Whatever Works: Not Like Mighty Aphrodite

Woody Allen has supplied the Irish Times with an interview. If you've read any Allen interviews in the last decade, you've more or less read this one. Not Allen's fault. The questions are always retread, and Allen, if he's anything, is consistent. The answers are always the same. I suppose most audiences don't spend their leisure hours reading this blog, so what's old to us is new to them. My favorite snippet:

Evan Rachel Wood has said that Whatever Works is closer to Mighty Aphrodite than any other Allen picture.

“She said that? My God! I can’t see any similarity whatsoever between the two movies – not a remote similarity. It’s interesting how a person can see a movie so differently. I remember when my sister saw Hannah and Her Sisters and she thought it was closer to Sleeper than my other movies. I told her she must be crazy, that there was no comparison between the two. Yet she saw some similarity there, although nobody else in the world did. And I don’t think there’s another human on the face of the earth who will find the most remote similarity between Whatever Works and Mighty Aphrodite .”

Axel Kuschevatzky Interviews Woody Allen

We'll have more to say about these interviews in the coming days, but until then they're posted here for you to take it. Thanks to those who alerted us to the clips.

Woody Allen in the Times Online

“The love I feel for people is more important than the art I create. If you have an unhappy love life, it is much more painful than putting out a movie nobody likes. I am very happy right now.”

Settled mind. Settled man.

A friend has brought our attention to a wonderful little essay by Caryn James written during the production of Radio Days.

It's a thought-provoking piece on its own merits, but it's also a fascinating read by way of contrast and comparison to more recent interviews and articles. We're fascinated by the subtle ways in which Allen has modified himself over the years, but we're blown away by how few modifications have emerged 20 years on.

1969 Television Special

In 1969, CBS aired a program called The Woody Allen Special. Embedded below is a promotion Allen did for the program, as well as clips from the show. The most famous of which is Allen's interview of evangelist Billy Graham.

What's with the name?

Some readers have puzzled over the title of this site, Good Small Films. A few have emailed to ask from which movie the phrase is taken, assuming it is uttered here or there by an Allen character. While those instincts are good, the phrase is not taken from an Allen film. It was snatched from an Allen interview.

Simon Garfield wrote a good story, perhaps the best we've read in the last decade, for the Observer during the filming of Match Point. While with the American director Garfield recorded these words

'In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now,' he says. 'There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it's taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we'd get a Fellini or a Bergman or a Godard or Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films - if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500m.

Woody Does PR for NYC

New York magazine has published a recent interview with Woody Allen. Allen delivers good, matter-of-fact answers to a set of bland questions. If any of our international readers have footage of Allen discussing 9-11 on European television, we'd love to see it.

NY: Were you in the city on September 11?

WA: Yes, I remember exactly where. Someone in my house—I lived on 92nd Street then—said, “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” and then we turned on a television set and then another one crashed, and we saw that. Two days later I was scheduled to go to Europe. A lot of people canceled going to Europe, there was a lot of fear. I wasn’t afraid, not because I’m anything but a major coward, but I was flying privately. I didn’t think that I could be hijacked. And because I went and I was a New Yorker, I became the spokesman for New York City and September 11. And I was on all the Sunday-morning news shows in France and England and Italy. I was suddenly on their versions of Face the Nation. And they were asking me, is this going to be the end of all humor? (They have a way of putting these things in European countries.) Is this the end of New York? And I said no, not at all. Not for a minute. I feel I was completely right. If you drop a person in New York City now and you drop them before September 11 and they didn’t know, they wouldn’t know the difference. I felt New York would metabolize it, and it would go on. New York would be the same vibrant city. And it is.

A Meaningless Little Flicker

Newsweek's Jennie Yabroff interviewed Woody Allen earlier this fall. The results are the same as the lions share of previous interviews, although Yabroff has done her homework. This always makes the interview better. Too bad NW didn't give her more space.

Allen comes off the same as ever.

"Your perception of time changes as you get older, because you see how brief everything is," he says. "You see how meaningless … I don't want to depress you, but it's a meaningless little flicker."

NW ran another Allen-related item in July, an interview with Patricia Clarkson.

Does he give a lot of direction?

He's completely hands off, and that's the beauty of Woody Allen. I think he's the least precious director I've ever worked with.

Interview Magazine, Woody Allen

Douglas McGrath, who co-wrote Bullets Over Broadway, has contributed a fairly good conversation with Woody Allen to Interview. It veers into tiresome retread at points, but on the whole it's worthwhile.

DM: I guess what I’m asking, though, is if there is one of your films that tells us the most about your philosophy of life? If someone couldn’t meet you and wanted to know what Woody is really like or what gives us the most sense of his worldview—his fears, his optimisms, his anxieties, his hopes—is there one film that kind of best sums that up?
WA: Well, to date—if it’s just that—I would probably say Anything Else [2003].
DM: Really?
WA: Yeah. You’d get it in a more abstract way in Purple Rose, because clearly I do believe that reality is dreadful and that you are forced to choose it in the end or go crazy, but that it kills you. So that film does sum up a great feeling that I have about life—I mean a large feeling that I have about it. But in terms of just me personally as a kind of wretched little complaining vantz, I think you would see that in Anything Else. There’s a lot of me in there.
DM: Very interesting. You’re full of surprises.
WA: Well, it is me. I’m not saying that Anything Else is my best film, though I didn’t think it was a bad film at all—I think that one is better than many films of mine that were more successful. I won’t say that it’s never the case, but very often there’s no correlation between the quality of one’s work artistically and its commercial success. Everybody knows that.

Curious about Anything Else. In GSF's opinion it's Allen's best film this decade, and one sure to receive higher marks in retrospective. If you're looking for a little fun, try watching Annie Hall and Anything Else back to back. Why is this fun? You'll see. We hope to write more about Anything Else in the coming weeks.

It's Lonely at the Top: Woody Allen Writes Spoof Diary

The International Herald Tribune, global arm of the New York Times, is running a farcical piece by Woody Allen about the filming of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

APRIL 2

Offered role to Scarlett Johansson. Said before she could accept, script must be approved by her agent, then by her mother, with whom she's close. Following that it must be approved by her agent's mother. In middle of negotiation she changed agents - then changed mothers. She's gifted but can be a handful.

The rest of the diary is funny too, and worth the time of your morning coffee.

On another Vicky Cristina Barcelona note, last month Allen was interviewed by Scott Foundas of the Village Voice and had this to say. As most readers know, the film opened to great reviews, not that that, if you read the interview, means anything. But if said reviews do mean something to you, GSF recommends Julissa Trevino's concise and thoughtful response to the film.