Trailer here. (http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/melinda_and_melinda.html)
Release Date: March 18th, 2005
Cast: Radha Mitchell (Melinda), Will Ferrell (Hobie), Chlok Sevigny (Laurel), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Ellis), Josh Brolin (Greg), Jonny Lee Miller (Lee), Wallace Shawn (Sy), Larry Pine (Max), Matt Servitto (Jack), Arija Bareikis (Sally), Brooke Smith (Cassie), Zak Orth (Peter), Andy Borowitz (Doug), Amanda Peet (Susan), Shalom Harlow (Joan), David Aaron Baker (Steve), Christina Kirk (Jennifer), Steve Carell (Walt), Daniel Sunjata (Billy), Vinessa Shaw (Stacey)
Director: Woody Allen
Screenwriter: Woody Allen
Premise: A discussion between friends over coffee about the nature of comedy and drama leads to the story of a woman named Melinda, whose life is in turmoil. From there, the two playwrights at the table spin different stories of where Melinda's life might go, to the comic in one and the tragic in the other.
I'm running out of obsequious banter. Please help me. :(
(Cast looks great. Please let this live up to the nonexistent hype -- shouldn't be too hard.)
What do you mean nonexistent hype? This is being hyped as the best Woody Allen movie since, y'know, since his good movies.
Plus that premise outlined up there is fascinating and a great idea for a movie. Ssssshould be good.
The premise actually struck me as slightly unoriginal, but it's all in the execution. That's why I view it a lack of hype. I'm rooting for this one. The execution looks fine from the trailer, but really, trailers are lying bitches.
Sidenote: I LOVE that Allen cast Wallace Shawn. That is genius for many reasons. Well, maybe just one big reason.
woody's been doing movie within a movie for a while now hasn't he?
sorta kinda similar to broadway danny rose, only they weren't sittin around making his story up.
Quote from: matt35mmThis is being hyped as the best Woody Allen movie since, y'know, since his good movies.
But ALL of his movies are hyped as his best since his good movies. IMHO, the only ones that stood up to that hype are Deconstructing Harry and Sweet and Lowdown. The rest vary between cute (Small Time Crooks) and borderline terrible (Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion).
But I believe that Woody will achieve greatness once again and I fall for the hype every time. I'll be seeing this despite Amanda Peet being in the cast.
Quote from: ewardsorta kinda similar to broadway danny rose, only they weren't sittin around making his story up.
That's what I thought too. Broadway Danny Rose by way of the artist's circle in Bullets over Broadway.
Woody Allen has made more comebacks than anyone I can think of. Just when I wrote him off in the 80's, he does Hannah and Her Sisters, one of his best. In the early 90's, after the awful Shadows and Fog, he did the great Husbands and Wives. OK, now he's overdue for another comeback. I hope this is it. If not, there's always his 2006 release to check out.
I didn't care for Small Time Crooks or Hollywood Ending, but I sort of liked Anything Else. The last one I really liked was Celebrity.
But despite all the recent disappointments, he is still Woody Allen, living legend, so I'll check out anything he does.
i'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.
Quote from: flagpolespecialhollywood ending was the wrost of the recent ones.
my vote goes to Anything Else. i will see M&M though although it doesnt look like this will be his 'comeback' film, you never know...
Quote from: ©bradi'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.
The last time I prayed like this was shortly before Matrix Revolutions came out. I was pissed.
i find myself very attracted to Radha Mitchell
the premise and parts of the trailer remind me of 'curb your enthusiasm', in the whole tragic or comic view of the same story. and to think, i had almost given up on woody.
Quote from: classical gasi had almost given up on woody.
story of your life :shock:
yeah, i set myself up for that one. i blame mr. allen.
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.
I'm actually hoping this MGM/ Sony think will give us some Woody SEs.
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.
I'm at odds here. I love Woody Allen and dislike Will Ferrell.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: themodernage02
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.
Quote from: Pubricki 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.
Quote from: MyxomatosisQuote from: Pubricki 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
Quote from: MyxomatosisQuote from: Pubricki 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.
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."
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?
This sounds like the film which Will will start to stretch himself, even just a little bit.
cowboykurtis...
It's really only that one sentence in the last paragraph that you take offense to, right? Besides the "dead shark" comment, that is.
Quote from: A.O. ScottInstead of making the movies we expect him to, he stubbornly makes the movies he wants to make, gathering his A-list casts for minor exercises in whimsy and bile that tend not to be appreciated when they arrive in theaters.
If he was serious, that's a dumbass comment, especially for Scott, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was voicing the popular opinion rather than his own. Because the rest of the article seems to (mostly) implicate the audience in the decline of Woody's popularity.
