Michael Maiello's picture

    Woody Allen's Movies, Career and Me

    I'd love it if we could keep discussions of, um, current events to the other thread.  This one is about the movies...

    You can condition your tastes.  I believe that.  But what I love most about art, high and low, is that it gives us an opportunity to be honest about our reactions to things without the stakes getting too high.  What I love most about comedy is that as an audience member, you can't fake it.  Watching comedy is like having sex.  You can try to be polite but if the other person is paying attention they know whether or not they got a laugh.

    My life as a Woody Allen audience member goes back to high school.  I was trying to write, even then.  I freelanced for The Albuquerque Tribune so I was making money writing at a young age and always had an eye on the biographies of young male writers who started out hanging around in news rooms and the like, skipping the educational component for real experiences with words, people and deadlines. I also wrote a lot of mostly bad science fiction and was marginally into theatre.  I came across a Neil Simon play called God's Favorite, a modern retelling of the Book of Job and still very funny the way Neil Simon always is (edgeless but skillful).  I wrote my own short story, senior year of high school called Gods Younger Brother, a retelling of genesis starring God's younger and less powerful brother Gosh who darned the souls of his enemies to Heck where they were tormented by Satin, Lord of Lingerie and Undergarments who was, for some reason, described as Ross Perot in drag.  My senior year English teacher read it at my request and told me it would make a better play.  He then gave me a copy of Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth and also a copy of Woody Allen's Without Feathers.

    I did turn the story into a play and I presented the first scene of it at the end of senior year as part of the theatre showcase.  I directed it myself.  It went over very well.  My girlfriend loved it.  Impressing girls is the important part of the endeavor.  But I am getting ahead of myself. The play wound up changing my life as it was a finalist for the Young Playwrights' Festival in 1994, which caused me to change my major from biology to theatre in exchange for a scholarship and stipend. But, back to high school English.

    We were all assigned a year long project following a writer where we would put together a series of critical papers, biographies and presentations.  The teacher hand picked the assignments, based on the students.  I was jealous when my best friend got Mark Twain because I took it as a sign that the teacher consideredd him, not me, the real wit and writer.  I got Woody Allen and was told to start with Crimes and Misdemeanors.

    This is a real novel of a movie.  The plot and themes are layered.  It bears repeated watching.  The cast is terrific, especially Martin Landau.  As I grew up, I'd gravitate more towards the existential issues of the movie.  It is about a man who gets away with a murder of convenience.  Getting away with the murder also allows him to get away with adultery and embezzlement.  But I was mostly attracted to the subplot where Woody's character, trapped in a loveless marriage, attempts to win Mia Farrow's heart even as she is falling for a somewhat despicable sitcom show runner played by Alan Alda who is not, in the end, as milquetoast an actor as people like to joke.

    It is the nerd trying to win the pretty girl from the cool kid, but set in high tones.  I can see why I was attracted to that particular story, even though the nerd loses in the end.  One thing you learn is that the cool kid actually has a lot going for him.  Nothing is so black and white.  Allen's character is a documentary film maker, working on the biographer of a philosopher who I believe is based on Rollo May.  The philosopher has all the answers.  Then he jumps out a window. Maybe there is more truth in Alda's TV sitcoms.  They do not, after all, end in death.

    Well, this opened the portal for me.  I read the rest of the prose collections and all of his plays.  I bought a cassette of his stand up from the 1960s.  I researched Allen's biography.  He was as self made as you could get, working up from the writing crew for Sid Caesar and pounding the boards as a stand up.  I loved that he wrote, and wrote well, in every medium.  From then on, I would gravitate to other writers who were similarly versatile (Steve Martin comes to mind).

    I dug back into the films, starting with What's New, Pussycat for which he contributed to the screenplay and then the early comedies.  Love and Death, the send up of Russian novels, became my favorite and I developed a crush on Diane Keaton.  Annie Hall taught me about adult relationships and Hannah and Her Sisters had me quoting ee Cummings to girls I liked ("nobody, not even the rain...")

    This was all around when the news of the divorce and Soon-Yi was happening.  Husbands and Wives was the contemporary movie.  I loved it.  I had never seen anything like it, really.  It was a documentary of sorts, filmed on handheld cameras.  Judy Davis was just this hard, strong and attractive woman.  Yes, Woody kisses Juliet Lewis in a penthouse during a lightning storm.  It was sexy and provocative.

