Woody Allen Interview (1987)

twenty-one take one okay you've built a career in films by creating a character called Woody Allen in quotes and then making fun of him how much of the real Woody Allen is in that character little bits and pieces but not not a lot it's mostly you know prefabrication why do you think people always insist on seeing the things as old a biographical um it's a good question I don't know I guess because they from what they read in the newspapers about me they seem to feel that there's a direct correlation between the events that they read in the newspapers and events portrayed in the movies but it's it's very deceptive because I might do a film with is whether it's just a little a little flavor of something that's real in it and everything else completely prefabricated and what they come away with for some reason is the the whole thing is real because of the one thing they recognize but presumably if you if you improvise a bit I don't know if you do but if you do then it must get more real in those moments where yeah so we don't improvise much I mean it's usually you know very much written mm-hmm you've might have one film a year virtually since the mid-1960s a fantastically productive record what what keeps you going what makes woody run well you know it's not it's not all that big deal when you think of it because that's what I do is make films I mean it's not that I'm torn between other activities and the the kind of situation within which I function that is I have a long-term arrangement for making films so it's not that I have to get an idea and sell somebody the idea and go find an actor to play it and spend two years making deals with people and going to lunch and doing nonsense as soon as I'm finished with the script we're in production the next day we were off and in pre-production anyhow the next day and so it's not it's not that big thing I have a number of ideas for films many more than I could make really in my lifetime I have a drawer full of ideas and when I'm finished with a film even a little before I'm finished when they're doing the sound effects work and there's a little hiatus for me from the day-to-day grind I I start to pull out one of these ideas and work on it and it doesn't take me that long to do a script and you know I don't shoot them interminably so one film a year is not you know it's not really a big thing I mean there are there people that John Sidney Lumet has made two and three films in a year it's not that Robert Altman has it's not that big a deal hmm you've often said that the writing for you is the most attractive part the most enjoyable part of filmmaking and it seems to me that recently you've been making your films more and more like the process of writing I mean that the the bits you've shooter like making a first draft and then you work on that a bit and then you go back into a second draft as it were as if the film right though I've always worked that way really I mean right from the first picture I ever directed to take the money and run I work that way I didn't know I was working that way I mean I wasn't it wasn't a pre-planned thing but that's how it came out I wrote it and worked on and shot it and then noticed many things wrong went back and we shot them and we shot them again and you can have the luxury of doing that if you're able to work within a small budget because the film I just finished now I shot the entire film from start to finish I edited and looked at it and didn't like it and shot the entire film again from start to finish throughout everything in the whole thing I didn't save a single frame from the original and I and I shot the whole thing again and made many changes and went back and did supplementary reshooting and all that and it still is a very modest budget film with all of that and it's not necessarily a wonderful film either it's just that in order to get it to survive at all I had to do an awful lot of work on it but if you stay within a limited budget nobody bothers you telling to radio days your most recent film in Britain to come out in Britain and with 200 roughly speaking paths and period sets and you know the logistics of it something I mean how was that after doing a sort of chamber piece like Hannah and her sisters I mean is it is that a kind of filmmaking you enjoy I don't enjoy the big you know I you know really it is was hard for me because it it's there's a lot of you know logistics with 200 people and various sets and mob scenes and many costumes occasionally I get an idea that necessitates that but I'd much prefer to do smaller films because it's just easier physically and even in Reggio does you work with with your family as it were with Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton and Tony well yeah I work I would always work with people that I that I know because it's just much easier for me it's it's difficult for me to to do a picture with some of that I don't know at all because you never know what's gonna happen I have no idea whether the person is going to be easy to work with or difficult or is ready to work in my kind of my kind of style you know if I if I finish a film I can call up Diane Keaton I'll call up Mia or Dianne Wiest or and say I have a great idea for a new scene it's better than the one we did let's meet in two weeks and do it and they say sure because they live near me and it's it's very informal and easy but if I was doing a film with for example Jack Nicholson somebody who I admire but don't really know you know I can't just call him up and say drop in and let's do another scene he may be off doing a picture and you know in China and so it's a tough way to work for me positive Radio dies is all about as it were people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge you know New York is a great yellow brick road and and help you brought out the other side of the bridge and it feels like your own memories of what a like to first cross that bridge and is that is that so there are a number of legitimate memories in that and an awful lot of exaggerated you know things that I made up but can you recall what it was like to first go to New York City in 1941 whatever it was with their dad yes I do remember what it was like it was just a great great experience of crossing the bridge itself was nothing that she just sat on the subway and and went across the bridge but when you emerged from downstairs from a subway and came up at Times Square 42nd Street I would be with my father for example or father and mother but I remember coming with my father and it was you couldn't get your mind around it was spectacular there were you know just hundreds of movie theaters one next to the other going strong and and arcades and street entertainment and soldiers and sailors and you know tremendous tumult and you know it was it was really a spectacular experience and then walking around there all the wonderful restaurants and and colorful characters that you would see you know people selling apparently stringless dancing dolls up against the buildings and releases of neckties and shoeshine people and I mean it was just it was great absolutely great and it was already on the decline then when it must have been just breathtaking was probably the 20s and the 30s I don't have a good memory of it before 1941 and that's quite an early memory for me but I mean today's children taking the same trip but get ahead of a shock oh it's a different different thing entirely it's it's degenerated tremendously architectural II and you know now it's what is it it's prostitution and pornography and dope addiction and you know it's it's dangerous going back to your very first film as writer and actor although not as director what's new pussycat you've said that it was a completely exasperation experience to be involved in that do you still hold that yes because there was you know I handed in this script I asked me to write it they paid me to write it and the it was the fault strictly of the producers of the film he just had no feel for that kind of material and over produced it I was you know I was very fortunate was my first script and we got Peter O'Toole you know who was still one of our truly great actors and Peter Sellers who was as great a comedian as I've ever seen and a director who I liked very much at the time named Clive Donna and they were lifesavers on the