Quote from: A.O. ScottWhat if we - and by "we" I mean the legions (or at least dozens) of young (or at least gracefully middle-aged) intellectuals (or at least newspaper readers) with battered used-bookstore copies of "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers" at their bedside and long passages of dialogue from "Sleeper" and "Love and Death" in their heads - go to the new Woody Allen movie because we want to feel let down, abandoned, betrayed? We are all aware that the man has problems of his own, but what if the dissatisfaction we feel with his work is, at bottom, our problem?
Mr. Allen will never again be his younger self, and his audience, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that fact, will never grow up, guaranteeing our further disappointment.
I'm not so sure that article is slamming Woody as much as you might think. He's saying the "dead shark" is a result of us not meeting Woody halfway.
Quote from: cowboykurtisHe's the closest this country has to Kubrick from a artistic control standpoint.
He's the only American director to get consistently wide releases that still maintains near-complete autonomy over his films, with the possible exception of Spike Lee. But these days, what with the casting of the likes of Jason Biggs, Jimmy Fallon, and Will Ferrell, I wonder if these are his casting choices or if the studios are influencing him. If you look at his films from even the mid-80s – when Scott implies that his talent started to wane – he was casting people like Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, etc. None of them back then had the same kind of popularity as some of the actors he is casting now, except for Diane Keaton, whom he made a star. This might be the compromise he has made with the studios in order to hold onto final cut.
I think Scott was serious when you were hoping he wasn't. but I don't think Scott meant it as a condescending thing. It's true, Woody doesn't care about what anyone wants and he makes movies almost therapeutically.
Regarding Woody's recent casting choices:
It is my understanding that Woody's film are not financed by studios. He has a long standing relationship with a group of equity investors, and a working realtionship/understanding with companies that just distribute his film. He has final cut, he has 100% casting control.
I have always credited his current casting choices to his desire to work with actors of our generation, so to speak. I think he probably casts actors like farrell and fallon becuase he finds them funny/talented. He's a comedic performer in his own regard that can go from slapstick to melodrama. I don't think he sees things as: "this ferrel guy means the young one's will pack the theater". Like you said, he's old and makes films for himself. I think he probably thinks by casting these young bloods, it might give him some insight or expereince that he hasn't had working with actor's of his generation. I applaud allen for making the film HE wants. At least someone is doing so, regardless of the results.
As far as A O SCOTT:
The editorial does comment on US as audience members unable to meet Allen halfway or vice-versa. But that last comment resonates. "Woody Allen is a dead shark." Thats a finite comment. HIS opinion as the writer.
I feel that it's the audience that has become dull and impatient and uninspired. If he didn't mean to discredit Allen he would've had ended it by writing "We, as an audience, have become a dead shark." I think he meant what he said.
With that said, I believe there is a more gracious and tactful way to bash a man who deserves teh utmost respect. One doesn't have to like him, one doesn't have to pay 10 bucks to see his movie, but I do feel he deserves one's respect. Especially from a snot nose editor, half his age.
To paraphrase William Holden's character in Network: "It's called basic human decency."
if you now read today review by A O SCOTT of Melinda & Melinda. He seems to contradict his previous opinion of Allen. This guy's a peice of work.
I agree with what you've been saying, cowboy. It's shameful how little respect Woody Allen is given nowadays. There was an article here in the Sunday Times awhile back, and it started out as this big career-spanning thing on Woody, a decent interview and pics and everything, and then the interviewer just ends up sounding like one of the idiots from Stardust Memories, saying he finds Allen's work pretentious, and he only ever liked the "early, funny films". Ugh.
Anyway, has M&M not opened for you guys in the states yet? We get it here on the 25th. Looking forward to seeing it.
Allen Offers Comic and Tragic in 'Melinda'
Woody Allen doesn't give many interviews. But when he does, he'll talk about anything.
His pessimism. Why he keeps making films. The many ways a movie can go wrong. The Soon-Yi "scandal" years ago. Even how lucky he feels with the way his life turned out, personally and professionally although gloom looms over him continually.
There were no limits to a recent conversation with Allen, indicating just how self-possessed the three-time Academy Award winner is. He's not "on" or displaying that Woody Persona so many of his fans love, but he's still funny and self-deprecating starting with the revelation that he thought he'd learn something from making his latest film, "Melinda and Melinda," as both comedy AND tragedy.
"But I learned nothing," he says with a chuckle. "I say the same thing now as I said when I began ... the cliche that there's a thin line between comedy and tragedy. And it's true. And I guess that's why it's a cliche."
He had hoped to discover a greater insight than that.
Reviewers who dislike his newest production, which stars Radha Mitchell as a troubled woman whose woes affect the people around her, complain that it lacks polarity the humorous rendition of the story isn't that hilarious, and the serious version isn't that tragic.
That's OK with Allen, who says he doesn't pay attention to critics. And while he maintains comedy and tragedy are separated by just a couple degrees either side of a psycho-emotional equator, most of the time it falls heavily on one side for him.
