Post by Noah on Apr 5, 2005 10:49:49 GMT -5
Here's an short piece about Woody Allen which I wrote a few months ago for the blog. I never published it, deciding to maintain the purely-politics format, but the message board seems like a good place for it.
Woody and Me[/b]
When I was sixteen, Woody Allen was my Elvis. I wanted to be exactly like him. I dressed like him and I talked like him. I only listened to jazz. I told my tenth grade English class that "I don't believe in reincarnation, but I did in a past life." And every night, after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, I would curl up with my brother's dog, Cookie, and watch Woody Allen movies, one after another, over and over. Pretty much every film he's made, up to and including Manhattan Murder Mystery, I know by heart, and so did Cookie.
Originally, I was in love with comedy, and I had ardent love affairs with numerous comic heroes. Hardly any were of my own era. I liked Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello and Peter Sellers and Danny Kaye. But Woody Allen was a comic personality I could identify with on a deeper level, even more than I could with the gods Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin. I was drawn to heroes whose charisma came from being smart and funny, as opposed to dashing and dangerous. But Woody Allen had the added ingredient of sex. He cast himself as an avatar of sexual frustration and romantic failure, with which I identified, but he also got involved with a lot of incredible women, to which I aspired.
It's probably worth noting that I realize, in retrospect, that my early teenage years might not have been marked by such sexual frustration and romantic failure if I had not chosen to constantly impersonate Woody Allen.
I had lived in South Florida since the age of twelve, but by the time I was sixteen I was so sure I was going to move permanently to New York in two years that I didn't even bother to learn to drive. In the suburbs, it's hard to date if you don't drive, but Woody Allen didn’t drive, so neither did I. As it turned out, I didn’t move to New York till I was twenty, and by then I was done being Woody Allen anyway.
As an artist, I thought, Allen could do no wrong. I said, "He makes one movie a year, and his is the best movie of the year, every year." I didn't just join the millions who know Annie Hall and Sleeper by heart; I joined the thousands who know Zelig and Crimes and Misdemeanors by heart. I joined the hundreds who know Husbands and Wives by heart. I even joined the dozens who know Shadows and Fog by heart, and I am one of two people on Earth who know September by heart, the other being a sixteen-year-old boy with glasses.
My intense worship of Woody Allen eventually faded away, as did my need to assume his identity, but I remain a fan. I know I'm not alone in thinking that he is one of the world's greatest filmmakers, and I wish he were as lionized as Scorsese and Spielberg. But those men are filmmakers who reach out to their public. They teach classes. They accept awards. They appear on talk shows. They do DVD commentaries. As an artist, Allen is no less of a legend, but as a personality, he's inaccessible. Like Garbo, he clearly wants to be alone. A lot of artists want that, but Allen is in the unique position of being able to make a movie every year, even if they lose money, and still be left alone and permitted to continue. His attitude seems to be that his work can speak for itself, and most of his work speaks awfully well.
Some of his films, the ones I've seen hundreds of times, make me a little bit uncomfortable now. I know them too well. Tiny details in them embarrass me, in much the same way I am embarrassed by tiny details in my own work. There is not a single frame of, say, Hannah and Her Sisters which I have not invested with all the heavy emotional chords of my adolescence. Certain conversations in Manhattan take me back to certain conversations in the hallways of my high school. Stardust Memories is a roadmap of my junior year.
I still look forward to his films when they come out, but I have come to feel that only some of them are great. Back when I had read everything ever written about Woody, I was well aware that the self-deprecating auteur felt he had never made a truly great film. This struck me as an incredibly noble position. Here was a legend in his own time, still struggling to make something he considered great, hoping each time that this might be the one. But I read a recent interview with Allen in which he said he's more or less given up -- that he continues to make films because that's what he does, but that if he hasn't made a great one yet, he probably never will.
This saddened me in a very intimate way. I know Woody Allen is a slave to his muse; he's not trying to please anybody. I know that he wouldn't be Woody Allen if he were the type to sit down and watch his own movies (he never does, once they're released) and revisit outtakes for DVD special features. But I want him to know that a lot of us think he has made several great films, and quite a few good ones, and some interesting misfires, and a few disappointments. A lot of us cherish his work the way he cherishes Ingmar Bergman's, and we remain hopeful that there are great films yet to come.
