The House Next Door

I have to admit -- since Match Point was a slight step up from Woody's decade-long drought, I sort of looked forward to Scoop, if only to see Ian McShane. Now my enthusiasm has been dampened again. Thank you.

Here's yet another Woody Allen movie that I'll be avoiding, especially after reading Keith's takedown. Woody has turned into an argument against the benefits of auteurship and an easy access to creative freedom. When's the last time he filmed something that was more than 1/2 to 2/3 of an idea for a movie? It is high time Woody started giving a damn about entertaining his audience. He should be forced to do hack work for somebody else; the results would be better.

I've said for a long time that Woody should try adapting something that isn't his own to break out of his routine.

There was a sense of real menace and ugliness in MATCH POINT that gave it an unexpected charge, even though it went slack in the final third and suffered from, I'm sorry to say, inadequate performances in lead roles (Scarlett was either awful or awfully misdirected). But I felt the movie got me closer to Allen's view of morality than I've ever been before -- a set of agreed-upon rules that take the place of a watchful God. Allen took us to a very, very dark place -- the ending wasn't just surprising, it was really appalling. I was hoping he'd keep revisiting that dark place until he became an entirely different and much more dangerous filmmaker (and in his autumn years, no less). Sorry to hear that hasn't happened. I wish I could say I was up to seeing it anyway, but it's not high on my list.

All this makes me wish I was a big old time studio boss, so that I could reassign projects. Scorsese would do the next Woody Allen project and vice versa. Spielberg would do an urban drama with an all hiphop score. Spike Lee gets assigned a big budget Hollywood musical that's rated PG.

Sounds like a rental. At least then I can just scan forward to the McShane parts!

Wagstaff: make sure to tell Scorcese NOT to use Leonardo and to keep the running time under 90 minutes because Woody Allen will be returning to slapstick.

And if you can pull all that off, see if any director can make a futuristic movie that is cheery and actually well-lit and doesn't have a bunch of interactive billboards.

Kevin Smith shouldn't direct; Woody needs a co-writer. Put 'em in a room together.

Well *cough* I liked it.

I haven't seen SCOOP yet, but the number of comparisons I've read to MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY have made me more intrigued, as that deceptively light farce about marriage and murder is one of my favorite Allen films.

Edward: "...Woody's decade-long drought..."

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY ('97) is another of my faves. Though yeah, the years since then have been pretty brutal at times.

Matt: "I was hoping [Allen'd] keep revisiting that dark place until he became an entirely different and much more dangerous filmmaker (and in his autumn years, no less)."

I always thought Allen was overrated by his fans (though the several mediocre films his profits enabled him to make--including, to my taste, ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN--allowed him to grow into an interesting, even striking, filmmaker by the '80s and '90s), but one thing he deserves credit for is the unremitting bleakness he's never shied away from portraying.

Not just in those unbearably gloomy-gus apings of Bergman, either, but in the comedies. THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO still packs a shocker of an ending everytime I see it; BULLETS OVER BROADWAY is the most nakedly unapologetic endorsement of Art over Life any filmmaker has dared to put forth; even the much-maligned SHADOWS AND FOG acheives a genuine (if slapstick) dread in its mix of Kafka and Nazism, Allen's trademark anxiety-attack worldview stretching and deepening like the jagged expressionistic shadows into something close to terror. So MATCH POINT seemed less a new direction in Allen's career than a monstrously clinical mapping of areas previously, albeit superficially, explored.

Wagstaff: "All this makes me wish I was a big old time studio boss, so that I could reassign projects. Scorsese would do the next Woody Allen project and vice versa."

I'd always wished NEW YORK STORIES had intertwined, you know? Or at least shared the same background and timeframe, so that while Allen was sitting on a park bench with Farrow we'd see Nolte shambling along behind them, puppy-dog snapping at Arquette's heels; maybe Larry David's theater manager could have suffered through the pitch Steve Buscemi's performance piece. Or, um, somebody from Coppola's episode could have been somewhere.

No, that one's not my favorite.

Bruce: "DECONSTRUCTING HARRY ('97) is another of my faves."

