Woody Allen: A Documentary - Part Two imagine...

You're about to see the second part of Robert Weide's

absorbing documentary on Allan Stewart Konigsberg,

better known to you and I as Woody Allen.

Picking up in the early '80s,

tonight's film explorers Allen's later career,

from the magical Purple Rose Of Cairo

to his most recent forays here in Europe,

including his biggest commercial success to date -

2011's Midnight In Paris, which picked up the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

There have been hits and misses along the way.

Weide's film probes both a creative and a personal life

that has captured hearts and minds and headlines

across the past six decades,

to reveal the often elusive man behind the glasses.

This programme contains some strong language

We're so used to conceiving of Woody Allen as a New York filmmaker

that it's actually come as quite a shock

to find him making films in England or in Spain,

but the truth is he's still the same filmmaker.

I mean, he was a metropolitan filmmaker

and he's become a cosmopolitan filmmaker.

He's still Woody Allen, but he's just changed -politans.

The inspiration of London for Match Point,

of Barcelona for Vicky Cristina Barcelona,

of Paris for Midnight In Paris,

and his next film will be set in Rome,

I think these are providing a wonderful way

for Woody Allen to recharge his cinematic batteries.

For example, we think we've seen everything of Paris onscreen, probably, by now,

and maybe we have,

but, in Midnight In Paris, it's the nocturnal city

that obviously animates not only the character Gil,

but Woody Allen's imagination.

It's those winding, dark streets,

this geographical or spatial dislocation

that creates the time warp in Midnight In Paris.

In other words, it comes from the place

that, suddenly, we're transported to the 1920s.

Oh, hi, Mr Hemingway.

The assignment was to take the hill.

There were four of us, five, if you counted Vicente,

but he had lost his hand when a grenade went off

and couldn't fight as he could when I first met him.

And he was young and brave and the hill was soggy

from days of rain, and it sloped down toward a road,

and there were many German soldiers on the road.

And the idea was to aim for the first group and,

if our aim was true, we could delay them.

Were you scared?

Of what?

Getting killed.

You'll never write well if you fear dying.

-Do you?

-Yeah, I do.

I'd say it's probably my greatest fear, actually.

Well, it's something all men before you have done, all men will do.

I know, I know.

Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?

Actually, my fiancee is pretty sexy.

And when you make love to her, you feel true and beautiful passion

and you, for at least that moment, lose your fear of death.

No, that doesn't happen.

The very geography of the world

is inspiring Woody Allen in this phase of his career,

much like New York City inspired his first 25, 30 years.

He said, you know, one of the good things

about leaving New York is that he shot

just about every street corner that he could.

He came to the point where, suddenly,

it became more difficult to make films in New York

because they're so expensive to do

and he was getting money to go abroad to do it.

But I think, in the end, the films are the films,

the stories are the stories.

So, instead of from Long Island, people came from London.

I forgot to tell you that Sidney Zion died.

-Who? What?

-Sidney Zion.

Oh, Sidney Zion died? Oh!

And Gwathmey.

Charlie Gwathmey died?

Yes, he had esophageal cancer.

Really?

Yes, so that's my news of the day.

Oh, my God. Really?

One after the other, the deaths have just been

mounting up. It's awful.

Well, there were always all those deaths,

these just happen to be people you know.

It's not like there was ever a lull in the number of deaths.

I know them all.

I don't do any preparation.

I don't do any rehearsals.

Most of the times, I don't even know what we're going to shoot.

When I come, they hand me the couple of pages,

the material that we're going to do for the day,

and I see what it is that I'm in for.

You know, cos I don't read the script after I'm finished with it and I rewrite it.

I don't read it again

because it gets stale to me and I start to hate it.

He has a great feeling for staging.

You have to know where the camera should be

in order to tell what the scene is about

and he has a great feeling about where the camera should be

and then what part of the set you want to see.

He doesn't like tricks,

he doesn't like effects, he doesn't use gadgets.

He likes collaborators around him.

You know, it's just one word,

actually, I would say, it's simplicity.

He is a director who believes in the written word.

It's not rocket science. This is not quantum physics.

If you're the writer of the story,

you know what you want the audience to see

because you've written it.

It's just storytelling, and you tell it.

There's no big deal to it.

MUSIC: Stompin' At The Savoy

One night, we were in Trader Vic's

and we uncharacteristically started talking about the future.

He used the phrase I have endless ideas for movies

and I remember it felt like the earth moved.

I just thought, it would take me a year

to have one idea about a movie,

And he's able to think of making one or two or three or... Many?

I might even have thought, somewhat condescendingly,

Well, he may find out that it's not all that easy.

This is my collection.

This is how I'll start,

and there's all kinds of scraps

and things that are written on hotel things

and I'll, you know, ponder these things.

I'll pull these out and I'll dump them here like this.

I go through this all the time,

every time I start a project.

And I sit here like this and I'll look at -

oh, don't like that.

Right.

No.

MAN: Read me one note off of one piece of paper.

A note here would be

a man inherits all the magic tricks

of a great magician.

Now, that's all I have there, but I could see, you know,

a story forming where some little jerk like myself,

at an auction or at some opportunity,

buys all those illusions and, you know,

boxes and guillotines and things,

and... Leading me to some kind of interesting adventure -

going into one of those boxes and maybe suddenly showing up

in a different timeframe or in a different country

or in a different place altogether,

or, you know, some kind of thing.

And, you know, I'll spend an hour thinking of that,

and it'll go no place and then I'll go on to the next one.

If he has an idea - and he has a lot of ideas -

if he has an idea and he starts to write it,

and it seems like it's going to work out,

the writing of it doesn't take him very long.

I've never seen anybody write so fast

and perhaps that explains, to a large extent,

why he's made so many films.

If you want to compare Woody Allen, in the realm of productivity,

you actually have to reach back an era.

You have to reach back to the 1930s,

when John Ford and Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh

and guys like that were making more than one film a year.

They we're doing it under the studio system.

They were basically part of the dream factory.

Now, Woody Allen is doing a film a year,

and writing a film a year, for 40 years.

That's unheard of.

That's almost without precedent, except for Ingmar Bergman.

Who the hell is good for 20 years?

This guy's been good for 40 years.

Who's good for ten years?

Five years?

He's kind of peerless.

