Cassandra's Dream

[ElPandaRoyal]

The movie's gonna rock!

Yeah, well, it's definitely not woody.

It's not a Woody trailer, but I'm sure it's gonna be a really great Woody movie.

[MacGuffin]

Woody Allen Explains His Love For Scarlett Johansson, Why He Doesn't Do Broadway  
'Cassandra's Dream' director calls actress 'very charming, very bright, very amusing.'
By Josh Horowitz; MTV

Write him off or put him on a pedestal, Woody Allen keeps doing what he does best. A new Woody Allen film comes out virtually every year, and the same old discussions begin: "He used to be so good." "He's back!" "Why won't he do another comedy?" And here we go again with "Cassandra's Dream," a drama much more in the vein of "Match Point" than, say, "Sleeper."

In the new flick, Allen once again explores matters of luck and murder most foul with the story of Ian (Ewan McGregor) and Terry (Colin Farrell), two ill-fated brothers who find themselves in a mess of their uncle's (Tom Wilkinson) making.

The legendary quote machine that is Woody Allen spoke with MTV News about his latest work, why he's got a thing for Scarlett Johansson, and why you might see him playing with an iPhone.

MTV: "Cassandra's Dream" is the third film in a row you've done in England. Does it feel like these new locales have revitalized you at all?

Woody Allen: As tempting as it is to think that, it's not really so. I was operating at full energy in New York and then wrote "Match Point" for New York. And then the funding suddenly dropped in from London. Then European nations started calling me to work in their countries. I had an offer to film in France and I had an offer to film in Italy, and I accepted an offer to do a film in Spain. I just completed a movie ["Vicky Cristina Barcelona"] with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Spain.

MTV: How far back does the idea for "Cassandra's Dream" go?

Allen: I had written an off-Broadway play years ago about a family that was very dependent financially on their uncle. In that play, there was no killing or anything like that. But it occurred to me as I was directing it, what if the uncle came to them and beat them to the punch? When they asked him for a favor, he asked them for one. So that was the germ of the idea.

MTV: There was a report the other day that said you and Scarlett Johansson are going to be a part of a New York anthology film.

Allen: A complete and total fabrication. Made up like a poem by Coleridge. Completely untrue. It wasn't even grounded in any conversations or anything.

MTV: It is true, however, that you and Scarlett have a great working relationship. Why do you think you two click?

Allen: She just dropped into my professional life inadvertently. It was supposed to be Kate Winslet in "Match Point," and at the last minute she was exhausted and called up and said she wanted to back out of it because she'd been doing movie after movie and wanted to spend time with her child. And I understood that completely. I don't think movies should be anyone's top priority. I said, "Sure, no problem." Of course I was faking it, because it was a problem for us. We were trying to figure out who was available for it, and Scarlett happened to be available. This all happened over one weekend. As soon as I met her, I had a very good rapport with her. She's very charming, very bright, very amusing. She livens the set up. The minute she walks on the set, the amperage goes up 200 points. She's a great kid and very talented. She can sing. She can do dramatic things and jokes if you need her to. Whenever there's a part she could play, she would probably always be my first choice.

MTV: Are there any other actors high on your list at the moment?

Allen: I've always wanted to do a film with Reese Witherspoon and Cate Blanchett. They're two people I'm extremely high on. I'd love to find something I could do with them.

MTV: You've said before you don't get offers to act a lot in other people's films.

Allen: Make that never.

MTV: I remember there was talk once though that you were going to co-star with Jim Carrey in "Stuck on You."

Allen: It's the first I'm hearing of it. I've never had a single offer in my long career approaching that. I've done one or two things over the years for no money as a favor. I've never had any real offers. And you would think there are certain parts around that I'd be a natural for: a college teacher, a shrink or a lowlife.

MTV: That's very surprising to me.

Allen: You would think that the parts that Walter Matthau played at this point would come my way. No one asks me to play the father; or Gramps, the lovable old codger; or Pops, the backstage manager at the theater. I've never gotten anything.

MTV: Do you use a computer for anything?

Allen: No. I don't own a computer. I write in longhand, and then I type it up on my Olympia portable typewriter, which I've used since I was 16 years old. It's the same typewriter, and I've typed every single thing I've ever written on it. It works just fine. You wouldn't know that I didn't buy it yesterday.

MTV: So no iPhone or iPod?

Allen: I have an iPhone. Someone put in all my New Orleans jazz music on it so when I go away on a trip I don't have to carry a lot of stuff with me and I can still sit in my hotel room with earphones and practice.