"There are some laughs you have in life, provided by comedians and provided by fortuitous moments with your family or friends or something," he says. "But most of life is tragic. You're born, you don't why. You're here, you don't know why. You go, you die. Your family dies. Your friends die. People suffer. People live in constant terror. The world is full of poverty and corruption and war and Nazis and tsunamis. ... The net result, the final count is, you lose you don't beat the house.
And yet, the 69-year-old writer-director says he was "lucky from the start."
"But even for the luckiest people, the really luckiest, luckiest you know, you carve out a little oasis for yourself for a short period of time, but then," he says, snapping his fingers, "that's it."
With an impish grin, he asks: "Am I depressing you?"
Some of his devotees sound depressed when they talk about his recent movies. For them, a Woody Allen film was an event, something to look forward to. A romantic, compelling letter from Manhattan, since the city often towered like a main character. A dispatch from smart, sophisticated people.
But no longer.
"Life has a malicious way of dealing with great potential," says a character in "Melinda and Melinda."
It can be mean with fully realized potential, too, although some critics have used the word "comeback" in warmly discussing his new film.
The filmmaker, whose career dates back to 1965's "What's New, Pussycat?," won Oscars for writing and directing 1977's "Annie Hall" and writing 1987's "Hannah and Her Sisters" and has collected 17 other Oscar nominations for such films as "Interiors," "Manhattan," "Broadway Danny Rose," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Radio Days," "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Mighty Aphrodite" but none since 1998's "Deconstructing Harry."
Since 2000, he's made "Small Time Crooks," "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion," "Hollywood Ending" and "Anything Else" mostly critical and box-office disappointments.
For his part, Allen claims not to suffer from highs and lows. "I'm not crushed if a film of mine does no business or is not well-received."
He even jokes about the empty seats at the cineplex.
"I have a small audience," he says, laughing and attributing that to his being a comedy writer whose work can be suffused with melancholy. "And I've always had a small audience. I know how to keep 'em out."
To him, a movie is a success if he can shepherd what was in his mind to the screen.
"If I have an idea at home, and I think it's a good idea, and I execute it I write it, and then I film it and edit it and put it out and I executed my idea, and I say, `Yes, this is what I had in my living room or my bedroom' ... then I feel successful about it," he says.
"But that's a much rarer experience for me," he says. "Usually I ruin them."
He keeps making movies "only because it's what I do" he doesn't know what he would do otherwise. He also makes them inexpensively (and quickly).
"It serves me therapeutically when I do it. I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects," he says. "It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given fingerpaints."
Allen sometimes has been criticized for depicting a world that's an unreal, effete aerie (often Manhattan's Upper East Side) with few blacks and few contented people and those who express contentment typically are superficial/stupid.
But Allen sounds content with the insularity of his life.
It's something that saved him 13 years ago from feeling damaged by the falling out with longtime companion Mia Farrow over his falling in love with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi and related allegations of child molestation.
That Ick Factor, as some see it, has altered perceptions of his work. Some moviegoers can't watch a couple of his films quite the same way again: "Manhattan," in which Allen played a 42-year-old writer who has an affair with a 17-year-old prep school student, and "Husbands and Wives," in which he plays a professor hooked up with a college-age student.
While life seemingly was imitating art in 1992 with tawdry tales played up in tabloids, Allen says he wasn't paying attention.
"At the time that all that was going on, you know, I was doing my movies and put out a play and was playing with my jazz band," he says. "That was something that was much more in the press than in my own personal life. I was isolated from the whole thing as I've lived my whole life, isolated and working."
Of course he would have preferred not being pilloried. But, he says: "Everything I did, I did. I've lived my life exactly the way I wanted to live it, and never had any regrets. ...
"I have my own little world that I live in, and it's pleasurable for me to the degree that anything can be pleasurable in this world."
Quote from: Roger EbertBefore the movie opened, A.O. Scott wrote a provocative article in the New York Times concluding: "Instead of making the movies we expect him to, [Allen] stubbornly makes the movies he wants to make, gathering his A-list casts for minor exercises in whimsy and bile that tend not to be appreciated when they arrive in theaters. How could they be? Mr. Allen will never again be his younger self, and his audience, as long as we refuse to acknowledge that fact, will never grow up, guaranteeing our further disappointment. Maybe what we have on our hands is a dead shark."
That's a reference to "Annie Hall," which won the best picture Oscar and was the high point of America's relationship with Woody Allen ("A relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.") With Scott's words, I have some sympathy. Woody Allen made members of my generation laugh when we were young, and now he doesn't make us feel young anymore. Scott argues that by refusing to repeat himself, Allen has left himself open to the charge of repeating himself: There he goes again, doing something different.
I cannot escape the suspicion that if Woody had never made a previous film, if each new one was Woody's Sundance debut, it would get a better reception. His reputation is not a dead shark but an albatross, which with admirable economy Allen has arranged for the critics to carry around their own necks.
