Posted on 11/01/2005 1:17:11 AM PST by nickcarraway
Director Woody Allen says the 1992 scandal that shattered his relationship with actress Mia Farrow and led him to marry her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, was one of the luckiest moments of his life.
In a rare interview appearing this week in Vanity Fair magazine, the reclusive, Oscar-winning filmmaker gives himself a "B" for his body of work and laments never having made as great a movie as 8 1/2 or The Seventh Seal.
He also says he has learned little or nothing with age.
"All the crap that they tell you about ... getting joy, and having a kind of wisdom in your golden years - it's all tripe," said Allen, who turns 70 on December 1. "I've gained no wisdom, no insight, no mellowing. I would make all the same mistakes again, today."
Allen said Farrow's discovery of the nude photos he had of Soon-Yi in his apartment as "one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life".
Allen's affair with the Korean-born daughter Farrow had adopted with conductor and ex-husband Andre Previn ended Allen's decade-long relationship with Farrow. She then accused Allen of molesting another daughter they had adopted together.
He was cleared of the charges, but his reputation was badly tarnished. He married Soon-Yi in 1997, an outcome he acknowledges would, in hindsight, have seemed improbable.
"If somebody told me when I was younger, 'You're going to wind up married to a girl 35 years younger than you and a Korean, not in show business' ... I would have said, 'You're completely crazy.'"
Although he describes his marriage to Soon-Yi as having "a more paternal feeling to it," he sees their age difference as an asset because it lessens conflict.
"When there's a disagreement, it's never an adversarial thing. I don't ever feel that I'm with a hostile or threatening person," he said. "She's very self-possessed and she runs the house and the kids and our life."
Despite their bitter breakup, Allen insists he bears no professional grudge toward Farrow and even suggested casting her as his wife in Mighty Aphrodite just after the scandal broke. He calls the idea a result of the "compartmentalisation" he keeps between his work and personal life.
"I'm just not the kind of person that thinks, 'Well, you did a terrible thing to me in my life, and so I'm not working with you,'" he said. On the other hand, he added, "I wouldn't put, you know, Hermann Goering in a part."
As for his career as a filmmaker, Oscar-winning director of Annie Hall said his movies fall far short of works by such masters as Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa.
"I feel that level of greatness is just not in me," he said. "It may just not be in the genes, or I just don't have ... the depth of humanity to do that."
Allen's latest film, Match Point, starring Scarlett Johansson, opens in December and is regarded as a possible Oscar contender.
I don't think that wisdom necessarily comes with age although the two are related. Some people are fools for their entire life and Allen is leading the charge to prove that.
I regard Woody Allen as (1) a person who has made some very funny films and written some very funny books and (2) a completely irrational, reality-challenged liberal dipstick who is morally bankrupt. Allen is like a lot of people who do something irrational and/or immoral and then spend their time trying to justify it instead of acknowledging their screw-ups. In short he's like most liberals...except with a little more artistic talent. But again that talent was exhibited best early on in his career. His stuff of late has been very lame.
The truest observation of liberalism I've seen.
Well, I suppose there's no fool like an old fool.
Regards, Ivan
I really dislike Woody Allen. Gack.
if you dont like woody then i like you. if anyone likes this jackass, then i dont like them.
Woody Allen speaks of his compartmentalizing ability. I think he himself is compartmentalized. 50% very funny, talented comedian and film-maker. 50% mediocre film-maker and personal train-wreck.
He seemed to be always trying to figure out what he was trying to figure out
For me, that was too much trouble to go through to like or dislike him.
Never liked Woody Allen as an artist or as a person.
I believe this is the definition of a fool!
One of the best things I ever saw regarding Woody Allen was a skit on Second City Television - SCTV - a movie starring Woody Allen and Bob Hope. It was fall off the chair funny.
What's to learn when you are a narcissist?
It was all about them when they were born;
It was all about them at 5-years-old;
It was all about them at 10-years-old;
It was all about them in college;
It was all about them during their marriages;
It will still be all about them in the nursing home.
Narcissists cannot grow in wisdom--they only go downhill after people figure them out.
If the same was true of me,I'd consider myself to be one sorry son of a gun.
Some grow up, some grow old.
Perhaps he is setting us all up for another outrage. Maybe he's going to elope with his 5 y/o daughter...
...the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.
(Proverbs 4:18-19)
I don't know about "fool" .....but it is the definition of STUPID. You know....do all the same things over and over again and expect different results???
