the wily filipino

For a filmmaker whose subject was “the soul’s battlefield,” as Woody Allen once put it, Bergman had surprisingly populist tastes. He relished long gossipy telephone chats and was as likely to watch Fellini’s Amarcord as The Godfather, Pulp Fiction or the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera. Screening Jurassic Park one day, he marveled at Hollywood ingenuity. “Those Americans know how to put on the pants!” he said.

They also knew how to make the television shows he liked. Bergman was a fan of the Muppets, particularly the out-of-control drummer, Animal, and rarely missed an episode of Sex and the City. “The women are beautiful, and they talk dirty,” he told [his daughter] Linn [Ullmann]. “Do you talk that way with your girlfriends?”