Quote from: ©bradi'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.
your prayers have been answered. saw this earlier this afternoon and i loved it.
thank you, woody. :yabbse-thumbup:
ill be seein it april 8, day after my b-day
pumped? yes i am pumped
Quote from: CinephileQuote from: ©bradi'm praying that this will be great. seriously, i just prayed.
your prayers have been answered. saw this earlier this afternoon and i loved it.
thank you, woody. :yabbse-thumbup:
i had planned to see it this afternoon but couldnt muster any enthusiasm after a handful of mediocre reviews. i'll probably see it this weekend if there is hope.
Woody Allen is such a cool, nice sweet old man when you read those interviews. He's awesome. These old men, theyre so sweet. :oops:
I love how he writes in bed, that old man. I wish I could but i'm left handed so its kind of hard, plus i got a bad back. And don't you hate when you read an interview and forget the guy's accent? I kept thinking scorcese in my head.
eward, my sister was born on your birthday too :)
I loved it... Woody is a genius really... and Will Ferrel is great
I love how he made Jason Biggs and Will Ferrel act like him... and they pulled it off... Radha Mitchell was great too
i liked it about 10000 times better than Anything Else, but not as much as anything else. no, it was pretty good and enjoyable but it didnt seem to rise above. i really liked radha mitchell and will ferrell was great, actually everyone was good but.. you know, there was so little of it. take two hours cut it in half, and then cut out a few more minutes for the storytellers, you've basically got an 2 episodes of tv show length, which i just wish there were more time to explore these characters who i liked. woody should do something different, like REALLY different. make a movie with only kids, or make like 4 or 5 movies about the same characters that can stretch over a longer period of time. i feel like its just sort of a comfort in the predictability of his movies, like they're enjoyable (barring any disasters like Anything Else) and always have a handful of great all-time lines and usually some good performances/actors but you know, c'mon. whether its comedy or tragedy its usually the same group of upper class new yorkers cheating and talking. it was still pretty good though, like a B-/C+.
A character so nice she plays her twice
Radha Mitchell is Melinda -- and Melinda -- in Woody Allen's intricate new movie. Source: Los Angeles Times
With her leading roles, so to speak, in "Melinda and Melinda," Radha Mitchell has joined a select sorority that includes Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis and Mira Sorvino — actresses chosen by Woody Allen to bring his complex and funny female characters to life.
Mitchell had never met the Oscar-winning auteur when he called to ask if she would play Melinda, the woman around whom he'd woven an intricate, twice-told tale. Startled, the Australian actress thought the call was a prank.
"But it wasn't a joke," recalls the lithe Mitchell, nursing a tea at Shutters in Santa Monica on a recent rainy afternoon. "He said, 'You have an hour to read the script.' And they sent it over. And then there was somebody who came to pick it up."
Though Allen rarely allows any of his actors to read an entire script, Mitchell, 31, received the complete screenplay because of the magnitude of her part. "Most of the other actors didn't know who was who or what was what in the scene, or what they represented in the story or anything."
Once she'd agreed to take the role, Mitchell says, Allen didn't change the script to fit her. "The script was very similar to what you see," she says. "Obviously it is an intellectual exercise, and you wondered how it was going to translate. Woody told me he edited it in two weeks, which is really fast, so obviously he had it very clear in his mind."
Allen, she says, had seen her in "Ten Tiny Love Stories," an intimate 2001 indie drama that features actresses speaking to the camera about love. Though it saw limited theatrical release overseas, "Love Stories" made its debut in the U.S. on video.
"My story was running into an ex-boyfriend at the cinema and knowing that you are going to go back home with somebody else that night, and the memory it triggers," she says. "The guy had a hairy back and hairy hands. It was a funny little anecdote."
Though Mitchell talked to Allen by phone before production began, she didn't meet him until the day before cameras began to roll. "It was a unique experience," she says with a smile. "And I played the two characters on the first day. In the morning I was one Melinda, and in the afternoon I was another Melinda, so by the evening I was just freaking out!"
Marc Forster, who directed Mitchell in 2000's "Everything Put Together" and in the hit "Finding Neverland," in which she played the unhappy wife of playwright James Barrie, says directors gravitate toward the actress for a number of reasons.
"She has an incredible power of saying things without saying them with words," says Forster. "It is a pure emotional communication. She has that skill really down — that she can communicate with an audience without using any words, and you know exactly how she feels and what she feels.
"It is amazing, the radiance she has. So many actresses can be beautiful, but they can't capture your attention. She really has this power, not only from her body language and looks but also from her soul and mind."
The conceit of "Melinda and Melinda," which opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, is that two playwrights — one (Wallace Shawn) who pens comedies and the other (Larry Pine) who specializes in dramas — meet over dinner one night and tell the same story, filtered through their iconoclastic views of life, about a woman named Melinda.
