To look at the short 'shlumpy' septuagenarian hiding under a
floppy hat as he makes his way about the Brooklyn streets of his youth, it's
hard to think of him as the model of the comic genius. To listen to his self effacing comments on
his life's work, it's hard to imagine him in the role of the dynamo filmmaker
who has managed to turn out a film a year for longer than many of us have spent
on this earth. To hear the roster of
cinema greats and near greats who come to praise him as a great collaborator,
tolerant director and sensitive writer, it's difficult to reconcile their
description with the director who makes casting decisions in seconds and fires
actors he is unhappy with. To listen to
his quick witted dead pan quips, the
existential angst he claims as a world view seems ludicrous.
This is the paradoxical portrait of Woody Allen that
director Robert Weide paints in American Masters—Woody Allen: A
Documentary that premieres on PBS in two parts, Sunday, November 20
from 9-11 and Monday, November 21 from 9-10:30.
Weide, an award winning filmmaker, has directed , written and produced in a variety of combinations documentaries on
Mort Sahl, W.C. Fields and Lenny Bruce among others. Most recently, after his 1999 comedy special
Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm for HBO, he has served as
the director and executive of the spin-off series that has been running for
eight seasons. He is a man who
understands comedy and knows how to work with comedians. Perhaps this is why the notoriously publicity
shy Allen was willing to provide him with the kind of access necessary to make
this film. If so, Allen made a wise
decision.
Not only is Allen willing to sit down and talk about his
childhood, his parents, his various wives, although there is only a mention of
his current family, and his career, but he even has nice things to say about
Mia Farrow, at least as far as her abilities as an actress are concerned. As far as other family matters are concerned
the film talks about them, but Allen does not.
He talks about how he began his career as a young high
school student writing jokes for news paper columnists and graduated to writing
for TV shows and comedians. He explains
how he was turned into a stand-up performer despite his queasiness about getting
up on stage. Weide intersperses clips
from some of his early stage and TV appearances; Allen may have been unsure of
himself in his own eyes, but one thing for sure he was funny. Clips from his stints with Dick Cavitt are
hilarious; hilarious enough to make you wish he had somehow found the time to
keep doing stand-up. While Weide does
mention his playwriting, and there are some clips from Play It Again,
Sam, that and his fiction writing get short shrift. It is his career in film that gets the bulk
of the discussion, and how can you blame Weide?
If your choice is between the New Yorker and Penelope
Cruz, there really isn't much of a choice.
He talks about how he got involved with movies and his
unhappiness with what the studios did with his first film, What's New
Pussycat?, which led to his demand that he be given complete control
over his future projects. The
documentary then goes on to examine his development as a filmmaker through his
early sketch-like comic turns to his great character driven comedies and his
attempts at more serious drama. It looks
at his successes; it looks at his failures.
It interviews people involved in the films, and it gets him to talk
about what he was trying to do and about what he thought he actually
accomplished. If the people he worked
with—the Diane Keatons and the Scarlet Johanssons, the Sean Penns and the Chris
Rocks—are generally effusive, in their comments, Allen, himself, always gives the impression
that he didn't do all that much. If he
has one of those Hollywood egos, he does his best to hide it.
While the film follows fairly conventional documentary
tropes—talking heads, family photos, film and video clips, when you have
talking heads like the actors from Allen's films and clips from Love
and Death and Manhattan conventional tropes are nothing to sneeze
at. Besides although the spine of the
film is generally chronological, Weide is perfectly willing to break into the
narrative to make a point or add a current perspective on something that
happened in the past. It is a neatly
constructed with an insight, wit and intelligence worthy of its subject.
No comments:
Post a Comment