FULL VIDEO | Woody Allen - The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss

[Music] hi and welcome to the origins podcast i'm your host lawrence krauss this week's episode was incredibly exciting for me because we had the chance to spend two hours with one of the world's most interesting artists film directors writers and of course humorists in the last century woody allen we were extremely fortunate that woody allen agreed to sit with us for a long time to discuss his views on the world his films and his thoughts about things from philosophy to science i realized that for some people this conversation itself will be controversial the very fact that we're airing a conversation with woody allen for those people i would say i'm reminded of of of a conversation i had with ricky gervais earlier and at the beginning of our podcast where he said that people that get angry that conversations happen that they don't want to hear are like people who go downtown and see a sign saying guitar lessons for sale outside a door and say i don't need any damn guitar lessons well if you don't want a guitar lesson don't go in if this podcast for any reason upsets you don't listen to it but if you do listen to it i think you'll be fascinated and i am particularly thankful that willie allen trusted me and our crew to come in earlier this year before the the pandemic and have a long conversation in his studio in new york city and i hope you'll enjoy it as much as i did when we had the conversation with no further ado woody allen well woody uh thanks so much for agreeing to do this it's a it's a great pleasure to be able to talk to you i'm happy to yeah well we'll see we'll see how you feel about that after this is over there there's so many things to want to talk to you about but but what i want to be since this is kind of an origins podcast i wanted to start with your origins you didn't like school did not no yeah and i read that you were ejected early is that really true were you kicked out yes and now i i want to be fair school didn't like me equal enthusiasm sure you know it's not that i was a wonderful student and i had to stand for school we didn't like each other okay um i went to a public school and then high school didn't like public school then like high school and then to keep my parents from jumping off the roof i went to college for a very short time in my my freshman year i took just just a drop dead easy course i was a motion picture production major oh really and i only took it not that i was interested in um making movies at that point in my life i only took it because i figured the curriculum you go to the movies that's what you do you go and you talk about them so i like going to the movies and i figured it was a goof off course and i'd be able to you know i wasn't i had no thoughts in those days of being a movie director at all i just wanted to avoid school work now i was let me tell you how terrible student i was okay in high school midwife high school i had two years of spanish two years in spanish when i went to nyu i conned them into letting me take spanish freshmen as though i had never had any spanish at all okay and i failed it now i was sitting in a classroom with you know 20 other kids whatever and they had no spanish at all i had two years of spanish but i was the one that failed i was not a good student um also at that stage in my life i was trying to learn to play the drums because i was very interested in jazz music and there would be certain exercises with the foot pedal that you had to practice so i would sit in class and the teacher would be lecturing about uh beowulf or something and i'd be doing paradiddles and things with my feet and i was kind of one one two one one two one you know so i wasn't paying attention i learned nothing in addition to that uh i lived in brooklyn and nyu where i went was on 8th street you know you got off at 8th street on the train i'd take the train to 8th street the doors would open and i'd sit there for a minute and i think do i want to go do i not want to should i go to the show and i'd turn jivasat for just enough time for the doors to close and then i'd go up to broadway on 42nd street and hang out in the automata to paramount and so between playing hooky and my poor scholastic aptitude and their hostility toward me and my indifference toward them the atmosphere was not conducive towards being educated they came to that conclusion before before they came to it on their own and they got me into a room with uh a conclave of deans now a conclave of deans yeah it's not a literal term an i excellent it's like it's you know it's a group of like four drips that sit around the table and they're telling you in no uncertain terms while you're out and you know i had no real argument with them because what could i say my marks were poor i didn't attend a lot i when i did attend i was practicing my foot pedal on the drums so you know they threw me out and uh and as well they should have did your drumming get better as a result of the class no no i gave up the drums after a while yeah but you were interested in music then you were always interested in music though you're always saying from teenage on yes i was always interested in playing music so your parents wanted to go to college like my jewish parents my mother wanted me to be a doctor i don't know what did your mother did your mother father have any did they want you to be all the kids in the neighborhood that i went to school with were becoming doctors and lawyers and accountants and architects and and professors in school i mean all had noble ambitions i didn't i had sleazy underworld ambitions i wanted to be a gambler a car cheat a con man i anything so i would not have to you know work or punch a time clock or sit in an office or i would have been you know if i didn't have the ability to write comedy which is pure luck it has nothing to do with any achievement in mine or working on it's pure luck it's like hitting a mega ball or something i i would be probably doing some menial kind of job i was i would be delivering for the florist or messenger service or something because i wouldn't want a job in an office so we're going to be sitting behind a desk all day and i don't want to say to people you know you'll get a lot of good wear out of this shoe you know or you know i i just didn't want to do that or open wide you know i didn't wanted any of those jobs so i would have probably done a job that let me be out in the street and there's very few jobs for a totally unskilled uneducated irresponsible person and i i would have been uh you know i guess a messenger or something and some extent that's why i became an academic too it's kind of a non-working job non-working yeah i've never worked a day in my life i mean uh and but it's pure luck it's just well we'll see a blessing yeah there's there's a lot of luck i think there's a lot of effort but i wanted to know why because you look i mean i'm heading towards the fact that you are incredibly you can't find the word yeah i mean incredibly something but the word doesn't quite exist but cultured but knowledgeable erudite you know literature music philosophy art in terms of ideas you're fascinated with ideas but somehow you got turned off school now i know that i've been reading and it seemed to me part of the reason maybe you had miserable teachers i had miserable teachers yes i was but i was also miserable i don't mean to you know blame it all on them they were terrible i was you know the education system is not good in the the education system certainly when i grew up i don't know if it's changed but the the burden of education was all on the student i'm just saying i had no inju i was not a reader as a kid yeah you know i only only only read comic books that was it just comic books and i meant i mean to uh i don't know i would say 16 years old maybe 17. you just read what comic books by the way i read all the standard comic books superman captain marvel batman and the green lamp and all that stuff and i read with great pleasure walt disney and little lulu and uh you know the mighty mouse uh i i just loved it all right you see when you see a 15 year old kid or a 16 year old kid and he's eating lunch and his comic book is hoping to you know woody woodpecker or something you know you think gee what is it with this kid so i was completely uneducated and unlike my sister who loved always to read her idea of heaven is to you know get a couple of books and just yeah lay down and read forever i had no interest in reading at all it never interested me as a kid i didn't like it time spent other ways was my thing and i only got educated not for any noble or ambitious reason i only did because when i hit about 17 years old or 18 years old i i was attracted to the girls in school and the girls that i liked for whatever strange reason i don't know were the kind of non-commercial bohemian girls the girls that had no lipstick and very little makeup and black tights and black turtlenecks and silver earrings and they were all interested in art and culture and literature and classical music and architecture and you know and so in order to keep up my end of the conversation i had to learn and so was the girls i learned but if it wasn't for them you know if i like the different type of girl for instance who was who was not interested in that of her interest lay elsewhere um you know i would never have learned but the ones i liked for whatever reason there were all those ones that you used to see in the jewels fight for cartoons or you know the ones that liked to hear the guitar players doing folk music and there were socialists and they were communists in your i see those in the early movies especially yeah those are the ones and so uh you know if they would at first when i started going out with them they would talk to me and i was you know i had nothing to say back to them i never read anything they read i didn't know who yeah andre segovia was i you know i mean and gradually to keep you know to be able to get a second date or even the first one at times i had to start reading and uh and so i did read and some of it i liked somebody then but the problem with being self-educated is that there are huge gaps in your education so there's some subjects i know pretty well and can talk about yeah and there are other things you think my god you mean you've never read any charles dickens or something moby dick yeah you know yeah well although you know it seems to me that you when i look at the at least the references in in your writing in the movies at least in terms of literature it seems to me to be remarkably broad i i you wrote once that you were not well you said you were not a habitual reader but you said it's a chore to read and you don't read for pleasure you read because it was important to read now i know why it was important to read i never got from from what i read from you now i know yeah but but surely it isn't that way now i mean you when you when i read what you write or say in interviews you talk the pleasure about just with total pleasure about dostoyevsky tolstoy dickinson elliot rookie all i mean it seems to me that there's a love ultimately of those people so was there a switch that was turned her or do you still not read for pleasure i don't i read very rarely for pleasure i don't read much but there are very few books in my life where the burden of entertainment was completely on the author i'm talking about fiction sure i can read some poetry because many of the