Thanks to Sophie Sinemania for the cool portrait! I’m really excited that she took the time to draw me!
Her excellent new book Sinemania! (graphic interpretations of the lives and careers of 23 North American and European directors from the past and present, including Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Quentin Tarantino, and Orson Welles from ECW Press) is in fine and not so fine book stores everywhere!
The cliché when reviewing a Woody Allen film is to play the “Spot the Woody” game. Since Allen stopped actually appearing in his own films it has become de rigueur to speculate on which role Woody would have played. It’s a bit of a tired game, but in his new film, “Midnight in Paris,” (which opened the most recent Cannes Film Festival) Owen Wilson is clearly playing the part. He’s a nostalgic Hollywood screenwriter who yearns to be taken seriously as an author. It’s Woody alright, despite Wilson’s California beach bum style.
In a story that harkens back to Allen’s older magic realism films like “Purple Rose of Cairo,” Gil Pender (Wilson), an American on vacation in France, finds himself transported back to 1920s Paris. For a man with “golden Age” fantasies it’s a dream come true. He meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, last seen as Loki from “Thor” and Alison Pill), hangs out with surrealists, sees Cole Porter sing at a party, drinks with Hemmingway and tries to steal Picasso’s girl Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Bringing him back to reality is his irritating present day fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her obnoxious parents.
It must first be said that “Midnight in Paris” is worth the price of admissions for the lovely shots of the fetching Marion Cotillard strolling the streets of Paris in a flapper dress. It’s also worth it to see Woody do for 1920s Paris what he did for 1970s Manhattan. He has one character say, “that Paris exists and anyone would choose to live anywhere else is a mystery to me,” and after seeing the film it’s hard not to agree. Allen’s cities are often as much a character as any of the actors and Paris is no exception. Now if he’d only shoot in Toronto. It might help tourism.
“Midnight in Paris” is a fantasy, but there is a point. Every generation looks back at the past with envy, Gil comes to realize that there really never was a “golden age” and that top be truly happy he must live in the present. That resolution is a bit of a revelation coming from Woody Allen, a man whose films seem to be from a different age but the skill he brings to this film proves he’s still a vital interesting filmmaker and not a relic from a past age.
Europe has been mostly kind to Woody Allen. After years of documenting life on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the famed filmmaker decamped to the continent, beginning his European vacation in London before moving on to Barcelona and Paris. The latest city on his whistle stop tour is one of Europe’s most interesting places, and the setting for his least interesting film in years.
“To Rome with Love” may be the only mainstream comedy—maybe the only non-mainstream comedy, for that matter—to simultaneously contemplate love, fame and Ozymandias Melancholia. Allen has created a portmanteau starring Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page as people under the thrall of life in the Eternal City.
“To Rome with Love” is well-meaning, but feels like something Allen would have written forty years ago. It’s an episodic screwball comedy with loads of characters, identity mix-ups, the comic’s trademarked highbrow references—will today’s audience get a Howard Roark joke?–and surreal situations. It has the same kind of farcical feel and references of his earlier work—look for older men paired with younger women, anxiety, comments on death and discussions on foreign film—but I think if he had written this decades ago it might have been funnier.
Allen, playing Alison Pill’s father, gives himself most of the funny lines, (“I was never a communist,” he says, “I couldn’t even share a bathroom.”), and while he manages to raise a laugh or two, the master’s touch is missing from much of the film.
Sporadic laughs dot the movie, but aren’t in abundance. The most surreal—and effective—part of the film involves Roberto Benigni as a clerk who becomes famous for being famous. It is a study on the nature, and ultimately the fickleness of fame. (K.K. are you watching?) It’s the strangest segment, but also the most charming. Benigni is just one step below his amped up walking-on-the-backs-of-chair-at-the-Oscars mode, and is a pure pleasure.
“To Rome with Love” is long on ambition and Italian scenery, but short on execution.
A break from familiar surroundings can do a body good. So it is with Woody Allen who spent thirty years making films in New York City before decamping to Europe. Just as Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar when he deserted Manhattan for the Boston location of The Departed and Spike Lee made his most interesting film in years with When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, his documentary set in New Orleans, Allen seems to have been reinvigorated by a change in scenery. Set in Spain Vicky Christina Barcelona doesn’t exactly hit Annie Hall heights, but does mark a high point for Allen after a long dry patch.
The movie begins with two girlfriends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), on summer vacation in Spain. They’re best of friends but have very different outlooks on life. Vicky is a straight-laced New Yorker, set to marry her rich fiancée and settle in to a comfortable life in a big house in Connecticut. Cristina is a sexually audacious free spirit, still trying to find herself. “I don’t know what I want,” she says, “I only know what I don’t want.” The young Americans meet an intriguing painter (Javier Bardem) who woos them both as he tries to deal with his residual feelings for his passionate but slightly loony ex-wife (Penelope Cruz).
