This interview was originally broadcast over the KALX airwaves on February 8, 2020.
Chris Michel: [00:00:00] All right, well, we’re here with the, the amazing Isabella Rossellini, who’s in town performing for, um, Link Link Circus. I thought we could get started. If you could just talk about the, the origins of, of the project and, and what brought you to this point and of this incredible show.
Isabella Rossellini: Well, a few years ago I went back to university to have a master degree in, uh, an animal behavior and conservation. And while I was studying I started writing. I didn’t intend to. I mean, it’s not that it was planned. It’s not that I say I go to university so that I will do theater, but I think I’ve been all my life an entertainer so that even when I was at school thinking I just do this to satisfy my curiosity, inevitably, I thought of films and things to entertain. So I did a series of short films, first called Green Porno, followed by Seduce Me, followed by Mammas that I’ve done, uh, for the Sundance Channel here and in the United States and Arte for German French television. And out of this came two [00:01:00] monologues. The first one was called in Europe Bestiare d’Amour and here Green Porno: Live on Stage.
Chris Michel: Uh huh.
Isabella Rossellini: And uh uh, and then this one Link Link Circus. So, the first monologue really had to do with reproduction, and this one has to do with, um, cognition if you want. So do animals think and feel. That’s the core of the show.
Chris Michel: Okay. And then what was the, um, going, going back to your decision to, to go to school then for animal psychology, what was, what was the thought there? Like, you, you had like a career going on right there as an entertainer, as you said. Was there any hesitation or did you just know, like, I wanna learn more about animal behavior?
Isabella Rossellini: I always liked, I always liked animal behavior and I wanted, I wanted it to study when I was the right age to study it after, after high school. But it wasn’t really a discipline that was offered in Italy where I grew up. It was biology, it was zoology, but not really animal behavior. And then, you know, my career took [00:02:00] off as a model and generally you’re a model when you’re very young and then continued as an actress. But actually when I hit my fifties, there wasn’t a lot of work. There was no work at all as an as a model, and very little work as an actress. So, that gave me time and my children also were adult and they were back to college and they were in college. So I was the empty nester. And then I went to a conference by Temple Grandin at Hunter College and they were handing out a leaflet saying, um, you just open an animal behavior master degree, which I couldn’t believe it. So, ’cause this is what I always wanted to do. And so I signed up not thinking. Uh, this will open up another career or will open up another possibility. It just, I was always curious about it and so joined in.
Chris Michel: Okay. And then the next step then to, to starting to present this to, to other people. The original format was, was, did that start with the, the YouTube clips then for, for Green Porno? Is that right?
Isabella Rossellini: They were, they really [00:03:00] weren’t meant for YouTube. YouTube just started it. We start, we did the short films 12 years ago, and Robert Redford, who runs, was the art director, if you want, the mind behind the Sundance. He always wants to find new ways for film’s expression. And one of the things that happened, uh, is that the shortest film you can find a commercial released 10 years ago was television. Short. Short means 20 minutes, or because that’s a half hour television format, or the hour, which is minus the minutes that you have to dedicate to the advertisement or the one, one hour and a half, two hours for theatrical release. And Redford was very nostalgic of short films like we’ve seen in short, in silent movies, in early cinema. And he thought that when YouTube started and it started as a platform where people put their own home movie, he said, well, maybe we can tell [00:04:00] short stories. And so he commissioned short series and by short he meant no more than two minutes. And so the people that work and collaborated with him reached out to several, um, people, you know, directors or wannabe directors. I, there was one of, one of them was me and I had done a film about my dad called My Dad is 100 Years Old. And that, uh, Sundance had bought, and so that’s why they reached me because that was a film that I directed with Guy Maddin, and they thought, ah, maybe she wants to continue to direct. And at first I said, I, I don’t know what to do. And then this idea came to my mind just like a little lamp bulb going and I said, “Oh, I could do Green Porno“. I could do all close up of me saying if I were a worm, then I transform myself into a worm. I would make this way if I were a fly, transform myself into a fly. I would make this way, and that’s how Green Porno [00:05:00] came about.