poems are short and do not require a lot of extended concentration um novels it's not my first my pleasure of first choice i'd always rather see a movie see a show in the theater listen to music watch a ball game you know and i read a certain amount of non-fiction again just to keep up in a conversation but it's it was just never a great great um pleasure for me well you got off to a bad start i guess yeah well that's the bad start i think is the key point i think i mean i again i keep blaming your early teachers i think i love the description you wrote once about teachers he said talk talk talk but when you see them they're mean looking sorry sad and bitter you know what their lives were like and you said you imbibed from from school socratically rather than intellectually just by looking at your teachers and learning how miserable their lives were yes and it's also the the stuff they gave you to read the stuff they gave you in school was no fun it was first of all antiseptic yeah you know do you really want to read the gift of the magic yeah you're a kid you want to read about when i was a kid i wanted to read about guns and gangsters and excitement and war stories and intrigue and spies and i don't want to read about you know her her combs and his and everything they picked out for you had that kind of bland antiseptic don't you know offend anybody to god these kids are so and it was the same with music when you went into your music periods or auditorium periods there was so much beautiful music out there so much cole porter so much george gershwin and jerome kern that was pleasurable to listen to and and they could have turned you on to music so it was a true pleasure they didn't you would go in there and they would you'd sing abide with me or or you know recessional or you know i mean stuff that you know a melodic antiseptic or solemn stuff that was joyless to kids and so you know i i didn't get educated very much uh because i didn't have a background or the right kind of courage apparently at home or at school but now two things though if your parents didn't listen to music where did you get your love music was again i mean was it in some sense rebelling against your parents your friends your peers your peer group because music i listened to pop music the radio was a big deal and it was a big deal you know you get up in the morning radio would go right on because they wouldn't interfere with your uh you know your your mature ablutions you could just do your thing and and it was fine so you know the radio was on and i'd be getting dressed and showering and i showered first then i got dressed and then you know breakfast and you and the music yeah the music in those days you know talking about many years ago now was you know benny goodman and artie shore and billy holliday and peggy lee and it was great music and it was gershwin and kern and nerving berlin and rogers and hart and so that gets baked into you yeah sure and so you you know you like it well and it's obviously like your taste because we're always one you again when i think about your music taste there at least in terms of the music you use for the movies it's very broad it's not just it's not just jazz of course which which appears in a lot of movies but it's stravinsky it's it's it's it's prokofiev it's every it's it's the classics as well which is yeah i love classical music again that came later isis that came later yeah that uh that was the latest thing you know at first we never heard any classical music i grew up on harry james and yeah never those the swing musicians and when when i got older and uh actually i married young and my wife came home from school and said you gotta hear this she had the brandenburg concerto oh yeah sure and she said they we took this in schools and she played them for me and they were good i liked them and and so she got me into listening to classical music and i did it more and more and and i um you know and this past summer if you can believe it me who was a stickball aficionado and champion in the brooklyn streets was at la scala directing the pacini opera really yeah so so i have developed in spite of myself in spite of all my my you know obstacles and reluctance and laziness and that's happening that gives hope you see it gives hope yeah that hope for everyone you know i mean i grew up on none of this did not grow up on classical music or literature or anything i grew up playing stickball playing stupor playing baseball schoolyard basketball and and and i wound up making a living in the arts yes did you have any good teachers by the way yes uh in there were a couple of good teachers well you had i have to say you had a biology teacher that i liked at least namely jessie kiosian who who was in uh um edibus rex she's a cute little biology teacher she was a tiny tiny little teacher at midwood high school and uh and i think i was in her class but i know she was a bio teacher there and i i think i was in her class years years later i was looking for interesting types for small parts and juliette taylor my casting director said i met this wonderful woman who says she knows you and she's a great type and and then she said her name and i said well yes i do remember her from midway i can't recall if i was in her class or not and then she came in and i used to and she was wonderful she was a tiny little thing and she loved culture in general yeah afterwards you surely didn't find that when you were a student i mean a student i i sled to the class always but she bet she left but when i saw her i remember seeing her once when i went with my then wife to a little tiny private classical piano recital upstairs in a walk up in the east village some guy was playing some sonatas and and jessie kyozin was there yeah she was smiling and then years later she showed up uh in casting and and man was very good yeah no i i thought the fact that she had the whisper to show up for casting must she must have been at least i would have thought she would be a fun teacher well i want to switch a little bit so so you didn't find out what you were interested in school really um although it's interesting to me it is interesting to me given what you've done since that the teachers you found interesting were english teachers in both in high school and and in university yes now i i have to just interrupt you for a second um when i first went to college at nyu and had the english teacher you know he was a guy and we had to hand in our first essays and i handed in my essay and he failed me on it and said sent me back the paper and said son you need a lesson in rudimentary manners you are a callow adolescent and not a diamond in the rough wow and uh now i was at that time trying to write funny yeah and i had some talent because i was while i was in that class i was being paid i was working as a comedy writer so i wasn't i did have some talent as the writers but instead of um encouraging me or saying you know look this is this may not have hit the mark but but uh you know if you want to write comedy i would suggest you read sj perlman or robert benchley or something there was no the teachers never stimulated you there was never any they didn't know how to that's so sad to make the most of it now you know i didn't care i thought the guy was a screwball and you know i couldn't care less yeah but uh if you think if he'd been different it would have made a difference to you at that time or you already i think if he had said i want to speak to you after school and it wasn't that uh dressing down yeah if you want to speak to me and say look you know if you want to write comedy uh i can you know i think you struck out here but but i i i i try reading these things and you know try again and see after you read you see if you think these are funny and let's talk about it but there was never any you know if you didn't do it you failed yeah yeah that says what about what about science i could the reason i'm asking is it seems to me that you have at some level a scientific sensibility which is really asking questions about the universe and in fact you know i was struck early on obviously because of my own interest when i before i knew you you know there's wonderful lines about the universe expanding what's the point and you know and everything's going and protons are decaying so i mean there's one one of your movies really going around saying but protons are decaying what's the point and so you had this at least you were following what was going on and in fact we first met when i think you were subjected to me talking about physics i think and and where was there ever any thought or interest in science yes as a boy i was i was interested in science but it got you better you got turned off yeah that's what happens to so many kids i was uh interested i i uh my parents bought me uh at my urging a microscope chemistry kit chemistry course yeah those were great and uh with the cabinets that opened and there's many chemicals in it and but i i didn't have the the strength of character or the or the richness of of the curiosity or the i didn't have it i was it was nobody's fault but my own i just because they when i expressed interest they did my parents did get me the microscope and did get me the the chemistries set years later but but i i i just wasn't i was a goof-off i was a kid that wanted to watch baseball rather than then when i got older um i became interested in all these or you know physics and astronomy interested it only in that the large questions the unanswerable questions i came to the conclusion were the only questions worth asking or dealing with sure because yes of course there's a great deal of difference if you're living under communism or socialism or democracy or and there's a great deal of difference in in your living day-to-day and all these things that make up the warp and roof of politics but in the end if you had an ideal society and it was everybody who had enough money and everybody had their health and everything everything was great there was no war and there was no climate change everything was solved you would still be faced with these terrifying unanswerable issues you still wouldn't be happy well yeah i got everything and and then you think to yourself it would become even more poignant because you'd be saying gee i'm i'm going to lose all this one day it's all going to be taken away from me now if your life is not so good if you're struggling to make a buck or to think up a couple of good jokes for the second act of a play or trying to get your invention patented or something you know you're concentrating on a small thing and it takes your mind off that and so you but in the end sooner or later if you accomplish everything you want in life you still come up against these big questions and the big questions are terrifying and they're you know they're they're no satisfactory answers and so uh i keep coming back to them all the time yeah sure yeah because they're nagging yes they're not the kind of questions you can say well can't answer that and no one will ever answer it so but that's the scientific part of you that's what the fact that you keep coming back to i mean i'm a physicist and theoretical physicist because it's those deep questions that intrigue me and i keep liking to ask them and return to them and for me almost the questioning is as important as the answering the fact that you keep searching i guess i find the conclusion equally the same that the universe is meaningless and it's all going to end miserably but right