Вуди Аллен: Apropos of Nothing

Incidentally, Leslee Dart, a press agent at the top of her profession, handled my publicity for decades. She didn’t know what she was signing on for when she threw her lot in with me, thinking it would be all setting up interviews and promoting my films. She hadn’t counted on me falling in love with a woman thirty-five years younger who happened to be my girlfriend’s daughter. It’s kept her on her toes from the moment the happy news hit the fan, and she recently made a comment to friends about the privilege of handling my press and something about an early grave.

Anyhow, Blue Jasmine came and went, and I got to work with Alec Baldwin again, Sally Hawkins, and the first of the two great Cates or Kates. My life is going forward, Soon-Yi remained a constant delight, my kids keep growing up, and while I try and help them with their homework, I remind them I got a ninety-eight in algebra only if you add three of my test scores together. So summer comes and I take the Allen family to the South of France and experience for the first time the magic of Emma Stone.

Put simply, Emma has it all. She’s not just beautiful, she’s beautiful in an interesting way, which makes her fun to look at, which makes her a true movie star. Plus not only can she act but she can work the whole spectrum. She’s authentically funny and a fine dramatic actress. She’s one of the only people I spent a lot of time talking to around the set. And that’s because she’s extra charming and we had a lot of laughs together. She taught me to text, and after the movie ended we texted a lot back and forth. I was always teasing her, she was always topping me. When people ask about moviemaking and I try to make clear it’s not the money, it’s not the acclaim, the notices, the awards; all dross, or make that chaff. I constantly reiterate it’s only the making of the movie that counts. You create, you bring your creation to life, and I wake up early in the morning in the South of France and there to greet me and work with me all day is someone like Emma Stone. It does wonders for your metabolism. And Colin Firth was so urbane and gifted, and Eileen Atkins, Simon McBurney, and the hilarious Jacki Weaver.

It was another film of mine that had magic in the plot. A perceptive critic wrote a book many years ago on the recurring theme of magic in my films. History has since borne her out. It seems to me the only hope for mankind lies in magic. I have always hated reality, but it’s the only place you can get good chicken wings. Because the South of France was so sunny and rough on photography, we shot early morning, waited all day, and resumed at about six at night. The picture took longer to complete and it cost more, but the investors don’t mind as long as I’m artistically fulfilled—and if you believe that, I have this bridge you may want to buy.

My next movie was a movie about philosophy. Irrational Man , which I shot in Rhode Island, didn’t make much at the box office. Don’t know why. It seemed an interesting commercial murder story, and Emma Stone was her delightful self opposite the brilliant Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin is a lovely guy with, shall we say, an offbeat personality. He’s very professional, very likable, and all you have to do is check out his movies over the years to know he’s an amazing actor. To Emma’s credit, in the most dramatic scenes, she matches him passion for passion. I was surprised at the small turnout to see it. One good thing about a movie is that it’s a tangible hunk of celluloid that exists and always has a chance to be seen by those who missed it. It can someday be embraced as a neglected or misunderstood masterpiece. Naturally, this has never happened to me. Movies of mine that opened and I felt were misunderstood or neglected remained so, although one or two successes might’ve been reevaluated and deemed overpraised. An added pleasure in making Irrational Man was I got to spend a summer in Newport, as delightful a spot as one could imagine. My family lived in a huge rented house, and Soon-Yi cooked several dinners for people working on the film, taking advantage of the big kitchen and good food available. I carp when I called her cooking a hate crime, as there are certain dishes she can handle. Let me put it this way: If you like spaghetti with a can of tomato sauce poured over it three times a day, she can be your chef. The weather was delightful, given it was summer and I could see why all the turn-of-the-century nabobs chose Newport to park their yachts.

