Melinda And Melinda

[pete]

anything else was kinda terrible, maybe due to the acting.  every scene is pretty much woody or christina ricci saying or doing something weird and then jason biggs just does his best "you whaaaat?!" expression.

[Just Withnail]

I'm actually hoping this MGM/ Sony think will give us some Woody SEs.

[ElPandaRoyal]

It's a shame, but the movie is really a disappointment. I mean, really. It had everything to be great, and there are a few moments of greatness, but it suffers from underdevelopment. Two stories condensed in the length of only one ruins it. I wanted to see more, much more, especially from the dramatic segment. The comic one results better (although it's also not perfect), and Will Ferrel really is genius. Great, great comedy actor.

First major disappointment of the year, and that sucks a lot.

Also, Anything Else is damn good.

Also, I'm gonna see Finding Neverland today.

Also, I have a lot of pudding.

[SHAFTR]

I'm at odds here.  I love Woody Allen and dislike Will Ferrell.

[Finn]

Will Ferrel is all over the place too much now. He has so many movies coming out this year.

These are his movies just coming soon:

A Confederacy of Dunces (2005) (in production)
Joan of Bark: The Dog that Saved France (2006) (announced)
Talladega Nights (2006) (announced)
Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny (2005) (announced)
Stranger Than Fiction (2005) (announced)
The Producers: The Movie Musical (2005) (pre-production)
Curious George (2006) (filming) (voice)
The Wendell Baker Story (2005) (post-production)
The Wedding Crashers (2005) (post-production)
Bewitched (2005) (post-production)
Kicking & Screaming (2005) (post-production)
Winter Passing (2005) (completed)

[matt35mm]

Yeah but all of those look good except for Bewitched.  Joan of Bark just moved up to the top of my list of Will Ferrell movies to look forward to.

[modage]

The Two Sides of Woody Allen
Source: Edward Douglas March 15, 2005

Later this year, Woody Allen will hit his 70th birthday, but after forty years making movies, the filmmaker is still going strong with Melinda and Melinda, his tenth movie in ten years. Neither strictly a comedy nor a drama, the film consists of two separate stories using two different ensemble casts based on the idea of an uninvited dinner guest. On the one side, it's a romantic comedy starring Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet, and on the other, it's a serious drama featuring Chloe Sevigny and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The only common bond between the two stories is its central character Melinda, played in both stories by Radha Mitchell, following up her role as Johnny Depp's wife in Oscar-nominated Finding Neverland.

The elusive Allen hasn't done very many interviews in the last few years, so when ComingSoon.net had the chance to talk to the veteran director about his filmmaking process and working with Will Ferrell, it was an opportunity that we couldn't pass up.

CS!: Presumably this project has been gestating for a number of years, but what was it about this particular idea—doing a story both as a comedy and a drama—that appealed to you?
Woody Allen: There have been many times when I had ideas that I felt would have worked either way. The idea could have been written amusingly or as a serious story, and in the past, I'd always chosen one. Here, I had an idea that I thought could make quite a serious story, but it could also make a quite funny romantic story. Then it occurred to me to alternate the two and see if I could maybe learn something from trying to juxtapose the two. Of course, I learned nothing in trying to do this. (laughter) It was fun to do, but it was not enlightening.

CS!: Do you have a particular preference of writing comedy or tragedy?
Allen: It's always fun to write the heavy stuff for me because over the years I've done a lot of movies, and almost all of them have been comic. It's fun to do something that's very, very heavy just for the change, but when I realized I was going to be working with Will [Ferrell], I went back over the script and tried to customize it more for him and that became fun.

CS!: This is a very different role for Will, but he does seem to do a very good impression of you. Was that intentional?
Allen: First of all, he's so physically different. He's a big, silly person, and everyone has seen and laughed at him as I have in these broad ridiculous comedies. The question was whether could he act and be believable as me. It turned out that because of his size and his face and whatever talent he has, that he's vulnerable. There's something sweet about him and your heart goes out to him and he's very, very amusing. There were things in the actual dialogue of the script that he couldn't do. Since I'm writing the dialogue, even though I knew I'd never be playing it, the tendency is to write it for myself. I had to cut some lines out, because he couldn't do it. It just never sounded funny when he did it, but there were things that he did do that I could have never imagined for the script when I was writing it before I met him. These were contributions that he would make that are just so built in to his ridiculous persona and the way he moves. There's something in the look of his face; it's intangible, but it's silly and sweet.