you you want the answers but it isn't necessarily the answers you want you want a certain set of answers and it's not the answers that you're getting well no i'm willing to take whatever the universe gives me and it doesn't bother me the universe is going to end miserably um it's sort of for me it's always kind of and we'll get to it because i want to talk with you it's a it's a worrisome thought it's a bothersome thought that uh that the universe is flying apart and is everything will be gone it's better it makes it more it makes the fact that you and i are here chatting so much more amazing to me i guess that's my attitude is that yes we're cosmically insignificant and we're going to be gone and human civilization is going to end and no the universe doesn't care about us in fact it's trying to kill us in many ways it doesn't matter and it's sure it's expanding and it's eventually going to come cold dark and empty but hey that means what an incredible stroke of fortune it is for me to have this little time with you now yeah you have to think about these things in fairly grim terms sophocles said you know better never to have been born at all that's the greatest blessing you i don't know you're you're here for a short amount of time and uh and you search for answers yeah but uh i feel that i'm not i've never been searching i've been searching for the answers i want to hear i don't want to come up with the answers you come up with you as a physicist come up with substantial answers about the real structure and working of but those are not fun answers to hear they're not soothing answers well they're not soothing but they are inspiring because they must because it must resonate with you at some level because you learned enough about it to know that matter is decaying or or that the universe is spanning there are there might be it wasn't yeah yeah of course you know and and i find i don't find them inspiring if i'm dispiriting okay that you've gotta you've gotta find ways to go through the day with a dark cloud hanging over your head that uh the the general uh narrative of the universe is a negative finite one well it's negative as far as humans are concerned there's amazing things going on what about low but if you're asking questions and the answer is not what you expected is that i expected it you know that's the problem no when i got it you assume the universe is miserable it is but but in life in general if you're asking questions about anything in terms of your art and what you're working on and the answer comes out to be something you totally didn't expect is that isn't that isn't that make you happy or does it matter if it's good if the answer is the seven numbers to the uh lottery yeah fine but but no if if the answer is if you're a little kid and you say how long do we live to your mother and she says oh you know people live to 100 and then and then you get older and you say hey wait a minute the life expectancy is uh 78 or something you've learned something but you have not learned a good thing or a pleasing thing well and it's not a pleasing thing it's not sure whether you're good but if you know it's shorter then do you think it becomes more precious or just becomes more anxiety written okay well we'll get we'll get there because i can well it's if there's issues i mean i've been because i've been reading you a lot and listening to a lot to prepare for talking one can deal with the absurdity of life and if you want to call meaninglessness absurdity in a variety of ways but one of the ways is comedy surely i mean did you get very unsatisfying none of the ways you're thinking of our satisfying they're all selling yourself a bill of goods maybe they are but but what else can we do um in fact when did you find out you were funny uh i've always been with a sense of humor i could always make people laugh was it was it a family thing i mean i grew up in a sort of a jewish family where you had to you you had to force your way into the conversation was happening everywhere and you had to come up with something for people to listen to you and i also had a role model my uncle was very funny and i saw how it endeared him to everyone around and it made me want to i think it made me i want to be that way was there anyone in your family there's no one in my family that was funny or made jokes or had any proclivity toward culture or the arts or show business so no and so when you what just funny was just natural uh i i have no idea where any of it came from i just know that when i was a kid i could make people laugh and and i didn't when i got to be an adolescent you know people suggested uh that i write direct what i was saying down and sell it to people well yeah and they were very wonderful and they'd buy it and that was let me ask you because of what you said about literature and what made you learn that did it also help you with girls the fact you were funny did that that oddly enough it's an interesting thing whenever they ask questions and do surveys and studies about what is uh attractive about other people to either sex yeah there's always a disproportionate emphasis put on a sense of humor yeah and they always say well i want someone who's kind to this with a great sense of humor who's funny you know it it always comes up yeah guys talking about the women they want women talking about the men they want for some reason funny is always right up there with the the the real essentials of desirability but did you note that i mean is that something you consciously i i wear to this day can't figure why yeah no not why but did it impact upon the fact that it you knew it might help you meet or no no no i was never conscious i i just uh assumed the the women in my life that were attracted to me the fact that i was amusing was meaningful to them to them and it's self-selecting i guess in that way you said somewhere that comedies but always about insecurity in life insecurity about women fear cowardice difficulties in relationships that's sort of the basis you claimed at least in one place well i mean if you look at all the comedies that you see whether it's bob hope or joe marsh or w.c fields or charlie chaplin that's what 99 of it's about you know about fear about anxiety about you know falling in love chasing after the woman and getting or not getting you know i mean that that's where the jokes lie that's where the jokes i accept when i also think about your jokes i think about existential themes cosmology death philosophy there's a they're built into the those themes are built into into your jokes and they're much sort of if you wish a grinder and as you once said the only things the only questions worth asking are ultimately sort of those existential ones in my opinion someone else would come to a very different opinion and feel that um you know there are many questions there are starving people and there are terrible things that need attention and and my stuff is all you know irrelevant nonsense and meanwhile the practical pain and living and suffering of real people is what they have to deal with i i didn't feel that way i mean that was just my i i don't mean to inflict my ideas or my feelings on other people for me i just felt given the circumstances of my life and what i observe around me and read in the papers or read in books that those questions are questions that you ultimately have to come up with when i did my movie um status memory status memories yeah you know my favorite i felt that that was a question people would ask me gee the character in your movie has got fame and money and uh why what has he got a right to complain well he was complaining because fame and money does not make a happy person as a cliche but does not make a happy person and he was complaining about that and he was complaining he was a lucky guy he was complaining for the millions of people that don't have anything and have to wrestle with day-to-day living and all the terrible journeys of life but you know but that's what i'm asking in some sense everyone seems to think all your movies are autobiographical why why they do is an interesting question they don't assume other people's movies are autobiographical and no and and i wondered if it's because the character you play in movies is a natural outgrowth of your stand up and so people always see the same to some extent the same character from the time you were before you're making movies to the time after and therefore assumes it must be you i i you know i once heard marlon brando saying in an interview that people confuse him with the characters he plays and that he was not like that he was not stanley kowalski and and i'm not like that yeah no i mean i and and but if you see charlie chaplin for example you know this guy puts on a little mustache and his kane is hannah i play in a movie and i this is what i wear yeah you know yeah so they understandably think that the guy in annie hall or the guy in manhattan or the guy is me give or take a few emotions or a few exaggerations and sometimes it is true that the character will be saying something that i babble about in life or but the characters in my movies are greatly exaggerated because otherwise the movies would really be dull if i was the character in the movies you would go to sleep in the first real and leave the theater so i have to exaggerate the characters tremendously in real life i'm not like i am in the movies maybe there's a touch here and there a touch there but you know i think it's it's it's amazing and i i have to say whenever when people have found out i i know you the first thing they say is is he like he is in the movies and i think it's the most i've i've read other people say the same thing it's the most amazing thing because you were not at all in my experience no one's like like the characters movie ironic relaxed thoughtful not not particularly neurotic as far as i can see all all of those things and it's kind of interesting that those characteristics are what people well it works i mean it works in the movies it's done very well but but in real life i've led a very middle-class productive um you know well-disciplined responsible life in in in the movies of course the the character i'm playing is frantic and neurotic and you know meant to be amusing trying to amuse people but people think that but but if you were around me for a while you and i don't mean to self-deprecatingly or facetiously you would see that i'm dull i'm i get up in the morning and you know what do i do the treadmill and then i lay down on my bed and write and practice my clarinet and take a walk with my wife and you know i mean i and then watch a basketball game there's no real adventure in my life no no but there is in the movies that you make and and i think you know he said something like the artist creates his own world that you know you can make the adventure in the in your writing but yes you have to you have to you're obliged to to that's why ninety percent of the movies you see if you turn on the television set and you surf through the movies or something almost every channel some guy's got a gun out or somebody's running them on a you know chasing after or fighting or people are searching all the time for conflict for drama for you know adversarial things that that engage your interest but the truth of the matter is most lives and minds certainly is very quiet and very uninteresting one one of the characters yeah well one of the characters when a movie said uh life doesn't imitate art it imitates bad television yeah i think