NEW YORK (AP) – Four decades after Franco Zeffirelli filled the world’s hearts and movie screens with “Romeo and Juliet,” the flamboyant Italian director is back in America, and he’s still signing autographs for his 1968 Hollywood hit.

Theaters are celebrating the 40th anniversary of what fans have dubbed “R&J” with special showings of the Oscar-winning film, and Zeffirelli is happy to scribble his name on DVDs.

At 85, visiting from Rome, he’s also to be honored for the dozen lavish productions he created for the Metropolitan Opera.

Three are being performed this season, including “La Boheme,” which opens Saturday night on the stage where he made his Met directorial debut in 1964 with a production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.”

On Monday, “Romeo” will highlight a Metropolitan Opera Guild luncheon at Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, with appearances by stars from Zeffirelli’s film and stage productions.

Soprano Angela Gheorghiu – who sings in the current “Boheme” – and Jeremy Irons will offer musical and spoken tributes for an audience that will include actors Lynn Redgrave and Eli Wallach, Met General Manager Peter Gelb, tenor Marcello Giordani, baritone Thomas Hampson, sopranos Patricia Racette and Kiri Te Kanawa, cabaret legend Barbara Cook, designer Oscar de la Renta, and Cardinal Edward Egan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York.

Zeffirelli says the “Romeo and Juliet” story is never outdated.

“Honestly, in the heart of hearts of adolescents today, there is the same desire to live an adventure of this same intensity,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “The film is only the carrier of this eternal love story. There is no other story that is so perfectly engineered and resounds so promptly with the affairs of the heart.”

At his villa outside Rome, Zeffirelli still receives letters about the film from new and very young fans.

“I identify completely with American kids today,” he says. “Like me, they are comfortable with what’s stimulating in life – in everything.”

In 1968, Zeffirelli cast two virtual unknowns to play “the star-crossed lovers” – the youngest performers ever to professionally play these lead roles based on Shakespeare’s masterpiece. At 15, actress Olivia Hussey had to get special permission to play a nude scene as Juliet.

Since then, Zeffirelli has directed film, theater and opera worldwide, with 1,640 performances of his productions at the Met alone.

Recently, he’s turned his director’s eye to another kind of stage – the rituals of Pope Benedict XVI. The director caused a furor several months ago when he was quoted as criticizing the pope’s “cold” image and “showy” clothes, with media reports suggesting Zeffirelli wanted the Vatican to hire him for a pontifical makeover.

He told the AP he was not offering himself as a papal consultant – only hoping somebody would “control” how the church’s top prelate dresses.

“He’s wearing somebody’s horrendous inventions,” said Zeffirelli, adding, “I like this pope very much, I respect him, he’s an extraordinary man. But he’s so involved with his mission that he doesn’t look at what he wears – they dress him up in all those strange materials, flashing colors and silk embroideries. That isn’t right.”

Benedict’s outfits include a fur-trimmed red velvet cap that some mistook for a Santa Claus hat.

Zeffirelli’s tastes are still very much in play – for a current production of “Aida” in Tokyo and one that opened last season at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala.

And while “wandering the world,” as he puts it, he’s helping compile two books – one on his life’s work in opera and cinema, the other his Met productions.

“I have always been full of doubts,” said the Florence-born Zeffirelli, adding with a chuckle: “But in the end, I have to agree that I’m quite a good director.”