MTV: Speaking of music, I would think that there's been interest over the years in turning some of your films into musical theater.

Allen: It comes up all the time. I've never been overly disposed to it. I've had a million offers on "Purple Rose of Cairo," a million offers on "Bullets Over Broadway," but I've never been overly enthused about it. I feel once I write it and do it, that's it. I don't have to be involved in it. It could be a situation where I simply agree to it and then I see it when it opens and put a bullet through my head. It's not something that really interests me very much.

MTV: Do you have as much interest in acting as you ever had?

Allen: I don't go out of my way to write for myself. I'm too old to be the romantic love interest in a movie, so the fun is sort of out of it.

MTV: Do you have a favorite performance of yours?

Allen: I feel I was equally good and bad in all of them. I can't really act. I do a certain thing. I have a limited range. If you take an actor like Dustin Hoffman or Philip Seymour Hoffman, these guys can play 60 different guys. I have a narrow little thing that I can do that is almost not acting. I can do it and I can do it well because it never ventures into the area of where I'm challenged. It's a limited menu of parts that I can do. I've been good in all my films, but good for me has a ceiling on it.

MTV: So many of your lines have become famous. Does it ever surprise you which ones catch on?

Allen: Yes, it surprises me because I feel I've done any number of lines much more worthy of immortality. For instance, I said years ago, "Eighty percent of life is just showing up." That thing has been quoted 20 million times. It's one of the least-witty things I've ever said. I've said more profound things that have gotten their laughs in movies but have not made it to the pantheon of Bartlett's.

MTV: Is there an underappreciated line we should shine a light on?

Allen: There was line in "Deconstructing Harry": "All people know the same truth; our lives consist of how we choose to distort it." That's a good line that never received any notoriety.

[cine]

for whatever reason, ebert gave this two stars and kept comparing it to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and how THAT movie "did it right" and how woody does it very wrong. with this and CMBB, he's completely lost it.

[hedwig]

first great movie of 2008 (still haven't seen Untraceable). it's SO crimes and misdemeanors-ish.

oh, and i just watched the trailer and i advise people to avoid it before you see the movie. it's pretty spoilerful.

SPOILERS...
the story has a lot of parallels to landau's in Crimes and Misdemeanors.. but it's a different take on guilt because at the end of C&M, landau gets away with it, whereas in this film the guilt eats away at them until it eventually destoys them. there were a few really heartstopping moments, like when they sneak up to kill burns and he's really friendly to them before they finally do it.. jesus christ. and that last shot was just brilliant.

[tpfkabi]

MTV: You've said before you don't get offers to act a lot in other people's films.

Allen: Make that never.

MTV: I remember there was talk once though that you were going to co-star with Jim Carrey in "Stuck on You."

Allen: It's the first I'm hearing of it. I've never had a single offer in my long career approaching that. I've done one or two things over the years for no money as a favor. I've never had any real offers. And you would think there are certain parts around that I'd be a natural for: a college teacher, a shrink or a lowlife.

MTV: That's very surprising to me.

Allen: You would think that the parts that Walter Matthau played at this point would come my way. No one asks me to play the father; or Gramps, the lovable old codger; or Pops, the backstage manager at the theater. I've never gotten anything.

I concur with the interviewee, it is very surprising.
On the other hand, I could see Woody presented with an offer and he declining or just being too busy to take it.

[cinemanarchist]

Everyone always says that bad Woody Allen is still better than good "insert director's name here," but this flick is really testing the limits of that adage.

[ElPandaRoyal]

and that last shot was just brilliant.

SPOILERS

No doubt. But the whole movie is a damn great achievment. And what's so damn great is that for the first time, Woody actually centers a whole movie on the relashionship between brothers (contrary to the ones about sisters) and it was really spot-on perfect. I mean, I really liked these two kids, and bu the end of the movie, I was heartbroken. Woody nailed it from start to finish, and there is not a single scene that is unnecessary in this. Plus, the acting was amazing, specially Colin Farrell who, I think, gave his best performance ever.

Two scenes that kicked my ass big time: first, when they go to the house and they are ready to kill him, and they see someone else with him. These guys (contrary to the main character in Match Point) are totally clueless about what or how to do it. I don't remember ever being so nervous about a movie before. Then, the actual killing. I dunno, but something about it made it work really well.

But hey, the whole damn thing is so great that I could be naming scenes all night. Great stuff.

[SiliasRuby]

All the positives about this movie have already been said, I just will say it's his best in a long time and my second favorite movie of woody's.