that's true well as you wrote it it doesn't it doesn't imitate art if it imitated art it would be a little nicer yeah but it imitates cornball you know not not the best of television but the worst of it another thing you said about the the central theme of of your movies is is the is this sort of reality versus fantasy and at one i read somewhere where he said you know reality versus isn't fantasy unfortunately right fantasy is much better fantasies much better you you learned this when you were a child when when i was taken to the movies at five six seven years old and you went into a movie house and there was a movie on the screen and it was you know whatever it was esther williams in a swimming pool and the people you know poured martinis and the men were witty and charming and the women were beautiful and the conflicts were had nothing to do with starvation cancer concentration camps or or anything that makes up the the fabric of sure society well i mean the purple rose of cairo is a great is to me epitomizes that right she's it's the depression-era woman whose life is in some ways miserable looking at the at all in fact the movie within a movie is is one of these wonderful 1940s 30s or whatever you know movies where everyone is drinking cocktails and going to see jazz and and having a lovely time yes and and i i would like that i would like to be able to step into a vincent minnelli movie and never come out of it and just live there the rest of my life that would be great see this is my point i was saying earlier do you i think i'm i'm gonna i'm not gonna give up this point that your reaction to the meaningless of meaninglessness of the universe which is real but there are two things in an absurd universe one of the ways to react is to treat it absurdly which is comedy and the other is to create a universe you'd rather be in whether in my case it happens to be you know thinking about the cosmos and dissociating myself from humanity or making a universe by movie so it seems to me being that some sense that being driven to comedy and movies are so natural given your view of the world that comedy is your response to dealing with a meaningless universe and the other response is to is to make movies where where life is better i already yeah you're trying to find something good about it yeah and so metaphorically you think yeah well but it doesn't it doesn't work the way the universe is up there saying treat it with comedy treat it with drama dreams doesn't matter lost you're all going down the toilet in the end so all of these things that you try and put a positive spin on you know don't really cut it when you are absolutely honest when you wake up at three in the morning and you don't have anyone around to and you think to yourself what the real situation is you know you put a positive spin so you say well isn't one reaction to it uh religion isn't one reaction to it comedy isn't some you know and the meaningless of night of life can be mitigated in this way now i don't think so i think um i always thought the artists in my opinion again this is all me you know who cares what i say but well i do the artist's job in my case is to try given the bleakness of the universe and the fate of man and emptiness and meaninglessness of it to find a reason to go on now it's hard to find a reason to go on cerebrally you go on because it's in your blood the the blood trumps the brain you you go on because something hardwired in you makes you go on so you can babble about the meaninglessness of night life for hours the guy comes into the room with a gun all of a sudden the meaninglessness vanishes you grab the gun you wrestle with him you you you know i run but you know that that's what you do now all you can do is try and find some some way to go and it's very hard to find a reason to justify life cerebrally i go on with life because something in me is frightened not to tells me to urges me to to preserve myself and to keep going it's hard for me to make a case for it cerebrally and so i'm trying in work to make a case for it and to explain to you how you can cope with this terrifying flying apart meaningless absurd universe and the best i've been able to come up with is that you can only distract yourself from reality that if you come nose to nose with reality you're not going to like it and the real situation is you're checkmated you you you're not gonna you there is no good answer and and you can come up with these metaphors or these or religious things or philosophical explanations and but in the end it's a bad deal that we've got it's a bad situation well and all you can do is distract yourself you can watch a show you can watch a movie you can get involved in your kids problems tutoring them you can get involved in trivial stuff so you don't have to think about it and that's the best advice you can have is don't think about it well you know actually this is interesting because i you talked about stardust memories you talked about the fact is this this comedy director is now faced with the fact that you know but it's not what he doesn't meaningful he's not dealing with the world's problems and it's bothering him and and he goes around and it's and he annoys everyone around him with the fact that he that he he doesn't want to make funny movies anymore he doesn't think it's worthwhile bob and and then he and then he meets these aliens and who's who and he sort of you know tries to ask what's the meaning and they're basically saying forget it and they say to him if you want to make me do mankind a service tell better jokes and in some sense is that what is was that that's what i see as the movie version of what you just said is that do we man kind of service by telling jokes you're distracting them from from yes it's it's you know uh you're you're in life and it's hard and harsh and you read the papers you watch the news yeah your own life is therefore closing on your your car you know you're naive and so you go into a movie house now you can go into a very serious movie and it will confront some of these problems but you never get a satisfying answer you get some spin that the director or the author wants to give you but let's say you go into a musical and you completely forget about your problems for an hour and a half and then you walk out and you're refreshed because you've had a breather you've had a cold glass of water on a hot day you're refreshed and you can go on with your life if you if you choose to go into a serious thing if it's entertaining perhaps it will distract you but it's also possible that the very problems of the movie making it a dramatic and serious work will force you to confront issues and you won't come out so refreshed so i'm making a case here for certain types of movies or certain types of entertainment as being distraction and distraction being the best you can do that's why i watch so much sports i was going to ask you a sports you're going tell me of course it's a distraction and it gives me a couple of hours where i'm not thinking about the terrible things that exist in life or the terrible existential realities i'm just thinking i get lost in a trivia but it's the ultimate but it's the ultimate in meaninglessness sports i mean and it's you know besides the fact there's these genetic freaks it's but i think i mean it's just one person where one's person loses and it doesn't mean anything right and yet interestingly it means as much as all the universe it means no less who wins the game between the yankees and the red sox means as much as the entire existence of the universe it has no less meaning yeah but what worries me i agree with you but the problem is that people ascribe meaning to it and and that's what is i would love it if everyone went to sports and said i'm just entertained but people care and and and actually that's the thing it is entertaining well insights can be extrapolated from it i mean you know hemingway can write about both fighting and write some interesting things to talk about but but when you lose yourself you know in a apparently meaningless entertainment of some sort of musical or sporting event you know it's got as much meaning as as while you're on earth let's go let's leave sports because we spent too much time on it already but for you not only is the universe meaningless but you don't like nature do not no yeah somewhere i don't like nature it intrigued me because of relation something you said that reminded me of something that verner herzog actually said did you ever see the movie grizzly man grizzly man well it was uh okay it was a movie about he made about a fellow who lived in alaska with grizzly bears for many years until he got eaten by one was there a documentary well it's this person made documentary footage and it's a documentary but werner used this guy's own footage which is remarkable footage of grizzly bears to make a commentary on his life i may have seen it it's a it's a it's like they didn't show them being eaten by the bear no they don't show them yeah i think i did see that movie yeah and but there's a line in there that reminded me a lot of something you you wrote which is he's looking at one point near the end of the movie they look they actually have the footage it was near the end of the season and they say they think that he's looking at the bear that eventually ate him and and he says look and there's a close-up and he said look in those eyes you know that's that's indifference you know it's not mother nature nature doesn't care about you it's it you know the big mistake that he made and people make is somehow thinking that nature cares about you but nature isn't different in fact it's worse it's banal well he doesn't say this but you say it it's but now the indifference of the universe is almost evil and and as you said when you know even in in looking at a looking at a beautiful scene when you look more closely you see violence and chaos and murder and cannibalism and when you look closely at nature you find it is not your friend and which which i've which is almost the same as looking at barrett saying it's not your friend it's going to eat you if it's hungry and i'm agreeing with everything you're saying okay but i find that intriguing when i read that it suddenly made it hit me why you like new york so much because it's the opposite of nature yeah it's not like cities yeah because new york's a city and you know i was reading and i was thinking about this in terms of the movie shadows and fog where you know the night is dangerous and it's not and what what rescues the person is civilization that being alone in a in either in a dark or or in a natural without without the the trappings of civilization around you is what's terrifying yes i agree but then that's interesting to me so you're kind of anti-russonian in a sense sort of that man was born free but lives forever in chains okay so the yeah i think he viewed the the primeval man before society is the ultimate free being and society imposes chains on that person but in some sense you're saying it really actually it's the opposite society provides a safety net yes a structure and a civilization you you know if i walk out into the street i live in an environment that has other families and restaurants and museums and schools and libraries and theaters and you know it's a i live in a civilized structured place whereas if i'm out in the wild but i learned this when i was a little kid i i could see you know that uh animals bite and smell and bark and lick and you know i mean