CS!: How gratifying is it that actors are still so willing to work with you?
Allen: I'm not surprised, because they only work with me if they're between desirable jobs. If I call an actor or an actress and someone like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese is calling them and are offering them substantial money, they have no interest in me at all. If they just finished a picture, and they've earned their 10 million dollar salary and they have nothing to do until August, I call them in June and they like the part, so they say why not?


CS!: You never seem to work with the same cast twice anymore. How does your casting process work exactly?
Allen: It's always a question of who's best for the role, and that's the first thing you think of. Then you find out whether your choices are available or that they won't work for no money, which is what we have. Sometimes, you get expensive actors who couldn't care less about the money. They're available and they rush to do it. In this picture, the hard casting was Radha, because it was tough to find somebody who could be very dramatic and also handle the light romantic stuff as well. Sometimes when we're filming, she had to do it in the same day. In the morning, she'd cry and attempt to commit suicide or something, and then in the afternoon she'd have to be light and frothy. I'd never heard of her or know that she existed, and then I saw a scene from Phone Booth, the Joel Schumacher movie, and I thought she was very good, a very attractive and convincing actress. Then they sent me some independent film footage of her and she was very, very good. I called her and she wanted to do it. I've been very lucky in the past with women I've worked with whether they were known or unknown, but even unknowns. It seemed to me that she could do this, and she looks great. She's charming and a good actress, but it took a long time to find her. It was a very tough part.

CS!: You also have a bit of a reputation for firing actors. What would you consider a fire-able offense on the set?
Allen: Well, what is fire-able really turns out, in the end, to be my casting mistake, because I'm convinced that they can do it, and when they come in and they don't do it, I try every conceivable way I can to get them to do it. I talk to them and explain it. I try to be as lucid as I can and then if that doesn't work, sometimes I try and trick them in a transparent way. I take the script and I act it out for them. I'm hoping that they'll pick it up from me and sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't and no matter what I do I can't get it. I'm not the skilled director that Elias Kazan was or Mike Nichols, where they can get a performance out of someone that can't act. I don't know how they do it, but I can't do that. After three days of trying to get the person to do the scene with every resource I can think of, I fire them because I don't know what else to do. I feel the whole picture will die if we use them, and I can't think of what else to do. If I was more resourceful or if I had cast more judiciously, although I think I'm casting judiciously at the time, but it's possible someone will come in and read and they'll be very goop at the reading and then for some inexplicable reason they can't do it when the time comes. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen occasionally. It has happened to me through the years at times and you know, it's a terrible thing.

CS!: Do you think it's fair to say that the comedy in the film is more for Jews and the drama is more for WASPs?
Allen: That's very funny. I don't really think of it that way, but I guess people think as comedy for Jews all the time. I'm forever being asked why are all the comedians are Jewish, and I always feel that they're not. I was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in a Jewish household, so naturally my idiom is where I grew up. I've had this conversation with Spike Lee a number of times. I could never convincingly write about a black family and I doubt if he certainly not as convincingly as I could, about a Jewish family because you know you lived it every moment so it gets into the nuances.

CS!: How was it to switch from DreamWorks, who released your last few movies, to Fox Searchlight?
Allen: Well, the switch was easy. Dreamworks was great to work with--they only distributed for me and they were great. They put the pictures out first-class; I had a wonderful time with them. To me it's no different. I always work the same way. Nobody reads a script. They either want to go with me or they don't, and my pictures don't cost a lot of money, so they're really not risking a tremendous amount. There's not a big loss side for them, and they don't get anything to say about anything. If they want to do this then we can do it, and somehow, I always seem to find somebody that's willing to do it at the low price that I'm able to do the movie for. It's just worked out that I've gotten some very good people over the years for each film. While I can't promise the studio to begin with that I will, by good luck and the availability of people, I do.

CS!: You seem to be driven to get one movie out every year. How do you manage that sort of schedule?
Allen: I'm not really driven that much. I finish a movie and when I'm finished with it—this may sound facetious—but I sit around for a week or two weeks and what do you do? I'm not going to go to the Bahamas or fishing, so I start to write something else and when I'm finished with it, I go and do it. It's not rocket science. You write for a few months, you finish a script, you cast it, shoot it, editing goes very fast with digital avid. The whole thing is not that big a deal. I finished this picture and another picture, and I'm preparing to shoot another film this summer.

CS!: How has your writing process changed over the years?
Allen: I still lay down on the bed with a yellow pad and write it longhand. Invariably, I have to type it myself and that takes three days. I can write faster this way. I was taught to write on a typewriter, and I think it would be healthier for me to do it that way, because if you write on a typewriter you sort of act out the scene and you know it works. When you write on a pad, you're hearing it in your head, and you don't know that it works, but it goes so much faster. I just got into this bad habit and I've been doing it for years.

