While I was in a traffic jam yesterday, coming home from Maysville on I-85 (All Lanes Blocked....dreaded words), I happened to catch a replay of a recent interview with Woody Allen on NPR. He's doing press to plug his new movie, WHATEVER WORKS, which opens in Atlanta in early July.
The movie sounds okay.... more Allen-Angst, this time starring
Larry David as the Woody surrogate and Evan Rachel Wood as the
inevitable younger (much) woman.... THIS TIME a Southern beauty queen
with more dimples than brains. Anyway, I have a soft spot for
Allen since he's created more enduring works than failures...though the
masterpieces, like, say ANNIE HALL or HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, are
getting to be distant memories.
But listening to his interview, it struck me how time-warped he (and, sadly, his genius) is. The comments are what we could have heard 30 years ago, except for hems and hahs about his child bride/stepdaughter. There are artists who've committed far more heinous crimes than that of a horny old man needing his youth re-affirmed by a younger woman (especially a supposedly forbidden younger woman). But for some reason, this transgression has stuck to Allen like...add your own metaphor.
It made me sad---though not as sad as being stuck in traffic with All Lanes Closed. Perhaps it's wrong to demand our artists stay creative and, well, personally acceptable for as long as they live. John Huston pulled stuff Allen probably never dreamed of and we just shook our collective heads.
Maybe it's just that you, the artist, create your own bed (so to speak) and then we, your acolytes, force you to lie in it.
But listening to his interview, it struck me how time-warped he (and, sadly, his genius) is. The comments are what we could have heard 30 years ago, except for hems and hahs about his child bride/stepdaughter. There are artists who've committed far more heinous crimes than that of a horny old man needing his youth re-affirmed by a younger woman (especially a supposedly forbidden younger woman). But for some reason, this transgression has stuck to Allen like...add your own metaphor.
It made me sad---though not as sad as being stuck in traffic with All Lanes Closed. Perhaps it's wrong to demand our artists stay creative and, well, personally acceptable for as long as they live. John Huston pulled stuff Allen probably never dreamed of and we just shook our collective heads.
Maybe it's just that you, the artist, create your own bed (so to speak) and then we, your acolytes, force you to lie in it.
I agree with you that Woody's best work is long behind him . . . it's sad to see a man in his 70s still trying to pretend (or delude himself) that this old man is still somehow physically attractive to teenagers/20-somethings. It would be nice to see him use his talents to make a movie about an old man that approaches the character development more realistically, but I guess that's not going to happen. I love his earlier movies and still watch them quite often, but Woody strikes me as a classic case of arrested development -- he will perpetually see himself as a young comedian going after the young women.