there's nothing to commend them to me you know other people go crazy you never had a didn't you never had an animal no never yeah when i was a little kid i didn't like it i i thought that i would like a dog because every kid had a dog and when i got the dog you know it was a big nothing i mean the first couple of days they were excited but then then is you have to walk the dog and the dog runs around the house and makes noise and jumps on the couch and barks and you know and i'm thinking so where's the what's the pleasure here um so but of course billions of people could not disagree with me more fervently uh i i'm i was never a pet lover cats dogs birds or nature and the other thing you weren't you like i remember trying to convince you to come out to arizona in the wintertime right as you said and you said no way and then i read you said you hate sunshine is that because you're a redheader i never liked sunshine i don't see the it sounds so neurotic but you know i the sunshine one the rays of the sun produce cancer forget about that i'm not someone who's intimidated that way i mean you know but they cause heat i don't like that only when it's too hot and the light that it casts is harsh and unpleasant so when i get up in the morning and i open my venetian blinds [Music] and it's sun you know once in a while that's nice once in a while but it's much nicer if i open it and it's a gray day and misty and moody and cloudy and the light is soft and the color saturation is beautiful and it's just it's kind of if i go out for a walk and the sun's not beating down on me or shining in my eyes and i'm and i'm seeing everything in a in a kind of gray but not an unpleasantly great it's rather a beautiful gray does that impact on the in movie making i can't i mean well you work of course with cinematographers who and who themselves determine what lighting they like right you don't want the gray days you all want the game they want them and i want them yeah everyone so the harsh sunlight is not good for movie making not for my movies they're not no and maybe for nobodies but we all there are times where we've made movies where we get on the set in the morning and wait all day long without doing any work at all till the sun starts to drop at the five o'clock in the afternoon or something and only then begin to work because the sunlight is not so pretty yeah and that's not just your view that's you that's your your your cinematography certainly the cinematographers would be very happy you know shooting in gray you know when you see these swedish movies and these british movies they look so beautiful the green grass or even even black and white they're so moody and lovely so the sunlight nature but we're getting back to the fact that somehow the chains of civilization are for you not change there in some sense a security blanket but at the same time one of my favorite movies of yours points out the the at least one of the dangers of living in a society and that's zelic that imposes on people the tyranny of society of conformity of the need to blend in right which which is the part of the chains that rousseau was talking about the fact that we have a social contract when we when we don't blend in well society punishes us one way or another in this case zelich's parents and other people early on imposing that on on him and he's the prototypical example of of someone who wants to blend in yeah you want to you want to be liked yeah and uh in order to be liked you know i mean in the simplest sense in that movie you know where he could read moby dick and if he's with someone who hated the book he's right along with him oh yeah i hated it and it was terrible and can give reasons and if the person liked it he can go with that person and anything to to blend in to to be like or to say you'd read it when you hadn't which is which is i think what well yeah well that but but because i think i think he was when he was hypnotized at one point he was embarrassed that he hadn't read moby dick as i remember and and it's interesting to me in that movie that it moves towards fascism that at some point his desire to be part of yeah yeah he ends up next to hitler in the movie yeah and um and you have com i forget whether it saw bellow or someone in the movie comments that it was natural if you want to conform and i think you say the danger of abandoning one's true self to fit in leads to conformity and submission and to the will and requirements of a strong personality which naturally leads to fascism yes you know if you live in a fascist society it's very hard to be an individual and and they they constantly forcing you to uh to live up to the rules of the authoritarian leader and to if you're an artist to make your art conform and and in any way not be outstanding or not be individual and and um in extreme situations nazi germany where and they're all wearing uniforms and and spouting the same thing and if you don't the penalties can be very harsh there they would kill you um in the social situation it can just be where you're persona non grata yeah so when but when i read that submission of the will requirements of a strong personality i couldn't help think of the current climate we're in in some sense i want to talk about the left and the right okay so one thinks i'm of trump i couldn't help think of the fact that in some sense this base and this and this uh need to this xenophobia that's a key part of it of of other you know wanting to be the same that we suffer from that on the right that trump's success if you wish his people is is in some sense related to people wanting the right is always that the right always wants a certain conformity the right you know the right in any in any country at any time and the left is always more liberal well yeah it is but well but i'm not sure it is now but i would i wanted to ask you about that because that confront were you influenced in zelig at all by i know we've talked about this personally about by knowing people who were blacklisted during the the fact that during the communists during the period of blacklisting there during the mccarthy era where clearly non-conformity at some level was labeled and then you lost your your whole livelihood i i do remember the mccarthy's i was i was young for the brunt of it but since i appeared in that movie the front yeah and uh walter bernstein wrote it and he had been blacklisted and marty writ directed and he had been blacklisted and we hung out together for the duration of the shooting of that picture uh i learned a lot about it because everybody you know zero mastel who starred in a picture these people are all blacklisted so i learned about it and i i knew about it from you know because everybody knows about it and and i knew about it when some of it was happening but i was too young to really be um actively committed to a position on it okay but so that that didn't that didn't play in any in any part and you're thinking in terms of zelda in terms of the the the the the black listing on the uh uh no the blacklisting thing for me was all centered around the front the movie the front yeah i remember again i only acted in but i did learn a lot about blacklisting and uh you know to it was a terrible and ineffective thing and well it was effective for a while at suppressing people but you you know you said it's always that way in the right but i'm a little worried that on the left we see the same kind of necessity for conformity right now universities obviously coming from universities i see university students not wanting to hear anything they disagree with and well that's on the face of it that's a terrible thing i mean that doesn't require any um kind of real debate or conversation it's just to a common sense person you would think that a university you know would not tolerate that that that it's a place where there should be a free forum for discussion uh even the most uh unpleasant kind and these things should be debated and you're there to learn you're not there to advance a social agenda you're there you know so i never have any patience with that you know when when a university stifles free speech now you then get into some nuances here and if some guy gets on stage and says you know so go home and get your rifles and kill all the jews kill all the black people yeah you know i mean there is the line that a common sense person can figure out this thing is not rocket science you hear a guy talking and he and he's um trying to advance a a political position that's hateful to you that's fine as long as it doesn't cross a certain line you can argue with them to death in fact that's what free speech is all about is to guarantee the speech you don't like the point of it yeah yeah i mean as long as you're not inciting violence i think that's the key point but we're seeing that the universities what's up what's uh are are now not just the students but when the students complain the universities are in immediately cow towing and you're getting this this rule of social justice of of uh of conformity that is every bit as as as uh restricting as you used to say the the you know the fascism was in one in one way or another that you know there's a famous those the yale students who are yelling at that yale professor when they talk about this halloween the common sense person will see that as but but but why the common sense isn't happening in university administrations it's really scoring commercial institutions whether it's a university a television network a hollywood studio a job [Music] in a business they're very quick to succumb to the slightest kind of pressure because they feel even a small pinch here and there in their pocketbook yeah and and that terrifies them they don't know how deep that pocket is going to go and they get terrified so a university or a television network or a film studio or a publishing house or a job a business will buckle under at the slightest pressure and someone like yourself watching that or someone watching will say god that's so terrible you know this guy uh listened to folk music in the 50s and now he can't get a job because they they're afraid he's a communist but um and this is one of the many terrible traits of the human personality uh it it folds under pressure look you lived in germany in the 30s and you lived or all over europe and you lived next door and were friendly with jewish families and your kids played together and you had no problem at all and then you got some pressure and as soon as the pressure you were ready to dump them right into the concentration camps i mean get rid of them and and because you know basically people are frightened they live their lives in terror they live in terror and the existential terror we were talking about before and they live in terror of you know they they want only to survive they don't want trouble they are taking for trouble and we tend to we tend to reward virtue signaling in all these cases meaning we tend to reward in the communist era you know in the in the mccarthy era labeling the communists in the in germany leaving the jews and now labeling the those who who offend uh by their speech as being as being as being and it's not just condemning that it's just not it's it's just condemning anyone who who is associated with that it's kind of a really strong system and and you know what happens is the the the first person gets uh fired and a wave of panic comes in after that and everyone associated with them gets fired and and you know but this this is this is what people are they're