project but there was nothing much anybody could do because it was one of those big Hollywood style movies and and too much was being dictated from the producer in the front office and and yet looking back on it 22 take one if you put all all your scenes in what's new pussycat next to each other and play them which I've recently done right there's more of the Woody Allen that was to come in them then I remembered you know there's the germ of quite a lot of things that it's possible because I did write it but but it it wouldn't who wouldn't represent me at all i I had said a long time ago that if they had let me make that picture you know that I think it would have been a better picture but would have made infinitely less money it was a it was a very big success financially undeserved I thought and but we all struggled I mean the director tried his best and I tried my best you know we stood together against the against the incursions by the Philistines but you know we just neither of us had any real clout and so um they just did what they wanted to do there's a Saturn Ion psychoanalysis runs through it very strongly in the Peter Sellers character yeah I'd hardly call it a satire and the you know the wave it's just just a lot of a lot of you know overly broad foolish you don't you want to ground show apparently to play that part which it sounds a very interesting idea yeah I don't remember that now but at that point it's possible that that I did because I was so enamored of him right and that would have been also before we knew we could get Peter you know that was Peter Sellers that just had a heart attack and this was he was not working this was his first picture after after his heart attack but as soon as I said they had gotten there you know they'd gotten him to appear in it you know that couldn't have been more thoroughly I mean I I couldn't have been more blessed on a first picture to have a cast like that it was just great and it's a shame that the the the people on top you know wanted the picture to represent a certain style of filmmaking the critics seem to be quite shocked in a way by the foot by the the morality of the film but by the time you made everything you always wants to know about sex which is honest another theme in a way everyone was more prepared to see a sex comedy as opposed to a romantic comedy yeah I don't I don't really remember much when what's new pussycat came out because I as I say I didn't direct and I was not really too interested in it when it came out and only went to see it because I was I was dragged by by actually the producer who said you can't be in London when it's opening and not to come it just looks terrible but I don't remember it being particularly sexy or anything I mean I don't remember well at all now everything you always want to know about sex was quite a bit later yeah and and there was in the 60s I mean in the later 60s right yeah and by then you could do anything you wanted in films from Sexual point of view well not that I did but you could what possessed you to turn this brilliant idea of turning dr. Rubin sex manual into a comedy oh it's funny you had a brilliant thing I was gonna say I had a bad idea one night I came home one evening from a basketball game and it was getting undressed and I turned the television set on for a moment and I was just gonna go to sleep and I saw dr. Rubin being interviewed and it just crossed my mind out of out of left field it would be fun to make a movie of that book and do different sketches relating to each different question and I could have renowned performance in each one and it was and for some reason the idea gripped me maybe because I was home alone and that or you know and that was the genesis of it but in retrospect I don't think it was a very good idea and would not do it again if I had it to do over would not do it again can I turn now to your first film as a director mm-hmm take the money and run it seems that you were learning the craft of film in a way as you were going on with is that right yes I was learning it for a number of pictures I mean I really learned very little on my first film actually in terms of craft I was I was just stumbling my way and hoping that falling back on the fact that I was sure that I could be funny that I could write funny things and present funny things and perform them but I you know I had never I didn't know the first thing about filmmaking or not the first thing I knew this though that it was going to be a pseudo documentary and style so I had something to hang on to I had a structure to hang on to right from the start and you pulled a lot of gags in I mean you shoot as many targets as you can in that film anyway and this there's less emphasis on plot and much more on the gags right right there was probably a stronger plot in it when I wrote it but when the thing finally came out night and I was forced to cut out lots of material that didn't work and quickly put in other material that would work probably the the net effect is this series of gags and there's the famous scene where your parents in the film Don Groucho masks to talk to the interviewer and you've been quoted many times is saying that in actual fact your mother does resemble Groucho Marx is those are two separate things i I never thought of those masks as as Groucho Marx mask is they're just they're just sort of cheap novelty disguises that one could buy in a little store in New York and and I would as I grew up I would always see them along with many other stupid little practical jokes and novelty items and so when I was writing that you know I wanted my parents to be ashamed of me and we thought of masks but that looked funniest so we did that now in regard to your question I know it sounds facetious but it's true my mother's side of the family does resemble the Marx Brothers I mean they resemble that you know and if you look at it Groucho some of those photos of Groucho when he didn't have the mustache and some of his candid shots when he was younger there's a great resemblance between my mother's whole side of the family not just her that's but it's a familial resemblance I mean she doesn't indeed look like Groucho bananas as well your second film deals with the world of of television and the media parodies of various things bits of film bits of television whatever and particularly about how television presents politics to us was parody the the thing that interested you most then no no and I wouldn't say it dealt with that there were just a couple of TV scenes in the picture it was it was as I had always seen that picture it was a you know a broad gag comedy but but it was essentially you know sort of a thin disguised plot to to hang jokes on that revolved around a revolution in in South America somewhere and a love story but I had never thought of it at any point as being a parody on television with the exception of maybe one or two scenes in the in the full-length sports cost of the but you can see how how one or two things like that will go a long way to creating that impression in someone's mind you know but you don't see it as a political satire of any sort no yeah I mean it happens to be about revolution and South America because that was a funny subject to me at the time but but it's not really very satirical I mean I may have an occasional individual gag in it which is a satirical joke but it's mostly you know sort of a surreal I don't know what to call it exactly it it has a kind of line of tradition to the silent comedians I always think as take the money and run does you know that the Keaton's and the chaplains and all the rest of it which later you you broke that that chord you know to that tradition right did you did you feel that didn't yes yes I felt that was true cos in those days when I was first doing films I felt the things that were most [Music] critical to me were the works of people like you know the comedian's Chaplin Keaton and the Marx Brothers and and I did that right through sleeper which was my most similar to know the old silent comedies but but I I abandoned that shortly after that because it didn't really interest me I mean do you do you think that people are you know funny way too grown-up to enjoy that entirely physical humor these days I hope so you know though you see those films and they're great to look at but you you sort of tacitly placed