Two of the funniest I ever saw, same show -- spoof on Fantasy Island, and the public health announcement "Warning Signs of Death."
Dan
It was sad to see him turn into a parody of one of his own characters.
Still, realizing you lack wisdom is, paradoxically, a sign you lack folly. The real fool fancies himself wise.
I could have told HIM that.
"I got caught cheating on my metaphsics exam. I was looking into the soul of the kid next to me."
I think that in order to gain wisdom, one has to have a foundation on which to build. It's no wonder he hasn't added to his store of knowledge.
These are all out on DVD. I love the Melonville's SCTV People's Choice Award Show where host Guy Cabellero is lowered from the rafters of the stage and tips out of his wheelchair.
"He also says he has learned little or nothing with age."
I believe him.
I'd say he has even less wisdom and insight than he used to have, if he ever had any.
" Stupid is as stupid does." .............. Forrest Gump.
Well, at least we share a favorite movie: 8 1/2.
Yeah, he just sends her to her room. (or his)
Oh man, here we go again. I remember this freaky little nerd claiming that he and Mia were more like friends or roommates than lovers.
Someone's going to be filing for divorce soon.
Woody Allen's pathology is his fortune.
My step father was in a movie with him in the sixties, "Take the money and run". He played a small part, but out of all the people he worked with, he has never mentioned anything about Woody Allen.
My step father shows up more than halfway through the movie. He is the bank robber in black that tells woody allen to leave this is his day to rob the bank.
Allen gets to do what he likes to do - make movies and work professionally with other celebrities - and he gets paid to direct his films.
His films almost uniformly lose money at the box office - he may not have made a profitable film in 25 years now - and his producers take the loss as an offset to their taxes.
He has the art of making a $10M movie that earns less than $5M down to a science.
Actually, he has on several occasions exhibited a somewhat less than total contempt for conservatism. The two that come to mind were both in Annie Hall (someone correct me if I'm wrong)...
At one point, his Alvie Singer character (a liberal metrosexual), who is trying to show off how intellectual and sensitive and politically correct he is to Annie (strictly in order to try to get her into the sack) is pontificating on the woes of society, and he mentions bigotry; then he says: "I'm a bigot, but it's OK, because I'm a bigot for the left." You have to hear him say it to appreciate how silly he makes it sound. Later in the movie, he's visiting Annie Hall's new apartment (after they've broken up) and he sort of snooping around while she's in another room and he notices that she's got a copy of National Review, just lying around. He picks it up and starts giving her grief about it, waving it around saying "what's this, a copy of National Review, what, are you dating a right-wing rock star now?" Then he opens it, briefly leafs through it, and (once again you have to see this to appreciate it) gets a look on his face like hmmm... this actually looks interesting.
There are others, but my Woody Allen period was long ago.
(steely)
My step father shows up more than halfway through the movie. He is the bank robber in black that tells woody allen to leave this is his day to rob the bank.
Well, you can tell your step father that I remember that scene, and I only saw the "Take The Money and Run" once, about 20 years ago.
Woody Allen always struck me as the kind of guy who didn't have very much use for other people. Except for cute shiksa chicks, of course.
Although I'm bound to say in fairness the he is not the only man in the world who exhibits that characteristic.
Exactly.
Why people are pointing to an interview where a person acknowledges their limitations as evidence of narcissism and folly -- well, it suggests a lack of comprehension somewhere among the synapses.
If he were any wiser he would have asked the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive him of his sins and accept Him as Savior. He hasn't much time left to do this.
LOL. I know what you mean...it is hard not to develop a simple knee-jerk reaction to things...
I feel that way about Liberals and Unions. If they are for it, I nearly always find the opposing point of view and settle in there. I am only wrong about 15% of the time...think of how EFFICIENT that makes me! I can apply that saved brainpower to more important things!
Re: the observations that Woody Allen's movies are all tax schemes. Charlie Chaplin perfected the same methods years ago.
Read Intellectuals by Paul Johnson. It seems to be a not-uncommon trait among famous creative intellects. Many of our most celebrated geniuses have been really awful people.
I read a fair amount of literary biography, and I used to find myself wondering why some men who understood people so well, and could write about them with such pathos, would treat the real people around them so callously. I came to conclude that their detatchment from the human race gives them a perspective that is simply unavailable to the masses. Most of us are too tightly woven into the warp and woof of society's fabric to see its design. But that detatchment also ruins their ability to relate to real people on a personal level.
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