CS!: Do you think that you'll ever direct anything that someone else has written?
Allen: I've never done that. I really have only directed because I'm a writer and I like to write, but I wouldn't rule that out now that I'm getting older, to try the experience once, just to see what it would be like to direct somebody else's script. I've only directed in the past cause I wrote the script.


CS!: Do you ever wish you had $100 million to direct a film?
Allen: I wish I had the hundred mill, but it's very hard. In my lifetime, the average film went from 50 and 60 million dollars to 100 million dollar films and considerably more. I'm making films where everything, including my salary, will be a maximum of 14 or 15 million dollars. It's tough, because there's a lot of things I want to do that I can't do. When I did this next film that hasn't come out yet, Match Point, they said to me that I wasn't going to be able to afford music. I figured out a way I was able to convince an opera company that was putting out an Enrico Caruso album to get the music. There's a lot of things you can't do like any kind of special effects or reshooting things.

CS!: So what's left for Woody Allen to do?
Allen: I would like to make some films that are bolder and more aggressive than I've made. I've always been a passive comedian in the mold of Bob Hope or someone that's victimized--a coward, a failure with women, a loser--and I'd love to try sometime to do a picture where I was a winner. (laughter) I would like that just for the fun of it. When you see Groucho Marx or a WC Fields, they have an aggressive sense of humor, and I'd love to try that. Now, it might not sit well. It might be that I would try it and they would say who is this guy. I would like to try that.

CS!: Can you tell us anything about your next movie, Match Point?
Allen: It's a film that I shot in England with Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Myers, who are brilliant. I rarely work overseas, but I got a situation that was very good for me. They gave me the money, no questions asked, and the atmosphere was wonderful. I worked in the summer. It was cool in London. The skies were all gray, which is great for photography, and there are no unions (laughter) which is a wonderful thing, not just financially, but because everybody can help out and do the other person's job without infringing. It's like making a student film in the best sense of the word. The guy that does the lunches can also stop traffic for you, whereas here, they can't do that.

Melinda and Melinda opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. Look for an interview with its star Radha Mitchell in the near future.

[Pubrick]

i hope this is good and everyone sees it, radha mitchell is pretty good.
ever since her days as a regular on an australian soap series.
but i'm afraid she'll go the way of frances o connor, under-used talent.
and it'll be woody's fault for making only crap the last 5 years.

[pete]

I'm happy for Woody and how he's just turning out all these films, I don't even care if they're good or not; I'm just happy that Woody is making films--as long as he's kinda happy I'm happy too.

[Ravi]

CS!: Presumably this project has been gestating for a number of years, but what was it about this particular idea—doing a story both as a comedy and a drama—that appealed to you?
Woody Allen: There have been many times when I had ideas that I felt would have worked either way. The idea could have been written amusingly or as a serious story, and in the past, I'd always chosen one. Here, I had an idea that I thought could make quite a serious story, but it could also make a quite funny romantic story. Then it occurred to me to alternate the two and see if I could maybe learn something from trying to juxtapose the two. Of course, I learned nothing in trying to do this. (laughter) It was fun to do, but it was not enlightening.

I've read comments that Spanglish wasn't good at settling on a comedic or serious tone.  I hope Melinda and Melinda doesn't have that problem.

[Myxo]

i hope this is good and everyone sees it, radha mitchell is pretty good.
ever since her days as a regular on an australian soap series.
but i'm afraid she'll go the way of frances o connor, under-used talent.
and it'll be woody's fault for making only crap the last 5 years.

She was a bright spot in Finding Neverland as Depp's frustrated wife.

[Sleuth]

i hope this is good and everyone sees it, radha mitchell is pretty good.
ever since her days as a regular on an australian soap series.
but i'm afraid she'll go the way of frances o connor, under-used talent.
and it'll be woody's fault for making only crap the last 5 years.

She was a bright spot in Finding Neverland as Depp's frustrated wife.

OWNED

[grand theft sparrow]

i hope this is good and everyone sees it, radha mitchell is pretty good.
ever since her days as a regular on an australian soap series.
but i'm afraid she'll go the way of frances o connor, under-used talent.
and it'll be woody's fault for making only crap the last 5 years.

She was a bright spot in Finding Neverland as Depp's frustrated wife.

But she was awful in Man on Fire.  I know it's not the best showcase for anyone's acting but she came off like a second-rate Charlize Theron in that.