Sonia Mistry: I am, I’m curious what you want the audience to take away from Link Link Circus and Green Porno. Like what do you hope is the outcome for the people who are watching?
Isabella Rossellini: Mm-hmm.
Sonia Mistry: What you’re presenting.
Isabella Rossellini: Well, I, I mean, of course there’s marvelous documentaries and films about animals, so I thought that was already covered by David Attenborough or the likes. You can’t really, uh, do better than that. But there’s something about animals. They make me laugh. They, I find them funny and I thought, maybe I can tell what makes me laugh. So that was the original base, the genesis of the fact that these, these pieces are comical, whether they are short films or whether they are a long monologue format in the theater, they’re generally funny. At least I hope they’re funny and the intent is to make people laugh, but then to go, “Oh, I didn’t know that.” You know, I always say, I want [00:06:00] the people to say, “Ha ha, ha, oh!” That is the reaction I enlisted.
Chris Michel: [Laughter].
Isabella Rossellini: I would like to elicit.
Sonia Mistry: Um, do you feel like in, in deciding to do formal studies in animal behavior that you kind of envisioned some new career path for yourself?
Isabella Rossellini: No, I didn’t at the beginning. You know, I went back to university in my fifties, so I didn’t, I thought my career is finished. I mean, my work is finished and I was very grateful to myself because I didn’t spend all the money.
Sonia Mistry: [Laughter].
Chris Michel: [Laughter].
Isabella Rossellini: I made as a model, as an actress. So I had created some cushion for me financially. And so, and some once in a while a job came, but I, I knew that it was disappearing and I thought they were gonna stop. And so, uh, it was really wanting to satisfy my curiosity. That was the, uh, mo- engine that motivated me and I also started an organic farm, so [00:07:00] I thought I need something to engage. But, you know, organic farm, you don’t make any money. So it isn’t really a career in the sense that something that was money making, I thought I’d done my money making years with modeling and acting when you’re young and beautiful and so you can capitalize on it, you take advantage of it, but then later you do something that is interesting and I was very grateful to the work that I’ve had and to myself that I hadn’t spent all my money. Uh, I didn’t know that, um, just by making these short films that were really an experiment for Sundance, they became so popular and eventually gave me more and more and more ideas so that in the last 10 years this has become really a full-time job to write and perform and about animals. And plus there is a farm too. Mm-hmm. So that has become a great activities, not lucrative, but activities. Indeed.
Chris Michel: Yeah. And are you continuing to study, um, animals and learn [00:08:00] more about them? Or is it, is now you’ve kind of switched to, to being the educator?
Isabella Rossellini: Well, I, uh, I would like to go, I would like to continue to study. It was very difficult to study and work and try to manage, ’cause you know, the work as an actor or an entertainer is very nomadic and the student are supposed to go to classes. So it’s not really, you can’t really move that much. Um. So I, I graduated last May, so it’s not even a year, and I just wanted to give myself a year where I could work with, I don’t have, I had five years of so many complications in trying to get the class, but also be in Los Angeles and class were in New York. But being in Los Angeles to do a series or be in Paris for Lancôme and still don’t miss the class on Wednesday. Then I thought now for a year I want to take a year off where, I just enjoy what I do, but I, but I would like to fulfill me. I find happiness in fulfilling, [00:09:00] um, curiosity. Um, so I would like to continue eventually. I don’t know when.
Chris Michel: Mm-hmm.
Sonia Mistry: Um, so how, since you, you began the show, Link Link Circus, has the show evolved over time since you’ve now completed your degree?
Isabella Rossellini: The, at the beginning it evolves because at the beginning you, you come up with ideas that you hadn’t thought before. Uh, so at the beginning when you, so we, we worked with Theatre Academia in Barcelona. We put it together and then we also re rehearsed it at the Baryshnikov Art Center in New York where we performed it. And in the first, I would say six months, it continued to evolve, but at a certain point you cannot, because there is light cues, there is video. And so every time you make a change there is the technicians, the video person, the light cues. So, at a certain point you have to sort of commit and [00:10:00] say, okay, this one stays this way. And then if I want to say something else, I’ll start, I’m making a note and I’m gonna write and, and do another show or do a film or do something else. [Laughter]. So it hasn’t really changed much in the last I would say eight, eight months. But at the beginning they do change.