The closest figure to Woody Allen would be Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth led the American League

with 54 home runs one year. The next guy had 13.

Not everybody has the staying power,

not everybody has the tenacity,

and not everybody has so much to say about life continually.

So, from a purely endurance point of view,

longevity and quantity

is an achievement, yes, but not the valuable one.

The achievement that I'm going for is

to try and make a great film,

and that has eluded me over the decades.

LEONARD MALTIN: After a pretty amazing ten-year run

of building goodwill with critics and audiences alike,

and then experiencing this misfire, as it was seen in many circles,

with Stardust Memories,

it was clear that he was not going to be boxed into

any kind of corner or pigeonhole,

he was going to do what he felt like doing.

So the question remained - what's next?

I was going to continue to make funny films.

I mean, I was not trying to get away from it.

In fact, probably the next film I make...

I haven't made a really funny film for a while.

I would like to try that again.

If Stardust Memories was a misstep,

then Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy was a return to strength.

He was actually going back to a known area,

which was pure comedy.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is the first farce

he's done, really, since Love And Death.

CLATTER

It was released as a summer movie.

People thought, "Ah, you know, here comes Woody again."

And I think that the studio backers, you know,

had to be heaving a sigh of relief that it was in colour, as well.

And I thought I'd like to do something

in the country, just for fun,

just to see the country as a beautiful thing,

the way I see the city, just for amusement.

-GORDON WILLIS:

-Somebody saw the movie and said, "it was the first time

"I've ever come out of a movie whistling the photography."

You know, so I thought it was pretty funny.

The other aspect of Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

is that it introduces Mia Farrow to his body of work.

-Yes, we've met before.

-Ariel told me about you.

It was such a funny coincidence when Leopold said

that you were his cousin's husband,

because I told him we were old friends.

Acquaintances. We're like...

Mia wrote me some fan letters over the years.

Then, once, I had a New Year's Eve party

and I said, "you know, why don't we have lunch sometime?"

And she said, "sure."

Boy, if I had only acted that time, you know,

when were at the brook that night!

-Yeah.

-It just haunts me.

-Yeah, me too.

You know, not a week has gone by that I haven't dreamt about you.

We made a date, we had lunch, and then we started going out.

SNEEZE

Hey, are you OK?

Eventually, we started going out in a more serious way and then,

I got to know her as an actress.

Well, you know, for a woman, the years slip away quickly.

Don't tell me you're getting scared.

Maybe.

But why? I don't understand. You're so beautiful and charming.

You could get any man that you wanted.

-Not you.

-Me?

I think, amongst all the love affairs

I was running through in those days,

you were the one person that could've stopped me.

She was very nervous when we first started working together.

She needn't have been.

Then it was a pleasure to work with her. She was always easy to work with.

If you lusted after me so, why weren't you also in love with me?

Can the two feelings really be separate?

Mia Farrow became his muse

and he began to show us a range in Mia Farrow

that had been denied us by, say,

Rosemary's Baby or Hurricane, you know.

Just sides of her we were not be able to see,,

and Woody Allen was able to bring her out in all her rainbow of colours.

And through her, he explored a number of wonderful modes of filmmaking.

And, in a way, by so doing, he's also testing his own range,

he's fulfilling every key on the pianoboard that he's got.

He just runs the scales in his own talent through the '80s,

with Mia Farrow as his partner.

She was an excellent actress with a very big range.

You know, she could play comedy and broad comedy,

she could play serious things,

and I felt no one had really exploited her much

on the screen, and so I wrote roles for her

and she never disappointed, she always came though

and did a terrific job for me.

That's what muse is, you know, the more you understand the person,

then you can bring out these different qualities in them, you know?

And he did it with Mia for years.

Like, who would have ever thought that Mia could be

this actress in some of these films?

Broadway Danny Rose - I mean, who would've thought that she could've played

these different characters with those accents?

I mean, you didn't think of Mia as that kind of actress, but he knew her.

You know, I never feel guilty.

I just think you got to do what you got to do.

You know? Life's short.

You don't get any medals for being a boy scout.

We always ate up at Rao's,

an Italian restaurant uptown, and Mrs Rao, Annie Rao,

would, you know, come and sit at the table with us and chat.

She always had the high blonde hair and smoked a cigarette

and wore the sunglasses

and she was a great character, a wonderful woman.

And Mia said to me,

"boy, I'd love to play a woman like that sometime. I'd be great."

And then, when I was going to do Broadway Danny Rose, it was perfect.

Johnny's all right. He was really nice to me when my marriage fell apart.

Yes? And what did your husband do?

Um, a little bookmaking, some loan sharking, extortion, like that.

So he's a professional man. What did you do, you divorced him, or you got a separation, or what?

Some guy shot him in the eyes.

-Really, he's blind?

-Dead.

He's dead, of course, because the bullets go right through.

MALTIN: By this time, if you were following Woody,

you never knew what was going to come next,

what tone it would take, what shape it would take.

And who would think that the same man

who made Broadway Danny Rose would also give us Zelig?

the relationship of the private person to celebrity

is the theme that he inaugurates in Stardust Memories,

but which he continues in Zelig.

NARRATOR: Leonard Zelig continues to astound scientists

At New York's Manhattan hospital,

where numerous tests have led nowhere

in determining the nature of this astonishing manifestation.

And it's done in more radical comedic terms.

There's a stylistic thing - he discovered

this optical process where he could bleed himself into

all these actual photographs of Woodrow Wilson and whomever.

I wanted to do it like a real, actual documentary, where you just about couldn't tell the difference.

NARRATOR: His transformation into a rabbi

is so realistic that certain Frenchmen suggest

he be sent to Devil's Island.

And I thought the theme of the character

who was always trying to be who he was around

was a universal psychological theme.

NARRATOR: As the men discuss their obesity,

an initially reticent Zelig joins in,

swelling himself to a miraculous 250 pounds.

Next, in the presence of two negro men,

Zelig rapidly becomes one himself.

What will they think of next?

and I felt that that, ultimately, would lead to Fascism because

you would always be saying what the crowd wanted to hear

and giving up your own beliefs and personality.

MALTIN: There is Leonard Zelig, sitting next to Adolf Hitler,

and the Mia Farrow character sees him blending in, as usual,

and yet, it's him noticing her waving at him

that snaps him out of that.

