Laugh In The n w year With tionships were not as you saw them in the movie. Values were not the same, integrity was not the same, and heroism was not. "I don't think that I ever recovered fully:' he said. "Because I went into movies and have lived a big portion of every year in a very unreal world. I go in the morning and there are beautiful women and handsome men, and they're in costumes and 1920s nightclubs. I make the stories come out the way I want them to. And so I have always led a very unreal life And he endorses this way of living. He talks about it with conviction. "The less, reality, the better. You get enough reality',' he said. "It finds you — you don't have to seek it out. If you were locked into reality all the time, you'd go crazy. You're reduced to escapism. Magic." She also suggested that all of the rapid-fire "references" in Allen's films — something so common in popular culture today — were "smart talk meant to convey the message that the speaker knows his way around lit and history, not to mention showbiz." "I'm not intellectual:' said Allen. "I'm the guy that you see at home with the beer watching the Knicks on television, or the football game. I'm not sitting up in bed with my Kierkegaard or reading Dostoyevsky." For a moment, all those messy, sexy women in his films — who never seem to be able to choose a profession but always want "to write who read e.e. cummings when they're told to by their more sophisticated lovers, who fall in love with Woody Allen because he's their 'teacher — seemed less silly. In fact, he's not unfamiliar with the inferiority complex. "I found myself — I don't know why — attracted to what I guess you would call these kind of • uncommercial-looking women:' he said Work As Shield When Allen was asked about the rewards of life, he laughed and cursorily mentioned family and "momen- tary flashes:' But then he went back to his work. His-work was his shield. Match Point, he said, had "served its function when I made it — to distract me from thinking of the worst parts of reality. I was able to spend time on solvable problems as to how to make the characters work, and how to make the scenes flow, and I never had to face up to the unsolvable terrible problems. These are all distractions for me." "Anhedonia," as the Allen pack knows, was almost the title of Annie Hall. And at one point in the course of our conversation, all these years later, Allen still used the word to describe his state. In an essay, Joan Didion scratched at the Woody glaze by attacking the famous litany at the Emily Mortimer stars as the cheated-upon end of Manhattan, when the Allen newlywed Chloe in Match Point. character lists his reasons to live: "Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, Louis of his teenage self. Armstrong's 'Potato Head Blues.' Every "They all were highly literate. They experience it evokes is essentially pas- knew poetry and classical music and sive. This list of Woody Allen's is the opera and novels and philosophy. And I ultimate consumer report:' was a major illiterate, and I couldn't She wrote that it "suggests a new class hold my own with those women at all. in America, a sub-world of people rigid For the first time in my life, I had gen- with apprehension that they will die uine motivation toward education." wearing the wrong sneaker, naming the Madame wrong symphony, preferring Recent Films Bovary. In recent films, Allen has been attacked Didion was both right and mean: Woody Allen's movies freed people to be as being out-of-touch, a man hermeti- cally sealed in a high-ceilinged self-obsessed; he made it look fun to be a narcissist. Comeback Kid on page 44 . • -(1 4 „ Musicat® The Hilarious Celebration of Women and The Change! a a • "The Ultimate Girls' flight Out!" • • • • • , - Detroit Free Press ° For Groups 15+ please call 313P163-8800 . ME GEM THEME • Downtown Detroit Box Office 313-c163-clg00 Ticketmaster 24g-645-6666 • www.gemitealre.coni • www.menopausethernusicalcorn CENTURY GRILL E Ask about our Inclusive Restaurant Packages RESTAURANT 1 (i6 ,]•041; Ice Cream • Espresso • Wifi Complimentary Freshly Baked Bread - Can fur Information Almost, Falafel House Milldam Catering • Party Trams Whale Lamb • Deliverg 0-11 fklandam-threw Saturday 11 10 Sundain - 6540 Orchard Lake Rd... • West Blearelteld Tel: 240.055.6929 • Fax: 24R.855.6959 wwwwAtteradateillouse..nert • We now offer some of your most favorite items of 30 years. Available anytime for your carry-out needs. '22.50 Corned Beef Extra Lean Corned Beef Fresh Roasted Turkey Breast Swiss Cheese Chicken Salad Tuna Salad The best tuna ish in North America." - lb. $10.00 lb. $11.00 lb. $10.00 lb. 5 6.25 lb. $9.00 lb. $9.00 lb. DETROIT FREE PRESS 6638 Telegraph & Maple • Bloomfield 248.851.0313 January 19 2006 43.