Woody and Me[/b]
When I was sixteen, Woody Allen was my Elvis. I wanted to be exactly like him. I dressed like him and I talked like him. I only listened to jazz. I told my tenth grade English class that "I don't believe in reincarnation, but I did in a past life." And every night, after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, I would curl up with my brother's dog, Cookie, and watch Woody Allen movies, one after another, over and over. Pretty much every film he's made, up to and including Manhattan Murder Mystery, I know by heart, and so did Cookie.
Originally, I was in love with comedy, and I had ardent love affairs with numerous comic heroes. Hardly any were of my own era. I liked Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello and Peter Sellers and Danny Kaye. But Woody Allen was a comic personality I could identify with on a deeper level, even more than I could with the gods Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin. I was drawn to heroes whose charisma came from being smart and funny, as opposed to dashing and dangerous. But Woody Allen had the added ingredient of sex. He cast himself as an avatar of sexual frustration and romantic failure, with which I identified, but he also got involved with a lot of incredible women, to which I aspired.
It's probably worth noting that I realize, in retrospect, that my early teenage years might not have been marked by such sexual frustration and romantic failure if I had not chosen to constantly impersonate Woody Allen.
I had lived in South Florida since the age of twelve, but by the time I was sixteen I was so sure I was going to move permanently to New York in two years that I didn't even bother to learn to drive. In the suburbs, it's hard to date if you don't drive, but Woody Allen didn’t drive, so neither did I. As it turned out, I didn’t move to New York till I was twenty, and by then I was done being Woody Allen anyway.
As an artist, I thought, Allen could do no wrong. I said, "He makes one movie a year, and his is the best movie of the year, every year." I didn't just join the millions who know Annie Hall and Sleeper by heart; I joined the thousands who know Zelig and Crimes and Misdemeanors by heart. I joined the hundreds who know Husbands and Wives by heart. I even joined the dozens who know Shadows and Fog by heart, and I am one of two people on Earth who know September by heart, the other being a sixteen-year-old boy with glasses.
My intense worship of Woody Allen eventually faded away, as did my need to assume his identity, but I remain a fan. I know I'm not alone in thinking that he is one of the world's greatest filmmakers, and I wish he were as lionized as Scorsese and Spielberg. But those men are filmmakers who reach out to their public. They teach classes. They accept awards. They appear on talk shows. They do DVD commentaries. As an artist, Allen is no less of a legend, but as a personality, he's inaccessible. Like Garbo, he clearly wants to be alone. A lot of artists want that, but Allen is in the unique position of being able to make a movie every year, even if they lose money, and still be left alone and permitted to continue. His attitude seems to be that his work can speak for itself, and most of his work speaks awfully well.
Some of his films, the ones I've seen hundreds of times, make me a little bit uncomfortable now. I know them too well. Tiny details in them embarrass me, in much the same way I am embarrassed by tiny details in my own work. There is not a single frame of, say, Hannah and Her Sisters which I have not invested with all the heavy emotional chords of my adolescence. Certain conversations in Manhattan take me back to certain conversations in the hallways of my high school. Stardust Memories is a roadmap of my junior year.
I still look forward to his films when they come out, but I have come to feel that only some of them are great. Back when I had read everything ever written about Woody, I was well aware that the self-deprecating auteur felt he had never made a truly great film. This struck me as an incredibly noble position. Here was a legend in his own time, still struggling to make something he considered great, hoping each time that this might be the one. But I read a recent interview with Allen in which he said he's more or less given up -- that he continues to make films because that's what he does, but that if he hasn't made a great one yet, he probably never will.
This saddened me in a very intimate way. I know Woody Allen is a slave to his muse; he's not trying to please anybody. I know that he wouldn't be Woody Allen if he were the type to sit down and watch his own movies (he never does, once they're released) and revisit outtakes for DVD special features. But I want him to know that a lot of us think he has made several great films, and quite a few good ones, and some interesting misfires, and a few disappointments. A lot of us cherish his work the way he cherishes Ingmar Bergman's, and we remain hopeful that there are great films yet to come.