Despite the sun drenched setting—the film was shot on beautiful locations in Spain—Vicky Christina Barcelona still feels like a Woody Allen film. Like many of his past movies it deals with complicated relationships and the nature of love framed by a jaunty jazz score—this time with a Spanish flair—strong situational humor and good performances by the ensemble cast.
Its clear Allen loves Scarlett Johansson. In this, their third film together, his camera lovingly strokes her face, luxuriating in close-ups that adoringly fill the screen. Her character is the catalyst of all the action, the pivot on which the movie spins and like many of his muses from the past—Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton—in Vicky Christina Barcelona he pushes her to reveal previously unseen talent. Her Cristina is a complicated character—confused and quirky, she’s searching for happiness in her surroundings and in herself. It’s Johansson’s best performance since Lost in Translation.
Another of the film’s pleasures is the pairing of Bardem and Cruz as the star crossed, but tempestuous ex-lovers. As a couple who “are meant for one another and not meant for one another” they have great chemistry and sparks fly in their scenes.
The film isn’t perfect. An annoying voice over is overused and a “Speak English” gag gets tired very quickly, but overall there is more good than bad.
For me Woody Allen’s most successful movies have frequently had women’s names in their titles and while Vicky Christina Barcelona isn’t a classic like Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall it is a welcome return to form after last year’s catastrophic Cassandra’s Dream.
Early on in the shoot for You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen’s latest exploration of love and neurosis, star Josh Brolin told the director he wouldn’t try and play a thinly disguised version of Woody Allen in the movie, like Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity or even Scarlett Johansson in Scoop.
“I know some people have tried to (play the Woody Allen character),” he says. “I don’t understand why. Everybody writes from who they are, but I think because Woody has acted in his films, and is choosing not to act in this film, therefore you are taking his place. I didn’t see it that way.”
The director was fine with that, in fact, he told Brolin to make the role his own. “Then I’d do a take,” says Brolin, “and he’d say, ‘You changed a word. You said cannot. The script says can’t.’ I’d say, ‘You’re not serious are you?’ and he’d say, ‘Yes, you broke the contraction.’ I said, ‘I thought you just said to make the part my own.’ He said, ‘I know. But the script says can’t.’”
Such is life on set with a genius.
Brolin, however, does have what most people would consider the Woody Allen role in the film; the part Woody might have played if he was 30 years younger. As a novelist with writer’s block and a taste for women, the Roy has the bulk of the film’s funny lines and best scenes, but Brolin says he couldn’t play Allen if he tried.
“Woody and I both said, ‘I could never pretend to be you nor could you possibly pretend to be me.’ If there are two more opposite people on this planet it is me and Woody Allen. For various reasons; which is why I think we come together and work together as well as we do, because we have the same sensibilities. We just have different structures.”
Brolin, who has made two films with Allen, says when he watched You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, he wanted to slap Roy. “To me he is pathetic. He’s not the most redeeming character out there. The grass is greener on the other side and he is constantly looking over there for notoriety and fame and all that. It’s a strange character and when he asked me to play it, I was like, ‘Why? Why me?’ But I’m very happy I got to do it.”
You could be forgiven for thinking there is always a Woody Allen movie playing at your local theatre.
Since 1965 he has produced a stream of comedies, romances and dramas at the rate of about one a year.
To place his output in context, look at the film careers of two of his contemporaries; Mel Brooks has made only 12 films in the time it took Allen to direct 45 and Carl Reiner has only written seven pictures against Allen’s list of 49 (and counting).
His productivity is nothing short of amazing — his latest film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, is at TIFF this week — but he claims to make films only because, “I don’t know what else I would do with my time.
“I’ve made perfectly decent films,” he says, but admits, “some of them may be very good and some may be very bad. If I was the teacher, I’d give myself a B.” Here’s a look back at the films of one of the hardest working men in show business.
La-di-da
1977’s Oscar winning Annie Hall is Allen’s acknowledged masterpiece, a film Roger Ebert called “just about everyone’s favourite Woody Allen movie.” The story of neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer (Allen) and the ditsy title character (Diane Keaton) is a sweet and funny (“That sex was the most fun I’ve ever had without laughing.”) look at contemporary relationships.
Sex and death
Of all the themes Allen has covered, sex (“Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right.”) and death (“On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.”) are his go-to topics. Of all his sex and death films, the chaotic Sleeper is the funniest. Billed as his “nostalgic look at the future,” it is a satirical sci-fi set to a soundtrack of Dixieland jazz. Funniest scene? Allen trapped inside an Orgasmatron.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable
He says he never watches his own films because, “I think I would hate them,” and in fact, there is one, considered a classic by many, he has watched and says he can’t stand — Manhattan. “I hated that one,” he says. On the flip side he does concede to enjoying Purple Rose of Cairo, Match Point, Bullets Over Broadway, Zelig and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Long before I saw the Statue of Liberty in person I felt like a New Yorker. Woody Allen’s movies were my initiation and his romantic, idealized view of the Big Apple planted the seed for my longtime love of the city.