In thinking back over two movies with Emma and how our frequent texting waned to pretty much zero contact, I wondered if it was the soft-boiled eggs affair that cooled her on me. We had been chatting, and somehow the subject had gotten ’round to soft-boiled eggs. I told Emma I took mine this way: I filled an ordinary coffee cup halfway with Rice Krispies. Next I boiled two eggs for three and a half minutes, removed them from the pot and cracked them, depositing the contents into the cup of krispies. I added salt and stirred till it formed a thick though not too thick mixture. Then I ate it with a teaspoon while it was hot. Emma couldn’t believe her ears and found it absurd I should regard such a concoction fit for human consumption. Relations between us cooled rather rapidly after that, and while out of politeness she reluctantly agreed to give it a try, my guess is she never did.

Eventually the texting between us stopped. Years later when I ran into a mutual friend and wondered if Emma had said anything, the person laughed and said, “Oh poor boy, don’t you know it was the soft-boiled egg business. It’s a touchy area within her life.” Pity. I have only fond memories of her.

One weekend in the South of France, Soon-Yi and I had lunch with our friend Larry Gagosian. Soon-Yi used to work at Larry’s gallery, after she’d just gotten out of school. Anyhow, we’re chatting and Larry happens to mention that he spoke recently with Roman Polanski, who is planning a film next year in Prague. Larry and Roman are very good friends, and do I know him? Yes, I know him, but I haven’t seen him in forty years. The last social moments I spent with him were when he and Sharon Tate and me and Charlie Joffe and Vic Lownes went to the prize fights in London to see Muhammad Ali batter a game Henry Cooper. Larry says, We’re leaving France today but we’ll be back in several weeks. Why don’t we have dinner with Roman Polanski? Fine, I say, confident that like all social plans I agree to, the day will never come and as much as I like the people involved, I invariably will want to stay home at the moment of truth. We finish our dessert, say good-bye. Now cut to three weeks later. Gagosian sails back to town and calls. Would Soon-Yi and I like to come to a little dinner at Roman’s house? Soon-Yi, eager as always to attend a social event, is already laying out her wardrobe ensemble. Okay, I figure, I haven’t seen Roman in decades, he’s a wonderful filmmaker, we can talk about movies, reminisce about our times in London in the sixties, what could be bad? Only that the day comes and I’m instantly socially ill at ease, but I suck it up. Naturally, as a director, I feel inferior to Roman and that doesn’t help. Now we drive up to his house in Cap d’Antibes, and I must admit it’s a knockout. Large, beautiful, majestically imposing on lush grounds overlooking the Mediterranean. Soon-Yi says to me as servants surrounded our car, “Just how strong were the grosses on Rosemary’s Baby ?” This type of spread couldn’t have just come from a big box office, I assured her, he must’ve invested shrewdly. Soon-Yi gets me through my entering phobia, and presently a very beautiful woman comes to greet us.

“Hi,” she says, “I’m Roman’s wife.” Now, I saw the movie where they met, so I remembered her as very beautiful. “Roman will be right down,” she says, “Champagne?” Fighting my natural awkwardness, I overcompensate and take the stage too aggressively, launching into a stream of nervous babble. “I go back a long time with Roman,” I say (all I needed was a cigar). “Really?” the sexy wife says. “Yes, we have some shared memories in London that I wouldn’t trade for anything,” I bombinate, ass that I am. Now we are joined by a few others and I wasn’t sure from my erratic hearing aids, tremulous ganglia, and genetic stupidity, but I thought I heard the name Roman. Soon-Yi, who never met him, didn’t know what he looked like and extended her hand and said, “How do you do?” The conversation among the group turned to some other topic like yachts or private aircraft. Meanwhile, the distaff side is nudging me and giving me the sotto voce wise-up, “That’s Roman Polanski, you’re being creepy to an old friend.” “That’s not Roman Polanski,” I inform her out of the side of my mouth like a racetrack tout. “Yes it is,” she says, giving me the patented wife-husband covert pinch. “Don’t tell me, I’ve known Roman fifty years.” “His wife just introduced him. You didn’t catch it because you’re deaf as Beethoven.” “That’s not Roman Polanski,” I assured her. “Don’t embarrass me,” she says.