In the dramatic version of Melinda's story, she's a frazzled, suicidal divorcée who causes havoc in the life of a former school friend (Chloë Sevigny) and her struggling actor husband (Jonny Lee Miller).
In the comedic tale, the sweetly scattered Melinda changes the lives of an Allenesque actor (Will Ferrell) and his successful documentary-filmmaker wife (Amanda Peet).
Though most actors say that drama is easy and comedy is hard, Mitchell found the opposite to be true because the dramatic side of the film verges on melodrama.
"I think the dramatic side was an interesting time," she muses. "My initial idea is that she should be less realistic, but he was all about making her real. 'Make it real; if anyone laughs we are ruined,' " she recalls Allen saying.
But audiences have found a lot of the dramatic view of Melinda's life absurdly comic. "Obviously it has a cynical, twisted sense of humor," Mitchell explains. "The film is about attitude and the effects of attitude on your life."
Allen was initially distant, she says, but warmed up to the cast during the filming. "He was different as the movie progressed," she says. "At first he didn't talk very much, and by the end, we had a dialogue and we would discuss what we were doing."
And though working with Allen was "intimidating," Mitchell adds that she learned to put more trust in her instincts as an actress.
Mitchell reports that the casts of both stories met for lunch before production began in New York. "We started at some cafe uptown and we progressed [downtown], so at 3 in the morning we were in Alphabet City getting drunk. That's how we got to know each other!"
This movie sucks my cock.
And not in a Lips To Belly, Eyes Looking Up At Me, Full To Completion sort of way. More like a Too Much Teeth, Not Enough Saliva, Herpes On Mouth kinda way.
Either Woody has genuinely gone insane and he has no conception of the shit he is now making (and the same goes for Zsigmond, this guy DP'd some of the coolest looking movies of all time, and he cranks out this sitcom crap), or else he's mailing it in at my fucking cinema ticket expense. If it's the first, I'm really quite sorry and more than a little sad. If it's the second, well, I wish I could punch him in the face right now...
And Will Ferrell can't act. Not for a fucking second. He can't even do a decent Woody Allen impression.
:yabbse-thumbdown: x100
Quote from: SoNowThenEither Woody has genuinely gone insane and he has no conception of the shit he is now making
care to explain?
Quote from: SoNowThenAnd Will Ferrell can't act. Not for a fucking second. He can't even do a decent Woody Allen impression.
i dont know if you were expecting shakespeare but basically woody allen is writing dialogue so theres a character like him in the film. they had to rewrite dialogue for ferrell cause he couldnt deliver it the way it should be said. they also added things cause ferrell could do it in ways allen didn't even think. so it worked both ways. watching ferrell DO a decent WA impression would've been annoying.
Quote from: Cinephilewatching ferrell DO a decent WA impression would've been annoying.
I agree. He did a good job but he is still Will Ferrel, and we all know what he can do and what he cant...
I still dont understand your "in memory of" message with Mr. T
Quote from: CinephileQuote from: SoNowThenEither Woody has genuinely gone insane and he has no conception of the shit he is now making
care to explain?
Y'know: thinks he's making great work on par with those that came before, hence is senile, and can't be blamed for making bad movies. I hate that assumption (that people always tack on all filmmakers -- "not as good as once was"), but in light of his post 1999 evidence, I can't argue it anymore.
If this movie would have been done by some no-name, I would have walked out in the first half hour. I hated it THAT much.
Myself, I found it very enjoyable and decent. Just wonderful. But that's me.
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I made Woody Allen laugh. Now how many people in this world can make that claim? No one I know goddamn it. It was so cool having him sit only a few feet away from me plus the new movie, Melinda and Melinda, is my favorite of his since Bullets Over Broadway. The film is split up into two parts the comedy and the tragedy. It stars Radha Mitchell as Melinda, a woman who unrepentantly bursts into dinner parties and sends everyone into a tizzy.
Daniel Robert Epstein: You always work with great cinematographers. I could hardly believe that this was your first time working with Vilmos Zsigmond. Why him and why now?
Woody Allen: What made me choose him, I just worked with Darius Khondji and I was going to work with him again but he was stuck on this tennis movie [Wimbledon]. Anyhow he was not available. So they gave me a list of cinematographers who were available and Vilmos was a guy I had loved through the years but had never even met so I had no idea what to think. He was available so I called him, it turned out he was anxious to do it and I had a very good time with him.
DRE: What was it about this idea that appealed to you?
WA: There are many times where I've had ideas that I felt could be written amusingly or as a serious story then I would always chose one and go in that direction. Here I had an idea that I thought could make a serious story but could also make a funny, romantic story. Then it occurred to me, why don't I alternate the two and see if I can do the picture and maybe learn something from it. Of course I learned nothing from doing it but it was fun to do.