Chris Michel: Mm-hmm. In, in terms of the, the directing of the piece, so you, you perform with, with your dog Pan who’s, who’s here with us. Um, how, how does that work in terms of the stage cues and, and working with Pan?
Isabella Rossellini: So, I work, I work with a director because I don’t see myself, you know?
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: And so, um, I work with it with Jody Shapiro who just left, who co-directed lots of my videos, and then Link Link Circus, uh, it was co-directed with Guido Torlonia. And what I need is a sounding board. So I need somebody that can say, I don’t need a director who is creative himself. I mean, it doesn’t mean that they don’t give me ideas and solutions, but they cannot say, [00:11:00] let’s rewrite this. Let’s start because I know the science and the science has to be per perfect. And if they have a good, a good idea, but so I don’t wanna work with a director that takes the script and makes it his own. So I need somebody that I understand what I want to deliver and tells me if there is clarity in my delivery.
Chris Michel: Hmm.
Isabella Rossellini: And then, you know when you are on stage and there are little solutions, you know, that you, I don’t see myself, I remember a director saying the, she sits on a stool. And I have a podium and at a certain point I have to hide something in my back. And so I was walking from her stool back to my podium that was, um, a little bit away. So it looked like it looked to the audience like a fake movement. And the director is somebody that says, you know, let’s these two props the stool and [00:12:00] that should be closer so that when Isabella step back, it doesn’t look fake. I don’t see that myself. I might feel it.
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: When I’m on stage, but you do need a pair of eyes that, so when you hide the tricks on stage so I can pop up a rabbit. [Laughter] Um, it looks a surprise, so I do need a director. You can’t, I find it very difficult to direct without, uh, seeing myself, which I can’t either in the video, I see it afterwards, but not while you’re putting it together.
Chris Michel: Okay.
Sonia Mistry: So, I’m curious how your relationship with Pan has maybe changed as a result of your studying animal behavior?
Isabella Rossellini: Well, I always had dogs. I always had dogs. I always had animals. I always liked them. Um, I volunteered for the Guide Dog Foundation so I can, I also am capable of instructing dogs in the profession. What I didn’t know what to do was to have a dog that would not react to an audience that applauds, um, [00:13:00] that might call or name, um, that my, the light that changed my voice in a microphone. I tried with my dogs and they seemed to be confused by it.
Sonia Mistry: Mm-hmm.
Isabella Rossellini: So, I called a gentleman called Bill Berloni, who trains animal for the theater. And I also explained to Bill that I, the dogs that I had were quite big and I wanted a small dog like this, like I could travel with and need to be below a certain amount of weight, and I think he’s 12 pound. That he get to travel with me in the cabin, ’cause I didn’t wanna put them on there with the luggage. And so I think these, um, dog trainers or people that work with dogs, um, they have contact with all the pound all over America. And within a month, Bill called me and he said, “We identified a dog that might have what you need that is in North Carolina.”
Besides the, the sizes, I wanted patchiness and floppy ears because patchiness and flop floppy ears is a sign of domestication. Um, if you [00:14:00] think of cows, if you think of goats, they have patch, patchiness, and all the canid in the wild, whether they are wolf, coyote, foxes, they have ears sticking up. But when once your domesticate dogs come from wolf, what is in the domestication? We don’t know what it is genetically that is linked, but once you domesticate an animal, meaning you select some, somebody who’s not aggressive, might be smaller, who can live with a human there are things that happen. Patchiness is one sign and floppy ears. So I wanted these two characteristics. So, there she came, then she came and she was, uh, instructed for six months by Bill. And then she was ready for me. We had also a backup dog, a trained dog that Bill already had a little one. Um, and, but she was very, she likes it very much so it was, it was an easy transfer. Actually, I think she likes it. Well, the other dog was 10 years old, so she moved a little slowly. And, uh, she’s very happy to be at, at the theater. [00:15:00] She’s happy because she doesn’t like other dogs. So, here she’s alone with me. [Laughter] She has only us human beings. No dogs are allowed in the theater. So that’s good for her. And she likes treats. And another thing is gluttony, they have to be very glutton. That’s why the cookies that you brought me.