they're and and it's hard to blame it's hard to despise them or blame them for their timorousness or cowardice's cowardliness or it's yeah because people are afraid and they're like because people are people are frightened they're living in a in a difficult but then you know i remember those lines about first they came for the lawyers and then they came for the you know and then they came for me i mean ultimately it's there but for the grace of god go i is what seems to me to be the way to protect society if you realize that whatever is happening to other people can happen to you yes yes but nobody but it's it's hard when it actually happens when you're if you're running a school or running a television network and uh somebody you know gets in some kind of trouble social trouble you're thinking what do i need it for yeah you know i'm i'm trying to make a living i run this network i run this university i'm trying to earn some money and do a good thing i could just as easily have a professor working here who's smart and the kids love who's not connected to uh anti-israel or boycott or something so what do i need it and and and that's the way people are they're not looking for trouble they're and so most people are not ready to take a stand the la one of the last lines in zelig is one wonders what would have happened if right at the outset he'd had the courage to speak his mind and not pretend and i i i that really resonated with me to think about that because ultimately it seems to me that the health of society depends on people willing to speak their mind and not pretend yes i i would guess and i'm only guessing because i know nothing about what i'm talking about of course is that it would work that that if if the students at a university say we don't like this professor because he's saying this if the university said i'm sorry that's but he's a accredited professor and he's free to talk that way and if you don't like it you can drop the course or if you don't like the university register someplace else if they took that stand it would i think be just a very short time before the situation would be better yeah no that it would not suddenly the university would not look up after a while and say gee everybody left i don't think that yeah they're still going to be there again easy for me to say because it's not my college it's not my business or the or the network it's not my network so i can be brave and you know and again i'm not living next to somebody i wonder if they took my neighbor away and said you know we're taking away all people who are vegans and we're going to shoot them would i have the nerve to say well wait a minute you know and then they say yes do you want to make trouble because we're going to take away your neighbor and shoot them because we don't want vegans um i don't know how courageous i would well personally but do you think that because the movies for you are a chance to to some extent escape reality although reflect on reality certainly even if in your personal life can you though make a movie then in some sense like zelig or something else that does make that statement that hopefully you know through through the movie making can you do the kind of things that one that you might do in not in in real life i mean in terms of speaking out uh you could i'm not the filmmaker for that only because i i'm not a social or political filmmaker because it isn't in me artistically for whether or not but not directly political but zelig in some sense you know i i finish a film and i sit home i think well what's my next film going to be about and whatever it is it could be a murder mystery it could be a musical it could be a a romance or a or a drama whatever happens to hit me you know it's so hard to get decent ideas that as soon as an idea comes that looks like it will form into a coherent beginning middle and end you tend to go with that because they don't grow on trees yeah so i don't sit there and think well this uh this is a good idea but it doesn't make a social statement or it doesn't say anything i don't care about that i i'm happy you're happy to have ideas well that's a wonderful i wanted to go into the ideas and the process you make and ask you do you think you're first and foremost a writer or a filmmaker i i think probably a writer that because if they said to me tomorrow you can't make any more films uh not giving you another penny i would be you know i would write i'd write to the theater and if they said to me in the theater we're not going to produce any of your plays because we hate you and i would say well then i'm going to write books and if they said we won't publish any of your books i would still write them because if they're good they will see the light of day eventually and if they're no good then i'm lucky nobody's publishing them you know so it's a win-win situation for me the fun is doing the thing i don't care if i'm laying on my bed writing a film script a play or a book or something i mean to me it doesn't matter it's the writing i'd actually put the pencil in the book well you know i'm glad to hear that you did once say i always feel like i'm writing with film yeah that's what you're doing you you you spend uh eight weeks ten weeks whatever until your money runs out accumulating what you would do it would be as if you were gathering words from a dictionary and and keep getting all the words you think are going to be relevant to the story well i'm gathering all the footage and then i'm going to make it into a story and i change it it's very malleable in the editing i don't write something and it's all you know rigid uh it's very malleable i i put the end at the beginning and put the middle and the end and change this and make it about something else and put in narration and change the direction totally for me it's a living breathing thing till it's completely finished and i have to hand it in so i always feel that i'm writing and i'm happy writing and i don't as i say i don't really care if i if i wrote stuff and through in the draw and long after i'm dead people read it and love it or you know the the public has spared it because it's so terrible well okay now this is interesting to me because it seems to me you what you just said is kind of a more optimistic view of filmmaking that i've read in the sense that i wonder whether making a film for you is the least enjoyable part of the process the more i read about it the actual filming yeah yeah you know the actual filming is hard yeah again when you're home writing mm-hmm you're right if you get a little tired you go make yourself tea you know you you know or get on the treadmill or you know go for a walk you're your own boss you're writing nothing like riding when you're making a film all of a sudden they hit the taxi meter at you know 150 grand a day or more yeah and they say well you've got eight weeks and then you're not gonna have any more money to pay the cab driver yeah and you gotta start working and you've got to get up in the morning and it's maybe cold out and rainy and unpleasant you've got to get out there and be funny at seven o'clock in the morning and keep going and be fin and wolf down your lunch and be funny all afternoon and make the right decisions and everybody's coming to you with decisions that you're completely unqualified to make do i know which gun that i should pick for the guy to have or which costume that she should wear wearing a you know a red blouse or an orange blouse or and then these shoes then do i want the cigarette case to look like this and did what kind of car would he drive and you know i don't know any of these things on and i'm i make those decisions and uh in ignorance and in terror and i'm and and you're working all day and then you knock off at night and you're exhausted you look at what you did and the the day before and it's always oh god did i i could have done that so much better and then you go home you're exhausted before you know it you're waking up in the morning and now this is not physically pleasant you know it's a it's a it's a difficult uh regimen but you know that only lasts lasts uh you know for me because i have limited money eight to ten weeks okay but it's to me i'm not it's not just the physical if i at least when i read what you've written it's also the intellectual you you say it seems to me that from what you're writing that the writing is the most fun for you you said once when i actually start writing i can celebrate because that is the day that everything's over because all the agonizing work is done before that which i assume is which amazes me so for you the thinking of the plot and all that stuff is agonizing and then once you and you somehow have it in your brain you don't do you make notes almost none and so you agonize over all that thinking and then you write and it's and you say it's just an ultimate pleasure but you say thinking of it planning it plotting it is is that's hard yes writing it down is pleasurable when you you're sitting in a room by yourself walking the streets by yourself and you're trying to think of what to do and envision a story with characters that begins here and there's subplot here and you're gonna and you're trying to think the thing out this is a nightmare and this goes on for weeks maybe months uh before you come up and you discard this that you're working on this idea thinking about nothing else for six weeks in a row and then you realize this is not going to be a good movie this is not going to work you start from scratch again to think of well do i want to do a movie about a car thief do i want to do a movie about a parachute jump or do i want to do something about a brain surgeon you know you're thinking and then finally you come up with an idea and it structures out when you have that and you sit down to write it it's pleasurable it's fun to write you know act one scene one but it seems yeah but you you write about it as if it's yeah it's such a pleasure and it surprises me to say that hear that first of all you must it's amazing to me that you can have it all in your head and then you can just write out the dialogue and the scenes it's it's so structured in your brain already that you just yeah right in no time you just as far as from what i read you just zoom it out boom boom you enjoy every moment of it which by the way i have to say from my experience is somehow the opposite of my experience not so much well in writing but also in science it's the thinking that's the fun part and the puzzling that's the fun part and gosh when you after you've figured it out and you have to write up the paper it's the last thing in the world you want to do is write it up and so a lot of people just leave it i mean in their drawers for for a long time and i so the writing is is much less fun than the than the puzzling which is so it was interesting yeah and then and then it's funny for me when i'm right then in my other hat when i write books in some sense i enjoy the writing but only once i get into it the thought of sitting down sometimes is is overwhelming to me and that barrier of oh my god how am i gonna i have this idea and i love the idea but how am i gonna put into words it just and then once i do what i enjoy most about writing is i have no idea where it's going when i start to write i think i'm gonna you know even in the non-fiction books and i think i know the subject but i think i'm gonna head here and then the writing takes me over here to a very roundabout way of describing where i thought i'd end up at the