DRE: Do you prefer to write the dramas or the comedies?
WA: 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 comedies. So it's occasionally fun to do something heavy just for the change. But then when I realized I was going to be working with Will [Ferrell] I went back over the script and started to customize it for him and that became fun.
DRE: How did you customize it for him?
WA: First of all, he's so physically different. He's a big silly person and everyone including me has laughed at him in these broad ridiculous comedies. The question was, could he act and be believable. It turned out; I guess because of his size, his face or whatever talent he has, he's vulnerable. There's something sweet about him so your heart goes out to him. There were things in the script, the actual dialogue, that he couldn't do. Since I'm writing the dialogue, my tendency is to write it for myself even though I knew I'd never be playing it. But I write it instinctively for myself and I had to cut some lines and dialogue out of the thing because he couldn't do it. It never sounded funny when he did it. But there were things he did do that I could never imagine when I was writing it. Before I met him, I never could have imagined it for the script or the contributions he would make sort of built in to his ridiculous persona. The way he moved, there's something in the look of his face, it's intangible, but it's silly and sweet.
DRE: Is there a good example of something you cut?
WA: I can't give you an example of exact lines I cut, but they were one-liner jokes that I do that are easy for me but they don’t sound like a joke when he does it. Rather it sounds like dialogue rather than a joke. It comes naturally to me, but it's not so natural to him. I've had that problem before with Diane Keaton. She's someone I used to write these sharp remarks for and she could never do them. She's the funniest person I ever met and always used to steal the picture from me. I always wrote the movie for me and wrote her a secondary role and when the movie came out she was always the funny star and I was always the secondary part. But she couldn't do those kinds of one-liners either for some reason. There are some people who just can do them and Will is not one of them. Will has a different comic gift and it’s hard to quantify it but it’s working great for him, not just on my picture but in general.
DRE: How do you cast your actors?
WA: Well it's always a question of who is best for the role. Then you find out that your choices are not available sometimes or they won't work for no money which is what we have. Sometimes you get very expensive actors who couldn't care less about money and they're available so they rush to do it. On this picture, the hard casting was Radha because it was very tough to find somebody who could be very dramatic and handle the light romantic as well. Sometimes when we were filming, she'd have to do it in the same day. She'd come in the morning and have to cry or commit suicide or something and then in the afternoon she had to be light and frothy. I had no idea she existed and then I saw a scene from Phone Booth and she was very good, very attractive and a very convincing actress. Then they sent me some indie films she did and she was very good. I called her and she wanted to do it so I just felt, why not? I've been very lucky in the past with women that I've worked with whether they were known or unknown.
Actors only work with me if they are between desirable jobs. If I call an actor and then Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese are calling them, who are fine directors, and offer them very substantial money, they have no interest in me at all. But if they just finished the picture and earned their $10 million salary and have nothing to do until August then I call them in June they say, why not?
DRE: I felt the dramatic portion of the movie felt like it was populated by WASPS and the comedy portion was populated by Jews. Did you feel that way?
WA: [laughs] That's very funny. I don't think of it that way, but I guess people think of comedy with Jews all the time. I'm forever being asked, why are all the comedians Jewish? I always feel that they are not. It's a misconception based on the fact that there were many Jewish comedians that came out of the Catskills. But Bob Hope, Buster Keaton or WC Fields weren’t Jewish and they were great comedians. Charlie Chaplin was half Jewish, so which half? Peter Sellers was half. So there are some fabulous Jewish comedians, but there are many that are not. I don't think it's a particularly Jewish thing. There was that rush of borscht circuit comedians that came out of that specific milieus. I was raised in a Jewish neighborhood and household so naturally my idiom is where I grew up. I've had this conversation with Spike Lee several times, I could never convincingly write about a black family and I doubt, I don't know but I doubt, if he could write convincingly about a Jewish family.
DRE: How did you decide to cast Chiwetel Ejiofor?
WA: I saw him in that one picture Dirty Pretty Things. I thought he was gorgeous, charismatic, a great actor. I made a phone call, he was available, and I sent the script to him. Then he wanted to do it so it was just my good luck. Daniel Sunjata, the black actor that played in the comic section, was from [the Broadway show] Take Me Out. He was great. I could have used either one for either role really. I saw Chiwetel first and wanted him for that but they were both two wonderful charismatic guys which is what I wanted. I wanted a guy who in one sense would sweep up both women and the other I wanted someone who is really a threat to Will.
DRE: Do you think in terms of color for roles?
WA: No I wasn't. I was thinking there's this party, there's a piano player at the party and he's an American piano player and she doesn't fall for the stiff they try to fix her up with but there's this great, gifted attractive guy at the piano. Once I decided on him then the other story I wanted a black actor as well.
DRE: How was the switch from DreamWorks to Fox Searchlight?