So, ultimately, it's love that brings him back to earth.

-LAUDER:

-I like purple rose of Cairo very much.

The Mia Farrow character has a terrible existence.

Her husband, Danny Aiello, is an abuser.

The only relief she gets is movies,

so she goes to see the same movie over and over again.

She can't find any meaning in her day-to-day existence,

but the escapism that movies provide is the only meaning.

OK, that's it, but at least she has this.

This is something that encourages her to hope.

Things are bad, but it's going to turn out OK.

I think that's such a clever film.

I intended it, you know,

on a much more pretentious, deep level, you know,

that people are faced, in life,

with choosing between reality and fantasy

and it's very pleasant to choose fantasy,

but that way lies madness

and you're forced, finally, to choose reality

and reality always disappoints, always hurts you.

You know, that was what made me do the film and, of course,

the idea that someone comes off the screen, that was the gimmick.

You know, I still can't get over the fact that,

24 hours ago, I was in an Egyptian tomb.

I didn't know any of you wonderful people,

and here I am now, I'm on the verge of

a madcap Manhattan weekend.

My god, you must really love this picture.

Me?

You've been here all day and I've seen you here twice before.

-You mean me?

-Yes, you, you!

This is the fifth time you're seeing this.

Henry, come here, quickly.

I got to speak to you.

GASPS MAN: Oh, my God!

-SHE SCREAMS

-Listen, old sport, you're on the wrong side.

Tom, get back here! We're in the middle of the story!

Leave me alone. I'm going to have a look around.

-You go on without me. Who are you?

-C-Cecilia.

-Let's get out of here and go somewhere we can talk.

-But you're in the movie.

Wrong, Cecilia, I'm free! After 2,000 performances

and the same monotonous routine, I'm free!

-Call father Donnelly!

-Tom!

Oh, boy! So that's what popcorn tastes like.

Been watching people eat it for all those performances.

-LAX:

-The role of the handsome young guy in the piece

was played by Jeff Daniels,

who was really quite wonderful in it.

Woody's not afraid to change cast members

as he goes along, if something doesn't work out,

and the best example of this is Michael Keaton in Purple Rose Of Cairo.

He greatly admired Michael Keaton and still does,

but never took the time to meet him and then,

once he was there, just felt he was so contemporary

for a movie that took place in the 1930s,

that it just didn't feel right.

And there have been other instances where,

for whatever reason, an actor hasn't worked out.

I would say that that doesn't happen often,

but, when it does,

he's not at all averse to saying, "we just need to start this over."

He shot September twice,

with different casts,

and that, I think he would say, was a writing problem.

He just felt he didn't nail it.

So he completely recast the movie, for the most part,

and moved people around, as if it were a repertory company.

Casting was just a process that he had very little patience for.

You know, when I first started, I never even met the actors.

I had my assistant director meet them and I would sit back

in the corner of the room somewhere and look.

And only over the years did I gradually start

to speak to the actors, and I have nothing to say to them.

We used to have three people, every five minutes,

in to meet him because

he didn't want to have to make much conversation.

That was very painful for him, very hard for him.

For the smaller roles, the meetings were very, very quick.

I always felt bad for these actors that would come in to the office,

they were being sent up for a role.

They'd ring the bell, I'd let them in,

they'd wait for a second, and we'd go in

and I'd introduce them - "this is so and so."

And they would come marching into the office, like,

expecting, you know, a half-hour with Mr Allen.

And Woody would stand up and remain standing and say,

"Oh, hi, you know, I just wanted to take a look at you

"and Juliet thought you might be right for something and... OK, so that's it."

The whole thing is awkward. They have nothing to say.

I have nothing to say. They're being looked at.

They feel fat, you know.

It's terrible.

And he would sort of, like, shake their hands and say,

"thank you for coming."

And they'd be ready to sit down and that was it.

So I'd walk out and they would always look at me

at the end like, "Are you kidding? Is that it?"

And I'd say, "that's it."

You know, ten seconds, sometimes.

And, of course, Woody feels

"but I'm doing them a favour. They can go on with their day. They've other things to do.

"They don't want to hang around here."

And I keep saying, "Oh, yes, they do, they'd love nothing more."

Sometimes, for the bigger actors, they were just flat-out offered a role.

His production office connected with my people in Los Angeles

and they just offered me the part.

I got a call from my agent, asking me if I was available

for a Woody Allen movie and I said,

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm available."

We have this very elaborate drop-off system.

The material does not go through the agents.

The material goes right, directly, to the actor.

Of course, it was very secretive

and so the script was brought over.

Someone who flew from New York with it

and then drove to my house in northern California.

Then he told me, "you're going to get a script.

"It's going to be hand-delivered. You're going to get it at 10:30

"and you have to return it by 4:30."

CLEARS THROAT I go, "Oh. All right."

Someone literally sits on the stoop of their building, waiting till they finish it,

Or, occasionally, lets them keep it overnight.

All I remember is that the script arrived

and it came hand-delivered and I had to hand it back

and it was all a very secret process.

He always includes a handwritten note with the script to the actor.

The next day, I was in the office,

the script was delivered, and there's a cover letter.

And there was a letter from Woody.

He sent me an e-mail.

-I got a letter.

-A note, from him.

It's obviously written on a typewriter.

Handwritten.

With the odd mistake, you know, X-ed out.

I actually printed it out and I put it on my wall.

I will frame that letter.

I probably have the letter in a drawer.

And it said that "you may remember me.

"You did a movie called Melinda And Melinda.

"I was the director." HE LAUGHS

"I plan on shooting this film Match Point in London this summer..."

"I have this movie that I wrote..."

"And I think you'd be really good for the part of Boris."

"I would love for you to play the part of Nola Rice."

"I'd be interested in you doing it. You may not like it. You may like it. If you don't like it, it's fine."

"I hope I can get to work with you in this lifetime."

"If you feel like there's something there that you want to do, that would be great."

"Feel free to modify some of the lines, if you feel like."

"If you want to change the lines, that's fine with me.

"Please read it and I think you have something to contribute to this part."

-I don't know, maybe I made that part up.

-SHE CHUCKLES

As a fan of his movies, every time I go,

I see that the cast always works.

It's like everybody's perfect for each character,

and he can make those decisions in five seconds.