them in your mind in a certain you know period and I think that stuff would be infantile today yeah and and that's okay yeah I mean but some of the themes like the way they can't cope with technology of machines get their own back and houses fall on them all those things I mean there's a kind of timelessness about that as well as the timelessness I think is about is is how well the person does it you know it's at Keaton did it so great and Chaplin did it so great so it will always be fun to watch them do it but you do it but you're watching them with the knowledge down deep that you're seeing an old film you know if somebody came out with a film like that today it's not as interesting I thought to me anyhow that Paris Buster Keaton hadn't read Freud maybe that's the reason Keaton was a a great great artist I think and those films do hold up but but I think it would be no fun to actually make one today moving on - yep Oh Woody Allen profile 23 take one yeah I think your early films were much more concerned with with parody of things that people might watch or think about then then your later films and someone like Mel Brooks stayed with parody if you see what I mean you know he's continued to make films which depend on something said I was not interested in parody and never would have occurred to me I mean I wouldn't agree with you is what I'm saying I was going for gags of any sort and any any kind and if an occasional joke that occasional piece of a film is turns out to be a parody of something else for for a brief moment that's purely accidental Mel on the other hand comes from the CID sees a tradition very fully I worked with Sid to but very briefly but he worked with him for many years was very close to him and one of the staples of that show was the parody of operas and films and television shows and Mel likes that very much he's always loved that so consequently he will do whole films out of parodies and and enjoys it it's a way to reach a mass audience in a funny way because everyone's got something in common with it sure I mean you can't say that you know everyone knows they get the references because everybody come on this and all the rest of them yah you're the next film played against Sam seems to me to be quite a breakthrough in your career because for the first time you bring the audience into your world you've got a character that is though Woody Allen character in embryo and you're you know the audience could sort of recognize that character and be don't be drawn into that world did you see it like that I don't always sound like I'm downgrading my own things but I I I didn't direct that no no as you know it was a little stage play that that I wrote many years ago mostly to give myself an opportunity to appear on stage and I always thought of it as you know it's just a very light little conceit and I never had any interest in making it into a film and I was very fortunate that herb Ross directed it and did a very good job on it you know but for me it's not it's not something that I look back on with any great pride or anything it was it was something that I did at the time because I I just couldn't do any better I wanted to get my feet wet you know as an actor in the theater and that's the only you know once once I was out of the play I didn't care what happened to it I mean the fact that they asked me to play the movie a couple of years later that was fine and a nice opportunity for me but I had no you know it's not something again that I would do it's quite move I mean I hate to sort of upgrade is the very beginning of it I almost find quite moving actually you've got this close-up of your face watching Casablanca and you're sort of in toning the words you've seen the movie so often and as this kind of God I wish it could be true look on your face which I find you know it's quite it's very touching well that's good luck then I mean that's great I'm glad you do and and the picture was successful it just wasn't one of my own personal favorites when he made sleeper your next film was a director you used the resources of cinema obviously much more thoroughly than you had before with special effects the design of it right the science fiction so true and there was this a mark of more confidence as a director well yes I had I had directed now several films before it and I was trying to there you could see a step forward for me I was starting to not worry about simply getting the film in on budget and on schedule only but you know working with the sets and the costumes and and the photography more in trying to trying to develop myself as a director and I I look back favorably on that film because of it because I think a lot of things work that I tried to do and they were they were benefit to me must have been held to make it was it was very difficult to make we made some of it in Colorado and out in Northern California that physical stuff and the special effects stuff is hard for me does does the world as it might be in twenty seven to three or twenty one seventy three whatever you know whatever it said does that interest you that they're the idea of what the future might be like or was that not the point well it wasn't really the point the point was just that one day I was walking down the street and thought gosh it would be really funny to do a movie where I get frozen and wake up in the future and my first thought which the the studio was willing to bankroll was that it would be a three-hour film a two-parter the first part would be an hour and a half comedy in New York City with me and at the end of the hour the hour and a half I would fall into a vat of you know the cryogenic VAT and get frozen then there would be an intermission and when they'd come in for the second half we'd be totally in the future we'd be 200 years in the future but when I started to write that it was a Herculean task I mean I couldn't I just couldn't do it it was so it was such a massive undertaking that I said you know forget it we'll just do the futuristic part of it and it was it's just an attempt to make it you know it was a good comic setting another ploy that that interested me and that was I thought it would because I was as I said before then m'f reign of mine that that really was responsive to silent comedy I wanted to do something where I woke up in a society where nobody spoke where it was against the law to speak or nobody spoke and I would have had to have played the whole film as a fugitive but silent and it would have given me an excuse to make a silent comedy without actually going doing a throwback but that also you know my interest in that waned as well and and I decided just to do you know cash in on the funny idea and and try and make it really more satirical of contemporary society than anything I envisioned for the future what one surprise is that one always expects that the soundtrack of such films is going to be on synthesizers and all the rest of it sounds fiction modern technological music and you chose New Orleans jazz as your soundtrack right what why did you choose that I did because I wanted you know the kind of synthesizer sound I first of all I don't like and atonal music or anything you might associate with futuristic music you know it's not very good for comedy and really what you want is what you associate with the old-style comedies you know the honky-tonk piano and and so I thought that would be a good backing for comedy scenes to hear that New Orleans style music is is a perfect accompaniment to those kind of scenes and that was the only reason that I gave myself the the the job of being a part-time clarinet is because originally I was someone who worked in a health food store and that was all and then I made myself an amateur clarinetist as well to justify my use of that soundtrack but jazz is still important to you that the New Orleans yeah sure I'm a great great moines jazz fan the in sleeper also there's a you and Diane Keaton are developing a sort of relationship of foil and and lead comedian as it were that that hadn't appeared before was all that scripted or did that emerge during the filming that sort of banter between you know it was it was scripted and and we had worked together on stage and play it again Sam and in the movie of that and we were very close friends and and she's a hilarious comedian and and that was the easy part of it that was