Conversations with Woody Allen

by LAX, ERIC

• ISBN13: 9781400031498
• ISBN10: 1400031494
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2009-08-18
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

In discussions that begin in 1971 and end in 2009, Allen talks about every facet of moviemaking through the prism of his own work as well as the larger world of film, and in so doing reveals an artist's development over the course of his career. He speaks about his influences and about the genesis of his ideas; about writing, casting, acting, shooting, directing, editing, and scoringand throughout shows himself to be thoughtful, honest, self-deprecating, always witty, and often hilarious.

Author Biography

Eric Lax is also the author of Woody Allen: A Biography and coauthor (with A. M. Sperber) of Bogart. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Times. He is an officer of International PEN and lives in Los Angeles.

Excerpts

Introduction

A book of conversations usually collects interviews done over weeks or months and so, regardless of the time span covered, the result is a snapshot that reflects the attitudes and feelings of the subject at a given point in life. This book, however, is an album assembled over half of Woody Allen’s life, beginning in 1971, and like time-lapse photography, it offers a clear view of his transformation from novice to one of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers, and what he learned along the way.

For thirty-six years I’ve had the pleasure of watching an artist’s evolution from close range, but I wouldn’t have laid money on the chances of that after our first meeting. In the spring of 1971 an editor at theNew York Times Magazinesent me to investigate three ideas for a possible story. One of them was a profile of Allen, a thirty-five-year-old comic who had written two Broadway plays (Don’t Drink the WaterandPlay It Again, Sam), whose prose was now often inThe New Yorker,and who had recently begun to act in and direct his own screenplays:Take the Money and Run(1969), the purported documentary of a petty criminal so spectacularly inept that he can’t even write a legible holdup note, and the just-releasedBananas,a comic turn on Latin American revolutions and U.S. foreign policy. With just enough plot to bind them, the pictures are strung together like a nightclub monologue, with little attention paid to character development or cinematic style. They are one often surreal gag after another, and they are uproarious.

The films announced the arrival of an idiosyncratic and original talent, and editors at theTimeswanted to know more about him, as did I. I thought he was in a league with my comic heroes, S. J. Perelman, Bob Hope, and the Marx Bothers, and even more varied in his ability to provoke laughter. I telephoned his managers, Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe, to ask for an interview, and an appointment was made. I arrived at their duplex office on West Fifty-seventh Street in Manhattan with a couple of pages of questions and a brand-new tape recorder and was taken upstairs, where Woody was waiting in a small room furnished with a table and lamp and a couple of nicely stuffed chairs. He looked uncomfortable and seemed shy; I was new to journalism and nervous about meeting someone whose work I admired. We shook hands, said hello, settled into the seats, and I asked my questions like someone reading off a checklist. His answers were succinct. His shortest was “No,” which would not have been so bad had any of his longest been more expressive than “Yes.”

So I wrote a piece on one of the other two ideas I looked into, and figured I was done with Woody Allen.

Six months later, while riding a bicycle in Sausalito, California, I was nearly run down by a Ford station wagon with a card in the front window that read “Rollins and Joffe Productions.” In that day’sSan Francisco ChronicleI had seen a short article about Woody being in town to filmPlay It Again, Samand, being young and solipsistic, I figured that instead of mere coincidence, this was a sign that he was ready to talk more openly. I phoned Joffe to see about another interview and was summoned to meet Woody on a houseboat in the Sausalito harbor, which was being considered for a scene in the film. We chatted about the baseball playoffs and then he excused himself to look at something with the location manager. A few minutes later, Charlie came over and said, “Why don’t you come to the set and hang around? But be sure to keep quiet and out of the way, otherwise you’ll have to go.”

I dutifully did as I was told and, after a few days, Woody came over between shots and we talked for a minute. He came back later and we talked longer. Soon we began more formal inter

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Excerpted from Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking by Eric Lax
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.