Just saying, "Hi, nice to meet you" to somebody,

he knows if that person is right for that character.

Well, that's the whole secret, is if you hire great people

and you don't mess them up with a lot of analysis

and conversation and speculation and nonsense,

if you just get out of their way and shut up,

they give you the performance that has made them

the great performer that they are.

-Are you angry with me?

-No.

Do you feel, um... Are you disenchanted with our marriage?

-I didn't say that.

-Are you in love with someone else?

My God! What is this, the Gestapo? No.

Well, what? What are you not telling me?

What kind of interrogation...?

Supposing I said, "yes, I am disenchanted,

"I am in love with someone else"?

Are you?

No!

I used to always write from the point of view of the male,

and always a particular perspective,

the comic male, the wisecracking comic male,

and then I met Diane Keaton,

I got a different perspective,

I saw a lot of things through her eyes,

and I started writing for women.

And one of the things that I gained was

a female's perspective.

And it was, eventually, more interesting to me

than the male perspective

and I attribute that to my experience with her.

I just want a salad. You really think I'm a loser, don't you?

-What do...? You're being ridiculous.

-You are, holly. Stop it.

-You treat me like a loser.

-How?

You never have any faith in my plans, you always undercut my enthusiasm.

Not so, no. I think I've been very supportive.

I try to give you honest, constructive advice,

I'm always happy to help you financially, I think I've gone out of my way

to introduce you to interesting single men.

-Losers! All losers.

-You're too demanding!

You know, I could always tell what you thought of me by the type of men you fixed me up with.

-You're crazy! That's not true!

-Hey, Hannah, I know I'm mediocre.

Oh, will you stop attacking Hannah? She's going through a really rough time right now.

-Why are you so upset?

-You know, you've been picking on her

ever since she came in here. Now just leave her alone for a while. I'm just suffocating.

I think Hannah And Her Sisters

is the movie that people expected after Manhattan, and when he satisfied that,

he was back to even deeper strength than he ever was before.

Now, he's in the Bergman zone, quite literally.

He's got Max Von Sydow in there, but in a very relaxed way.

There's nothing imitative of Bergman.

They're simply, you know, drinking from Bergman's cup at Bergman's dinner table, but,

at the same time, bringing Woody Allen's sensibility to the proceedings.

But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers -

third-rate con men,

telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak for Jesus

And to please send in money.

Money, money, money!

If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name,

he'd never stop throwing up.

My favourite is Hannah And Her Sisters.

It had one component which I love,

which Woody loathes, much of the time, which is some sentiment.

It's only optimistic in the sections that I failed.

I mean, I wanted it to be a melancholy film,

for the most part, but, for some reason -

incompetence in the directing or the writing or something -

the emphasis shifted so that it was perceived by audiences

as more up and optimistic than I had intended.

Early on in the film, there's some suspicion he has a brain tumour.

-THINKING:

-'It's over.

'I'm face-to-face with eternity.

'Not later, but now.

'I'm so frightened,

'I can't move or speak or breathe.'

Well, you're just fine. There's absolutely nothing here at all.

And, finally, he finds out he's OK and he comes out of the hospital

and he's jumping through the street,

and then he stops and he realises that, you know,

I'm not going to die from this brain tumour now,

but I'm going to die someday

and then, he goes back into a blue funk.

And then he begins to look around at different religions

and he's thinking of becoming a Catholic,

so he goes to see a priest, the priest gives him some books.

And then we get a scene, he's at a high mass.

He's way in the back, he's the outsider looking in,

the non-believer looking in.

The character wants to believe, but he just can't.

Mom, come out!

Of course there's a God, you idiot. You don't believe in God?

But if there's a God, then why is there so much evil in the world?

Just on a simplistic level. Why were there Nazis?

Tell him, Max.

How the hell do I know why there were Nazis?

I don't know how the can opener works.

I do think it's on his mind.

I do think that he thinks about those things.

I think that, when you're extremely sensitive,

which is what he is,

you're very in tune with what life is,

and it has to end, and it can be very cruel.

And I think that these are the issues that haunt him.

I do believe that's the reason why it's a theme in his movies,

is because he does think about it a lot.

Woody had said, you know, making a film preoccupies him

and so he doesn't have to spend the whole day

thinking about the meaning of existence,

but he spends the day making a film about the meaning of existence.

So it doesn't distract him, in the usual sense,

I mean, he's not out, playing golf or playing tennis,

he's working these themes into his films.

This woman's going to destroy everything I've built.

That's what I'm saying, Judah. If the woman won't listen to reason,

then you go on to the next step.

What, threats, violence? What are we talking about, here?

She can be gotten rid of. I mean, I know a lot of people. Money'll buy whatever's necessary.

I'm not even going to comment on that. That's mind-boggling.

Judah Rosenthal, the character I played

in Crimes And Misdemeanours, is a pillar of the community,

he's got a family, he's respected,

but he has an affair

with this stewardess

played by Anjelica Huston

and she becomes a loose cannon in his life.

You told me, over and over again, you'd leave Miriam! We made plans!

-I didn't!

-You did! I gave up things for you, business opportunities!

-Oh, pipe dreams!

He doesn't know how to handle it

and he calls his brother,

who's a little on the shady side, and he resolves it

in a way that is horrendous, really.

When I see her,

I'm overwhelmed by it.

He has a great deal of difficulty living with it

and flashes back on a Seder,

Passover dinner that he remembered,

where a lot of religion and philosophy is discussed.

What are you saying, May, there's no morality, anywhere in the whole world?

Listen, for those who want morality, there's morality.

Nothing's handed down in stone.

Sol's kind of faith is a gift.

It's like an ear for music or the talent to draw.

He believes, and you can use logic on him all day long and he still believes.

Must everything be logical?

And if a man commits a crime, if he...

if he kills?

Then, one way or another, he will be punished.

If he's caught, Sol.

No, no, no! Whether it's the Old Testament or Shakespeare, murder will out.

Who said anything about murder?

You did.

Did I?

Woody walks a real tightrope in Crimes And Misdemeanours,

because he's telling, essentially, a very serious story,

yet he knows to counterbalance it with a lighter story,

involving him and Mia Farrow and Alan Alda.

And it's that very deft combination that makes the movie work.

It's amazing - I couldn't graduate,

and the same school now teaches a course

-in existential motifs in my situation comedies.

