Word: ascyltus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...YOUNG bisexual wanderers. Encolpius and Ascyltus, quarrel over possession of a beautfiul young boy, Giton. Ascyltus gets him, leaving Encolpius weeping in a building which unsympathetically collapses, driving Encolpius alone out into the world. In a scene at a Roman art gallery. Encolpius meets a poet named Eumolphus, and the two talk of the decadent disrepair of the art of their time, and look back wistfully to past classics. Having thus conveniently suspended the present in cultural malaise, the two head off to a banquet/orgy given by Trimalchio. a fat old fart whom Petronius, the author of the original Satyricon...
...husband than lose a living lover," but Encolpius is beginning to come apart, to lose himself sexually. At this point, he is estranged from himself only emotionally. But by the time he has been married to a homosexual ship captain, shared a woman with his constantly re-appearing rival Ascyltus, then seen Ascyltus go at a writhing nymphomaniac who is tied spread-eagled in a wagon, and, finally, helped kidnap an albino hermaphrodite (who dies, of thirst)-something's got to give physically as well...
Once again, Eumolphus, miraculously saved from the fire, intervenes, sending Encolpius off to the Garden of Delights for the cure. He might have made it there, except that he suddenly sees Ascyltus cavorting with the women who are supposed to be helping him, and the emotions that crippled him in the first place come rushing back...
...devoutly places his torch between her legs to her sex, and "Poof." It is as if Fellini cannot bear to let us imagine anything. Anyway, Encolpius goes to Oenothea, and she "lights his fire," as it were, and he walks off jubilantly through a field of enormous stone phalluses. Ascyltus re-appears once more, realizes that Encolpius has finally found himself sexually, and dies on the spot. Got that, dies on the spot. And, to re-inforce the absurdity of such an ending, Encolpius sails off to new adventures...
...Fellini version, the actors literally performed by saying the numbers. "It was a multilingual cast," says the maestro. "So instead of having them speak dialogue, I often just had them count one, two, three." Hiram Keller, recruited from the Broadway production of Hair to play Encolpius' intimate, Ascyltus, was given instructions of equal subtlety: "You are evil and you lay everything in sight...