easiest but most of it was written there was what whatever has the air of spontaneity is probably because we did it well then I mean that's the only thing I can think of because it was it was scripted and I'm usually always pretty much scripted the punchline to sleeper that you believe in sex and death things that happen once in a lifetime seems to be the germination of the next one love and death it seems to grow out of that thought or was it something you've been thinking of making for some time no again the genesis is always so different than I how it appears to the outside I I was right I was writing a murder mystery and that murder mystery later turn out to be Annie Hall but I was writing a murder mystery for Diane Keaton and myself well we're gonna play too clever New Yorkers and and make a lot of jokes on that and get involved with with a murder and then I started writing and I thought look I don't really want to do a murder mystery because you know I don't want to be a mystery writer and and I just had a I you know had an a negative prejudice against it at the time and you know it's funny because I'm such a fan of them too and so after some months of writing that I threw it in the drawer and already had several scenes in it that were to be in Annie Hall you know do the murder mystery began the exact same way where I'm waiting in front of the cinema for her to pull up and she pulls up and we get into an argument and we go home and you know all of that was mamuro began and and so I was kicking around my house looking for something to do because time was running out and I wanted to do a film and I just happened to see a Russian history book on my shelf I thought gee it would be funny to do a film based on all that Russian literature and all those Russian cliches and and and I thought it was an area where I could then get in a lot of subject matter that I like to talk about you know about philosophical themes and death and longing and then I thought it would be fun to to do that and and that's you know I thought I'd do a big again a cartoon film about it and and tried to make it as funny as I could make it at the time again logistically 24 take one on the face of it's very odd for a 1970s New Yorker to sort of colonize the Russian novel in that way I mean it's you know here's the his this character who's obviously a 1970s card was stumbling around Dostoyevsky tell us that all the rest of it I mean does that strike you as odd it didn't at the time I mean I you know I've always had a great love of Russian literature and heavy literature and heavy themes in general I always I'm interested and attracted to them and also find them very funny and so that was that was a fun thing to write not so much fun to shoot but fun to write I mean to shoot it myself in a nightmare because I mean it's like a sort of De Laurentiis production all these cast of thousands blade I gathered by the Russian army yes we used the Russian army who were in Hungary at the time and they made wonderful wonderful soldiers you know they they could march and drill and do all that stuff perfectly and they were thrilled to be in the movie because their life was so boring just occupying Hungary you know which is what they were doing and you know was it was a tough movie to make I mean it was cold and laborious and you know how very hard work I found that not easy but fun to write and I mean as I mean since it was such hard work did it ever cross your mind that you know maybe God wasn't an underachiever maybe was having the last laugh after all no but I'll tell you what did cross my mind I just freezing on a hill in Budapest outside of Budapest one day and I thought I'm not gonna make any more films out of New York this is ridiculous I'm freezing it's 5 o'clock in the morning what am i doing and in Hungary what am i doing you know I'm a train to Zagreb next week it just was crazy and I and I didn't make another film out of New York after that it's I mean has a New York feel to it doesn't it because I know you've always admired and Bob Hope for example and Jim and I always think of that as the most Bob Hope fish of your films in a funny way you know they did the sort of coward who's also a hero and talks his way out of these great historical things I think you could say that yeah III didn't like the actual Hope films very much I mean I don't think they're very good films but I think that he and alone and he was being Crosby were brilliant was Britt he was brilliant and they were brilliant [Music] moving on to Annie Hall could you have written Annie Hall do you think if you hadn't known Diane Keaton so well I couldn't have written that character no there was no way I could have written that character because I was I was taking things directly from you know things I'd heard her say and and her motor speech people everyone thought that was an autobiographical film but in fact it was not at all you know because very little of that was true that's not where I was born my father didn't have that job that's not how I met Diane that's not how Diane and I broke up that's just just you know practically nothing in the film is true i co-wrote it with Marshall Brickman and a friend of mine and many of the observations and things were based on things in his life that he vaguely recalled and you know but but it had an autobiographical feel to it to people and they think that it it was my life but it is the real Diane Keaton like any hole not so much the the facts as it were but the atmosphere of the character her mode of speech is and when I first met her you know she was an out-of-towner in New York you know with great naivete and and so there was a great similarity now she's very sophisticated because she's lived here for many years and been in the in you know the center of the theater and show business and so she's achieved a certain sophistication but when I first met her she was very very naive like that character and didn't know about anything didn't know about New York City or psychoanalysis or show business or you know she was just an she was a originally she was a coach at girl at an Italian restaurant mm-hmm but you saw her in hair wasn't that's how you well I didn't see her in hair someone told me she was great in hair and no I was that we were having auditions for a female for play it again Sam and someone said she was great and so she came in auditioned again not for me for the director of the stage play and I I was sitting there quietly only to voice my opinion he was making the decision and I thought she was great well she and then we thought maybe she was little too tall for me but she wasn't because I went up on stage and we played at the scene together and and and after two weeks of looking at more women we both agreed that she was by far the best one we had seen and we called her back with an a-hole the the focus on the central relationships UNLV randomly seems to have evolved during the shooting it seems that it was rather different kind of film to start with I mean you've mentioned that it originally started out as a as a murder mystery but even beyond that it was more about you I guess and your view of the world how did that happen well this is true of great many of my films you know I set out with very grandiose ambitions and very specific aims and and by the time I'm in the editing stage the last stages of editing I'm floundering around and will take anything to survive you know it just doesn't matter to me you know I abandoned many of my original ideas and and so that was originally going to be what goes on in alvey's mind that was going to be the movie you were gonna see what goes on in his mind going from bit to bit without much plot and it just couldn't handle it when I shot it and edit it that way but it was incoherent I mean even when I showed it to Marshall Brickman who co-wrote it with me he couldn't follow it it was too stream-of-consciousness and too strange so gradually in an effort to survive irish aped it in editing and a little reshooting and and took the best of it and that relationship became the focus right became became the story and apparently I was originally going to be called and he'd only I meaning an inability to enjoy yourself right and then did a United Artists executive when he heard this almost threw himself out of the window is that true right they they've always been very