Isabella Rossellini, once thought of as a bit of a muse figure, is turning into the quite the one-woman show. In My Dad Is 100 Years Old, th short film tribute to her father, Roberto Rossellini, that Guy Maddin directed from her own screenplay, she played herself, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, David O. Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin, one or two of which must have constituted a stretch for her. Now she's on the festival circuit, the Sundance Channel, and maybe your cell phone with a series of really short (one-minute) films, collectively known as Green Porno, that she wrote and co-directed with Jody Shapiro, and which star Rossellini as various insects explaining their mating rituals. Rossellini talked about the series with Deborah Solomons, who hit her straight up with the most obvious question about all this: why did she choose to play the male insects? Rossllini: "I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite." Solomon: "But aren’t the females more interesting, if only because they rule the bug world?" Rossellini:: "Can I say something? I am sorry. I didn’t want to make a feminist statement by saying the female praying mantis eats the male, so, Watch out, husbands." Solomon:: "Maybe your interest in bugs was spawned by David Lynch, who cast you in your first major film, Blue Velvet, and presented a view of the world in which red ants are teeming beneath every beautiful surface." Rossellini: "Oh, David must have chosen red ants because they are known to bite; they have a painful bite." For some reason, this reminds the reader of the story that Lynch broke up with her over the telephone. Maybe he really is a Martian.
