At the same time, his relationships with his wife, mistress and favorite actress are going haywire. To make matters worse, his nagging producer is on his back, demanding to see a script. This Guido, like his namesake in the film, memorably portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni, has dried up artistically and cannot come up with an idea for his next picture. Raul Julia stars as the crisis-plagued Italian film director, whose name has been changed to Guido Contini for the musical version.
''I don't know how to separate choreography from directing, for I think everything we do in life is a dance,'' he says.
Tune has staged ''Nine'' with nonstop movement, but is not credited as the choreographer. Tune co-directed and choreographed ''The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas'' and staged ''A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine.'' He also directed the current Off Broadway hit ''Cloud 9.'' Mr. Yeston, making his Broadway debut, and a book by Arthur Kopit, the author of ''Wings'' and ''Indians.'' The director is Tommy Tune, one of the leading lights of contemporary musical theater.
The $2.75 million production of ''Nine'' has music and lyrics by Mr. But its connection to ''8 1/2'' is not readily apparent, for as a condition to granting the rights, Fellini insisted that his autobiographical film not be mentioned in the advertising, in the program, or anywhere else. Tonight, nine years later, ''Nine'' will open on Broadway at the 46th Street Theater. Finally, in 1973, he began to write songs for a musical version of ''8 1/2.'' He called his show ''Nine.'' Yeston churned ''8 1/2'' over in his mind during his student years at Yale and Cambridge, and during his early years on the Yale faculty.
''I still believed in all the dreams and ideals of what it was to be an artist, and here was a movie about an artist - an artist in trouble. Yeston, today an associate professor of music theory at Yale. ''I looked at the screen and said, 'That's me,' '' recalls Mr. Maury Yeston, then an idealistic high school senior with dreams of becoming a composer, went to a neighborhood movie house in Jersey City, N.J., to see Federico Fellini's Academy Award-winning picture, ''8 1/2.'' He was instantly taken with Fellini's beleaguered hero, Guido Anselmi, a great Italian film director suffering from a midlife crisis - a crisis that at once made shambles of his career and his personal life. It began one night at the movies in 1962.