As is SWEET AND LOWDOWN from two years later. Not, apparently, enough of a favorite that it popped to mind immediately....

Bruce: My favorites are "Take the Money and Run." "Love and Death," "Manhattan," "The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Zelig," "Hannah and her Sisters" and "Husbands and Wives" -- an altogether impressively diverse and accomplished bunch of movies. ("Zelig" is especially resonant and ahead of its time.) I have an affection for "Sweet and Lowdown" and "Deconstructing Harry" (so nasty!) though both of them are shaggy and repetitious, and by the end it's hard to be sure what, exactly, Allen means to say about any of the issues he raises. The latter has two gags that ranks with Allen's best -- the elevator trip down to hell (in which we learn that the floor dedicated to the media is full) and the running gag where Harry asks his hookers what they think of their job, and they invariably reply that it beats waitressing. "Every hooker i've ever asked has said it beats the hell out of waitressing," Harry says. "Waitressing must be like, the worst job in the world."

Bruce: "MATCH POINT seemed less a new direction in Allen's career than a monstrously clinical mapping of areas previously, albeit superficially, explored."

Well put.

Matt: "I have an affection for "Sweet and Lowdown" and "Deconstructing Harry" (so nasty!)..."

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY is the only Allen film I've seen to draw as many audible gasps as laughs from the audience. Despite Allen's protestations, the film is so pure and uncompromised in its viciousness it's hard not to see it as autobiographical.

Plus, it's the only time that Billy Crystal has ever made me laugh. "It fucks with the ozone!"

Matt: "...though both of them are shaggy and repetitious, and by the end it's hard to be sure what, exactly, Allen means to say about any of the issues he raises."

O, absolutely. Allen's working method has always seemed ramshackle--all those stories about snipped subplots, recast actors, and even a film or two reshot from scratch suggest a filmmaker prone to losing the forest for the trees.

And ZELIG is a full-blown masterpiece, I think, dazzling both technically and thematically. I know Allen did something similar for TV back in the '70s, splicing himself in as one of Nixon's top advisors, but I never saw it. Has anyone ever caught this? And is it interesting as more than just a dry run for ZELIG?

Bruce Reid said...

Bruce: "DECONSTRUCTING HARRY ('97) is another of my faves."

As is SWEET AND LOWDOWN from two years later. Not, apparently, enough of a favorite that it popped to mind immediately....

I am with you Bruce on the Sweet and Lowdown, and was reading along on the comments, and thinking to myself what was the one with Sean Penn, and that gypsy guitar player?

Bruce Reid said:

Plus, it's the only time that Billy Crystal has ever made me laugh. "It fucks with the ozone!"

I'm particularly fond of "You ever fuck a blind girl? They are so grateful."

(Add me to the list of HARRY lovers.)

I haven't watched it in eons, but as far as I know, I, too, am a Deconstructing Harry fan. If nothing else, this discussion has inspired me to put one of its best lines back in my personal quote-rotation: "The most important words in the English language are not 'I love you' but 'It's benign.'"

Also, Scoop is dreadful, though harmlessly so. Say what you will about Match Point, but at least it had some kind of drive, plus an uncompromisingly godless view of the world. And had it never happened, Scoop -- and, thus, Woody's recent filmography -- would look far more deadly.

Add me to the list of people who enjoyed Deconstructing Harry, but it comes with a caveat: Great script (nasty, nasty, nasty!), shitty direction.

As evidenced by the barrage of profanity that explodes from my face whenever someone says "Match Point," I'm no big fan of Woody Allen. In fact, I seem to like the movies Allen fans hate (Hollywood Ending, to name one) and despise the ones people want to blow him for (Annie Hall, anyone?). He's been making the same movie for 30 years, which is why I liked Deconstructing Harry's writing so much.

I saw Scoop this evening because I was too stupid to get to the theater during a time where anything else was showing (anything else, not Anything Else). It was better than Match Point, but so is having a live wire shoved down the front of your Speedo while you're covered in jellyfish and wading in the ocean at the Jersey Shore.

