"I work 90 percent of the time. But I'm not a recluse."
may be losing this fight. Certainly Radio
Days, his fifteenth and most recent film,
was a step backward. An attempt at an
American Amarcor4 this episodic comedy-
drama seemed stifled and joyless, less a
case of taking risks than of surrendering
to worst instincts.
It's the darkly nutty rather than the
endearingly nutty Woody Allen who says
things like: "The best film I ever did, real-
ly, was Stardust Memories. It was my least
popular film. That may automatically
mean it was my best film. It was the
closest that I came to achieving what I set
out to achieve." This was the sour little pic-
ture in which Woody plays filmmaker San-
dy Bates, hounded and harassed by gag-
gles of grotesque and grasping aficionados
during a film weekend in the country.
Pauline Kael was so revolted she wrote, "If
Woody Allen finds success very upsetting
and wishes the public would go away, this
picture should help him stop worrying."
But he hasn't stopped worrying. "A film
of mine will be very popular and there's no
correlation between that and its quality,"
he says. So the public was too stupid to ap-
preciate Stardust Memories? Well, no, he
doesn't quite say that. "I caught a lot of
flak on that picture. I think that was un-
justified. Some people came away saying
that I had contempt for my audience. This
was not true. I never had contempt for my
audience; if I had contempt for an au-
dience, I'd be too smart to put it in a pic-
ture. I'd grouse about it at home. I've
always felt that the audience was at the
least equal to me or more. I've always tried
to play up to the audience."
By "play up" he certainly doesn't mean
pander. His antipandering impulse is so
strong, Allen may go too far the other way.
Asked if he shot an alternate, "happy" end-
ing to his film The Purple Rose of Cairo,
Allen says, "This is the happy ending." He
shot an alternate, even unhappier one; the
pathetic Depression waif played by Mia
Farrow not only doesn't get to remain in
her screen fantasy life, she doesn't even get
to go back into the movie theater for
another escapist fix. When Allen made An-
nie Hall, he said he thought of titling it
Anhedonia because it was about a man in-
capable of experiencing pleasure. The wor-
risome thing about Woody Allen is not his
difficulty in experiencing pleasure but the
guilt he seems to feel about giving it.
His judgment of his own work seems a
trifle screwy, the kind of thing that con-
founds his fans and must give fits to Jack
Rollins and Charles H. Joffe, his longtime
mentors and the executive producers of his
films. Woody says, "When I finished
Manhattan, I went to Rollins and Joffe and
said, 'Do you think there's any way I could
buy this from United Artists and not have
them release it, and then I would do one
free film for them or something as pay-
ment?"
Manhattan was one of his more ac-
complished and fully realized romantic
comedies. Allen used the music of George
Gershwin, another great American
(Jewish) original, on the sound track.
Gershwin once expressed admiration for
Stravinsky and a desire to emulate his
work, prompting someone to ask him why
he would want to be a second-rate Stravin-
sky when he could be a first-rate Gershwin.
One does get the feeling that given the
same choice, Woody might opt for ersatz
Igor, or at least think it over for a longer
time. It's not so much a question of letting
Woody be Woody as it is of making Woody
be Woody — of keeping Good Woody thriv-
ing and Bad Woody at bay, of keeping the
steak/reality equation in perspective. Of
reminding him that just because a picture
is popular and pleases an audience doesn't
mean that it's ipso facto suspect.
"There does seem to be this correlation
generally between this enormous populari-
ty and a quality of movie I wouldn't want
to make," he says anxiously. "What I would
aspire to in my fantasies at night are the
films of Kurosawa and Buiauel and
Bergman. Those are the great works of art
in film, and nothing would please me more
than if some time in my life, I could achieve
a film of that consequence. These things
are not popular. Whereas the E.Ts and
Rambos and things like that are hugely
popular. So I see a definitive correlation
between lack of popularity and high quali-
ty." By this standard, Henry Jaglom must
be the greatest director who ever lived.
What Allen may feel is not contempt for
the audience but contempt, or at least
resentment, for the necessity of attracting
and pleasing an audience. Hitchcock loved
preparing a film and thought shooting it
was a bore. Allen loves writing a film and
thinks making it is a chore. He talks as if
exhibiting it in theaters kind of spoils the
whole experience for him. Perhaps the
purest form of cinematic art would be to
write it, shoot it, edit it, and then throw
the thing away.
The half-opened door through which
Woody Allen peers is the entrance to the
Manhattan Film Center, a converted
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
25