good with me and they didn't want to use that title but you know if I wanted to then they would have said okay but they you know they my relationship with them is one of friendly pleading on both sides and they said look II we love the picture and it people are gonna like it but you know if you put it out of a drive-in theater in Kansas or the Midwest tight like anhedonia no one's gonna know what it is or come and so you know I guess from a commercial point of view they were probably right hmm I change it well what do you think it was about that sad romance which is really at the center of the film that struck a chord with all in such a big way with audiences in the late seventies because people identified whether to a remarkable degree yeah it's always hard to know exactly what it was I mean it was it I thought it was a nicely done film you know it had the LD and I'd entertaining elements to it I mean it was well photographed and well played very well played by the an and nice music I don't know I had a commercial quality to it I don't know if it reinforced the prejudice of the middle class and so they is that what I said no that's what that's what that's what I was thinking you know that's us up there and and or I don't know it was entertaining to them though those are non mature which i think is i mean in the late seventies his was it was a very important thing to be you know when nearly all cinema as it is now actually was about the East woods and the Schwarzenegger and the Stallone's and all that I mean to see someone who's a hero who doesn't have to behave like that seems to me to be very important could be I'd never I thought of it only as really as a comedy yeah you know and I and I thought when I was putting it together originally that it would be fun for people to see what went on in my mind and then I would actually speak to them right from the start and enlist their their you know indulgence and then I was gonna show them what went on in my mind but the relationship was so strong that nobody wanted to see what went on in my mind they they want to get back to this story of the two people but there's one serious theme aleast I think there is he'll probably tell me that it isn't serious but and that is introducing an a to the Jewish Way of life as well here's someone from outside that way of life being introduced to it and there's one or two very dark moments in the film but like when she says that you know Grammy would would think of Alvey as a real Jew and all that sort of thing I mean that's a dark theme to put into a film that's a comedy well I had never thought of introducing her to a Jewish way of life I you know just would never have occurred to I was introducing it to to a sort of New York showbusiness way of life I mean that's that's how I thought of it but that comes from from reality I mean you know she had these delightful grandmother's Keaton did and they were wonderful old ladies and they were fun to be with it and you know I met them when they were in their 80s and you know they had almost never seen anyone Jewish before and they they had all the prejudices against him but but they were very nice and you know when I got to know them and and so I that came out of that but nevertheless at the time a tiny hole came out there are a lot of writers for example like Philip Roth Joseph Heller Saul Bellow writing about the sort of urban Jewish hero coming to terms with the world around him fast-talking not at all confident but making up for that vibe by talking about and being do you feel that you did you feel that you belonged to that kind of tradition in a way because it's a very strong thing in the 70s only vaguely I mean I guess I guess vaguely in that I am Jewish and did live in New York I have always lived in New York but I had never I'd never thought of it that way I mean I had never thought of you know anything Jewish say in any of my films is incidental and accidental I mean I never think of it as as a motif or a problem that I'm dealing with it's it's just a fact like like you know that I live in New York or or that that I'm a Democrat and not a Republican or you know there's just certain certain facts and those are the facts but but I never I never saw it as a scream cassette also required wrote a five Woody Allen profile 25 take one okay when you made interiors in 1978 you said that comedy was really like kiddies food and that you wanted to eat at the grown-ups table for once did you really believe that I do you know I have very specific ideas about that and I don't mean to proselytize or or convince anybody of the way I I think these are purely personal ideas but I I do see a difference between comedy and so-called serious drama and I personally hold one in higher esteem for myself I prefer one to view I prefer one to do if I if I could and and I do think I mean I I do make a value judgment and find a deeper value in one than the other but it's a massive down grudging of your own work in a way because I thought your whole work stands as an example to the contrary I don't think so I now again I don't mean to downgrade comedy I think it's a wonderful thing and you know but but I put the other on a higher plane myself and I think to the degree that some of my films have been good it's been to the degree that I could make them more serious and to the degree that say Charlie Chaplin was more outstanding to me by far than say Laurel and Hardy or Buster Keaton even or Perry Lang dinner it was because he chose to get more serious sometimes he got so serious that it didn't work but when but what gives his film more richness is that their seriousness to it and for me the great you know the great artist of course I like the this the drama's of Shakespeare and I don't like the comedies of Shakespeare very much and I you know very much like Strindberg and Eugene O'Neill enormous ly checkoff very much you know it's just what my own personal tastes I thought that will come through in interiors in a way it sort of belongs to I think - it's kind of tradition of European drama just that kind of tradition right - that kind of thing and that that's my favorite kind of drama and I'd like to do more of those kinds of movies in the near future visually interiors is an extra in my view an extraordinary controlled film which of course is one of the themes anyway of the story with Eve and it raises this interesting issue of whether a comedy can be quite so beautiful that sounds a strange thing to say but whether it's a distraction to make a comedy so stylish and well designed as that film was to a degree yes to a degree in the comedy what you want is fast paced cutting not not camera moves and now you know bright lights and loud voices I mean the best sentence you want it you want it's got to have a certain Verve and energy and you don't want it you don't want the camera drifting around in a kind of you know lethargic way or strange half-lift faces or you know the the the nice thing about the Buster Keaton comedies of the Marx Brothers or any comedies that you like you know they're clean and fast-paced and well lit and and full of energy and so so I do think that the techniques are different cinematically when you're making them and if and if you did have that sort of incredible control over the design that I think in interiors is an extraordinary achievement that maybe one wouldn't laugh I mean one just wouldn't realize it's the one supposed to laugh at it right to a degree that's true I think you would hurt your laughs and be like pouring syrup over them sometimes you see people trying to make a comedy in the United States for example and they'll hire a great cameraman a truly great cameraman just because they know his name and he'll lighted and it will be beautifully lit but it becomes oppressive that's not really what you want you want you want the thing and that's why to me also making a comedy is not as much fun because the real tools of of the cinema you can employ in making a dramatic film whereas a comedy you don't you what what you want in the case of Chaplin or Keaton or the mantras is basically a record of the material of the comedian's performance or you know you want great simplicity and speed and simplicity and and you know that's not as much fun to to wallow in while you're when you're making a film it's fun to to fool around with with control situations and