Woody Allen
Interview By: Ray Dademo
Where, exactly, does Woody Allen's unique insight into the female psyche come from'
In the words of the master, himself: 'There was a time in my life when I could never write for women. I wrote everything for men ' and myself, really. It was only with the advent of my relationship with Diane Keaton that I was so in awe of her, that I started to write for her. By writing for her, I felt 'Gee, I can really write for women.' Then it got to be more fun than men. I feel that I've learned a great deal over the years, considering I couldn't do it at all when I started.'
Sure, we all love the Woody Allen character (even when it's played by John Cusack). He's bumbling, neurotic, endearing; an archetype that anchors most of the writer/director's filmography. Still it's Woody's women that provide the broadest spectrum of character variety. From film to film, it's certainly possible to spot similarities between the men, ('I never see it myself,' Woody claims) but the women are an entirely different matter.
Take for example this list of actresses who've reached career-defining heights in their work with Woody Allen: Dianne Wiest as the waifish sibling in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' and, later as the man-eating diva in 'Bullets Over Broadway;' Judy Davis playing wronged divorcees in 'Husbands and Wives' and 'Deconstructing Harry;' Mia Farrow breaking your heart in 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' and grating your ears in 'Broadway Danny Rose;' Geraldine Page and Elaine Stritch as the domineering mothers of 'Interiors' and 'September;' Elaine May and Mira Sorvino stealing scenes in 'Small Time Crooks' and 'Mighty Aphrodite.'
With the imminent release of 'Melinda and Melinda,' (Allen's thirty-sixth film as a director) we should be prepared to add Radha Mitchell's Melinda to that list of actresses. The film's structure demands two different versions of the Melinda character: one comedic and one tragic. This one-of-a-kind narrative is something Allen has been toying around with for a while.
'In the past,' Allen reflects, 'I've had ideas that I thought would make a funny comedy and also could be dramatic. I've always chose whether I'd write it as a comedy or a drama. If you take a movie for example like 'Another Woman,' which I wrote as a dramatic movie, the woman is listening next door and hears voices coming from the shrink's office and they turn out to be stuff about herself. But it could've also been funny. I could have been the guy who hears the shrink next door and looks out into the hall and sees the woman walk out and she's attractive and interesting and I know all about her...' ('Could have' probably isn't the best term here. This was the plot to Allen's own 'Everyone Says I Love You.')
'In this movie, a woman comes to a dinner party and unearths a whole story. I thought 'Gee, this could be very funny and romantic. She lives downstairs and the guy gets involved with her. Or, it could be very dramatic.' I thought I would do it as a single thing and I would learn something from the experiment. But, as it turned out, I learned nothing from doing the movie. It was fun to do it, but I was not enlightened. I came to no conclusions about anything.'
Despite a lack of illumination, 'Melinda and Melinda' provided Allen with more than a modicum of fun ' it also provided an insurance headache. 'My very first choice in this movie was Robert Downey, Jr. and Winona Ryder. I got both of them and then I found, at the time, that I was caught with some insurance problems. I felt this was grossly unfair to both of them ' it was almost like blacklisting. Terrible.'
Still, his inability to cast Downey and Ryder allowed Allen the chance to make two (hardly new) discoveries. 'I gradually got to discover Radha [Mitchell] and Will [Ferrell] was brought into more detail. I thought that he was very, very funny and thought that he could act different in it than Robert Downey would be. He certainly was. He brought things to it that are very, very different.'
It was, in fact, Ferrell's choices that gained him the Wood-man's admiration ' not his newly-minted box-office status. To an auteur like Allen, the domestic gross of a film is the furthest thing from his mind. 'I never think of who my audience is, because it's very small. I think it spans all ages but in minuscule amounts. I know I have some young people who see my movies, because they're always writing me, and older people as well. But when you add them together, it's such a small number. Even at my most popular, I could never identify who they were.'
'Melinda and Melinda's' 2005 release coincides with Allen's seventieth birthday, a occasion he is not exactly looking forward to. 'It does [scare me]. Not that age. Any age. It scared me when I turned thirty and forty and fifty. The so-called 'milestone birthdays' have a drama to them ' they have a round number zero next to the digit. I hate the thought of getting older and then the inevitable...facing decay...death.'
It's a marvel that a man of Allen's age can continue to write vibrant, arresting characters for young actresses like Radha Mitchell. Perhaps it has something to do with his marriage to 35 year-old Soon-Yi Previn. 'Yes. Yes, that is an interesting experience. It's interesting being married to someone who is considerably younger than me because there are things that I know just from sheer chronology that she's just not aware of and didn't live through. On the other hand she has a perspective on things that's very youthful 'that I don't have, you know' Because I will be seventy in December. So, it's an interesting kind of chemistry for me...and her.'
'Melinda and Melinda' stands as a testament to the longevity of Allen's career. In an era where our greatest directors are churning out epics every few years, Woody Allen continues to write, direct and occasionally star in one film per year. The high level of excellence his work has maintained (with a few creative pitfalls along the way) says something about the man, himself. For Woody Allen, movies are not an extension of life, but rather life itself.
As he puts it: 'Sometimes I get the fantasy that if I retired and just spent my days doing nothing I would be happy. Just getting up in the morning and walking the streets and having lunch and watching a movie. Then I get a couple of days off and I do that. Then, I'm antsy to get back. I feel that I'd probably die in the saddle, so to speak ' working like Bunuel, working till I drop.'
RayDademo@TheCinemaSource.com
