Now with all the post productions done for the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona. The film has already had its first premier in New York. All the shutterbugs are trying to get a glimpse of the beautiful star cast walking down the red carpet. Woody Allen has many things as always running around his head before the big release. Woody starts of by saying this to the LA Times about his favorite spot on his bed “pleasurable and I might go cast the people and see my characters come to life. And I put the music in and I see the characters playing their scenes to the beautiful music behind them. You know, I get a kick out of that. And if nobody else does, that’s too bad.”
He is one of those fellows who was once the darling of all critics and audiences alike. He seemed to have lost his way in the decadence of all that happened in Hollywood and his own meanderings. But the man who has grown wise beyond his years doesn’t really put much meaning to the whole thing. ” When you’re a kid you think to yourself, ‘Fame and fortune and it’s going to be so exciting and . . .’ — but then you quickly find after three or four films, you find, ‘Wait a minute, the upside is nothing and the downside is nothing.’ The adulation of the multitudes or of the critics is an impersonal experience, and the negative feelings [from] people is an impersonal experience. The contract that the audience has with the person is you entertain us and we’ll show up. And that is as the contract should be.”
It seems like the man is probably loosing his way with all the pre release jitters from making some terrible movies like “Celebrity” and “Anything Else” this was followed with many ugly accusations by his then wife Mia Farrow. But all this is a thing of the past and his new movie is poised to be one of his best comedies in a decade. The film follows the lives of the two American woman go on a vacation to Spain where thy get into a relationship with an artist played by the intense Javier Bardem and his bitter sweet ex wife played by Penelope Cruz. The whole film brings together these woman who are in various stages of their sexual drives. Scarlett who plays a dissatisfied woman while Rebecca Hall is almost going to see her passion to be tested and Cruz is aperson who is ready to make anyones life a living hell but is stuck in the mind of Great Art.
Woody Allen seems to get older by the day but is getting ready to start his own comic opera titled, ” Gianni Schicchi.” He is frailer than he is usually and slightly reserved demeanor unlike his good old days when he just couldn’t stop jabbering.
Allen was dying to go to Europe to make a film there and get a European feel for once in his life. “I always wanted to make the kinds of films that I saw in the 1950s. The Truffaut films and the Goddard films and the Bergmans and Fellinis, and those are the films that always influenced my work. And I’ve always copied them and been influenced by them. ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’ looks to me, when I see it, like one of those films. It’s got all the earmarks: the music, the people bicycling through Europe, the interaction of the characters and the out-of-focus scenes that you see in those pictures.”
Here is a video from the latest movie.
This turn has come after a lot of that has happened to his career. He was probably one of the greatest directors in his time at the beginning of his career making such greats like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Husbands and Wives”. But this has not been so in the last couple of years. With American known to treat their greats with a lot of disrespect. He reached a stage when his movie failed to shine at the US Box Office and had to look for financial backing in Europe.
But in the last couple of years he seemed to shy away from the safe landscapes of New York and go to places like Barcelona, London and make dramas of crime and passion that will go punished. But the whole idea of making such films seems to have come from his entry into Europe which was surely certain. It was really about time for the man.
His ideas of scripts comes down from jotting down stuff on sheets of paper and then just throwing them around until he finally gets around writing a script. It was from one of these paper bits that the idea of two women vacationing in Barcelona came about. He really didn’t talk to the actors about the roles except give them stage directions. But one of the things that is really missing in his movie is his presence. I think with time it is going to be thoroughly missed.
He says he doesn’t care if he ever acts in one of his movies again. “If there are no parts for me, then I just won’t play any. . . . And if there’s a lovable character named Gramps who, you know, was wise beyond his years, you know, then. . . .”
He doesn’t seem to be like the protagonist he always he plays in his films a man seized with so much existential pain that he has turned neurotic and at times really sweet. His persona on screen has nothing to do what he is in real life and stems out of a liberation he feels he gets from cinema. “I’m not like Dustin Hoffman or Robert De Niro. These guys go out and do miracles on the screen. I’m a perfectly believable actor in my small range. So I can play a college professor, I can play a shrink, I could play an intellectual, even though I’m not an intellectual, or I can play a lowlife. I can play like Broadway Danny Rose or I could play a cheesy little bookmaker or a grifter of some sort because I can handle that. Me, the character for real, is closer to the sleaze ball, but I can act both of them.”
He seems to be a man who is sort of caged in his own ingenuity. He says that his life is a total anti of what happens on screen. He doesn’t really believe in life imitating art sort of thing. “I always feel like I am doing the same process all the time. I don’t make them any differently,” he says. “I don’t feel any sense of liberation in Europe. I don’t feel that I make happy films when I’m happy and sad films when I’m sad. I don’t feel I make autobiographical films. I was not particularly happy, or going through a good time of life, when I made ‘Take the Money and Run’ and ‘Bananas.’ Those are two of my most silly comic films. Whereas when I made ‘Cassandra’s Dream’ and ‘Match Point,’ I was going through a very wonderful time of life. These have been very good years for me. I have a great marriage, great kids. There is no plan or agenda to it or anything. It’s luck. It’s random.” He is a man who looks out for those human impulses in cinema while he shoot. He also craves of what death holds for many of his characters.
Woody’s movies seems to be filled with laughs that are sure to make everyone happy. But that is not all they offer to the audience. The movies tend to give lesser than what the viewer would love to have and that is what makes his movies truly special. They give us a sense of longing of what he has to offer next.
“A relationship is like two sets of wires that are all over the place and they all have got to connect,” says Allen. He uses his fingers to demonstrate, gently touching one hand to the other. They are delicate and surprisingly youthful, but his attitude about love is fatalistic. “If one wire doesn’t connect, then it doesn’t work. It’s like there’s one thing missing. The salt is missing from the diet. It’s a small thing, but it ruins you. You die.”
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August 29th, 2008 at 7:13 am
This turn has come after a lot of that has happened to his career. He was probably one of the greatest directors in his time at the beginning of his career making such greats like “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Husbands and Wives”. But this has not been so in the last couple of years. With American known to treat their greats with a lot of disrespect. He reached a stage when his movie failed to shine at the US Box Office and had to look for financial backing in Europe.