interesting lighting and and you know psychological nuances just more fun hmm now a lot of critics think that in Manhattan you you have your most your most mature work which manages to be funny and serious and true all at the same time and yet you've often said that you think it's overrated by them that they went overboard about Manhattan and they shouldn't have done yeah again I'm not trying to downgrade my films at all he does sound that way I'm just trying to be objective about them when I when I look back in Manhattan there were many things about it that I liked but essentially it didn't it didn't really go for it had one foot in escapist romance and one foot in a slightly more serious theme and what what carries you through Manhattan for me is more the style than anything else that it's it's beautifully photographed and it's fun to see Manhattan then and my passion for the city and my passion for the Gershwin music was entertaining for people but I I would do Manhattan differently now if I was to do it it's not a film that I wouldn't do today but I but I would do it I would do it differently but nevertheless that theme of the romantic view of the city you know set against the the mess that people make of their lives on the one hand and on the other hand the sort of culture that we've got around us today which is difficult to be romantic about is for me it's great strength you know that that once it kind of collides them right I think that is the best the best of the thing but it yes I'm surprised too I mean I I don't dislike the film it's just that I that I you know I was surprised that the at the enthusiasm with which it was met and Isaac the central character by now is confident knows his way around very very confident in many many ways and miles away from you know the little man of the early films who you know very damaged and lots of things happen to do you think it's difficult to be funny about such a character because the more competent people are on the whole the less funny they are well no you can be it's a different kind of funny I mean in in bananas or something you know it's it's a it's an infantile type of funniness but in manhattan it's different it's it's it's it's more adult and whittier and i don't think it's difficult to to I mean I think at one example that would be someone like Saul Bellow who's whose enormous Lee witty I mean really witty and his novels and you know totally competent the characters and full of full of insights and full of observations and it's just a different style of comedy they still can't puzzle out the final moment of the film person you can enlighten me when Tracy says you've got to have faith in people and Isaac stands there and there's a smile on his face and I can't make up my mind whether he's saying isn't it marvelous to meet somebody who believes this or is he saying come on you know better than that in other words you know is it there not be tending well well well what we had thought about at the time and the ending was we weren't sure what was going to happen to that girl mariel hemingway when when she went on with her life whether she was going to become cynical and like the other characters in the movie or retain her youthful sweetness and so you know it was a sweet smile I mean it was a smile of affection for her but some skepticism about you know what was gonna happen to her in the future yeah so it's both in a way then you've been on your slammin ghost wind and rents all that beans again and everything but it's a very interestingly sort of enigmatic moment I think right I like the nd that was an ending that we shot quite early in the shooting of the film and never had to change you know I mean we shot it the second week before the whole film was done and we never had to change it it just it just worked well for us you said that Manhattan's about cultural junk food you know that it's about that sort of false opening of the film where he wants to make it a film about mm-hmm a culture in decay right and all the rest of it do you feel that that American culture is kind of disintegrating around you for the most part I do there's a strain of very good American culture I mean we have some wonderful writers and wonderful painters and but in general we have you know a pretty junky culture and you know it's pretty it's a television or fast food culture you know you can see our movies what most of our movies are almost all of them and what our television shows are for the most part and you know in politics you know it's it's not really not really living up to what we should be living up to so I mean you'd put quite a lot of people on your academy of the overrated but they wouldn't be quite the same ones that Don Keaton puts on it in the film right I won't even say they're overrated they don't they're nobody even bothers to rate them that and they then people know that there that there's nothing special about them they just have given up and are willing to say I know it's junk but I'll I'm too lazy to turn the dial or too lazy to do anything about it in Manhattan I think 26 I know your treatment of the female characters in Manhattan seems a whole world away from the equivalent treatment of female character in say played against Sam you know well the attitude of the central character has moved on from a treating treating women as objects of lust as it were you must must score through to treating them as friends as good friends possible good friends is that a change of heart that happened in you in the in the meantime or or is it a change that happened in the world outside oh I probably I probably felt that way all the time but but the other is the path of least resistance for comedy even today if I was to make a comedy it would be much easier to make a funny comedy where I'm lasting after somebody you know it just would be funnier then to get into the more complex relationship of being a friend and so I I've always had many female friends but when I made play it again Sam when I wrote the play you know I was just thinking of how to get those laughs and the quickest route to get the laughs was to to be lonely and to lust after my friend's wife and so I did it it's it's true isn't it because it becomes a much more real person much more complicated person because he has this attitude I mean he really wants more from life all right sure it's a different to different character entirely Stardust member is not were you getting your own back on the people who didn't like interiors when you notice no no not at all I was I was trying to make again I was trying to make a funny film but with a serious idea behind it you know I wanted to try and make a film about a man who had presumably to the outside I everything he had money and he was famous and and and yet he had come to a point in life where he realized still that he was still gonna wind up on the junk heap with everybody else and it didn't mean anything in that that nothing saves you not being an artist not being rich not being famous or wealthy or none of that can save you and and him coming to terms with that idea over the course of this weekend which really happens in his mind for the most part but many people saw that film as me attacking my fans and saying the people out there that are enjoying my films are clawing and pulling and and silly looking and but that had nothing to do with the film at all I mean the movie buffs in the film all over so they stepped off the pages of Diane Arbus or something I mean well I was trying to make failure I wanted to make it you know a serious cartoon I mean I wanted to make it you know baroque in that sense I mean where do you find such faces something that they're remarkable but just in the streets of New York I mean I mean just you go hunting for yeah and you know the the only reason people look like that is I wanted to show his subjective state of mind that you know everybody looked you know funny or threatening or you know and that's all that I tried to do with it I mean they do that lots of people that write the definitive book on camera marks you know right now that was my favorite film for a while I mean if you would ask me that just until a couple of years ago that would have been my favorite film of mine it was my least popular film but but it was certainly my own personal favorite and it looks in retrospect to be you saying goodbye to