Chris Michel: [Laughter] Yeah.
Sonia Mistry: [Laughter].
Isabella Rossellini: I had to put up on the closet because she will eat them in a flash. Um, and so, and now she’s my dog, you know, she lives with me and she’s become my doggy. [Laughter].
Chris Michel: That’s great. And does she ever have diva moments where she doesn’t wanna perform on a particular evening?
Isabella Rossellini: No. No. Uh. Well, she has diva movement where she’s not, uh, she barks at other dogs. She doesn’t like the dog. When she’s at home, she often barks. I think she’s nervous because I live in a farm and there’s a lot of other animal, and she’s small. And so I think she’s nervous about other animals or, or domineering and tells them, you know, it is my territory.
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: You stay there. You don’t come here. Who know? There’s a lot of conversation. But, in the theater, see, she became quite calm. Uh, she knows the [00:16:00] cues. I mean, I know when we, we, when we rehearse sometime, we rehearse a show we had. For her, we have to change the cue because otherwise she an, she knows the show by heart so that we change the order of the scene of the block.
Sonia Mistry: Mm-hmm.
Isabella Rossellini: So that she keeps, she has to become concentrated. So, because otherwise she does all the tricks. Like she sit, she roll over, she does a little dance, uh, she barks, she knows you’ve done all the tricks in that order. So if I change the order. Then she has to concentrate and listen to my order. But even, um, uh, uh, you know, sometimes she’s backstage and she lies down in and she falls asleep like this. And Rick, who is backstage, said that like a, a, a few second, like a 30 seconds or a minute before she has to come. She gets up, she yawns, she stay, and she waits by the curtain, by the, you know, by the wing. She knows I, when she has to come, of course, she doesn’t understand English or what I’m saying, but I think there [00:17:00] is light cues or music cues or something. She knows it. She knows it by heart. I know it also, sometimes I’m on stage and she might come stage left and she has to go stage right, and I might have her facing left, and she knows she has to go out this way. And so she keeps, she keeps on turning her head.
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: Looking at her. So, I know she knows exactly what to do, and she’s fast. I don’t have to say, sit, sit, sit. No. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. She does it very fast.
Chris Michel: Wow. That’s great.
Sonia Mistry: Do you, do you still have other dogs?
Isabella Rossellini: Yes, I do. I have, uh, another dog called Pinocchio. They’re always rescues. Um, and then in my family, everybody has a dog. My daughter has two dogs. My son has one dog, and I have friends at the farm that have dogs. So sometimes when we have, we often have dinner and four or five people, and there’s 10 dogs. There’s always more dogs than people. [Laughter].
Chris Michel: Yeah. But then, Pan must not like those parties.
Isabella Rossellini: No, they don’t. She doesn’t like the dinner [00:18:00] parties with all the people? No, the people she likes, but not their dogs.
Chris Michel: Oh, okay.
Isabella Rossellini: She, but it’s so, it’s okay. I mean, she’s nervous, but she, if I meet. If I run in the street with her, uh, and she sees a dog, she’ll bark at the dog, but at home somehow she doesn’t bark. But I know she’s tense. I know she’s tense. She doesn’t like other dogs, but she doesn’t bark at them or fight.
Sonia Mistry: So, I’m curious how the experience of having a live stage show compares with your past work, working in television or, or film, like which, which is really more challenging or which is more fulfilling for you?