    Yes, theme of younger women shows up a lot. Partly it's tied to the themes of infidelity, which is as much part of life in Allen's world as it is in Philip Roth's or John Updike's.  So is older men and younger women.  I understand the urge to read this as confessional.  It may be.  There is also, though, some artistic intent at work here -- he is pushing social boundaries and, if you think about it, is going even where other controversial film makers won't.

    Now, there's a great takedown of the 70s era Allen movies by Joan Didion here that fans and nonfans alike should read.  She attacks his kind of shallow intellectualism.  The movies are, to Didion, just a lot of intellectual name dropping for a certain overeducated and juvenile class of neurotics.  It may be so.  But those people need movies, too!

    I also take a different view of this -- all the literature references strewn about and cameos by Marshall McLuhan speaks to a time when the non-specialist could still have meaningful opinions about philosophy and literature.  Allen's work is steeped in middlebrow.  Shakespeare and Greek tragedy is for everybody.  This is even the point of Bullets Over Broadway where the mob hit man is a better playwright than the intellectual.

    In any event, over the years I saw almost all of his movies when they opened, wherever I was.  Deconstructing Harry was one of my favorites -- a kind of misanthropic romp through psychology and fantasy. 

    The latest, Blue Jasmine explores fate and success in America with Cate Blanchett playing a woman who lived in excess as the wife of a real estate Ponzi schemer, only to be brought low by the law. To me it seemed vital and contemporary (some of his movies do, I admit, seem lost in time).

    I have taken a great deal of inspiration from all of this.  He has made a movie a year, sometimes more, since he started with Take the Money and Run (which has one of my favorite visual gags of prisoners escaping a chain gang disguised as an immense charm bracelet).  Nobody has matched this output.  This is why I consider him America's Shakespeare -- he works and works and works.  The culture changes, media changes, the movie business has changed and he doesn't stop.  It's a real success story that I will always admire.

     

    Comments

    One of my favs is A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy, just because he invents a pedal-powered flying machine and no one really cares. I also liked Shadows and Fog, which played like a funny Twilight Zone episode.


    There's a string of movies, especially during the Farrow years, where magic is real but doesn't much affect the outside world.  I really like that notion.

    There's also the much maligned Celebrity that I really adored.  In it there's a throwaway line about a novelist writing a book set in a world where everybody is famous "every life is celebrated."  I have been trying to actually write that idea, with varying degrees of success, ever since.


    set in a world where everybody is famous "every life is celebrated."

    Sounds like Employee of the Month programs writ large.wink

     


    That might be a way into the story... Thanks, Emma!


    Liked "Love & Death", as the kind of dismal Russian humor fit him well and the excessive philosophizing seemed so natural for Tolstoy, as well as "Purple Rose of Cairo" mixing the oldies. Still intend on seeing "The Front" one day...


    The Front is fun.  But it's not one that he wrote or directed.  One of the rare films where he only acted.


    There's a nice movie from the guy who did Cinema Paradiso where Polanski only acts - though that's even rarer, aside from bit parts like in Chinatown.


    I really enjoyed that Didion review but could not help remembering that Manhattan and the other Allen movies she mentions are set in her professional world and I now have this image of two mirrors facing each other stuck in my head.

    Never a fan of Allen's movies but he does have some killer quips that I adore, like:

    "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."

     


    There was something about Manhattan that I forgot to add to this.  Didion makes fun of him for the scene where he lists the things that make life worth living as I guess his list constitutes a very safe collection of middle brow tropes.  But that's juxtaposed with Diane Keaton's character who hilariously explains her own tastes as being the result of her "being from Philadelphia."  Anyway, Keaton and the guy she's dating entertain themselves by making lists of "overrated" people including Mozart, Van Gogh (which they pronounce Van Gock" and Miles Davis.  Woody Allen's character responds, "all of those people are wonderful, every single one of them."

    I remember really agreeing with that and kind of believing forever after that truly smart people are more likely to like cultural things than to dislike them. Ironically, Allen himself is now viewed as overrated in some circles.  I could definitely see people adding him to that list.  But I'd defend him right along with Van Gock.