[pete]

is it a predictable movie?  I thought match point was good but it just played out so similarly to crimes and misdemeanors that I was glad to have caught it on video instead of on the big screen.  What about this one?

[cine]

i didn't find it predictable but then again, i dont have cinematic ESP like a lot of you freaks...

[grand theft sparrow]

No, your ESP is limited to deaths of aging celebrities.

[cinemanarchist]

I thought it was about as predictable as Match Point. Haven't exactly figured out why I think Match Point is the far superior film...it just is.

[Alexandro]

Sorry for the delay but I just saw this last night.

SPOILERS.

I'm torn between loving this for the good stuff and hating it for the bad/lazy stuff. The positives that have already been mentioned are true and I agree completely. The relationship between the two brothers, from the page to the direction to the performances is the best thing about the film. They just feel like brothers. Farrell is very good in this, but really everyone is. Tom Wilkinson I think is the one who steals each scene he's in. He gets everything right: the tension, the combination of safety and mistrust his character should inspire, the dark humor...And for the most part the film is very entertaining, focused and engaging. The combination of Woody Allen and Phillip Glass works wonders and that surprised me. I wish he had used more of the music.

However, I do have some major complaints. It feels unnecessarily long and predictable. Everyone knows they're gonna kill the guy, and the tension build towards that moment is awesome, but right after that the whole things starts falling apart. Because it was obvious from the beginning that Farrell was gonna have a crisis and probably be the one who gets eliminated in the end. That whole third act of McGregor "deciding" what to do made me impatient, because I knew what was gonna happen. I mean, too many (3?) scenes of Collin Farrell waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night.

The scene with the uncle when they make up their minds of killing Farrell suffers from this too. There was nothing for them or us to think about, the outcome was inevitable. And then they go on the boat and I was already bored with the whole thing when the unexpected happened. I just never saw MgGregor dying coming. And I though "awesome! the woodman just pulled the rug on me!". That was a brilliant move. And then he completely kills it by cutting and ending the film AGAIN with a couple of dumbass policemen explaining everything to us. How many times has he done this already and why doesn't he realices is way too cheesy and lazy to work anymore? I felt cheated and pissed off that he didn't show Farrell's suffering more, and even his suicide. I mean that's one huge missed opportunity to end on a highly dramatic, emotional and DIFFERENT note. The final shot of the film is awesome, but it would have been more awesome if it were of the boat wandering alone in the middle of the sea, after both brothers are dead. Coming back to land and to see what the girls were up to was unnecessary and boring from a narrative point of view. The cops explaining what just happened goes from funny (bad funny) to enraging.

That said, this was infinitely better than Before the devil...and yes, the murder scene was the best in the whole film, with the level of intensity the ending should have got.

[Pozer]

spoilers throughout

The combination of Woody Allen and Phillip Glass works wonders and that surprised me.

my favorite thing about the movie.

That whole third act of McGregor "deciding" what to do made me impatient...

me too.  the third act suffered greatly do to: 

"I'm not a perfectionist," Allen said. "I like to throw a lot of stuff on the wall and what sticks, sticks, what doesn't, doesn't.

And then he completely kills it by cutting and ending the film AGAIN with a couple of dumbass policemen explaining everything to us.

yeah, but that's classic Woody.  that's him putting his signature at the end.

I felt cheated and pissed off that he didn't show Farrell's suffering more, and even his suicide.

i think we saw enough of Farrell suffering, but i agree, it needed something more.  not his suicide.  something simple, a look from Farrell to the name Cassandra's Dream painted on the side of the boat...  yeah, that's it.

[Alexandro]

SPOILERS AGAIN

Right after MgGregor explodes in the boat and tragedy ensues, I was totally on the edge not knowing exactly where this was going for the first time in one hour. The fact that it was only minutes, maybe seconds away from the end added to the intensity. Bad enough that he cuts from this to some other uninteresting shit, but to have two characters who never appeared before telling us one of the two leads just commited suicide felt so much like an anticlimax that the only way that it would have worked for me is if this were some sort of crazy rebelious woody allen new shit, but not the same old same old, and certainly not something that he would do just to put "his stamp" on it...It's difficult for me to believe that he does these things to put a stamp on things and not just because he follows certain old rules from old movies. Really, it almost ruins the whole film for me, but I won't allow it, because it truly was good and entertaining despite it's shortcomings.

I also think that having them both die onscreen and float away in that boat would have been a good homage to a certain Ingmar Bergman film.