There are some legendary directors whose films have made a profound impact on American culture, but in Woody Allen’s case, his legacy stretches beyond merely his films. His archetypal neurotic, self-deprecating, upper-crust intellectual persona, that is a hallmark of many of his classic films like Manhattan, Bullets Over Broadway, Deconstructing Harry, Crimes And Misdemeanors and the Oscar-winning Annie Hall and Hannah And Her Sisters, has become just as much a part of American pop culture as the films themselves.
After several years of European-set films like Match Point and the Oscar-winning Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Allen has returned home to New York City for his latest comedy Whatever Works. We quickly learned from the now 73 year-old writer, director, and actor that his European swing was not one of his own choosing.
“That’s strictly a function of finance,” Woody explains, “It’s very expensive to make movies in New York. I work on a very low budget and I can’t afford to do it. I’d like to do it. I’d like to make more movies in New York, because I live here and I love it, but surprisingly, New York and California, which is the film center of the United States theoretically, is too expensive. It just costs a fortune of money. I was going to make my next film in New York and I couldn’t afford to. It was millions of dollars short if I made it in New York. So I thought maybe I’d make it in San Francisco because that’s also a very good city, but I couldn’t afford to make it in San Francisco either because that was too expensive.”
“So we shifted it to London, made the cast British, just like we had with Match Point,” he continues, “I had written that for New York and the Hamptons and Palm Beach. I had written that as an American story and I Anglicized it because to make that in New York was a fortune of money. The same thing with the film I’m going to do next, to make the film in New York would be a lot of money. I can’t afford it, but I can afford to do it in London. And I would love very much to make more new films in New York because I love the city and I love being here and it’s just a question of being able to afford it. If I happen to write a film that budgets within my limited budget, I’d certainly make it here.”
Woody goes on to add that some of the places he had to go to film movies required him to creatively adapt his comedic sensibilities for the surrounding culture.
“The sensibility’s the same certainly in a city like London,” he says, “I mean, really that’s just another version of New York. Barcelona was a little bit different. I wasn’t as familiar with Barcelona, so I had to write with some of the characters speaking in Spanish and that did have influence on the context of the script.”
“In this case, fortuitously, it had a good influence, but it could have a bad influence just as easily,” Allen adds, “So my first instinct is to go to London, because they speak English and it’s a city with restaurants and bookstores and traffic. I can feel it there. But I’d just as soon make it in New York if I could do it.”
Whatever Works was actually a project Allen had wanted to do since the late 1970’s, but was compelled to shelve it after the death of actor Zero Mostel, who he had initially designed the film as a starring vehicle for. He explained how a chance occurrence of coming across the long-shelved script compelled him to revive the idea as a vehicle for Curb Your Enthusiasm creator and star Larry David.
“This is not a part that I could have played even if I was younger,” he believes, “I could not have played this part because I originally conceived this thing many years ago for Zero Mostel and Larry is able to do this kind of sardonic, sarcastic, vitriolic humor and get away with it because there’s something obviously built into him that audiences like. They like it. They don’t feel…Groucho Marx had this. They were never offended by Groucho. They were offended if they didn’t insult him, he told me once. And Larry has this thing that he can get away with that. If I was to do that. I wouldn’t be as graceful at it and I’d think I was nasty if I was insulting people and proclaiming my own genius and saying that I was, that people were cretins.”
“You would not like me, but certain people can get away with it and he’s one that can,” Woody adds, “But it’s not something that I would ever do, because when Zero died, I never thought for one minute that of doing the part myself, I never thought that a good script here, maybe I can handle this. I never thought that. I put it in a drawer and if it was not for a possible, imminent actors’ strike, I would have never have taken it out of the drawer even to look at. And I was trying to think of who can do this and it never would have even occurred to me that I could do it. And then, Juliet Taylor, my casting director, thought that Larry could do it and I agreed completely that it would be like mother’s milk to him.”
However, Woody notes that while the bulk of the film was relatively left intact from the original script, he said it took a lot of work to update the script by rewriting it.
“It took work,” Allen explains, “The original story, what intrigued me about it originally was that Zero was this big, fat, blustery, self-aggrandizing, while Zero in real life was so cultivated, he knew everything about art and literature and science and music and he was always sharing this knowledge with you from a justifiably superior position and I thought it was very funny to be around him. I was around him when we made The Front and he was always carrying on and lecturing. And I always thought it would be very funny that he’s living with this runaway, this dumb little runaway from the South.”
“And then suddenly, this mother shows up and suddenly, she hates everything about him and cannot stand him,” he continues, “And then, her father shows up and it seemed that original material all remained the same, but the references and the concerns of the picture, the existential references remained the same. Those would never change anyhow. So the character was mortally afraid of dying and hypochondriacal and washing his hands. But the social and political things, many of them had to be changed and freshened up to contemporary, social patois.”