-Really?

I could've done the whole picture just as the murder story

and very often regretted that I didn't,

because I found Marty Landau's story so compelling

and so interesting and mine so uninteresting.

And then it occurred to me that, if my character made the film about Alan Alda,

it tied the whole thing up because it was a funny idea,

that I was forced to make this aggrandizing documentary

about this guy that I couldn't stand.

The thing to remember about comedy is

if it bends, it's funny if it breaks, it's not funny.

So you got to get back from the pain, you see what I mean?

Issues of what life is about and why we're here and why it's so painful

and relationships between the human being

and his existence and human loneliness,

that never gets resolved

and so it's of constant interest to me.

-Hi, cliff.

-Cliff! Hello.

And I can see, if I look back on my work,

I see some of those themes creep in all the time.

I wanted to give you this letter back.

It's my one love letter.

I'm cursed with the clown's approach to it

and I always have to approach it in a comic way.

I plagiarised most of it from James Joyce.

You probably wondered why all the references to Dublin.

I wish I had been born

a gifted and great tragedian, but I wasn't.

What are your views on divine matters?

Excuse me, me?

I'm asking you if you believe in god.

It's incredible, that's the third time tonight somebody asked me that exact same question.

You know, I would love to, believe me, I know I would be much happier.

-Yeah, but you can't.

-I can't, no, it's just, you know...

You doubt his existence and you can't make the leap of faith necessary.

Listen, I can't make the leap of faith necessary to believe in my own existence.

Here's your drink, Kleinman.

That's fine, that's tricky. You keep making jokes until the moment comes

and you've really got to face death.

Why are you always on such a morbid subject?

I just, you know, that's the future.

If I thought that there was nothing except this, I'd kill myself.

I've thought of it. Believe me, there have been many times

when my brain has said, "why not?"

I mean, there's no point to anything.

But, somehow, my blood always said, "live, live,"

and I always listen to my blood.

Woody Allen,

he's always swimming around the same philosophical issues.

There's still that thing you can do with his films

where they'll get you thinking and talking

or they'll spur something in you that,

you know, it's good medicine.

I think that Woody Allen asks these important questions,

is there a god? Isn't there a god?

Is there life beyond the grave?

Makes him unique among contemporary filmmakers,

but also makes him unique in the history of American cinema.

These are the two key questions, and he just keeps hammering away at them.

You know who has these thoughts all the time? Is Schultz the tailor.

He thinks that nothing is real at all

and that everything exists only in the dream of a dog.

But this is real, isn't it?

And beautiful.

So Woody and Mia had this kind of idyllic life -

certainly, in the public mind.

Here were two accomplished artists, they had this strange relationship

where he lived in his place, she lived in her place,

but she was in all his movies and he was there every day

and then they adopted a daughter and then they had a son

and it seemed kind of the perfect thing.

You know, they'd talk about how they could each go

out their windows or their balconies and wave at each other across the park

and this came to a crashing end

during the filming of Husbands And Wives.

Things fell apart at the very end of the shooting.

Really, there may have been two or three days left of shooting.

She must have called him and I remember him answering the phone

because we were, like, waiting for him to shoot the sequence

and I could tell something disturbing was happening

on the other end of this phone call.

Mia discovered that Woody was having this affair

with one of her adopted kids.

Mia had gone over to Woody's apartment for something and, on a mantelpiece in a room,

discovered some nude polaroids of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

It took me two or three days to convince Mia

to come back to work and finish the film

because her reaction was, "there's absolutely no way I could see this person anymore."

And, yet, they had to, in the midst

of this terrible emotional thing for both of them,

behave in a professional manner to finish the work.

So she, like a trooper, came and finished her job.

We were going to the faculty dinner,

and I'll never forget this,

around fifth avenue and it was just an icy black night, we were walking downtown.

Remember that? And then, suddenly, we decided not to go to the dinner, just said, the hell with it.

It was just such a beautiful night. We walked into Central Park.

It was, you know, so snowy that night.

-I remember how cold it was.

-We could see every star.

You were so beautiful in that black dress.

-Really. Mmm.

-Don't do that.

Why not?

Because it's over and we both know it.

When the great cosmic rift occurred,

you know, across the park

Woody was the antichrist

on the front page of the New York Post every day.

Their life blew up and this just became fodder

for the gossip magazines

and for television and for newspapers.

It was intensely covered.

The 12-year relationship of Woody Allen

and Mia Farrow has come to a bitter end.

Director Woody Allen has confirmed he is

in love with Mia Farrow's adopted daughter.

The acrimonious break-up caused by Allen's affair

with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi...

SPEAKING FRENCH

And when it became a custody battle between them,

it was almost lurid, in the way that it was handled.

There was nothing too small that wasn't scooped up.

Woody Allen and Mia Farrow have a date tomorrow - in court.

People everywhere in the country are talking about an ugly child custody battle.

The mud thickened today in the child custody battle

between Woody Allen and actress Mia Farrow.

That bitter battle between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow over visitation

and custody rights to their children heated up again today.

His break-up with long-time companion Mia Farrow

and their subsequent fight over child custody

has turned his private life into a public soap opera.

believe it or not, I didn't think I was that famous, to warrant such coverage.

I was on magazine covers.

I'm thinking, you got to be kidding.

I'm not that big a deal, to warrant this interest.

But, apparently, it was a good, juicy story,

a very juicy story and, you know,

it took a little edge off my natural blandness.

You realise how these celebrity cases come to play,

that nothing can be more important in the country

at that moment than whatever celebrity case is playing,

and it will last until the next one comes along.

A judge has refused Woody Allen's request for custody of his three children -

one biological, two adopted.

The custody issue was... was terrible.

That was... you know, he never cares what they write about him in the newspaper.

Even though I care and people who care about him care,

he doesn't care and he doesn't read it so it doesn't,

you know, impact him in the same way.

Not being able to see his kids

was terrible for him.

All through this upset with Mia

and the scandal surrounding it,

he was never late for a meeting.

We would have a casting session

before he'd go to court, half the time.

He never missed a beat.

It was almost as if

Woody has dreaded so many bad things happening to him in life

that, when something really bad did happen to him,

he was totally prepared.

Everybody had an opinion about my private life,

which I felt they were all free to have

and free to respond in any way that made them happy.