WA: The switch was easy. Dreamworks was great to work with and they only distributed my films. Fox is great and I had a wonderful time with them. To me it was no different because I always work the same way. No one reads the script, they either want to go with me or they don't. My pictures don't cost a lot of money so they're really not risking a tremendous amount. They don't get to say anything about casting or anything at all really.
DRE: You do a movie a year, is that difficult at all?
WA: I finish a movie and then I sit around. I heard Neil Simon say the same thing once, you sit around for a week and what do you do? You go to the Bahamas and go fishing? So I start writing something else and when I finish it, I put it on. It's not rocket science. You write for a few months, you finish a script. You cast it; you shoot it, editing goes very fast with an Avid. So the whole thing is not that big a deal. I finished another picture and I'm preparing to shoot another picture this summer.
DRE: Do you ever miss doing standup?
WA: I miss doing standup but I'm too lazy to do it again. To write an act and be funny for 45 minutes on stage is a huge amount of work. Much more work than a movie. In order to get an hour’s worth of really funny, potent material, it's a huge amount of work that I don't have the energy or patience to do it. But I do miss it because it's a wonderful medium to work in. I also love watching it so the fact that you can turn on your television set at any time of the day or night and see two or three comics working in perpetuity around the clock is wonderful.
DRE: Would you ever direct something someone else has written?
WA: I've never done that. I've really only directed because I'm a writer and I like to write but I wouldn't rule it out now that I'm getting older. It would be an interesting experience to see what it's like to direct someone else's script. But I've only directed in the past because I wrote the script.
DRE: What is your writing process?
WA: I still lay down on the bed with a yellow pad and write. Invariably I have to type it myself and that takes three days. I was taught to write on a typewriter and I think it would be healthier for me to do it because if you write on your typewriter, you act out the scene and you type it down and you sort of know it works. When you write on a pad, you're hearing it in your head and you don't know that it works when it becomes audible, but it goes so much faster that I've gotten into the bad habit and I've been doing it for years.
DRE: I’ve heard so many stories about actors getting fired from your movie sets. What is a fireable offense on your set?
WA: Fireable is only when it turns out to be my casting mistake because the person does no wrong. I hire them and I'm convinced they can do it and then they come in and they don't do it. I try every conceivable way to get them to do it. I talk to them, I explain it, I try and be as lucid as I can and then if that doesn't work sometimes I try and trick them transparently. Sometimes they do it and sometimes they don't. I'm not a skilled director like Elia Kazan or Mike Nichols who can get a performance out of someone who can't act. So after three days of trying to get the person to do the scene, I fire them because I don't know what else to do. I feel we're doomed if we use them and I can't think of what else to do. It's possible that someone will come in and read and they'll be very good 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's a terrible thing.
DRE: Do you like doing these smaller budgeted films or would you like to try and do a $100 million movie?
WA: I wish I had the $100 million. $50, $60 million and $100 million are common now and I'm making films where everything is a maximum of $15 million. Its tough because there's a lot of things I want to do that I can't. When I did this next film that hasn't come out yet, Match Point, they said to me you're not going to be able to afford music. I figured out that by using all opera I was able to connive an opera company to do the music. But there's a lot of things you can't do like any kind of special effects or reshooting things so if I had more money, I'd use it.
DRE: What do you want to do that you haven’t been able to?
WA: I would like to make some films that are bolder than I've made. I've made romantic films and comic films but I would like to see if I could come up with something that was bolder, more aggressive. I've always been a passive comedian. I've always been a comedian in the mold of Bob Hope. Someone that's victimized, a coward, a failure with women and a loser. I'd love to try a picture where I was a winner just for the fun of it.
DRE: Could you tell me about Match Point?
WA: It's a film shot in England with Scarlett Johansson who is brilliant and Jonathan Rhys-Myers who is also brilliant. I worked in the summer, it was cool in London and the skies are all grey which is great for photography and there are no unions! That’s a wonderful thing, not only financially but because everyone could help out and do the other person's job without infringing. So it's like making a student film in the best sense of the word. The guy who makes lunch can also stop traffic. It'll be at Cannes and probably out later this year.
DRE: If you got a tattoo, what would it say?
WA: Just a simple thing that said "Mother."
Quote from: MacGuffinDRE: I've heard so many stories about actors getting fired from your movie sets. What is a fireable offense on your set?