We wondered though if Allen had to change any of the film to jibe with Larry David’s fairly distinctive comedic sensibilities.
“I didn’t rewrite anything for Larry,” he says, “When I took the script out of the drawer, I did have to rewrite the script because it had been laying there for a long time dormant, sort of. I had to freshen it up and jazz it up a little bit to make it more contemporary, but I never changed it for Larry. Larry seemed to just fit it like a glove as soon as Juliet Taylor said Larry David. It was like a light went up and it seemed, yes, of course, Larry did.”
One particularly telling scene in Whatever Works is when Boris tries to overcome a panic attack by watching Fred Astaire films. We asked Woody how he himself deals with that.
“I do exactly that kind of thing, turn on something on television,” Allen says, “For me, it would probably be a ballgame or something, something that’s calming, when there’s no sense of conflict. If I was to turn on a movie, I’d be full of self-loathing and think, oh, God, I make these movies and there’s so many great ones, and I couldn’t do that. But I could turn on a ballgame and it would just be very placid.”
We mentioned to Allen Larry David’s response to this same question by saying that he “embraces panic”.
“It’s perfect casting,” he simply responds.
Playing the young Southerner Melodie St. Claire that Larry David’s character Boris Yelnikoff encounters in the film is actress Evan Rachel Wood, whose received critical accolades for her performances in films like Thirteen and Running With Scissors. Woody recounted how he came to cast the young actress for the film.
“Evan, I had seen very briefly in some things and obviously, I say this even without her with me, she was great, and I thought, God, this girl is wonderful,” he recalls, “I didn’t know she could do a Southern accent. She said to me, yes, I can do one, but she didn’t want to do it and show me and I just assumed, look, I’ve seen her in other movies and she’s not going to take the job and make a fool of herself. And when she came to the set, the first time I heard the accent she was doing was when we shot her.”
“I never heard it in the rehearsal,” Allen continues, “There was no rehearsal. I never heard it in conversation or at the wardrobe test and she just came and did it and Ed Begley, Jr. didn’t even know that she was supposed to be doing a scene in a Southern accent. And I told him and he was surprised and I got panicky for a moment and then he said, oh, OK, and he made some kind of little mental adjustment and then, he was just great.”
Allen also talked to us about his fairly hands-off approach to directing actors.
“Well, people have always asked me over the years about performances in my movies and they think I’m being facetious when I say this,” Allen explains, “But I’m not, but I hire great people and then, I get out of their way and let them do…they were great before, they were great in my movie, and they were great in the movies after me. I just don’t want to mess them up, but I hire them and then tell them that they are free to go if they are doing something that I notice that’s egregiously wrong for some reason that very rarely happens.”
“It happens but it happens very rarely,” he adds, “So I’ll say something to them and I’ll say this needs to be a little more grim or this needs to be a little bit more quieter or something, but that’s it. And if you hire good people, then they read the script, they understand it, they get it, that’s why they take the job, and they do it. And afterwards, you look great as a director and the actors, but the truth is if you hire the right people, that’s 99%.”
With an approach like that, we fooled around with the notion of whether that meant Allen, who’s had a history for having never attended the Oscars anytime he’s ever been nominated or acknowledging them, is aloof when any of his actors receive Oscars for his films, like most recently with Penelope Cruz, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
“I wouldn’t feel aloof of it,” he replies, “Aloof is feeling above or superior to it. No, I don’t feel that. But I don’t feel that their getting this Oscar is because I brought out something in them that no one else could or that wasn’t in them. They basically get the Oscar because they’re good. I mean, when Penelope Cruz gets an Oscar or Dianne Wiest or Diane Keaton, it’s because they’re great. I do feel a modicum of contribution in that I supply them with a role, with a role they can spread their wings and show themselves off in. But in terms of…they’re not getting that Oscar because I sat them in the room and drilled their character into them or tricked them in the role in different ways.”
“You read [Elia] Kazan’s biography and take James Dean on the motorcycle and you see if his life would be in his car, they somehow get these performances,” Woody continues, “I can’t do that. I don’t even talk to them. I try not to talk to them as much as possible and then, they do what they do and they’re usually very good at it. So I don’t feel aloof. I do feel I’ve made a contribution in giving them a part that they could show themselves off in. But believe me, I don’t overdirect them. They’re getting those Oscars because of who they are. Penelope Cruz was sensational in the [Pedro] Almodovar film before my film and Michael Caine was sensational in Educating Rita, the film he did before my film. He didn’t deserve it necessarily for my film and I think they were paying him off for not giving the one in that. He’s great, but I don’t feel aloof about that.”
