First of Two Parts
Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, without bucket hat
Born Ashkenazi Jew and raised Brooklyn bohemian in a big extended Midwood family, who could be more “New York” than Heywood “Woody” Allen? As a teenager, Heywood legally changed his birth name – Allan Stewart Konigsberg – to “Woody Allen” and after school began sending jokes under that nom deplume to newspapers, which eventually brought him to the attention of his heroes Bob Hope and Sid Caesar. In those early days of live broadcast television, Woody landed in Manhattan as a gag-writer who would develop into America’s top sanitized stand-up comic, destined to monetize his moniker – while the edgier Lenny Bruce developed his rap sheet on the flip side of comedy’s coin.
No matter what name applies, keep in mind that the guy pictured above – without his trademark tennis-club bucket-hat – just turned eighty-seven years old. And he’s at work on his final film, an untitled French project starring Isabelle Huppert.
Writer-director Woody Allen was productive for half a century. His mother lived to ninety-six; his father lived to be one hundred. “By the time he was sixteen or seventeen, he was making more [income] than his parents … and regularly employed every day of his life since,” said biographer Eric Lax. Although his film career is winding down, Woody will continue to write short stories on the same German-made Olympia portable typewriter he got when he started sending gags to Broadway columnists.
Despite his own private turmoil near the end of the Twentieth Century, Woody Allen has been seriously funny in public for seven decades. He was peerless among working cosmopolitan filmmakers. This strange nagging man created some well-respected dramatic works (“Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Interiors,” “Husbands and Wives”) although his thoughtful comedies are what distinguish his long, albeit controversial, career.
He averaged one-film-a-year after he directed his first picture by himself (“Take the Money and Run”) in 1969, when he was thirty-four and his show-biz name was well established. Woody came to filmmaking a little late in life, after he’d frequently appeared as a guest of Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin … becoming “A Household Name” telling jokes all across America.
He dropped out of a collegiate “motion picture production” course before he was invited to join Caesar’s writers’ room – the center of the universe for gag-writers in the 1950s (see “Reality TV One”).
That was a wise career choice. Wiser still was Allen’s hooking up with managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe who had never represented a writer before, but had the vision and resources to mold Woody into an international celebrity. “With the same horn-rims and casual clothes which would become his trademark,” writes biographer Julian Fox, “Woody was ... a universal comic voice, in appearance and complexity so like the audience he was entertaining that, within two years, he was being widely touted as the most popular stand-up comic in America.”
Woody Allen’s transition from famous stage-and-tv act to world-famous filmmaker was more gradual. His “early funny films” were co-written with Mickey Rose or Marshall Brickman, and those performance-based scripts seemed more like Show-of-Show sketches or SNL skits. But as Allen began writing films alone, things changed. He became more cinematic, more “European”. According to Julian Fox, Woody evolved from “hip, neurotic urban successor to Chaplin, Keaton and the Marx Brothers” into a “middle-class Chekhov” or more accurately a lighter version of Sweden’s drama-demon Ingmar Bergman.
Certainly any Woody Allen movie begins like a Bergman film, with the writing. Only a handful of Woody’s films have had co-writers. A prolific Playboy short-story scribe published primarily in The New Yorker and Esquire, Allen knows how well that writing form translates onto the big screen. Of course, the writing is simply the beginning and his investment in the work gets more deeply rooted once he assumes his critical “role” in the production as director on the set.
Woody Allen’s plentiful strengths as a writer/director:
evolved visual style
evolved sonic style
ridiculous dialogue from
ridiculous characters in
ridiculous situations and
ridiculous relationships
jokes embedded into plots
surprising story interjections
open to actors’ improvisations
scenes crafted in master shots
note-perfect musical details
age-perfect period settings.
Some might argue that Woody Allen is the “most historic American filmmaker” after Ken Burns! But that’s another story.