His latest film, Whatever Works, is the first of Allen’s films to be set in Manhattan in four years, and you get the sense he’s glad to be home. It’s his love letter to the city, showcasing only-in-New-York locations like Chinatown’s fish markets and the Yonah Schimmel Knishery (137 E. Houston St. near 1st Ave., 212-477-2858).
The movie will make you want to jump on a NYC-bound plane ASAP, which is exactly what I did.
There are no official Woody Allen tours of Manhattan, so I created my own daytrip to see Allen’s New York with my own eyes. With a good pair of runners, a map, a Metrocard (get a 1-Day Fun Pass for $7.50 US at MetroCard Vending Machines and neighborhood stores) and some determination you should be able to do this tour in about six hours.
The first stop serves a double purpose. The Dean & Deluca Café (560 Broadway at Prince St. in SoHo, 212-226-6800) is the perfect place to fuel up on coffee to get the day started — it’s also where Mia Farrow has lunch with the newly-single Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives.
Now that you’re in a caffeinated, New York state of mind, exit Soho for the funkier streets of Greenwich Village.
You’ll pass the former home of The Bleecker Street Cinema (144 Bleecker St.) — where Allen’s character takes his niece to see movies that will improve her mind in Crimes and Misdemeanors — on your way to his favorite pizza joint, John’s Pizzeria (278 Bleecker St. in Greenwich Village, 212-243-1680).
John’s Pizzeria is also the place where Allen and his much younger girlfriend, played by Mariel Hemingway, have the “in six months you’ll be a completely different person” conversation in 1979’s Manhattan.
Moving north, our next stop is in midtown. The Carnegie Deli (854 Seventh Ave. between 54th and 55th streets, 212-757-9889) is virtually unchanged since Woody shot much of Broadway Danny Rose here in 1984.
In fact it hasn’t changed much since it opened in 1937 and Henny Youngman was a regular.
Take some time to check out the autographed pictures of celebrities have eaten there, and if you have the appetite of three people order The Woody Allen — “Lotsa corned beef plus lotsa pastrami; for the dedicated fresser only!” says the menu, and it’s not kidding. There’s over a pound of meat between two slices of rye.
Next, walk off the sandwich with a jaunt to the The St. Regis-Sheraton Hotel (2 E. 55th St., 212-753-4500). Woody has used this location twice. This is where Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey carried on their covert love affair in Hannah and Her Sisters and, in Radio Days, the hotel’s King Cole Room (with its Maxfield Parrish Art Nouveau mural behind the bar) was the site of the swanky New Year’s celebration Joe Needleman listened to on the wireless.
The next stop is the location of one of Allen’s most iconic New York images. The poster for Manhattan showing Woody and Diane Keaton sitting in silhouette on a bench was shot at Riverview Terrace on Sutton Square, just beneath the 59th Street Bridge.
It looks a little different than it did in 1979. The bench is gone (stolen by Woody fans perhaps?) and the landscape is a little different but the view is still spectacular.
You’ve seen the movies and the sights, now catch a glimpse of the Wood-man in person. Allen and his clarinet have been blowing up a Dixieland storm on Monday nights (from September to June) at the Café Carlyle (35 E. 76th St. on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue, 212-744-1600) since 1996. Reservations and jackets are required and tickets ($100 for the show, dinner is extra) go quickly so book ahead for the toe-tapping fun.
Not quite as exclusive or as pricey is Elaine’s (1703 Second Ave. between E. 88th and E. 89th St., 212-534-8103), which restaurant writer A. E. Hotchner summed up with the words, “What Rick’s place was to Casablanca, Elaine’s is to New York.”
On film it’s the location of one of Allen’s most famous one-liners: In Manhattan, he’s at Elaine’s complaining about the difficulties of seeing a 17-year-old. “I’m dating a girl who does homework,” he says.
Off-screen, it’s one of his favorite restaurants. “I ate at Elaine’s every night for about 10 years,” he said. “I’ve eaten alongside everyone from Don King to Simone de Beauvoir. There was no celebrity that didn’t show up there.”
One of the celebrities who ate there was Mia Farrow, who asked Michael Caine to introduce her to Woody one night at the restaurant, thus beginning their long and tumultuous affair. Soak in that storied atmosphere for the price of an entrée.
The tour finishes up with a trip to Pomander Walk, (260-266 W. 95th St. through to 94th Street between Broadway and West End Avenue). This beautiful village — built to resemble the London stage set from a romantic 1910 play — is made up of 27 Tudor-style houses and is the location of the architectural tour Sam Waterston gives Dianne Wiest and Carrie Fisher in Hannah and Her Sisters.