[MacGuffin]

Woody Allen Reveals New Neurosis in New Movie

Woody Allen, a comic symbol of neurotic New Yorkers to film buffs everywhere, gives vent to a new syndrome with Friday's release of "Melinda and Melinda."

Call it "opus envy" -- a condition in which a highly esteemed comedic artist questions his own value compared to "serious" dramatists.

In "Melinda and Melinda," Allen delivers a cinematic serving of double vision, spinning separate comic and tragic treatments of an anecdote about a character named Melinda that are intercut with one another.

Australian Radha Mitchell, of "Phone Booth," and "Finding Neverland," plays both Melindas with otherwise distinct casts, including Will Ferrell and Amanda Peet in the comedy and Chloe Sevigny and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the tragedy.

A Sophoclean dialogue about the relative virtues of comedy and tragedy punctuates the piece, revealing some of Allen's own inner turmoil.

"Emotionally, comedy will never have the same impact," former stand-up comic Allen told Reuters.

"You can take the greatest comedies, and it's never the same as the impact when a curtain comes down on 'A Streetcar Named Desire' or 'Death of a Salesman.' You're pulverized by what you've seen. Comedy is just fun and entertaining."

Allen, nominated for 13 Oscars for best original screenplay and six times as best director, said he wishes he thrived on the other side of the spectrum.

"I feel less comfortable when I'm doing dramatic things. But that's my real aspiration, my secret dream. I wish I had been a tragic poet instead of a minter of one-liners.

"So whenever I get a chance to do something dramatic, I do it with such passion for it. But I don't move as gracefully in those circles as an Ingmar Bergman does or Tennessee Williams did."

At 69, Allen is still moving forcefully in films and while he says it is harder to write roles for himself to play as he ages, he has no plans to slow down.

"Melinda and Melinda" is the 35th film he has directed since debuting with "Take the Money and Run" in 1969.

"When you finish a film you sit around for a couple of weeks and then what do you do? I write," he said. "I enjoy it. I start to write and I finish it and then I go and make the movie. Then it starts all over again."

CREATURE OF HABIT

The bespectacled Allen is a creature of habit.

He has played his clarinet in a swing band that has performed weekly in Manhattan for decades. He is a courtside fixture at New York Knicks games at Madison Square Garden.

And he churns out New York-based comedies about doubt and yearning, marital infidelity, the inability to communicate and the specter of death -- all elements in "Melinda and Melinda."

Allen provided a glimpse of the cocoon he inhabits when discussing the casting.

He said he was not familiar with Ferrell, an eight-year veteran of TV's Saturday Night Live and star of film comedies such as "Old School" and "Elf," until he was shown some of his movies.

"I thought the movies were moronic, but he's a funny guy," Allen said.

Allen maintained his usual level of secrecy around the film, giving most of the actors only the script pages that contained their character's dialogue.

Ejiofor, who starred in the critically acclaimed "Dirty Pretty Things," played a debonair classical pianist in the dramatic "Melinda" and was shocked when he saw the finished product. "I laughed my ass off," he said.

Mitchell said she was stunned at first at the lack of direction from Allen, who does not rehearse the actors and prefers to distance himself during shooting.

"Just say the lines. Just say the lines," she said was Allen's advice. "Very simple direction, which you wouldn't expect from such a cerebral director. But it was probably the best direction I've ever had.

"He didn't really talk to us. In not talking to the actors, he creates their own neuroses."

Explained Allen: "I never give the actors more than they need. I always feel the less they know, the better. It's less complicated."

Allen wrestles with the value of the work he does, but the brainy comedian says he is not a bit concerned about his film legacy and what people will think about him after he's dead.

"The truth of the matter is, once you're gone it doesn't really matter," he said. "The whole world standing over my grave singing my praises wouldn't mean a thing.

"I just want everything to go right while I'm here."

[cowboykurtis]

Did anyone see the woody allen editorial written by A O SCOTT in last weeks NY Times? My opinion of scott has plumetted. To sum the article up: he ended by essentially saying "Woody Allen is a dead shark". I find this a dispicable comment. THis prick has the audacity to say such things about one of the greatest filmmakers our country has seen. I for one do not love every Woody Allen film, but there's something to be said for one of the few directors who makes whatever he wants, when he wants. He's the closest this country has to Kubrick from a artistic control standpoint. Show some god damn respect. It disgusts me. Critics really get the best of me. I've felt similar to many responses to Aviator. If you don't like the film, comment on the film. But to discredit an artist's life by making below the belt comments is immature and beligerant in my opinion. After all, what the hell have critics done to contribute?