WA: Fireable is only when it turns out to be my casting mistake because the person does no wrong. I hire them and I'm convinced they can do it and then they come in and they don't do it. I try every conceivable way to get them to do it. I talk to them, I explain it, I try and be as lucid as I can and then if that doesn't work sometimes I try and trick them transparently. Sometimes they do it and sometimes they don't. I'm not a skilled director like Elia Kazan or Mike Nichols who can get a performance out of someone who can't act. So after three days of trying to get the person to do the scene, I fire them because I don't know what else to do. I feel we're doomed if we use them and I can't think of what else to do. It's possible that someone will come in and read and they'll be very good 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's a terrible thing.
does anyone know who he has done this to?
michael keaton in purple rose of cairo was one i think, right?
but anyways, i thought melinda and melinda was just terrible. completely agree with sonowthen, minus his contempt for ferrell (whom i love, but i thought he fell so god damn flat here). this was a complete waste of time, i really hated it. at this point, i'm not expecting another masterpeice from woody, ill certainly see anything he puts out, but im not holding my breath any longer, this piece of shit killed it.
Quote from: PubrickQuote from: MacGuffinDRE: I've heard so many stories about actors getting fired from your movie sets. What is a fireable offense on your set?
WA: Fireable is only when it turns out to be my casting mistake because the person does no wrong. I hire them and I'm convinced they can do it and then they come in and they don't do it. I try every conceivable way to get them to do it. I talk to them, I explain it, I try and be as lucid as I can and then if that doesn't work sometimes I try and trick them transparently. Sometimes they do it and sometimes they don't. I'm not a skilled director like Elia Kazan or Mike Nichols who can get a performance out of someone who can't act. So after three days of trying to get the person to do the scene, I fire them because I don't know what else to do. I feel we're doomed if we use them and I can't think of what else to do. It's possible that someone will come in and read and they'll be very good 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's a terrible thing.
does anyone know who he has done this to?
He first had Christopher Walken in September, then got rid of him for Sam Shepard, then recast half the movie and reshot almost all of it. But obviously it was because they were "not right", not because they can't act...
This movie was just a disappointment. I will take an analogy from a friend....This film is like bigfoot, I have always heard of a bad woody allen movie but I've never seen one (I've only watched his classics).
The premise of the film isn't that good, it takes what is great about Woody Allen, his ability to combine and comedy & drama and it splits it up. I guess this would work if either section works, but they don't. The comedic section is mildly amusing and the dramatic section is boring.
In the end, the result is a film that doesn't feel like a Woody Allen film, instead it feels like a bad Rob Reiner film.
I was slightly disappointed as well. First of all, the dinner conversation setup was just so elementary...it might have worked (and been more interesting) if it was a discussion between high school drama students, but seeing two middle aged, suposedly academically successful playwrites have such a trivial discussion with such seriousness just sort of annoyed me. Although I love Wallace Shawn.
The rest of it was sort of...good, I guess. I enjoyed it. The main problem is that he shot the tragic section in exactly the same way as the comic section, and it's therefore hard to distinguish between them. Look at Interiors, the amazing composition therein - that's how he should have shot the tragic half, and it would have contrasted beautifully with the comic part, which was fine as is. The dramatic monologues that Mitchell delivers (beautifully) were the high points of the film - a reminder of what a great writer Allen is - and her plight was compelling, its denoument moving - but it was shot like a comedy, and so it didn't really work.
A better execution of the concept would have been to shoot the whole thing twice, using only the tragic script and maybe even the same script - but with contrasting visual styles providing the humor and drama, rather than completely different scripts.
Overall, I liked it about as much as Anything Else, which I also felt harkened back to Allen's greater days, without actually achieving greatness itself.
I saw Woody in Central Park yesterday, though, and that was cool.
Quote from: GhostboyI saw Woody in Central Park yesterday, though, and that was cool.
amazing. :shock:
It entertained me mildly, but I left it in the theater. It didn't take me any place I hadn't been before, in terms of Woody, but also thematically. I thought Ferrel's character was both well written and well acted, my favorite part of the movie.
Anything Else may not have been a stellar movie, but it took me some place that Woody had not taken me before. For that I prefer it, for that I enjoyed the movie. Melinda and Melinda was like listening in on a good conversation but already knowing the details.
We've had it a month already.
Woody Allen's recent Melinda & Melinda is expected to street from Fox on 10/25.
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ew
yikes. what a great example of 'shoulda used the poster image'.
You guys are acting like this is something new.
All it needs is Woody Allen smiling in the corner and the words "Another intellligent comedy from Woody Allen" underneath his face and it will become a classic.
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EHAHAHAHAHAH!. if you mention it, it will come.
Good work, Adam Spiegel.
sometimes
only sometimes
i wonder ... if you took one of those peek-a-boo peel-a-way things and continued peeling it, 'til the entire cover was peeled off, what would be underneath? maybe that's the secret. maybe you need extremely tiny tweezers to peel it away because it's made of ultra-thin sticky paper. and maybe those lucky enough to peel it away and get inside are rewarded somehow. maybe underneath the jersey girl peek-a-boo thing was kevin smith's naked body lathered in herbal soap. and looking at that melinda and melinda dvd modage just made, with the little woody allen head in the corner, i just can't help but wonder...
will ferrell looks like he's wearing a plastic nixon mask for a face.