They could sympathise with me, not sympathise with me,

they could dislike me, they could like me,

they could, you know...

It could have no effect on whether they saw my films,

they could never see my films again.

None of that mattered to me.

I really, at the time, thought,

"Oh, my God, is this really the ruination of Woody?"

But, you know,

he was able to continue his work and his career,

which, to me, is the main thing.

How much I envy his ability to compartmentalise.

He was able to continue to work all the time...

Woody has the ability to compartmentalise his life.

So he was able to sort of compartmentalise...

Woody's ability to compartmentalise...

He can compartmentalise his life.

I'm very good at compartmentalizing,

for better or worse.

When we were writing Bullets Over Broadway,

the custody trial was about to happen

and so there were, of necessity,

a lot of interruptions in our work.

We'd be talking through the scenes, as we would do with each other,

and then the phone would ring and he'd say,

"Oh, excuse me, I got to take this," and then he'd go over

and you would hear a very hushed "hello," you'd hear, you know,

"detective" and maybe "get a sample."

You know, you'd hear kind of hair-raising phrases

and then he'd hang up and he'd come back and he'd go,

"OK, let's go back to work."

I just remember this one day, we had been interrupted three times and, after the third time,

when there'd been some other grisly exchange on the phone,

he came back and he looked at me and he goes,

"OK, back to work on our little comic bauble."

We got the money! We can do the play!

What?! When?! How?!

A single backer going for the whole show.

-And no hitches?

-Well, uh...

We'll meet tomorrow and discuss it, all right?

I just thought it was a funny idea,

that a guy wants to put on a show

and a gangster, you know, bankrolls it

and makes his girlfriend the star of it, or one of the stars of it.

-Hey, Dave, she read your play.

-Yes, yes. It's thrilling, turbulent, a page-turner.

Charmed, charmed, charmed, charmed.

She's a great little actress, you know. She just needs as break.

So what have you been in, Miss, uh...?

Olive, olive, olive. Call me olive, honey.

Olive. You're... Well, you're experienced?

Well, I had a little experience.

Oh, she ain't got no experience.

-I do, too. I have, too!

-She's a natural.

They ain't talking dancing, olive.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

You don't mean dancing, do you? She used to wiggle at this joint in Hoboken, you know,

-pick up quarters off the tabletops with her...

-Hey! Hey! Hey!

I'm just trying to break the ice, all right?

Butt out, why don't you! They're talking to me!

-Who wants a drink?

-I'll have a double anything.

Bullets over Broadway is just...

I just think it's a wonderful movie.

I mean, you know what they say,

write about what you know - well...

It must be difficult, getting a work like this on.

It's a sad reality of the marketplace, I'll tell you.

We've never really had a chance to talk.

-No.

-Hi, folks. What can I get you?

-Two martinis, please, very dry.

-How'd you know what I drank?

Oh, you want one, too? Three.

We spoke a lot by phone when he was making Bullets...

And so I'd say, "how's the movie going?"

And he'd say, "Everything's going great,"

but, at first, Diane Wiest, whom I had felt, right from the beginning,

was wrong for that part - and had no trouble telling him.

I kept saying, "Dianne Wiest for that vain, hammy actress?"

Because you know,

she's so sweet and vulnerable and, you know,

it seemed so not like Dianne Wiest.

And he kept saying, "No, she has to do it. She can do anything."

So I thought, "OK, go ahead, sink your own picture, what do I know?"

What happened was this - we shot for two days.

He said, "Tonight, come and see the dailies with me."

I sat there and I saw this

painful, painful attempt

for me to do this role. Pathetic, pathetic.

He said, "Do you see?" And I said, "Yeah, I do."

He said, "Well, you know, what are you going to do?"

And I said, "You've got to pick up the phone

"and you've got to find somebody who can do this.

"It's not me. You've got to replace me."

He said, "No, no, no, no. There's something we can do. There's something."

When I was talking to her, she was convinced she was going to get fired.

And with the first couple things we re-shot,

she didn't have that deep baritone voice

and I think she was sort of finding that.

Or they were finding it together.

Without my own voice, I was free to do

this mad, crazy, you know, psychotic woman.

Helen, have you thought about what I said before,

-about the way I feel?

-Don't speak.

But I want to express...

Don't speak, don't.

-There's just a few things that I want to tell you...

-Don't speak, no, no.

When we first met, I was thinking...

Don't speak. Please, don't speak, please.

Don't speak! No! No, no, no!

Go, go, gentle scorpio, go!

Your pisces wishes you every happy return.

-Just one...

-Don't speak!

She couldn't believe that I wanted her

to play it so broadly,

and I did, I wanted her to play it like Norma desmond,

just as broad as could be.

She went straight from there to her,

I think, second academy award.

And so it's odd - he's a director whose actors get

tremendous numbers of awards or nominations for awards,

but if you watch him on the set,

he's the least directive director you can imagine.

I love his directing style because, honestly,

a director who has confidence in his actors

and who doesn't try and muscle them around the set,

allows them to blossom and makes them take

the responsibility for their performance.

See, the thing is, if you're with somebody who says,

"It's all you now, go," it really then

puts the ball in your court, you got to come with the goods.

So let me ask you a question - are you ever frightened that,

when a guy comes over your house and pays you,

that he's going to, you know, maybe like tie you up and kill you?

Oh, no, I always get paid in advance.

FANFARE PLAYS

Come on.

He said that he didn't really like to rehearse,

unless I wanted to, and I was like, "No, that's OK,

"because I actually didn't really love rehearsing either."

He said, "You don't have to say

"any of the words I've written, if you don't want to,"

and I was shocked because I was like,

this is the best, genius, comedy writer we have.

His script is so fantastic, why wouldn't I say the words?

And he said, "No, the script is just a blueprint.

"It's whatever makes you as real, natural, and funny as possible.

"So if you want to say something else, go ahead and say it."

And you never thought of just getting a regular job?

Well, yeah, sure I did. No, I did things.

I waited on tables, I worked in a massage parlour, I did phone sex.

Now and then, I would, you know, turn a few tricks

in order to make some dough.

And one day, my friend Suzie calls me

and she asks me if I want to be in a film,

something called Snatch Happy,

and I said sure, and I remember

I was very nervous because I'd never done it

in front of people with a camera before,

you know? And so, there I am on the first day,

on the set, and there's this guy

fucking me from behind, right?