very beginning but for you when you're writing would be fatal for me it would be fatal for you i have to know where i'm going otherwise you know you want you're working working for weeks and you start writing and you come up with 20 50 70 pages and you're out you you you haven't figured out where the the flower flower is you know what i mean you and you're then you got 60 pages that are quite good but it doesn't go anyplace and you have no climax you have no story that matures so it's though i have to know so you see when you write sit down and write you know where you're going and you're very rarely surprised that the that the writing takes you anywhere else even though you haven't had that experience ever where you even when it works out whether you think you're going to write a movie about this and you have you know the whole mind and then you instruct it right that's a bad feeling lucky man no no no it's all it's i i know this from other writers too uh you're out of control you your characters take over they say and if your characters take over you're out of control you you want to control you know someone who's writing dramatically for a movie or play something i could if i just had a good climax only to start i'm i got it i'm home free i can always get you know moss hearts said third act problems not the killers nobody has first actors and i understand that completely if you have a good third act and and you know you know what you then the rest is all easy you can get up there 500 ways it doesn't matter so so but you have to know or i have to know where i'm going specifically and and i don't want to start writing until i know i have that otherwise you know really you do write you know when i wrote purple rose of cairo the guy comes off the screen and he sees mia farrow in the audience and she falls in love with him and he with her and the guy has stepped off the screen and people the characters are panicked on the screen and people are coming into the movie i have to see it now i'm finished with 50 pages and i'm sitting there and it doesn't go anywhere i got and i got no place to go so then what happens now he's off he's met her she likes him now what do i do so i was out and i took the thing this was after a lot of work i threw in the drawer and i figured well that's it it just doesn't work and six months later after i did another film or something it occurred to me that the actor who came off the screen was a screen thing of an imaginary character what if the actor playing him in hollywood came back and there were two of them and there was all of a sudden in two weeks time the thing just flowered like a rose bush and i had a very good story a film of mine that i i really enjoyed yeah yeah it's one of them it's a great movie and but okay but that's the so for you when you say when i start writing it's finished that wasn't an example of it but what it really means is when you have the good third act and you know where it's going then then it's a pleasure yeah and i but i i usually structure out most of the thing in my mind i know i know where i'm going and i know where the fun is going to be and okay so the thinking and the puzzling is agonizing the writing is a pleasure but then what i meant by the fact is not that maybe the making the film isn't the favorite part it wasn't just the the physical problems you say as the process goes on casting shooting editing gets worse and worse for me when i'm finished i look at it and i'm in disappointed the idea for the film was so beautiful and everything's so great and then little by little i wounded it writing casting shooting editing mixing i don't want to see it again so and i always wonder when i first met you i remember i was flying from australia and i happened to see annie hall again after 25 years i hadn't seen it before and i told you and you said i haven't and you told me i haven't seen it since i made it and now i know that you don't watch any of your movies after you make them is this the reason yeah because uh you can only be disappointed the things on film if i saw any hall now i think oh i could do this so much better i got a much better joke for here why didn't i say this why how could i say such a stupid thing you know so what i want to torture myself for so i don't i don't ever watch them because i can't do anything about them so i don't watch them would you be happiest if in an imaginary world you could just have ideas for films and write the scripts and never make the movies and they painted no no i have to make the movie so it comes out the way i want it i i did that on my first movie what's new pussycat with you and uh it was an embarrassing stupid movie and a terrible experience and i vowed that i would never yet never do anything you decide to go for always have the control of writing and directing and yes because you're shocked you know to you to one to me in this case it's common sense what to do but you give it to someone else and you can't believe that they don't understand the simple common sense they're not stupid they're good and they're professionals but you you know i think grafton said that um he was talking about timing and said people don't realize that just one extra syllable totally will ruin a joke they don't they don't understand that and i see that i said can't you see that if i say he woke me up it's funny if i say he awaken me it's not funny one is going to make an audience laugh and the other is not and they they can so it's just like if someone said to me can't you hear that when the guy comes to that passage that he's it's a little flat his clarinet is a little flat or his trumpet's gone a little sharp there i said no it sounds great to me and he said no i said you don't hear his little shop we're going to take that passage again and well people don't hear it and and you can't believe it if you can do it yourself so i have to make those things because um because so they're not ruined i want them to be what i want them to be you want to ruin yourself instead of letting someone else yes exactly if it's going to be ruined uh i want to be i want to ruin this but i actually was asking it sort of somewhat different direction if there was an imaginary world where no one would make the film where you could just have ideas and write scripts and not have the agony of of watching film scripts for sure because the film is a director's medium okay so you said somewhere making the film is a big struggle but i would rather struggle with films than other things so so it's really you do want to make the movies i mean it's movies are what you want to do well movies are only what i want to do because people back them yeah and it's and the hardest part about making a movie is raising the money for it yeah yeah and so if people back them if people keep coming forward and saying yes you need this much money for a movie we'll put it up i'd be a fool to say no yeah yeah sure but but if someone's tomorrow said to me they can't get any backing no one's going to back any of your films they don't like you then fine i i mean that's okay with me i i'm very happy to write for the theater i would not write film scripts and give them other people yeah okay i'll write please but you wouldn't write the film scripts but okay but the struggle but you but you realize it's a struggle and it seemed to me you want to at some level you want to struggle and because i mean one of the things that i admire so much about you again having known you personally and learned this is your work ethic and the the discipline you have and you said it you said the work is all that matters all i do is work if i just keep working everything else will fall in place you finish a movie you don't luxuriate in it you're the next day you're you're you're writing the next movie and it's work and you say you don't care whether the films are successful or not whether they're yeah right the fun is making the film when you're a kid you think oh i write this film i'll direct this film i'll make it and i will be famous and i'll go to parties and i'll win oscars and i'll do and then you envision some glamorous fantasy thing then you realize quite quickly when you get older and you get into film that all of that is less than meaningful i mean none of it is satisfying or fun or anything and what you look and say hey what was really fun was creating that thing and so when you're finished with a film i don't mean to be arrogant i don't want to say i don't care i always like when people like my films but if they don't like them there's nothing i can do about it i made the film and there it is so what am i going to sit home and brood that they don't i made the film i gave it my best shot i hope you like it if you don't like it nothing i can do about it i if you do like it great but i'm i'm not concerned with that i'm concerned with with you know when annie hall won the academy awards someone said weren't you thrilled i'm thinking to myself when andy hall won that i had made annie hall a year ago i was working on another film i'm not i'm not interested you know people now will call me and tell me how a film is doing yeah and i'm thinking i don't care how the film is doing do i care that in in budapest or omaha or some place the film had a great weekend what does that mean to me it means nothing i i finished that film you know six eight ten months ago and haven't seen it since or thought about it since it's history so so so i don't really care i i have a film now that's playing in europe what it doesn't matter to me i finished another film i'm i'm worried about the editing on this film and getting the jokes right and getting the romances right and things and i'm thinking god i have an idea for new film but let me ask you well first of all that's what i've always admired that attitude which is so amazing i mean i'm i've written books and i remember agonizing i mean i you know just wanting to know how it's doing and one and were you was this always your attitude or were you when you started did you have that pie-eyed view of oh i i want to win the awards i want to be famous i want to have the glamour or were you always did you never suffer under that illusion i never thought about awards because i was thinking of survival i had so much trouble with take the money and run i you know i was so sure it was going to flop because i was such an amateur putting it together and when bananas i wasn't even thinking in those terms um and uh and then on when i came to the movie love and death which is like the fourth movie i made united artists came in with a cotton or cardboard cotton with a thousand reviews from all over the country and they said why don't you read those reviews and give us a nice quote from each one that you want we'll make up a big quote ad using 100 quotes or something i started reading them and they were you know good reviews from 99 percent of them and i'm thinking to myself this guy likes this this guy this guy i'm a genius to this guy i'm an idiot because i didn't know this and i copied this and i was too slow here and there i was revolutionary and you know i'm thinking if i read through all of these i learn nothing just and you hear people's opinions on things and and so i put them aside i said you make up the quote ad you want and i never ever ever looked at another word written about me in interviews news stories on television reviews now people used to say to me oh you should read vincent candy what he said about you do you know my god the review's so glowing never ever read a word