Вуди Аллен: Apropos of Nothing

Even under ideal circumstances, making a decent film is an endless series of land mines. When presented with additional obstacles, the goal posts are pushed way, way back. Apart from my usual small budget, there was, as I described, a paucity of actors willing to throw their lot in with a toxic personality. Fortunately, Wally was not among them. Still, I was filming in Spain, and the Spanish tax laws required me to use a large percentage of actors from the EU. While so many of them are wonderful, few speak good enough English to nail the one-liners like the guys at Lindy’s. Then there was the fact I was up to my neck in a lawsuit against Amazon, plus the press was constantly writing about me as though I was actually guilty of something. To quote the usually reasonable and level-headed New York Times , I was “a monster.” Somewhere, Kafka was smiling. Anyhow, with so many bars in the saddle, can a decent race be run? Meaning, can a maligned, distracted director, no Bergman to begin with, with so much stacked against him, turn out an enjoyable movie? Suddenly, the challenge of making the film became more exciting. So how will Rifkin’s Festival , my project in Spain, turn out? Who knows? But I do know it was fun to do and great to hear Wally say my lines. The lesson here, I suppose, is that some men can thrive under pressure. I, of course, am not one of them, and if the movie turns out well, it will be a miracle.

And will the films of my “golden years” now play everywhere but the nation in which I am an honest, upright, tax-evading citizen? Who knows? Who cares? Not I and certainly not audiences with plenty of other fine movies to entertain them.

And so summer came, and I went with my jazz band all over Europe and played to lovely audiences everywhere. The turnouts were huge. Don’t ask me why because I have no answer. It’s New Orleans music, and over the years I haven’t improved. Still thousands come to hear us night after night, and we can’t get offstage. If anyone had told me, one day I’d be standing before eight thousand fans playing the “Muskrat Ramble,” I would have doubted their sanity. Then I moved on to Milan where I directed an opera, or should I say, I restaged the Puccini work I had done successfully for the Los Angeles Opera. Again, if anyone had told me when I was hitting a Spaldeen two sewers in Flatbush that I’d be at La Scala taking a bow having staged Puccini, I would have put him in the same hat factory as the guy who told me I’d be playing “Muskrat Ramble.” Next day it was off to San Sebastian for a few months to make a movie, and work in that mini paradise with Wally, Gina Gershon, Elena Anaya, and Louis Garrel till Labor Day. Both of my daughters worked on the film, and Soon-Yi went hiking and sightseeing all over, every day, in temperatures that average seventy-two degrees all summer. Meanwhile Rainy Day has opened quite successfully all over Europe and South America, soon to play the Far East and spurring a demand for the movie in the United States as intense as when the Edsel was unveiled. Soon-Yi, the kids, and I flew back to the delightful Bristol Hotel in Paris and hit those rues and boulevards like Americans in a musical. Actually, my loved ones hit the rues. I stayed in the hotel doing publicity for Rainy Day .

So what else can I say about writing this book? A book as essential to the reading public as Amanda McKittrick Ros’s masterpiece Irene Iddesleigh or Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm . I regret I had to devote so much space to the false accusation against me, but the whole situation was grist for the writers’ mill and added a fascinating element of drama to a life otherwise pretty routine. To a guy whose high point of the day is his walk on the Upper East Side, a lurid tabloid scandal certainly gets the adrenaline going. I agree with what Francine du Plessix Gray wrote when she interviewed me years ago: “There are no great Woody Allen stories.”

To me, the best parts upon proofreading the galleys were my romantic adventures and writing about the wonderful women I was passionately smitten with. I have included all that was of interest about my career, which ran too smoothly to produce many sparkling anecdotes. I did not include technical details about my filmmaking because I find them a bore and don’t know any more about lighting and photography now than when I started, as I was never curious enough to learn. I do know you have to remove the lens cap from the camera before you film something, but there my technical expertise ends. When I direct, I know what I want, or more important, I know what I don’t want.

For students of cinema, I have nothing of value to offer. My filming habits are lazy, undisciplined, the technique of a failed, ejected film major. As for writing, for those interested, I rise and after breakfast, work in longhand on yellow pads lying across my bed. I work all day and usually work at least part of every day of the week. This is not because I’m a workaholic but because work keeps me from facing the world, one of my least favorite venues. I go to my drawer to fish out notes I’ve accumulated throughout the year with ideas. If none of these ideas pan out after I think them through, then I force myself to think of a story to write, even if it takes weeks. It’s the worst part of the process as it entails me sitting or pacing in my room alone day after day, trying to focus my concentration and not get sidetracked thinking of sex and death. Eventually, an inspiration comes, or more likely I settle for some workable premise, figuring I better shape up because baby needs a new pair of shoes.

I like writing more than shooting because shooting is hard, physical work in hot and cold weather at ungodly hours and requires a million decisions on subjects I know little about. Suddenly, I have to call the shots on camera angles and tempos and women’s fashions and hairstyles and house furnishings and automobiles and music and colors. Not to mention that the meter is always running once filming begins, and at approximately a hundred or a hundred fifty thou a day, so if you fall behind a week, you’ve dropped a half million bucks. When the shooting finally ends, people you’ve worked day and night with intensely for months instantly go off in all directions, feeling sad and empty and vowing unending love and the desire to work together again. I usually say good-bye to the cast by shaking hands rather than the flashier kiss on the cheek or pretentious foreign double-cheek kiss. By the next morning, all the emotion and closeness has evaporated, and ones are already bad-mouthing certain others.

I enjoy sitting with my editor and gluing the cuts together, and mostly I enjoy picking out records from the collection and dropping them in, allowing the music to make the film look so much better than it really is. I like making movies, but if I never made another one it would not bother me. I’m happy to write plays. If no one would produce them, I’m happy to write books. If no one would publish them, I’m happy to write for myself, confident that if the writing is good, it will someday be discovered and read by people, and if it is bad writing, better no one sees it. Whatever happens to my work when I’m gone is totally irrelevant to me. After I’m dead, I suspect very little will get on my nerves, even that annoying noise the neighbors make with their leaf blower. The fun for me was always in the doing, and I was well paid and worked around gifted, charismatic men and gifted, beautiful women. I was lucky to have a sense of humor, or I would’ve wound up in some odd occupation like Fake Mourner or Circus Geek. I consider myself primarily a writer and that’s a blessing, as a writer is never dependent on being hired to work but generates his own work and chooses his hours. Sometimes I think it would be fun to get up onstage and do stand-up comedy again, but then the thought of it fades.