Woody Allen Is Feeling Bleak Enough Without Your Judgement
Woody Allen uses the word “tragic” four times in his front-page interview with the New York Observer. Also, “nihilistic,” “dreadful,” “sad,” “malcontent” and “embarrassment.” And that’s before he gets going about the “appropriate police.”
Life, the movie director says, is “a tough scuffle,” and “a tragic situation.” You do what you can. Which, in Allen’s case, right now, means promoting his film Whatever Works, starring a fellow neurotic New York Jewish comic, Larry David. And maybe blowing off a little steam about all the hubub about marrying his former step-daughter Soon-Yi Previn.
As long as you’re not hurting anybody … or doing anything that’s causing any mischief or hurting anyone or anything awful, that whatever works to get through your life is fine. All the nonsense about what one should be doing and shouldn’t be doing and what’s quote unquote appropriate according to what I call the appropriate police—it’s nonsense.
Working through these feelings in his film does not (surprise!) seem to have lifted the notorious pessimist’s dark outlook on life. “We all still remain in this dreadfully tragic predicament,” he told the Observer’s Sara Vilkomerson. “And a tragic life.”
But don’t try to cheer Allen up. He’ll assume you’re lying. Like those people at his film openings.
I go to the party afterwards and go back into phony social mode where people are exchanging enormous insincerities. They’ve hated the film but they’re saying, ‘Gee, great film. Great film.’
Then again, Allen never re-watches his own movies. Life is much more bleak that way.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
I don't even care, I'd still do him.
Just remember kids: this is not totally unlike Brad Pitt marrying Zahara Jolie-Pitt in 15 years' time.
Woody won't watch, say, Deconstructing Harry? I knew I was in good company.
WretchedGnu
..
"...Allen never re-watches his own movies..."
What an AMAZING coincidence.
I just bypass that and don't watch them the FIRST time.
..
Kirth
He's not even trying anymore. What happened to"noisome", "woebegone", "lachrymose", "lugubrious","dolorous", "repugnant", "repellent", "abhorrent", "invidious", and "disgruntled"?
Oh, and "kiddie-fiddler"?
It's like he's the original emo..
"As long as you're not hurting anybody..." I'm sure Mia Farrow didn't feel a bit hurt.
You know, if the sucker HAD acted like he knew he was a cad, I think I could forgive him for marrying his step-daughter*. It's the total obliviousness to other people's feelings that's the crime here.
*I will never forgive him for Deconstructing Harry, Celebrity, Anything Else, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Scoop and whatever other unwatchable crap he's got in the can.
SarahHeartburn
@Kirth: same!
@SarahHeartburn: Hey! What's wrong with Deconstructing Harry?
i'm a bottle
@SarahHeartburn: Even if he felt so guilty that he tattooed "asshole" across his forehead I couldn't overlook this. For God's sake she's the daughter of a woman he had a child with! She is his son's sister!
"Inappropriate police" indeed. Fucking pervert.
poor bastard, now he's gotta stick with soon-yi for the rest of his life. really painted yourself into a corner with that one, huh, you little schlemiel?
the_lerpa
Allen and Farrow's only biological son, Seamus Farrow, said of Allen: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent... I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children."
friend_of_a_friend
So let me get this straight, his enormous (and highly repugnant) sense of entitlement allows him to boff and marry his girlfriend's child, then he wants us to feel sorry for him?
All that therapy and those are his choices. What am I missing here? More importantly, what is he?
@[www.absoluteastronomy.com]
Not hurting anybody? What about those of us who are waiting for a deep enough movie?
@pufflehuff: It's exactly like Brad Pitt marrying Zahara in 15 years' time. After Angelina finds nude photos of Zahara that Brad took.
@SarahHeartburn: What annoys me about Woody Allen is his - as you say - "obliviousness to other people's feelings" combined with his absolute obsession with his own.
You're rich. You can make movies and music whenever, and with whomever, you want. You have a large townhouse and a young wife. Stop calling your life "bleak" or "nihilistic". Maybe pop on over to the orphanage Mia got Soon-Yi from and THEN start comparing "bleakness". Only the richest, most navel-gazing could call a life like his "bleak"
@MsMuffinMcGuffin: Holy cow. What a resume. Good for him for helping others and not obsessing over himself like his father. GO RONAN.
He looks just like Mia too, thank God.
@MsMuffinMcGuffin: Therapy is problematic for narcissists because they will inevitably go from therapist to therapist until they find one who just makes them feel better about being a narcissist.
That said, who wants to be without "Manhattan," "Sleeper," "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Love and Death," etc... etc... etc...?
Kakapo
He's probably just upset about Leitch's impression of him on Win Ben Stein's Money.
@FormerEnglishMajor: He seems to act more like her as well, thank God.
@friend_of_a_friend: I absolutely heart Ronan Farrow. Beauty inside and outside.
@FormerEnglishMajor: Zahara Jolie-Pitt Pitt.
I think Vicky Cristina Barcelona proves that Woody is bored with his child bride because she doesn't look or act like an underage girl any more, but he can't dump her without reigniting a shit storm, so he's fantasizing about threesomes and whatnot ...He's burning through actress "muses" more and more quickly too. Poor guy. He's really got it hard.
@nosyparker: Totally agree. He knows Soon-Yi burned all her bridges with her mom/siblings, so he feels guilty abandoning her, but I completely have thought the same thing - that he is burning through "muses" faster, and until his last 2-3 movies, when he actually put in a male stand-in for himself, he was 65+ with 25-year-old "love interests". Embarrassing.