it's remarkably healthy and i have you know it's a it's it's not a temptation it's not a that's like it comes naturally because i just want to see where he says you know masterpiece you know forget it it's it's you don't want that you don't want to obsess over yourself well i know you don't want to sit in a room and think god that guy was right i am shallow i should turn to deeper themes or yes i'm quite brilliant and i think you don't you you don't want that you don't want to think about you so you want to think about put your nose to the grindstone and think about the word good plot good plot good good plot good work i mean because that's what that's what i mean by not being neurotic it's the the attitude towards your work is is healthier than than than mine has been i know that but at the same time it also illustrates something because i want to make that connection to science that people think that ultimately art and science are selfish in the sense what you're doing is doing it for yourself you're doing if you're working hard the best thing you can do but you're also doing it because you enjoy it it satisfies you and and most scientists don't become scientists to save the world they do it because they enjoy it because they enjoy it and doing something and if you don't enjoy it you rarely do a good job okay right and you probably think you've never worked a day in your life exactly you probably think you know hey they're paying me to play baseball yeah exactly it's like hey this is the best thing i'm playing i'm playing every day right and so i feel the same way that that i'm doing this to myself that a certain amount of people enjoy it that's great that's a that's a perk it's a bonus i i love that but you know now it's a spartan life you know you you don't make a movie for example and luxuriate in adulation and go to parties and accept your rewards and think because you got these awards you're better than you really are and you and you don't go to your opening night in a party afterwards and suddenly you're surrounded by fascinating women and brilliant men and you're you know uh no that's that's um you you lead a spartan life you work and you go home and you work the next day and and the work yeah we see i i i mean the fact that work entered three times that sensei you you've said it the work is what drives you but at the same time i have to say when i listen to you and maybe you should feel good about this i think of richard fineman the physicist who's a one who is another idol of mine i should be yeah but yeah but two things you know when the nobel prize he said yeah are you thrilled he said no i was thrilled when i had the answer to the question then probably you know the prizes matter he also said and there's a famous book it was this it was his wife tragically died early who said why do you care what other people think those two things when i think about you it's the work that's you know whether if you're satisfied with it you're satisfied with it and if you're not you're not it doesn't matter what anywhere else says and when you and it doesn't matter what other people think but but but feynman was also he appeared miraculously to come up with solutions to things people didn't see there was like 50 000 pages of hard work that in his life that he done it's hard work it's a detective the tedious checking of its own and as the work so i you know we're getting near the end and i want to just you know i i it all came together to me and i said to you earlier it was in the middle of the night maybe that's crazy but when i when i think of this being driven by these existential questions and you say basically yeah you're doing this but if you're not asking the deep questions you're really not doing what you should be doing you know you you you're doing it for me on my own personally nobody you think about that in art in general if you're you know when you compared flow bear versus tall star kafka no matter how good you are as a craftsperson if you're not dealing with the deep questions that are hard to address then you're not then you're not really doing it and you've got to work hard and and and so i i think of when i think of your response to this meaningless universe by the work you do which you claim is to distract but you also say it's the work and it's hard and it's a struggle i hear all those things coming out i couldn't help thinking for me the prototypical existential thing is camus and sisyphus the myth of sisyphus of sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity because at the top the gods have forced the boulder to go down it's his meaningless existence that he's pushing the ball almost gets up rolls down again and then camus says i think sisyphus was smiling yeah he says that because he wants to put a good spin on it no but i think now that's that's his version of catholicism or judaism but maybe you know i think it's interesting i think it's less rosy i think it's less rosy you you i don't buy it no no i don't think it's i disagree i think what he's saying is what you said in some sense is that it doesn't mean rolling off this thing up this hill is meaningful it's meaningless but you're here you're stuck you've got to find meaning and i see you beautifully finding meaning in your work and your comedy not saying not thinking that it's profound that it means anything you know the question is distraction it's a distraction because it allows you to get through the rolling the boulder up the hill i gotta tell you i got a joke in my new movie rifkin's he just finished shooting in spain he's coming home and while he's sean who's playing the intellectual oh great he's in it again okay says i have this dream someone mentions sister fist he says i have this dream where i'm pushing a boulder up the hill in the [ __ ] showing and pushing and appreciating says finally i get it up there and then what the hell do i have a boulder a house and i think that's true then what do you got so yeah that's what i'm saying you you know you solve the technical problems the physical problems the problems of the world you get the boulder on the hill and the gods don't stop you it gets up there then what do you got you got an empty life with a boulder on a hill you know a meaningless universe you know what's up but it's but if you make me but if you if you get if you get if the struggle if it's rolling the struggle is a distraction that's a distraction you know if it if you make it meaningful even if you realize it has no cosmic cosmic significance if you get joy in the searching and i do i as a scientist i get more joy in the searching than the answering the struggle of figuring out however if if some guy comes in and steps on your toe hard and you're oh geez i think you broke my toe i got to go to the emergency room you get the same distraction you know what i mean yeah but you're not thinking about uh the universe flying apart are you thinking about if i can get my choice of having me stepping on your toe when you woke up in the morning or getting up and putting that pen to paper and making your next movie you'd make the next movie because that's the struggle that you want to do it's a yeah it's a struggle that i can handle but but if i get up in the morning and someone says to me you know you got to get down to the motor vehicle bureau and renew your license oh god this is the last day that's also a struggle and i'm caught up in that trivia and i'm not thinking i'm going to motive vehicle bureau and i have to maybe take the test again and the universe is flying apart i'm not thinking that i'm thinking about the motive so it distracts me okay you know but i'm a big fan of distraction because i feel the situation is irredeemably bleak unsolvable and uh absurd and the only thing you can do like in hemingway's story the killers and he says to the guy well gee it's terrible it's horrible and think about is well don't think about it don't think about it okay well you know that would be a wonderful place to end but i've got to go on for a minute because two minutes because i think that's a wonderful way to sum up but at the same time i want to quote a poet that you liked and i learned this that i learned this poem i don't want to appear more eridite than i am from watching a movie i watched a recent movie did you see jojo rabbit do you know what i haven't seen it's an amazing i'm so impressed with it let me just say oh i can't wait to see it i've heard i've heard very good things about it he quotes rilke who is a poet and there's such an amazing quote which i let everything happen to you beauty and terror just keep going no feeling is final and i thought well you know that's that's not such a bad way to end this either is that okay it's good no feelings finally you just keep plugging away you just keep plugging away you know he's got no choice no no but you people do have a choice they can they can despair they can say look it's this is the worst thing is he's despairing when he when he tells you this you know he's he's only telling you this because he's despairing read better yeah you know the one who wrote obad oh yeah i know i forget names now i both forget read that and see what you think of that okay see how you feel after you've read that okay but for me the struggle the the terror it's just it's a distraction but it's all we have as you said reality is awful but it's the only only place to get a good stake right uh unfortunately yeah and uh well that would i want to that look that summer sums up the profound aspect of this i want to end it with one last thing because it's important to me which is i was reading you know you were when you cast i really think about jodie foster writing you and saying can i be in one of your things and you know you pointed out that you generally get you know you have julia taylor and people who cast for you and but sometimes there's someone you know and they and you think about it and you put them in a role and you could contact them and you say oh that was that was right for you jody foster and she was in one of your movies so i was going to say that would that ever happen if there was like a short jewish physicist a short jewish physicist who you might want to you know if he said i i want to you know if you ever have a role for me jewish physicists are not box office okay thank you very much thanks woody it's it's i could go on for hours but thank you very much i'm sure they're all asleep by now and if they're not they should be thanks philip larkin phillip lochen right okay there we go but we did couldn't you yell that out earlier [Music] the origins podcast is produced by lawrence krauss nancy dahl john and don edwards gus and luke holwerda and rob zepps audio by thomas amusement web design by redmond media lab animation by tomahawk visual effects and music by ricolis to see the full video of this podcast as well as other bonus content visit us at patreon.com origins podcast

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 221,222

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics, Woody Allen, Director, Writer, Annie Hall, Bullets Over Broadway, Apropo of Nothing, Memoir, Interview

Id: hvSl_pJF8FE

Length: 107min 18sec (6438 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

No shit!

Under-appreciated but, like Steve Martin 10yrs later, Woody's standup act still holds up pretty well I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_tUxKhtUa8&list=PL3049251E1071EB10

[u/OJ_Soprano]

Thanks for posting.

[u/Narrow_Table]

I love this man (no homo)