Woody Allen

[MacGuffin]

All Things French in Vogue for Woody Allen

In Woody Allen's America, Bordeaux or Burgundy wine and other things French are always in vogue. But he admits his European sensibility makes his films less popular back home.

Even with trans-Atlantic ties at a low ebb, the French are still seen as standard-bearers of class, elegance and, well, romance among Americans, he said, and the U.S. filmgoing public knows it.

"If you were doing a scene of seduction, and the man gets the woman in a candlelit restaurant, he would never order a California wine because then everyone would laugh," Allen told reporters in Paris. "It will not be a Portuguese wine, it will just always be French."

"There's a mystique that Americans have about French wine," he said. "Despite any political conflicts America has with France, most Americans have enormous affection for thing French."

France's vocal opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq chilled relations between Paris and Washington, but Allen stopped short of any comment on the soured ties.

The bespectacled filmmaker was in Paris to promote his new film "Melinda and Melinda," which explores both tragedy and comedy through two separate and parallel lives of a young woman each played by Radha Mitchell that are the subject of a dinner conversation.

The film gave Allen the chance to dabble in tragedy admittedly not his strong point. It is to be released next month in France and in the United States in March.

Allen said he liked Michael Moore's anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11" which won top prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year but insisted filmmakers face limits in changing political attitudes.

"I don't think that it made any real difference in the outcome of the election," Allen said of Moore's film. "It's no question that I was disappointed in the outcome of this election."

But "I don't think people see movies and say, 'Well, I'm going to go out there and now I'm going to vote for somebody different,'" Allen said.

Allen's films are wildly popular in countries like France, and he acknowledged that these days his penchant for European culture doesn't win him much favor in America.

"It's not surprising to me that all over, my films have some kind of European sensibility," he said. It "doesn't help their popularity in the United States but it's unconscious."

[ElPandaRoyal]

Melinda and Melinda will come out January 6th here in Portugal, and guess who's horny to see it? That's right. Moi memme, fukkos  

[Kal]

I saw 'Zelig' tonight and its one of the funniest things I've ever seen... this is when Woody Allen shows his real genius... it was great!

[classical gas]

is he really a genius?

[mogwai]

wtf is woody allen?

[classical gas]

genius

[Alethia]

yes, he is.  despite melinda and melinda.

[cron]

PLOT/LOCATION SPOILERS FOR THE NEW MOVIE

The Woody Allen guide to London

For his new film, Match Point, Woody Allen has abandoned Manhattan, the backdrop for so many of his films, and come to London. The director talks to Peter Kelly about the settings that inspired him - and how he put them on film

After 30 years of using New York as both his location and inspiration, Woody Allen has become synonymous with the city. No other director or screenwriter has tied their themes and style so tightly to a particular place, and no one else has spent 25 of their 38 films making the architecture of Manhattan seem both impressive and romantic. So it was a surprise to his fans that his next release, Match Point, was shot entirely in London.


Woody Allen openly admits his pragmatic reasons for filming in the UK. "It was really because the finance was raised in London." Having selected London, however, Allen accepts "it was a felicitous choice" because the capital contains enough architecture to match his requirements.
American directors, annoyingly, often see filming in London as a kind of tourism. Mainstream films still tend to reference the standard landmarks of the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square to establish a London setting, while those on a smaller budget try to get to the "real" London by showing the small back streets of the east end. Neither has given much time to depicting the increasingly landmark-strewn South Bank, which is why Match Point is seen as essential to promoting London as a modern, international city.

Using the right people was clearly vital to Allen producing an authentic London film. Santo Loquasto has been Woody Allen's production designer for around 20 years but was unable to come to London to work on Match Point. So the role of realising Allen's vision in a British setting fell to Jim Clay.

"He was so meticulous and imaginative - sometime quite astonishingly - working in the same way Santo works, which is on a very limited budget but producing very large impressive sets for me," says Allen. "He did beautiful opera sets from scratch and he made the interior of Tate Modern.