Woody’s weaknesses:
over-narration
too many characters
“small-part” cameo-casting
hands-off directing style
narration during montage
odd cross-generational casting
slow pacing, particularly later films
lax backstories, particularly later scripts
sustained agitating tone, i.e. Woody’s “voice”.
Allen’s narrative inadequacy is particularly odd given that’s often the first topic dramatic writers discuss when evaluating their own works. Who’s telling this story? Why? And how?
Many writers believe it’s best to have no narrator at all, but to let characters and situations move the story forward through dialogue and action within scenes. Narrating too many details is insulting to an audience, it belittles screen-writing Rule No. One -- “show, don’t tell.”
Certainly Allen can craft a perfect narration. He wrote one for Sandy Baron in “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984). It’s brilliant: Baron sitting around a table with other comics spinning yarns in flashback. Sandy’s “reminiscence” is the longest story, and main narrative thread of the film. Although Woody does cut back to his table scene, most of Baron’s shaggy-dog monologue is voice-over – and it truly propels the story.
Jump forward twenty years and we find Woody regressing with over-narration seriously bogging down his screenplays. It’s as if he’s channeling his Inner Robert Benchley. The obvious culprit: Woody’s short-story narrative voice occupies too much room in his scripts which should be rejoicing in his dialogue and silly situations, but not muddling through overstated plot-points and I-told-you-so expositions.
This is the case with his screenplays for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” (2008) and “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” (2010). Curiously, Woody was toying with narration at this time as he had characters turn from dialogue scenes to face the camera and suddenly narrate. That didn’t work for Jason Biggs in “Anything Else” (2003), nor for Larry David in “Whatever Works” (2009). Woody is best when his narratives are embedded.
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Eventually by playing male leads in his own films, “Woody Allen” transformed himself into a character so world-renowned that his on-screen nervous nebbish seems to have consumed any semblance of the real guy who actually dreamed him up. Unlike, say Benchley or Will Rogers, who left a bit of wiggle-room room between their on-screen characters and their actual selves.
As my speech-therapist wife points out, what truly distinguishes Woody Allen is his peculiar “prosody” … exactly how he talks, the music of his voice. This includes his rhythms, timing, tone, emotional state, syllable-stress patterns and other vocal elements which color his particular style of speech filtered as it is through Flatbush, Tin-Pan Alley, Borscht Belt, Harlem jazz beats and live television.
One way to clearly hear how a good actor can “channel” Allen’s syncopated speech rhythms is to observe how the distinguished Sir Kenneth Branagh handled “the Woody role” of Lee Simon in “Celebrity”. Close your eyes and hear for yourself:
Anyone who’s tried to do so can verify that directing oneself on screen is difficult at best, particularly with other actors in a complex scene. To act in front of a camera, most actors require another set of eyes. It takes a talented free-thinking thespian to look at a character “objectively” from the inside out – and still be able to tell everyone else what to do in the scene.
Movies in which Woody-the-director failed to cast Woody-the-actor are among his funniest: “Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985), “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), “Celebrity” (1998).
Allen’s later films in which he reappeared as “the Woody character” directing his own scripts -- “Anything Else” (2003), “Scoop” (2006) -- do not distinguish his acting, his directing nor his writing.
As Woody aged and continued to cast himself as the neurotic love-sick New Yorker, he began to lose his audience. He just isn’t credible as a lallygagged octogenarian wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing Lothario. No wonder younger audiences avoid him, and his old fans long for his “early funny ones”.
