Federico Fellini gets Marcello Mastroianni to play him. Yes. Right? Of course. The artistic block is something that Fellini dealt with all his life - Orson Welles once said that Fellini was a great artist with very little to say - that's part of Mastroianni/Fellini's block - He knows where he wants to go but he doesn't know if he has what it takes to get there - then of course the the distractions or excuses whatever you prefer, they are muses, mothers, loves, wives. I was overwhelmed by the access Fellini provides to his own heart and mind and by the audacity and poetry of the film. 8 1/2 stands alone in the virtual mausoleum of world cinema.