"I'd never heard of what you call 'the Gherkin', but Jim showed me the exterior and the interior - both worked very well for me. He also showed me certain neighbourhoods, with very wealthy homes [in Belgravia and Pimlico] we had to shoot in. I also needed some tennis locations and he put me on to some ones that were perfect for the character but also were quite lovely to look at [Queen's Club, West Kensington]."

Early plot details of the film (Allen is famously secretive about forthcoming films and his plot outlines often change) involve a young tennis instructor who becomes entangled with a wealthy family. This leads to his rise in the world of the upper classes and affairs with two women, which have murderous consequences. The subtext of social tension - a recurring Woody Allen theme - has been reflected in the choice of locations, ranging from grand country estate homes to the Covent Garden hotel and the Curzon Cinema in Soho.

Clay says: "I spent five weeks with Woody travelling around with him. For Woody, who doesn't know London that well, everything was a joy and an experience, but he's not a pushover by any means. He says right away if he thinks it doesn't work for a scene, or if he doesn't like it, or if it isn't the right atmosphere for what he has in mind."

From Clay's point of view, it was essential to avoid the potential pitfalls of working with an American director: "We had to be careful not to make it look like a tourist movie, and where possible would throw those elements away. For example, you just have to be very careful how you show the Millennium Wheel. I was prepared to argue that case but I didn't have to in the end because Woody's so astute."

Perhaps understandably, Allen is unsure about using London architectural cliches in his film. "I don't recognise them as such, so I'm sure I shot a certain amount of picture-postcard London, but that wasn't on my mind. I was just trying to do the story." In assembling a British crew Allen has ensured that he has people who understand London as much as he understands Manhattan.

Tate Modern immediately seemed the ideal building for a Woody Allen film. "It has all those warm colours, it's vast and it has a fabulous light quality, which changes throughout the day. Early on, at eight in morning when the sun is just coming in through that end of the turbine hall, it's just a magical space," says Clay. The challenge was to make all these disparate elements of the London urban landscape coherent, both in this film and in the broader context of Allen's oeuvre. As Clay explains: "The Millennium bridge links the South Bank so successfully with St Paul's. Apart from being a superb piece of design and engineering, it has this fantastic backdrop. Cinematically, that stretch of the river looks stunning.

This portrayal of modern London could only go so far, however: Daniel Libeskind's London Metropolitan University building was rejected - it would stand out in film as bizarrely as it does on Holloway Road. "Woody is fairly traditional in his outlook. I think the Gherkin is as far as we wanted to go in the contemporary world," says Clay.

There were also more specific requirements when selecting locations for the film. Woody Allen frequently includes long scenes with one continuous shot as the characters walk and talk through block after block, down the long, straight streets of New York. These kinds of streets just don't exist in London, so St James's Park was used to accommodate extended pieces of dialogue.

Most heartening is what Clay said about working with Woody Allen: "He made me see London differently."

www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk

[MacGuffin]

Scarlett and Woody at It Again
With their collaboration Match Point set to debut at Cannes, Scarlett Johansson will head back to London for Woody Allen's next project. Source: FilmStew.com

Scarlett Johansson, who'll be seen at the Cannes Film Festival this year in Woody Allen's Match Point, is re-pairing with the filmmaker for another London-set feature. Johansson has been cast as the female lead in the next project from Allen, which will once again film during the summer in the U.K. Production will start on June 28.

As per usual with Allen films, both the title and the plot details of the film, which Allen wrote and will direct, are being kept close to the vest. Letty Aronson and Helen Robin will produce the project, with Stephen Tenenbaum serving as executive producer.

Match Point co-stars Emily Mortimer and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and marked the first time Allen left Manhattan to shoot a project.

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strange.  is she the new diane keaton/mia farrow?

[Alethia]

and marked the first time Allen left Manhattan to shoot a project.

what about bananas and things of the like??  were those not shot on location?

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or part of everyone says i love you?

[The Perineum Falcon]

Love & Death?

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Manhattan

[Sleuth]

Monk is filmed in LA instead of San Francisco