Miss Scarlett is to comedy what Gallagher is to watermelon--pure destruction. I love a woman with glasses (to hell with your saying, Dorothy Parker!) and Scarlett was oh-so-cute wearing them...until she opened her mouth and I realized she was Woody Allen with an overheated cooch. Her journalist character should have been called Lois Laid; she thinks the guy's a murderer, yet she's still going to spend time alone with him and bang him repeatedly. Gentlemen, now you know how to get into ScarJo's panties.

Ian McShane was the only bright spot in the movie. Against the empty eye candy of Jackman and ScarJo, he actually tries to make the material work. If only his ghost had materialized and shouted "cocksucker!"

Bruce: And ZELIG is a full-blown masterpiece, I think, dazzling both technically and thematically.

I agree with you on that one, though isn't it one of those films most Woody fans dislike?

I make no argument for SCOOP as a great movie, though I laughed WAY more than I did at HOLLYWOOD ENDING.

A number of reviews have brought up the old tired claptrap about the leads in Allen's movies 'imitating' him. As if when Woody cedes the lead role to someone else his films should become indistinguishable from Cameron Crowe's or Martin Scorsese's.

Woody Allen is a smart Jewish man from New York who makes films about the issues and ideas that move him. The out-of-hand dismissal of his films (though there have been some bad ones, God knows) is inexplicable to me. I can't think of another filmmaker so slagged on for using his own voice. Does Richard Linklater make too many films about people talking? Does Tarantino make too many films about criminals?

I liked the energy of most of SCOOP, and I thought Johansson was at the very least having a good time. Her energy made the movie work for me despite a piffling climax and the wasting of McShane and Jackman....

Simon: A number of reviews have brought up the old tired claptrap about the leads in Allen's movies 'imitating' him. As if when Woody cedes the lead role to someone else his films should become indistinguishable from Cameron Crowe's or Martin Scorsese's.

Woody Allen is IN this movie, so why is Scarlett imitating him? He does a pretty crappy imitation of himself in Scoop already. Why isn't Scarlett Scarlett like Keaton was Keaton?

Simon: I can't think of another filmmaker so slagged on for using his own voice.

People aren't "slagging" on him because he's using his own voice. They are slagging on him because he keeps saying the exact same thing with that voice.

And what does being a "smart Jewish man from New York" have to do with making a good movie? Scorsese is a smart Italian man from New York who also makes movies about what moves him. Spike Lee is a smart Black man from New York by way of Atlanta who makes movies about that which moves him as well. Woody, Spike and Marty all have this in common: their crap exists alongside their masterpieces, and they're both about things that moved them.

"And what does being a "smart Jewish man from New York" have to do with making a good movie?" - odienator

Nothing...you've made my point for me. Good or bad, films by Scorsese or Lee are treated as cultural events while Woody's films are denied serious consideration. "Inside Man" was one of the most entertaining films I've seen this year, but I couldn't begin to imagine what "moved" Spike about it.

....I also think the statement that Allen keeps "saying the same thing" can be proven false by anyone who watches MANHATTAN and SWEET AND LOWDOWN back to back......

Nothing...you've made my point for me. Good or bad, films by Scorsese or Lee are treated as cultural events while Woody's films are denied serious consideration.

I haven't made any point besides stating that you don't have to be a "smart Jewish man from New York" to make a piece of shit nor a masterpiece.

I don't recall any "cultural event" surrounding She Hate Me or The 25th Hour.

So, tell me, why is Woody "denied serious consideration?" Where are the examples of this? The man is always nominated for Oscars and always has drooling critics rushing to defend even his worst shit (like Match Point). The man is a legend; even a non-fan like me won't dispute that.

Allen is one of the most revered and respected directors of his era, with more Oscars and nominations than any of his New York City directing counterparts--Lumet, Marty, Spike. When Match Point, his worst movie, gets nominated for Oscars and becomes a critical darling, there's no way you can tell me that he deserves pity for not being "seriously considered."

I take no issue with your liking Scoop--different strokes for different folks--but there's no way in Hell I'm drinking the Kool-Aid you're slinging vis-a-vis poor old, underappreciated Woody Allen. He's damn appreciated, and sometimes deservingly so.

And you should have chosen Interiors and Sweet and Lowdown. Manhattan is Sweet and Lowdown with a minor instead of a mute.