And there's these two huge guys dressed like cops

in my mouth at the same time and I remember thinking to myself,

"I like acting. I want to study."

I never expected to win the Oscar, never.

And I was, like, preparing to be happy

for whomever's name they called,

and then they called mine.

I think the secret is

that everybody wants to work for him so badly

that they know they have to do their best

and I think they bring their very best

to the set every day on a Woody Allen film.

They don't want to disappoint.

We gave Sean guitar lessons.

Six months before the movie,

we sent a guitar... we paid for a guitar teacher

to go over to Europe and stay with him.

So, I didn't have to, you know, do one of those shots

where you always had to cut away to someone else's hand.

That was Sean.

He didn't ask to see or know anything

until he rolled the camera.

His feeling is that the best, complete thing he's going to get

is going to come out of the actor's instinct

and that what he finds out on day one is

whether or not he cast it well.

Really, I'm not one of these guys who gets his head turned

every time some dame walks by.

I've had plenty of beautiful women

and I always put 'em in their place.

Yeah, love 'em and leave 'em,

that's my motto.

Love 'em and don't look back.

I never once regretted... Not one time

did I ever regret dumping a beautiful dame.

Because you got to keep your guard up. You don't, them pretty ones

get their worms in you and then it's over, you're done.

Particularly if you're an artist.

Nah, I've seen too many guys crying in their beer.

Me? I'm going to be a star.

After the cut was called,

I looked at him to say,

you know, "should I choose window or aisle on my way home

"or am I sticking around?"

And he was already looking at somebody else,

getting, you know, ready to just, you know, do another take,

or do something, and there was never a comment at all.

To this day, I've never heard him make

a specific comment about the character that I played.

But when it comes to directing an actor,

it's a bare-bones clarity that any personality

can understand and interpret.

I can't write all night and then drive in the daytime!

You know, I fell asleep at the wheel.

Oh, god. Well, are you OK? Did anyone get hurt?

Look, I need time to work on my book.

When are you going to finish that book?

Like that?

Y-Yes, physically like that,

but what's missing from it is...

the argumentation.

I think I've come to realise that he is

the best actor's director I've ever worked with,

and I've worked with some really good ones,

so I say that after a lot of thought.

And so, while he's giving us a lot of free rein,

he's still going for something very specific,

the way he's offering these suggestions all the time,

but then sort of backtracking and saying,

"but we don't have to, and, you know, if you don't feel comfortable with it,

"then forget I ever said it," so it can just be real life.

I mean, how many times can you write

and tear up and rewrite these chapters?!

It's like you're scared to finish.

OK, you know what? You're right. I'm gun-shy, I can't handle it,

if it's confirmed, yet again, that all those nice things predicted about me were wrong.

-That I was, what, a flash in the pan?

-Well, stalling is not the answer.

All my friends have family! Can I do that?

-Yeah, sure, yeah.

-Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.

-Warn me.

And you shut the door because we're going to cut in here.

I'm anything but comfortable on this set, for sure.

I've spent a week and a half here getting ready to start

and it's been the most torturous week and a half of my life

because he's one of these guys that you want to please,

you know, you really want to please him.

It's like going back to, you know, acting school,

you know? I feel like I know nothing

and I just want to please this guy's vision.

And she's sipping her drink, chatting.

Right here. And I'm...?

You're in here with her. Why? You ask.

Uh-Huh.

No, I didn't ask why, I just asked where. I mean, why? Is always the question,

why we do have to be alone together?

That I can never find the answer to. What could you do in here?

Just be uncomfortable.

OK.

I mean, what could I do as an action, what could I do as a...?

I mean, you can come in... I mean, you can come in for your cigarettes,

you know, get them while you're here.

You can come in and sit down in anticipation of your salad.

You know, if they say to me, "would you like me to do it this way?" Or "was I too mean in that?"

You know, I can't just stare back at them and not answer,

so I have to say yes or no.

You do get actors that want a little feedback and they do ask questions

and I give them a short answer,

a short, flattering answer - "Oh, you were great, do exactly what you're doing,"

or something, and they're fine.

Do it that way and let's see. This was quite good.

Now, if you're telling me you can be

even more natural, fine, that never hurts anything,

but this was not...

If you saw this, you wouldn't think,

"Oh, it's not authentic or it's artificial."

Right. Well, that's what I don't want, by any means.

It looks perfectly natural.

I ask him a lot of questions. He says, "Don't worry about it. Get a good night's sleep.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Learn your lines

"and I'll point you in the right direction and you'll be fine."

He doesn't really go into motivation or, like, acting stuff, like,

you know, what's the back history, what's the story?

He doesn't really go into any of that.

I think... I'm not sure.

I think he once said, "I gave a standard direction - do it faster."

We didn't meet until three days before filming,

when I showed up in Paris,

and we shook hands and he asked me how my flight was

and it was a good flight and uneventful,

and he said, "Great. This will be the last you hear from me."

The words I think you hear most often on set are

"Make it up. Make yourself comfortable.

"Put it in your own words. If you get an idea, go with it."

Even if I have to say something like, "Woody, nobody says 'valise', you know, I can't say 'valise'."

And he'll say, "Well, what would you say?" "I have a suitcase."

He'll say, "fine, say suitcase. It doesn't matter. Say whatever you think,

"as long as it has the same intention as the line."

Some of the directions would be like, you know,

"what you're doing is very good but, you know,

"there's a Knicks game at... Speed it up."

"You've got to move this along because I've got to leave. The knicks are playing. Sure."

I don't have a lot of patience, in life, or in general,

so, you know, I don't have the patience to do another take.

If I've gotten what I want,

then I want to move on, finish, and go home.

I don't have the concentration or the dedication

that you really need to be a great artist.

I'd rather be home, watching the ballgame.

He is a very efficient worker and runs his set in a way

where everyone's working hard, but nobody's taxed

or no one's like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe we're on another 18-hour day."

You only do a handful of takes. He gets most of his footage in master shots,

so he'll shoot a four- or five-page scene all in one shot.

I'd be conscious of "OK, one page to go."

"You got a line coming up, you got a line coming up."

Because you didn't want to screw up because then you

have to go back to the beginning and do it all over again.