You’ll have to peek through the gate (it’s locked to the public) but its Alice in Wonderland aura and the fact that Humphrey Bogart used to live there make it a must-see for movie fans.
By the tour’s end you’ll see why Isaac Davis, Woody Allen’s character in Manhattan, famously said, “This is really a great city. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s really a knockout, you know?”
For Woody Allen there is no place like home. After a protracted absence from his beloved Manhattan—the locale for his most famous films—Allen has set his latest, Whatever Works, in the Big Apple. Perhaps the change in location to Europe was as good as a rest for the filmmaker, or perhaps he is reinvigorated by shooting on the streets of New York again. Whatever the case, with Whatever Works, he has made the first true neurotic Woody Allen movie since 2002’s Hollywood Ending.
Larry David stars as Woody Allen, although his character’s name is Boris Yellnikoff, a brilliant but misanthropic man who lives in a state of constant pessimistic despair. Boris is so foul tempered, so out-of-step with humanity (or nattering microbes as he calls them) he makes the caustic character David plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm look positively cordial by comparison. When a homeless waif named Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) inserts herself into his life by moving into his walk-up apartment and treating him to homemade southern cooking, his world view softens, but only a touch.
Whatever Works feels like a throwback to the kind of observational films Allen made in the 1970s. His best work has always focused on the basics of life—love, morality, sex, religion and the randomness of the universe—and Whatever Works signals a welcome return of Allen’s trademarks after a series of entertaining, but fluffy films. Also at hand are Woody staples such as an old school jazz soundtrack (the film kicks off with Grouch Marx singing Hello, I Must be Going from the 1930 film Animal Crackers), the familiar Allen font in the credits and the even more familiar May – December romance storyline.
The acerbic heart of the film is Larry David, main character and fourth wall piercing narrator. It can’t be said that he brings a lot of charm to the movie, but that’s the point. It’s a rare actor who could pull off a line like “It’s true, I have been patient with your phenomenal ignorance,” and not completely alienate the audience but David has the disagreeable old coot routine down pat and knows that viewers will go along with him no matter how bumpy or uncomfortable the ride. My only complaint about the performance is that it seems so constrained. David is an improviser at heart and occasionally his long scripted to- camera monologues feel forced.
Balancing out the sour with the sweet is Evan Rachel Wood as the naïve Melody, a young former pageant queen from the Deep South. She hasn’t given many comic performances but here she is dimwitted perfection. Wood milks every laugh out of the script, particularly when she is regurgitating Boris’s high brow theories on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the like.
Whatever Works is only occasionally laugh out loud funny, but is a welcome return to his roots from Woody Allen. Call it How Woody Got His Groove Back if you like, but nobody else does jokes about ego and super ego with as much panache.
Clint Eastwood’s latest film, Hereafter, concerns itself with what happens once you have, as John Cleese might say, “shuffled off this mortal coil.”
In the film, a woman has a near death experience, beginning her walk into a bright light surrounded by misty figures making a similar journey into that great goodnight. That’s just the most recent cinematic vision of what happens after death, but there are many more, some played for laughs, sometimes for drama and now and then for comfort.
In Deconstructing Harry, Woody Allen goes for the joke, taking the viewer on an elevator ride through hell’s nine floors, each reserved for a different kind of sinner. Best line? “Floor 7: the media. Sorry, that floor is all filled up.”
Tim Burton also had some fun with the afterlife in Beetlejuice. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis get tips on how to haunt their old house in a book titled Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Best line? “We’re not completely helpless, Barbara,” says Adam (Baldwin). “I’ve been reading that book and there’s a word for people in our situation: ghosts.”
Taking the hereafter a bit more seriously is The Rapture, which sees Mimi Rogers almost reunited with her dearly departed daughter. This version of Heaven is much starker than the usual sweetness and light paradise seen on film; there’s no Pearly Gates or fluffy clouds with angels snacking on Philadelphia Cream Cheese. For that version check out the opening minutes of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. The story of a dead carnival worker who asks for permission to be sent back to earth for one day to make amends for mistakes he made in life starts with a glittering vision of heaven, complete with sparkling stars. Best heavenly quote? “Here there is no time; this is the beginning and the end.”
What Dreams May Come, the 1998 film about a man who leaves heaven to search hell for his wife paints heaven as a place that, as Roger Ebert noted, seems “cheerfully assembled from the storage rooms of images we keep in our minds: Renaissance art, the pre-Raphaelites, greeting cards, angel kitsch.” The heaven in this film is a wonderful place “big enough for everyone to have their own private universe.”
On the flipside is the movie’s vision of hell as a surreal, dark place. Best quote: “Hell is for those who don’t know they’re dead.”
Thanks to Sophie Sinemania for the cool portrait! I’m really excited that she took the time to draw me!