    Thanks for this!

    "Crimes and Misdemeanors" is one of my favorites too. It really highlights the sad truth that success often stems from breaking all the rules while the rest of us get shit on - literally like Allen's sister in the movie. I've seen plenty of that living here in NYC. The dishonesty (well, and some shit too on the subway stairs) especially in the workplace. Those people then go on to make the most money.

    Back in high school I was also on a mission  to watch as many of his movies as I could and I vividly remember seeing "Husbands and Wives" in the theater alone and was just blown away. I think it was the first time I had seen people on the big screen arguing like real people. Maybe I was so struck by this since I was already a Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill fan.

    When "Deconstructing Harry" came out I was working at my first professional job outside of college and I remember telling a guy I worked with how much I liked the movie and this guy (at least 20 years older than me) said he expected Woody Allen to have grown up by now. I suppose I get that more now having almost 20 years under my belt since then but don't we all know that good writers write what they know? Few artists are revered for their social skills and they are often late bloomers in that respect. I see that in Allen's career.

    I think his movies have a similar evolution as The Beatles. Some silly and playful, some experimental and messy, and many brilliant. All worth your time depending on what strikes your mood.

    In retrospect I learned long ago that there is a special floor in hell for me - "Subway Moms" - this went over my head at the time but I can honestly say that Woody is a big reason why I live in NYC now so thank you for that.


    I loved Woody Allen's early movies and still do.  Take the Money and Run was hilarious.  The scene where he's standing outside the prison begging to get back in still cracks me up. (Roger Ebert didn't think it was much, but his reasons against it were the reasons I liked it.)

    But I also liked Sleeper and Bananas and Zelig   Broadway Danny Rose might be my favorite.  I loved those early scenes where the comedians are sitting around talking about Danny Rose.  Of all his characters, DR seemed to be the closest to real.

    There was a certain charm to his early movies that suited my low brow just fine.    The three movies films Joan Didion talks about, Annie Hall, Interiors, and Manhattan, were all such disappointments for this early Allen fan.  To me they were boring and pretentious, and the inside jokes got to be as tiresome as a movie full of product placement.  Once the comedy was gone, there was no reason to follow him anymore.  (I've also never been to NYC.  I don't really get that whole love affair.)

    I did love Hannah and her Sisters, even though it came along well into his auteur phase   I saw it again not long ago and it was like watching an entirely new movie.  He's a master at meaningful throw-away lines, I'll give him that.

    I also read "Without Feathers" when it first came out and somewhere around my house I still have "Side Effects".  He could write funny!

    But can I say this about Michael Maiello?  This little riff right here made me laugh so hard I had to sit with my legs crossed for a while. (I'm afraid to look at it again.)

    I wrote my own short story, senior year of high school called Gods Younger Brother, a retelling of genesis starring God's younger and less powerful brother Gosh who darned the souls of his enemy to Heck where they were tormented by Satin, Lord of Lingerie and Undergarments who was, for some reason, described as Ross Perot in drag.

    You can write funny, too.  Yes, you can.


    Thank you, Mona. :)


    I was reminded of Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light. It would be interesting to know when Maiello wrote his bit. Scott Adam's first strip involving Phil was from May 3, 1989.


    Had to have been 1992.  But I didn't steal it, honest!


    Sit down, you'll have to take this polygraph test.


    Great, now my palms are sweating and I'm bound to fail...


    I object!


    As Mr. Maiello's internet attorney.. I OBJECT.


    Annie Hall is still one of my favorite movies, in part because it treats relationships in a sentimental but unsentimental way that is rare in the movies. But it also has some of the best off beat humor. I still think of Christopher Walken as I dri. ve down the two lane highways at night (and the look on Woody's face). The kid who says '' I was a heroin addict, now I'm a methadone addict. '' And the best scene when he flashes back to when he was a kid in the doctor's office, explaining the reason he won't do his homework is because the universe is expanding, and his mother exasperated yelling '' Brooklyn isn't expanding. '' And some way Allen is able to tie that little kid to the same person who would one day meet Annie some time after their relationship ended, and everything that went right and everything that went wrong between the two. I guess we all need the eggs.

    Thanks for that, Trope.  Brought the whole movie back for me.


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