Can Woody Allen Work in Hollywood Again?
New York TimesCan Woody Allen Work in Hollywood Again? - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/movies/woody-allen-dylan-farrow.html
43 mins ago - Hollywood says it's done with Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, Kevin Spacey and other figures ousted for misconduct through the #MeToo movement. But what about Woody Allen? His film distributor, Amazon, the presenters of his musical “
The Guardian
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/movies/woody-allen-dylan-farrow.html
43 mins ago - Hollywood says it's done with Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, Kevin Spacey and other figures ousted for misconduct through the #MeToo movement. But what about Woody Allen? His film distributor, Amazon, the presenters of his musical “The Guardian
'Right
now online many people are absolutely certain that Allen is guilty.
Just as they are absolutely certain that Amanda Knox is guilty, just as
they will be absolutely certain that what I am saying is wrong. There is
not a lot of nuance in Hashtag Justice. There is a hashtag #IBelieveDylanFarrow'
Mapping the Woody Allen genome.
"Without him, contemporary popular culture — from Lena Dunham to Louis C. K.; from Nanni Moretti to Jon Stewart — would scarcely exist": http://nyti.ms/K2KcIo
"Without him, contemporary popular culture — from Lena Dunham to Louis C. K.; from Nanni Moretti to Jon Stewart — would scarcely exist": http://nyti.ms/K2KcIo
Woody Allen on Faith, Fortune Tellers and New York
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: September 14, 2010
Asked on Tuesday morning if it was appropriate to wish him a happy Jewish New Year, Woody Allen made it clear that such formalities were not necessary. “No, no, no,” he said with a chuckle, seated in an office suite at the Loews Regency hotel. “That’s for your people,” he told this reporter. “I don’t follow it. I wish I could get with it. It would be a big help on those dark nights.”
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Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Keith Hamshere/Sony Pictures Classics
A scene from “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” with Gemma Jones, left, and Naomi Watts.
“To me,” Mr. Allen said, “there’s no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They’re all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.”
Mr. Allen spoke with Dave Itzkoff about his new film, how its themes resonate in his life and whether he has made his last movie in New York. These are excerpts from that conversation.
Q. The ideas of psychic powers and past lives, or at least people who believe in them, are central to your latest film. What got you interested in writing about them?
A. I was interested in the concept of faith in something. This sounds so bleak when I say it, but we need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t. I’ve known people who have put their faith in religion and in fortune tellers. So it occurred to me that that was a good character for a movie: a woman who everything had failed for her, and all of a sudden, it turned out that a woman telling her fortune was helping her. The problem is, eventually, she’s in for a rude awakening.
Q. What seems more plausible to you, that we’ve existed in past lives, or that there is a God?
A. Neither seems plausible to me. I have a grim, scientific assessment of it. I just feel, what you see is what you get.
Q. How do you feel about the aging process?
A. Well, I’m against it. [laughs] I think it has nothing to recommend it. You don’t gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you’d trade all of that for being 35 again. I’ve experienced that thing where you wake up in the middle of the night and you start to think about your own mortality and envision it, and it gives you a little shiver. That’s what happens to Anthony Hopkins at the beginning of the movie, and from then on in, he did not want to hear from his more realistic wife, “Oh, you can’t keep doing that — you’re not young anymore.” Yes, she’s right, but nobody wants to hear that.
Q. Has getting older changed your work in any way? Do you see a certain wistfulness emerging in your later films?
A. No, it’s too hit or miss. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything that I do. It’s whatever seems right at the time. I’ve never once in my life seen any film of mine after I put it out. Ever. I haven’t seen “Take the Money and Run” since 1968. I haven’t seen “Annie Hall” or “Manhattan” or any film I’ve made afterward. If I’m on the treadmill and I’m scooting through the channels, and I come across one of them, I go right past it instantly, because I feel it could only depress me. I would only feel, “Oh God, this is so awful, if I could only do that again.”
Q. You recently told the European press that shooting movies in New York had become too expensive. Do you think you’ve made your last film here?
A. My first choice would always be New York. It would be my fondest wish — to work where you live is of course the most luxurious privilege, and I’m sure I will film here again. But the few dollars I have go further in certain places. The cities I’m talking about — London, Paris, Barcelona — these are very cosmopolitan, and they’re like New York. I can afford it a little bit easier. To me it’s a privilege to shoot in New York, and I don’t mind it being extra. I just have to have it, to be able to afford it. I would always make the picture in New York for $15 million that I could make elsewhere for $12 million, if I had $15 million. But if I don’t have the money, then I can’t do it.
Q. It’s not a situation in which these European cities have rolled out the red carpet for you, whereas New York took you for granted?
A. New York has always been cooperative and helpful and a pleasure to shoot in. But the European countries do give you an enormous amount of cooperation. I still occasionally have to make cuts in my film to work there, too. I’m always working with less money than I need. It’s axiomatic.
Q. Were you prepared for the firestorm of media coverage you set off by casting Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in your next movie, “Midnight in Paris”?
A. I was very surprised at the level of journalism that occurred in relation to her. She has a small part in the movie — a real part, but it’s a small part. And I shot with her the first day, and then all the papers said she was terrible, and I did 32 takes with her. Of course I didn’t even do 10 takes with her. This was just a magical number that some guy created in a room. Then they printed that her husband came to the set and was angry with her. He came to the set once, and he was delighted. He felt she was a natural actress and couldn’t have been happier.
Q. That would make a good blurb for the movie poster.
A. For some reason, the press wanted to say bad things about her. I don’t know if they had something against the Sarkozys, or it was a better way to sell papers. But the fabrications were so wild and so completely fake, and I wondered to myself, Is this what happens with Afghanistan and the economy and matters of real significance? This is a trivial matter. That’s a longwinded answer to your question: I was not prepared for the amount of press that was attached to the picture because of Madame Sarkozy.
Q. When you’ve got down time between projects, as you do now, how do you spend it?
A. I do the usual stuff. I take my kids to school in the morning. I go for walks with my wife, play with my jazz band. Then there’s the obligation of the treadmill, and the weights, to keep in shape, so I don’t get more decrepit than I am. I generally don’t see the big Hollywood movies. I saw “Winter’s Bone” the other day and liked the movie very much, loved all the performers. And when I was in Paris, I got a chance to read a certain amount, Tolstoy and Norman Mailer. Things that had slipped through the cracks over the years.
Q. I half-expected to see you at that 12-hour performance of Dostoyevsky’s “Demons” that Lincoln Center Festival produced over the summer.
A. No, no, I’m a lowbrow. I read that material, more out of obligation than enjoyment. For enjoyment, for me, it’s a beer and the football game.
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