You didn't want to mess up the take. It's daunting.

Almost a hundred years after the abolition of slavery,

a man couldn't play a game of baseball

in the big leagues if his skin colour was black, OK?

You're harping on one point.

OK, forget blacks! Take Jews.

-What?

-Here we go.

For years, they restricted the number of Jews in schools, medical school.

In America, as much as they hated blacks, they hate Jews even more.

-Why?

-Blacks, they were scared had too big a penis.

-Jews, they hated, even with little penises.

-For god's sake, I'm eating!

After I did my first scene, he came up to me and said,

"That wasn't horrible."

HE LAUGHS

But this notion that I hear that he doesn't direct,

I mean, that's kind of ridiculous.

He gets what he wants.

The thing about Woody, as a director,

was just go, be there and do whatever you want

and mess up the lines and turn your back to the camera

and let's grab it here and lets go.

You got to go back to your shrink. I want you to see dr Ballard again.

Larry, I went for two years!

Yeah, I know, but you know how General Motors will recall defective cars?

-You got to go in for a tune-up.

-Larry, we'll be in and out in five minutes, honey.

No, no, I'm telling you! I'm your husband. I command you to sleep!

-Well, I... sleep!

-No!

-I command it! I command it!

It was so easy.

It was so simple and relaxed and fun

and no pressure and nobody expected anything

and I've never worked with anybody like that, ever.

This musical we did, Everyone Says I Love You,

we had a very involved sequence with Goldie Hawn

which involved dancing with wires in Paris.

As far as Woody was concerned,

"Oh, we'll just show up and do it on the day."

I said, "Well, you know, there's, like,

"all these flying rigs and, you know, dance choreography

"and, I mean, this all has to be worked out.

"We just can't show up on the day with, you know,

"with a hundred guys on the quay."

I used to have to, like, drag him, kicking and screaming,

for, like, one or two rehearsals for something like that.

# Just you

# Just me

# Let's find a cosy spot

# Where no one can see... #

I wanted to do the old-fashioned kind of musical,

where I used old-fashioned songs.

I didn't want to do anything more innovative or modern,

I just, you know, wanted to get people who, you know,

like to sing in the shower or couldn't sing.

None of that mattered to me.

# What are my arms for?

# Use your imagination

-# Just us

-Just the two of us... #

That film has got its fans,

but it was not a huge success.

I did it, like all my films, for the few people who like it.

It's interesting. Because of the auteur theory,

there were a lot of filmmakers who felt,

no, I have to make a great film.

People felt obliged to top themselves.

Woody Allen has never felt obliged to top himself.

He's felt obliged to do whatever interests him most,

to go there with a full commitment,

but when he's done, he moves on,

and he just - he moves right into the next thing.

Deconstructing Harry was based on the premise

that you learned about the character and his life

from what he wrote.

So Harry was a writer who's having a writer's block

and was going through bad child custody stuff with his ex-wife.

Sick, sick, sick fucking bastard.

And I thought that would be interesting,

that what he wrote was telling

and maybe even sometimes more telling about him

than how he carried on in his actual life.

I like it.

A character who's too neurotic to function in life,

that can only function in art.

Now Harry's nothing like me.

I've never had a writer's block in my life.

You know, I would never have the nerve

to kidnap a child in a custody thing.

I... That's not my life.

What's the man like?

It's me, thinly disguised.

In fact, I...I don't even think

-I should disguise it anymore. It's... You know, it's me.

-Uh-Huh.

In the late '90s and then into the turn of the next century,

some people were starting to write him off,

saying that he was played out.

There's a period that comes after Deconstructing Harry

where I just had to think of it as Woody adrift,

because he was making a film a year.

They were coming out steadily,

but there was something that was off in film after film.

You know, and there would always be something that was on

in film after film at the same time.

But you'd see and you'd go into each new Woody Allen film and hope, cos you never do know.

I suggested once to him,

"What if you were only making one film every two years?

"Wouldn't that be more of an event?

"Wouldn't people just feel like there was something special about it?"

And he said, "No, that makes no sense at all."

He just has to be out there making films.

He's always been a person who's done what he wanted,

whether it was moving from Bananas to Annie Hall

or moving from Annie Hall to Interiors.

There's always been...

His career has been guided purely by his sense

of what's the right thing for him to do,

not "what does the audience want me to do?"

And he's not afraid to fail. That's the thing, too.

Like, failure does noth... He kind of...

You can tell he kind of approaches it like a baseball player.

Like, "OK, I'll get em the next time."

I'm willing to fail without any problem whatsoever.

I just... I draw the line

at an obvious, flagrant committing suicide.

I don't really care about commercial success,

and the end result is I rarely achieve it.

See, that's one of the great things about Woody.

He really doesn't give a hoot what anybody says about him,

you know, which I think

is the hallmark of an artistic sensibility,

as opposed to kind of a more normal movie-making sensibility.

You know, how can you get too caught up

in reviews or how the movie's doing

if you're already on to your next movie?

Which is probably a good way to be,

cos it kind of protects you a little bit from, you know,

"How's this doing? Or "what are the numbers on this?"

It's an artist who continually paints

and has to be heard from and has to...

Maybe... I don't know why you do this,

but do you do it so that you know you're alive

and you want to let people know you're alive and you're still thinking

and you're still in there punching?

You know, I think probably that's what it is.

How many great films has he made?

A lot. You know, so he's made a few clunkers, but even the clunkers,

there's always something about them.

Always. That's art.

I've been working on the quantity theory.

I feel if I keep making films and just keep making them,

every once in a while, I'll get lucky

and one will come out, and that's exactly what happens.

I just will never forget, you know,

after Curse Of The Jade Scorpion,

after anything else, after all those films that seemed to wander...

In a theatre, seeing a movie. OK, here's a coming attraction

for a film that's set in Britain.

It's a thriller,

and it looks really intense, and it's got a good cast.

People are nudging, "Hey, let's see this."

You're threatening me? If I don't do what you say, you'll go to my wife?

Hello?

Who keeps calling?

You lied to me. You're a liar!

You can learn to push the guilt under the rug and go on.

Otherwise, it overwhelms you.

And then, suddenly, boom -

written and directed by Woody Allen.

Match Point. Hello, what's this?

I grew up on Woody Allen movies,