum: From a Script for a Film Idea [Paperback]

Milo Manara (Author), Federico Fellini (Author), V. Mollica (Editor)

From Publishers Weekly

In 1966, after a terrifying nightmare, the Italian director Fellini decided to abandon the making of a film called The Journey of G. Mastorna . Fellini's memory of that movie serves as the inspiration for artist Manara's transformation of the director's failed screenplay into a fantastic journey to a land of mystery and ancient wisdom. A beautiful woman fallsp.59 into a pond chasing Fellini's windblown hat. Under the water's surface is an eerie world of preserved shipwrecks and planewrecks, p.60 a resting place for ghostly references to Fellini's films. Inside a submerged seaweed-encrusted 747 the woman is astonished to find Fellini himself.P.64 He sends her off with a very handsomely drawn Marcello Mastroianni--Fellini's alter ego--to make a movie of unknown content. They stop in Los Angeles p.68 and finally reach a grand hotel on the Mexican coast where magical transformations abound. Fellini and Manara have brought the dreamlike beauty of Fellini's cinematography to the comics medium. A consummate linear draftsman, Manara's deft portraits of Fellini and Mastroianni are complemented by his dazzling imaginary architecture, his characteristic lyrical eroticism and the playfully self-referential exchanges between Fellini and the characters in his story. This unusual and engaging encounter between two exceptional artists is in color and includes short essays by Fellini and Manara.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.