autobiographical style films saying you know I'm not gonna make films where people can confuse my life with my word and exactly what happened on that film there was an enormous amount of confusion between people thinking that I was the lead character and that I was saying that I I didn't have a high regard for my audience and they were fools and you know but this was not what the film was about but but I was I was a little bit hurt by the by the misapprehension that it was I want to biographical and you seem to be saying you know in the scenes for example when as a child you're a conjurer sleight of hand and so on that you know in future I want to be a storyteller I want to be a magician I don't want to make films where people are going to confuse my life and my work anymore certainly in retrospect it looks like that sort of turning point because after that you started telling stories again right but they did in that film confused the two very much zelich took several years to plan evidently because the technical side of it is obviously very very complicated well no it took a long time to make you didn't take several years to plan it was one of those things where I pulled out of the typewriter and right to work on it but it took a long time to do very long to do what gave me the original idea for the film because it's it's a very bizarre one on your face I had always wanted to do a documentary comedy always from my first days that's why I did take the money and run but but I wanted to make it 20-7 Tech one said what gave you the original idea for zelich I had always wanted to do a documentary film I tried it and take the money and run that was my first film and I could achieve a certain amount of it but I wanted to do it more Spartan Lee I wanted to do it like a real actual documentary we just about couldn't tell the difference and and I thought the theme of a character who was always trying to be who he was around was a universal psychological theme because I had known many people who would always accommodate to the group that they were with and I felt that that that ultimately would lead to fascism because you you would you would always be saying what the crowd wanted to hear and giving up your own beliefs and personality and so I combined the two and did it and one thing that happened the United States was that the film was well received over here but the the psychological details of the film were overlooked a lot because people were amazed by the documentary quality we were able to give it now we did put a lot of work into that and we you know we were all glad that we could do that but I didn't want it to overshadow the theme and content of the film but too many people that did many people you know were were very much taken with the way we did it because looked like a film by someone fascinated with technicalities in a funny way you know well it's a it's a you know it's a good reproduction of a documentary I mean you know those kind of films appear on our television programs you know very very frequently I could have told that same story realistically but I didn't want to because I felt it was a national story or worldwide story and I wanted to show its importance in general and so that's what happened with that here after all the technicalities of selling Broadway Danny Rose is much more like a short story I think it has a feel of being slightly improvised being a lot of fun being very relaxing to make I don't know if that's entirely spurious well almost it was it was not relaxing because none of them are relaxing they were all very arduous and hard work and we're all go around angry and depressed and you know I mean so but but it was you know me and I eat it at an Italian restaurant in town frequently and there's a woman who owns it and Mia said to me I'd always wanted to play someone who looked like that and this woman you know has got that bun hand she's always got dark glasses on even if it's 2:00 in the morning and smokes too soon and she she looks great and so I I thought what could I write for Mia where she could play something like that and then the story began to come to me and I started to do it and that that's the evolution got a fantastic performance out of Mia Farrow oh she was great it was just a revelation she was great yeah she called and bra say you know she lost a nerve of course when we started to shoot and said no I don't know how I got into this you know I don't think I can do it but she was wonderful from the first day you know as soon as she gave up her her apprehensions and said she had the dog bosses in the heads of hide behind a wife says right of course you know it's not easy for an actress to work behind dark glasses for a whole movie because you know you don't realize until you try how much they're doing with their eyes and and that's suddenly out of bounds for them in a way you surprised me that it started with with that aspect of the story rather than with the vaudeville aspect of it because obviously from the quantity of your biography you know the vaudeville side seems to be nearer to you having you know right but that rolled up in that school that was incidental material from my life I mean I wanted to do that story about her and as I began developing the story and my characters you know evolved I was able to draw on things that I knew about which was my own beginnings in not quite vaudeville but nightclubs yes you said that it's the best education that a comedian can get but one of the themes is presumably a Broadway Danny Rose is how all that's decayed has gone in a way right that kind of thing is just about gone I mean it does exist to a degree but when I first started it was already on the wane and it was a very rich wonderful world of comedians and jugglers and strange acts and balloon folders and ventriloquist's and each one thinking that huge success was just around the corner and hoping that they would get the perfect manager to to you know make them famous and and invariably the manager would find them and build him up to some small degree and then they would leave him this just happened but not skating penguins dressed as rabbis I think that must have been you awesome there that was there was a prefabrication doing anyone have that oh all right miss 21 no sync pulse 50 Hertz 25 frames per second transferred to 16 more plays transcription cassette also required rule 6 Woody Allen profile 28 take 1 the Purple Rose of Cairo partly celebrates I think the power of cinema to help people escape but also shows that that's a trap and yet it's set in the past I mean do you think that cinema no longer has that power it probably does to a degree not not like it did when I was growing up because there was no television and you know and even before I grew up in the 30s and the 20s you know you know what I'm what a mad scene that was people just rushing to the cinema where I grew up it was a little dinky neighborhood in Brooklyn there were 20 wonderful cinemas you know within 10 blocks of my house or something I mean you just couldn't believe it the whole country was cinema crazy and the big studios were making you know hundreds of films a year now they don't do that anymore and so it's but in those days it had a huge power of empathy and escapism but you you show I think one of the most subtle things about the film which is very subtle in my view is that not only does the magic of the cinema not really help Cecilia although she thinks it does but that the character in the film can't cope with the real world you know you do kind of mirror image of that right which is an interesting theme the the film was it was you know only incidentally about cinema I mean I it could have just as easily been a character from a book she's reading comes out to her or or a character walks off a stage play I mean it was just happened I just wanted to do that because it was a good graphic for me but the object of the movie was very simply put to show that that we all have to choose between reality and fantasy and we're of course forced to choose reality otherwise you know the other way lies madness and when you choose reality you get hurt because reality hurts you and that's what she did she was she was at least mature enough in the movie at the end to to choose reality over fantasy and then the reality stabbed her in the back because that's what reality does