@Lucia Toledo: Not to mention a funny one.
GuyBitchy
Soon-Yi's looks, once youthful though never stellar, quickly morphed into middle-aged lesbian pottery instructor mode.
Karma's a bitch, clown.
GuyBitchy
@FormerEnglishMajor: One wrinkle. Woody never adopted Soon-Yi.
LittleLolly
@the_lerpa: Woody and Soon-yi seem like a good couple to me even if how they got together is sordid. She doesn't come off as worshipful. too bad he's still not happy and will always take it out on us.
Edward Lionheart
@LittleLolly: She adopted Soon-Yi in 1978 and started dating Allen in 1980. Close enough for me.
Soon-Yi was never his step-daughter. He and Mia Farrow not only were never married, they never lived together.
radiogrl1
Woody Allen was born in Somalia, grew up in Cambodia,
and came to America with nothing but a shirt on his back, where he faced nothing but discrimination, hardship, and poverty his entire life. So yeah, he should know how life sucks, and he off all people should be given a free pass to do whatever it takes to make the pain of life go away.
@Kakapo: Thank you!
Despite his questionable choices in his private life, it can't be denied that, before "Celebrity", "Small time crooks", "Scoop" and other cr@p movies, the man was a genius. And I will always thank him for "Love and Death".
HeyWhoTookMyStapler
I love how he went totally over to nihilism--and not of a particularly benign variety--when he realized that he could not get laid whenever he wanted.
There's a philosophical criterion.
@friend_of_a_friend: ..and in effect makes Soon-Yi his stepmother..
@FormerEnglishMajor: Don't get me wrong, I think the whole relationship is a creepfest.
LittleLolly
I just hear an eloquent version of Ted from Scrubs.
@Edward Lionheart: Actually, in that movie of his tour with his Dixieland band she came off as a bit, um, retarded. Which might well explain the attrraction.
@radiogrl1: That makes a difference, how, exactly? Still his son's sister, right?
amphora
@friend_of_a_friend: Thanks for sharing that quote. It is a moral transgression and totally wrong. Allen, sometimes, almost spins me to seeing his point of view, but really, fuck that noise. His son is totally right.
amphora
He's always been a sad little man. It's how he lures the ladies in.
He is at this point talentless.
forwardmotion
@LittleLolly: Le Nasty
TillieHarper
Many great artists treat others like crap because they're so self-absorbed and think their art is more important than people. And clearly, many former great artists do too.
thomashenry
As long as you're not hurting anybody … or doing anything that's causing any mischief or hurting anyone or anything awful, that whatever works to get through your life is fine.
But you did hurt someone Woody, you did.
[www.sundayundies.com]
TillieHarper
@FormerEnglishMajor: Yeah, let's not send him to that orphanage...he'll come out with a Vietnamese harem.
TillieHarper
"As long as you're not hurting anybody … or doing anything that's causing any mischief or hurting anyone or anything awful, that whatever works to get through your life is fine."
He's got a point there. But I think Mia Farrow was pretty hurt by him getting it on with her daughter.
@Kakapo: I volunteer!
I have not watched a Woody Allen movie since the one time I saw "Sleeper" at a friend's house, and I'm fine with that. I don't find his movies funny, and I think he's just . . . dull. And creepy.
The_Lovely_Miss_Bronx
@Lulu82: Whoops, someone already beat me to it.
@GuyBitchy:
you beat me to it. for a while i've thought she's got that lesbian pottery instructor thing going on.
no wonder his obsession with scarlett johansson.
Finally, someone who makes Roman Polanski look like babysitter material.
RollsRoyceRevenge
Mia Farrow is a class act. I can never look at this dude without thinking about her. If that makes me part of the appropriate police, then so be it.
@friend_of_a_friend: It's as if Oedipus Rex is your family biography.
nickcarroway
@RollsRoyceRevenge: Ha!
GuyBitchy
@radiogrl1: So he was only sleeping with (and eventually married) his girlfriend's (and mother of his child's!) daughter? Yeah, that's much better.
This isn't the Woddy Allen I came to know and appreciate when I took that class on tragedy and film-making at the Learning Annex in Rego Park. THAT Woody was buoyant, told me I had a future as a director, and then as he patted my firm haunches, said I reminded him of his ex-daughter, soon-to-be-ex-wife, Soon Yi.
That's a good thing, right?
Creepy lil fucker aint he?
LET HE WHO HATH NOT CARNALLY IMPOSED UPON THEIR ADOPTED KINDA DAUGHTER TYPE ASIAN BRIDE THROW THE FIRST STONE!
LeeroySpitzer
@friend_of_a_friend: I'm amazed at young Mr. Farrow's intelligence and eloquence.
Crinkelbert_Fishtybuns
He is the creepy little man in the adult bookstore buying the Oriental pussy magazines. Yeah, we know your type.
dontmindme
yawn, Mildred Pierce redux. Awkward and weird, yes; catastrophically wrong? No. Farrow and Allen never married; she adopted those kids on her own. And, they're Hollywood people, so, sorry, the rules don't apply in any direction. Woody has trouble with intimacy, and he's figured out that no female, regardless, can fix that. Yeah, it's odd, but lot's of odder stuff going on this minute in tinseltown.
MrRewrite