Isabella Rossellini: Well, the, probably writing is the hardest part of all. Um, performing, I love to talk to the audience and I love the direct contact with the audience. The part that is hardest is to be on the road, um, because then you’re gone from home two, three months at a time and I get homesick. I wanna be home and your life kind of comes to a halt. [00:19:00] And I also have the farm, so I generally travel, I tour my show, in the winter because then I would like to go back in March and stay throughout the summer until, at least till November at the farm. It doesn’t mean that I don’t do other jobs, but I will not engage on a tour that takes me away for six, seven weeks.
Um, films, um. Film is great because I think I grew up with it, I think in terms of images. So even when I do the theater, it runs in my head like a little film. So I like film for that reason. But, theater also is cheaper somehow. The finances are easier. That’s why I, I stopped making film. Maybe one day I will resume, but films are so expensive ’cause you need, uh, yes, you could do it with your phone, but you still need light. You still need the cameraman. If I am the one acting and need somebody, then you still need editing and you need music. And so you always need a crew. And by the time you put together even the [00:20:00] shortest film, it’s still more expensive than theater. It’s, and then you have to find somebody who gives you the money, because if you do the film and then try to sell it, most of the time they give you a, a fraction of the money you spend. ‘Cause they know you already spend it.
Chris Michel: [Laughter] Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: So you don’t have any, any negotiation, power. Theater, it’s easier because theater, you could do it in a place like the chapel, you could do it in the street, you could do it in a bar, you could do it in a big theater. Um, and you know how much the ticket is sold, how many people can enter, how many people bought the ticket, and you divide them. So 50% goes to the theater, 50% goes to me of this 50% it goes to, to these two people that working with me. So it’s an easier financial operation. Something I can wrap my head around The Green Porno, for example, the short films that I’ve done for Sundance. They’re very popular and I know they are seen by millions of people, but at the beginning that you couldn’t monetize them. Now [00:21:00] they’re in YouTube. You couldn’t really monetize them. I think now Sundance has put some advertisement, so I think they might get some money, but I don’t know. I don’t have the operation to put advertisement and really make sure they pay me. I don’t know. The people say they are influencer, they put a a, a, um. And something in Instagram and they get paid. I don’t know. I don’t know who, who calls, who makes sure I don’t understand the operation. So I went back to theater because I don’t understand how the other things works. [Laughter].
Sonia Mistry: We all wish we understood how that works. [Laughter].
Chris Michel: Yeah [Laughter].
Isabella Rossellini: Go back to the theater, do radio interview. Well, the radio interviews. Yeah. So theater, interviews live, then you would know.
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: You know.
Chris Michel: Yeah. I guess you, you have a hundred chairs. You can just multiply it by the ticket cost. So you know.
Isabella Rossellini: Exactly.
Chris Michel: But you have no idea. These people who are watching on the Internet.
Isabella Rossellini: You, you don’t have no, you have no idea. And then who do you call? You know? Uh, algorithms, things, uh, you know, there’s not a person that is, you are [00:22:00] face-to-face that you can discuss it. So that’s why I went back to the theater. [Laughter].
Chris Michel: Mm. Yeah. In, in terms of the, the films that you had done, the, the animal related ones, what kind of feedback have you gotten from other educators? Have you heard of like, people in universities that like, use it as part of the curriculum?
Isabella Rossellini: Yes, they did. They did. Even in high school.
Chris Michel: Yeah.
Isabella Rossellini: A lot. A lot of teachers contacted me and, um, they, they’re using it and they’re having fun. Professors at colleges are using it, and at the beginning when I started 12 years ago, there was a little mistrust, uh, about what I wanted to do, you know, if they knew me, they thought, well, I was a model, an actress on what you wanna do, you, so there was a kind of a mistrust. And then, um, but not now. I think, uh uh. I got a Ph.D. from an, uh, Honoris Causa from the University of Montreal. I performed in theater, like the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles and New York at the Musee d’Orsay [00:23:00] in Paris. So all of a sudden now I can, uh, even if they don’t know who I am, I can mention the places where I’ve been and they say, oh, okay, so maybe she’s legitimate. [Laughter].
Chris Michel: Alright.