something it kills you not always but no but enough times if it does always kill you actually you know and it's it's it's so treacherous that that you know would be great if you could live the life that you see in the bow you know that is the controlled life the life that one can control in the book or play or film the idea for hannah and her sisters apparently came to you when you were rereading Anna Karenina yes what's the connection I was just reading the book rereading the book one summer and thinking you know it would be fun to do a movie where you saw a little bit of one story and a little of another and then went back to that and then went to a third and back to you know that that style of and and that's that's how I got that the the idea to do that kind of a movie the the three male characters in the story seem to me to represent three aspects of Woody Allen if I can put it that way I mean there's the romantic Michael Caine character there's the artist - you know carries a lot of weight and is in his head about what's going on in the universe and everything and there's Mickey the questioning one and they're all sort of three bits of Woody but you're only one of them yes here here your observation is correct I will say this is true I could have played any of those roles and did feel you know I felt that that I could have played the part that Michael Caine played that's not as well but I could have played it and and I played the part I did play and I could have played Max von Sydow is part also because I did feel I was writing myself and all those characters definitely and I'm against the feeling that again this this may be completely wrong that in recent years that you almost feel that you don't want the Woody Allen character to be in it that someone else can do that work now that you know the directing and writing yes but that you you're marginalizing the Woody Allen clerics yes I'd like to I'd like to spend a little more time directing that's why I was not in radio days I was not in the film as yet to come out that follows Radio days and I'm not going to be in the film that I'm planning to shoot this fall because I don't want to be in every film and I don't want to make every film a comic film I'd like to make the next of the next 10 or 15 of whatever films I make I'd like to make you know half of them quite serious films and that would eliminate me immediately because I wouldn't want to be in a serious film as an actor because I don't think I could do it and wouldn't want to anyhow I think you probably could but the audience wouldn't accept it they wouldn't accept me you know I'm not sure that I could you know that I wouldn't be too inhibited to to really get too emotional on the screen the ending of Hannah seems optimistic I mean whenever I've seen it there's been a kind of palpable sense of relief amongst the audience when Holly says I'm pregnant at the end because I think it's probably the first Woody Allen film they've ever seen which doesn't have a sting in its tail whether they don't leave thinking god they're you know the last five minutes just turned me completely around it seems optimistic I mean is it it's only optimistic in the sections that I failed because I wanted to make a film that was not optimistic I wanted to make a film about a man's irrational sudden passion for his sister and for his sister-in-law you know and a man who's told that he's gonna die and then suddenly when it turns out that he's not doesn't want to go back to work or anything and just walks the streets questioning life and finally doesn't come to any big conclusion you know it reads all these books and all that and he's gonna blow his brains out you know and and and figures what the hell I you know I won't wife should I that's not gonna solve anything I mean I wanted it to be a melancholy film for the most part but for some reason incompetence in the directing or the writing or something the emphasis shifted so that it was perceived by audiences as more up and optimistic than I had intended and consequently was very popular as I said that might be the case yes the I mean what you say about the public's reaction to it is really makes me think of there's a I think it's ten books now written about you that's more even worldwide and a lot of people say a lot of very pretentious things about your films and from this interview it's clear that you know you reject that I mean you don't want people to make claims for your work that aren't there right they can make claims if they're there but but yes silly dude is it difficult not to play the game as other film directors have and be pretentious it's fun to be pretentious because you know you think that you're deep and that other people regard you as deep but but but it's easy not to not the PS is easy not to play the game because because it's silly I would be dishonest if I was you know I tried to be completely honest with you and all these films and you know they're very often if audiences and had any idea with many filmmakers or most filmmakers how many accidents they're seeing and how many how many things that didn't start out to be what they are you know they would be very surprised and this goes for the best of filmmakers yes I have a picture in my mind of a Woody Allen and Mia Farrow have surrounded these days by pets and children and homes and domestic life which is a very long way away from the Woody Allen of old that audiences tend to associate with you has there been a dramatic change well no because me and I live we don't live together she is surrounded by kids and pets and I live by myself across the park and we see each other quite frequently but but no I'm still I'm still as I was I mean I I do play with the kids all the time but but then I never have to be there when the diapers have changed or anything you know really awful happens yes and you still hold your same views of the countryside that your characters also because I know Mia Farrow has a place in Connecticut yes and it's always it's always a sore point between us she loves it and I I can never bear to go to the country I mean I I'm not a I'm a strictly urban person still and I have all the same old prejudices and the crickets make you nervous and all crickets make me nervous definitely yeah so there's no thought you you wouldn't retire to a rustic no you've recently said I wish someone would come in and tell me I can't make films anymore mm-hmm in a recent interview is that true but if somebody actually said you don't have to do it anymore right it would be it would be sort of a load off my mind I'd like to I'd like to write books but it seems such a shame not to make films while people are willing to finance them because everyone wants to make films and people are giving me millions of dollars to make these films to put them on so I think you some day I'll be old and enfeebled and won't want to get up in the morning and do it and and I'll write the books then but it would not bother me if someone said tomorrow you can never make another film I mean I'd probably get up in the morning relieved and relaxed and because I enjoy writing and is there any particular way you'd like to be remembered no looking back I mean that you know if you had to put in a nutshell what your your legacy might be well what would be great of course would be you know to have been a significant contributor as a filmmaker I don't feel that I've made a great film yet in my life I hope I will make at least one and maybe a couple but I don't think you know if one standards for great films are you know the Bicycle Thief and grand illusion I you know and that would be I'd like to be remembered as someone who made at least one if not one or two really great films mm-hm and y'all seem to become a father for which congratulations oh thank you um do you hope that he or she is gonna be a chip off the old woody as it were I hope it's a she that's the first thing I mean that would be very important to me and no I just hope you know I hope it's a sheen that she's healthy that's all I really care about the rest is it's not important thank you very much okay

Channel: Beyond Bolex

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Keywords: woody allen 1987 filmmaking interview director editing behind the scenes

Id: jYI44lsm0iA

Length: 73min 40sec (4420 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2018