Woody Allen’s endurance allowed him to choose among the world’s best actresses and comediennes for his casts. Whatever their generation, he wrote unique roles and scenes for them: Elaine May, Lily Tomlin, Anjelica Huston, Tracey Ullman, Julie Kavner, Olympia Dukakis, Judy Davis, Dianne Wiest, Louise Lasser, Lynn Redgrave, Geraldine Page, Gwen Verdon, Maureen Stapleton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman, Gena Rowlands, Blythe Danner, Jennifer Tilly, Téa Leoni, Carla Bruni, Christina Ricci, Naomi Watts, Winona Ryder, Stockard Channing, Debra Messing, Scarlett Johansson, Patricia Clarkson, Cybill Shepherd, Bernadette Peters, Jessica Harper, Jodie Foster, Carrie Fisher, Sandy Dennis, Mia Farrow, Helen Hunt, Kathy Bates, Demi Moore, Juliette Lewis, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julie Hagerty, Kirstie Alley, Barbara Hershey, Helen Bonham Carter, Rachel McAdams, Penelope Cruz, Freida Pinto, Parker Posey … and this is NOT a comprehensive list!
However, no other woman on Earth means more to Woody’s film career than his only sister, Letty Aronson, who also functions as his business manager and main organizer. It could be argued that Letty helped stabilize her older sibling’s career during his tabloid issues of the mid-1990s by keeping him focused on his writing and shooting schedules. We all should have such a sister!
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In his 2011 documentary Robert B. Weide asked Woody to name “movie star crushes” he had as a kid or young adult, and he listed without hesitation: “Rita Hayworth, Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner.” Often it seems that Allen creates male leads who get tangled in triangles so he can work with three great female actors all at once! Mise-en-scène et menage-a-trios! Or as a California friend calls it: “Woody porn”.
“The unfathomableness” -- as Allen himself inarticulately states it -- “of desire” is Woody’s primary concern as an artist. Which begs the age-old question: was his a bottomless pit or a dry well? At what point did Woody become too old to pull off such characters of limitless desire?
In “Scoop” (2006), a tabloid-comic murder-mystery, Woody didn’t even bother to come up with any kind of compelling motivation for his lead character, an old stand-up magician, to buddy-up with a vivacious college journalist. Scarlett Johansson, a woman whom Woody calls “a crippler”, plays the student called out of an audience to assist him with a trick. Further muddying that story was the random appearance of an apparition who seems to defy death at will, but appears at all the right narrative moments. The film had a shoddy backstory, poor premise, muddled clues, confused characters and as a result, it’s not very funny.
Recently I asked twenty friends to send me their lists of favorite Woody funny movies. Almost all of them are seniors or late middle-aged. As expected, “Annie Hall” topped most lists, along with several votes for “Manhattan”. But otherwise there was little agreement, with too many films to choose from – although I’m sure few friends are familiar with Woody’s complete works. Curiously, only two people picked any of his movies from the Twenty-First Century.
One lifelong friend who lives in Southern California and teaches a collegiate class in film history wrote: “I must tell you that today's students do not get ‘Annie Hall’. The New York/Jewish angst for which Mr. Allen is so famous, does not compute. Mexican, Filipino and Vietnamese students are simply not impressed. Mel Brooks, Yes; Woody Allen, No! And then there's the unproven pedophile stuff…female students threatened to boycott my class the night I showed one of his films. I teach 19-20 year-olds and the female students do not like him. There's a new generation out there who’re just not interested in Woody Allen.”
That’s a shame, because the old generation has similar feelings too. A seventy-year-old Florida friend seemed to sum up his generation’s feelings: “My interest in his work waned with the advent of his personal relationship with his adopted daughter … and that’s still the elephant in the room, for me, whenever he appears on screen. Just sayin'.”
Many people agree with these negative personal opinions, and it’s unfortunate that Allen’s private proclivities prevent people from appreciating his films, particularly his later “funny ones”. Certainly, his own personal history is no laughing matter and few of us can relate to its details: Woody married his adopted daughter on Christmas Eve 1997 which caused further public uproar over what seemed vengeful payback for unsubstantiated child-abuse charges several years earlier brought on by a former leading lady and mother of eleven children. Nobody can write such a convoluted family plot.
