Conversations with Fellini

Conducted over a 40-year span, these interviews with director Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) touch on everything from his early life to his friendships to his cinematic visions. In Conversations with Fellini by Costanzo Costantini, Fellini describes his first sexual experience (at the age of ''six or seven'' with his family's housemaid), shares his thoughts on memory, and reveals that he once received porn-film stills from Groucho Marx. Ultimately, Conversations is not a book for the weekend film buff: Think of it rather as necessary reading for the obsessed, Fellini-familiar fan. B+