Melinda And Melinda

[SoNowThen]

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.

x100

[cine]

Either Woody has genuinely gone insane and he has no conception of the shit he is now making

care to explain?

And 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.

[Kal]

watching 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

[SoNowThen]

Either 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.

[SiliasRuby]

Myself, I found it very enjoyable and decent. Just wonderful. But that's me.

[MacGuffin]

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."

[Pubrick]

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.

does anyone know who he has done this to?

[Alethia]

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.

[SoNowThen]

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.

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...

[SHAFTR]

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.

[Ghostboy]

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.

[modage]

I saw Woody in Central Park yesterday, though, and that was cool.

amazing.  

[Mr. Merrill Lehrl]

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.

[Just Withnail]

We've had it a month already.

[MacGuffin]

Woody Allen's recent Melinda & Melinda is expected to street from Fox on 10/25.