Curiously the climax of Woody’s Jerry-Springer drama coincided with his most complex work in which he “deconstructs” his life and personal relationships. “Deconstructing Harry” – released two weeks before Christmas Eve 1997 – is his most fascinating “comedy”, a harshly-funny masterpiece. Fittingly the edgy film is full of jump cuts which dropped Woody’s annoying nervous ticks onto the cutting-room floor. Still, the picture failed at the box office, losing almost half of it’s twenty-million-dollar budget.
The Telegraph of London was brutal in its review: “This is Allen’s most scorching anatomy of marital bonds, a film so bitter, witheringly frank and unsentimental he entirely reinvented his style of shooting and editing for it. Jump cuts abound, straight-to-camera interviews break up the plot, and Carlo Di Palma’s handheld camera whip-pans all over the place, seeming to reel from one accusation or gossip-bomb … ”
He followed that film with “Celebrity” (1998) but curiously Woody-the-actor is absent from that one. Considering the current glut of “reality tv”, perhaps he should have cast himself in the lead instead of Branagh. After all, Woody was writing about a subject with which he had extremely intimate relations … the public follow-spot.
With his tabloid turmoil and his Bergman period now far behind him, Woody finally took his own advice – offered by his character David Dobel, a writing mentor in “Anything Else” (2003):
“I would stick to the jokes if I were you. That’s where the money is.”
Although his old typewriter will now only hammer out jokes in short-story form, it’s now time to revisit Woody’s movies as his filmmaking career winds down. We’ve looked at a dozen of those works – particularly his top bananas, the very funny ones – in Part Two, here:
http://jamiejobbbackstagepass.blogspot.com/2022/12/woody-allen-part-two.html
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WOODY AS WRITER-DIRECTOR – ALL THE FILMS:
Take the Money and Run (1969) Bananas (1971) Everything You Always Wanted to Know … (1972) Sleeper (1973) Love and Death (1975) Annie Hall (1977) Interiors (1978) Manhattan (1979) Stardust Memories (1980) Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) Zelig (1983) Broadway Danny Rose (1984) Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Radio Days (1987) September (1987) King Lear (1987) Another Woman (1988) New York Stories (1989) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) Alice (1990) Scenes from a Mall (1991) Shadows and Fog (1991) Husbands and Wives (1992) Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) | Bullets over Broadway (1994) Mighty Aphrodite (1995) Everyone Says I Love You )1996) Deconstructing Harry (1997) Celebrity (1998) Sweet and Lowdown (1999) Small Time Crooks (2000) Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) Hollywood Ending (2002) Anything Else (2003) Melinda and Melinda (2004) Match Point (2005) Scoop (2006) Cassandra’s Dream (2007) Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) Whatever Works (2009) You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) Midnight in Paris (2011) To Rome with Love (2012) Blue Jasmine (2013) Magic in the Moonlight (2014) Irrational Man (2015) Cafe Society (2016) Wonder Wheel (2017) A Rainy Day in New York (2019) Rifkin’s Festival (2020) UNTITLED (2022) |
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You Tube’s computer-generated video-bot for all things Woody:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCliU4pi7c3yUDL 0KtOEOaSg
MUBI’s listing of Woody’s 25 best comedies:
https://mubi.com/lists/dont-forget-the-laughter-woody-allens-best-comedies
Current filmography with gross earnings:
London Telegraph ranks every Woody film from worst to best:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-to-watch/woody-allen-movies-best-worst-ranked/
2012 Washington Post Interview:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/woody-allen-on-rome-playing-himself-and-why-he-skips-the-oscars/2012/06/27/gJQAMUCz8V_story.html
https://youtu.be/dPqvqPIGFts
http://nypost.com/2014/02/08/woody-mia-a-greek-tragedy/
http://www.worldcat.org/title/woody-movies-from-manhattan/oclc/34731246?loc=
http://www.worldcat.org/title/woody-allen-a-biography/oclc/606437930
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/woody-allen-a-documentary-interview-filmmaker-robert-b-weide/1924/
https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2022/9/x4rvi59jc6dgqg8sarh825hcaukvvi
(Thanks to Contra Costa Library for its help in researching this posting.)
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