With such a deep connection to New York City, we asked the Brooklyn native to share with us the fond memories he’s had of growing up there.
“My memories of New York are unrealistic,” Allen replies, “The New York I grew up loving ironically enough was the New York of Hollywood movies where people would live in penthouses with white telephones and come home at five in the morning with Armin draped over their shoulders and this was the New York that I knew. I never knew New York. I grew up in Brooklyn, not that far from Larry, and I never New York as it really existed. For that, you have to speak to Spike Lee or Martin Scorsese.”
“I only knew New York the way it appeared,” he adds, “You know, with people popping champagne corks and dressing in tuxedos and making very witty banter and elevators rising into the apartments directly and so that’s the New York I have depicted in my life and that’s the way I’ve tried to live my life and it’s caused me a lot of grief.”
We wondered as well, considering the increasing trend of films being adapted for the stage on Broadway, a legendary New York City fixture, we asked the longtime independent filmmaker whether he himself would ever consider letting any of his legendary film be adapted for Broadway.
“Well, I myself would have no interest in that whatsoever, none,” Woody states, “Producers call all the time and they wanted to make Bullets Over Broadway into a musical and The Purple Rose Of Cairo into a musical and they do propose these things. And I don’t care and if they want to make some deal, they can, but I have no interest in it. I have no interest in writing it, seeing it, knowing about it, you know. It’s just something that would not interest me at all, but some of them would make good musicals in the right hands.”
“The books of some of those things would make potentially good musicals,” he adds, “The odds of bringing it off are hugely against it. The odds of doing a good musical, even if you have a book that’s viable to begin with, the odds are not in your favor. But what probably happens is they get the rights to one of my movies and make it into a musical and it would be a terrible musical and everyone would be angry at me, you know.”
Woody’s comedy has made an impact on the American cultural landscape, particularly among the Jewish community. However, as we talked about how the landscape of American comedy has changed over time, he himself dismisses the stereotypical notions that his distinctive brand of humor is purely appealing to the Jewish community or that Jewish people in general dominate the world of American comedy.
“First of all, I’m not a believer in the sense that Jews have a monopoly over everything on comedy,” he states, “I believe they made a contribution, for sure, but Bob Hope was not Jewish, Buster Keaton was not Jewish, W.C. Fields was not Jewish, Jonathan Winters is not Jewish. You can go on…Robin Williams, these people are not Jewish and they’re hilariously funny, and so, much has been made of this as having an ethnic focus. And I agree with Larry, he put it very simply but right on the nose, that it’s a question of just being funny. Some people are funny and some are not funny. Many people who are not funny can make a living at it because you don’t have to be great to make a living at it, just like a doctor, he doesn’t have to be great, he could make a living out of it, and a lawyer doesn’t have to be…So the same with comedians.”
“In the end, to really be wonderful at it, you got to be funny and in every generation, there are a few people that are authentically funny. The cosmetics change,” he continues, “W.C. Fields is totally different than Mort Saul, Mort Sahl was great and he was totally different than Jonathan Winters. who was great, and Nicholson Mey was completely different than Larry. They’re all great because they’re all authentically funny. The ones that are not authentically funny, you know, your body knows, you may not be able to articulate it, and you may laugh at them and you may get a certain amount of enjoyment. But when you’re asleep at night and you wake up at three in the morning and you’re alone in your bed, you know who’s really funny and that’s what it is. Some people are and some people aren’t, but it doesn’t have to do with ethnicity though.”
Finally, we asked Woody whether he feels he’s gotten better as a writer and a filmmaker in a career that now spans nearly 45 years and nearly 40 films and his reply, just like much of everything else in his career was nothing short of vintage Woody.
“Marginally, I have gotten better. It’s true,” Allen says, “You can only get better marginally because it’s not an exact science. So every time you make a movie, I’ve now made about forty movies, every time you make one, it’s a new and different experience, but you learn very little from the past, very, very little. So I’m a little bit better than I was when I first started. I was very protective. I made a lot of coverage and covered myself a lot, but I got more confident and was able to let actors improvise and do long takes. And it’s 10%, 5% you learn and experience and the rest, you have or you don’t have. But I was lucky enough to be able to have enough to tell my stories, but I’m not much better I was.”
”I’m much better than I was when I made Take The Money And Run, but I’m not much better than I was when I made Annie Hall or around that era,” he continues, “I learned very little after that. The only thing that changes to some degree is that you have life experiences and you suffer a certain amount and you incorporate that into your work, not in the content of your work, but the sensibility of your work. And it’s nothing that you try and do, it happens, and if you’re lucky, people buy tickets to see it and if you’re not lucky, they don’t like it, but that’s all. There’s been a marginal increase in my technique and very little else good.”
