The Daily Hatch

I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.

My interest in Woody Allen is so great that I have a “Woody Wednesday” on my blog www.thedailyhatch.org every week. Also I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in his film “Midnight in Paris.” (Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway,T.S.Elliot,  Cole Porter,Paul Gauguin,  Luis Bunuel, and Pablo Picasso were just a few of the characters.) Check out these trivia facts below.

Here is some trivia about Woody Allen:

There are lots of nice advantages that you get, being a celebrity. The tabloid things, the bumps in the road, they come and they go. Most people don’t have as big a bump as I had, but even the big bump – it’s not life-threatening. It’s not like the doctor’s saying: ‘I looked at these x-rays of your brain, and there’s this little thing growing there.’ Tabloid things can be handled. I just don’t want a shadow on my lung on the x-ray.

I’m just trying to be objective and honest. If you were having a 10-film festival and showing Citizen Kane (1941) on Monday, Rashomon (1950) on Tuesday, Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Seventh Seal (1957) … I don’t think anything I’ve ever made could be placed in a festival with those films and hold its own.

I have an idea for a story, and I think to myself, “my God, this is a combination of Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller” … but that’s because [when you’re writing] you don’t have to face the test of reality. You’re at home, in your house, it’s all in your mind. Now, when it’s almost over, and I see what I’ve got, I start to think: “what have I done? This is going to be such an embarrassment! Can I salvage it?” All your grandiose ideas go out the window. You realise you made a catastrophe, and you think: “what if I put the last scene first, drop this character, put in narration? What if I shoot one more scene, to make him not leave his wife, but kill his wife?” [But nine times out of ten, after the screening of the first rough cut,] the feeling is: “OK, now don’t panic.” The other 10% of the time, it’s: “OK. That’s not as bad as I thought.”

My experience has been, with one exception [Midnight in Paris (2011)], that when I do a film in a foreign country, the toughest audience for me is that country. In Italy, they said: ‘This guy doesn’t understand Italy.’ And I can’t argue with those criticisms. I’m an American, and that’s how I see Barcelona or Rome or England. If the situation was reversed, and somebody from a foreign country made a film here, I might very well be saying: ‘Yeah, it’s OK, but this guy really doesn’t get New York.’ And I’d be right. And I’m sure they’re right.

To have been the lead character in a juicy scandal – a really juicy scandal – that will always be a part of what people think of when they think of me. It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t please me. It’s a non-factor. But it’s a true factor.

[Ageing] is a bad business. It’s a confirmation that the anxieties and terrors I’ve had all my life were accurate. There’s no advantage to ageing. You don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t see life in a more glowing way. You have to fight your body decaying, and you have less options. The only thing you can do is what you did when you were 20 – because you’re always walking with an abyss right under your feet; they can be hoisting a piano on Park Avenue and drop it on your head when you’re 20 – which is to distract yourself. Getting involved in a movie [occupies] all my anxiety: did I write a good scene for Cate Blanchett? If I wasn’t concentrated on that, I’d be thinking of larger issues. And those are unresolvable, and you’re checkmated whichever way you go.

If you’re a celebrity, you can get good medical treatment. I can get a doctor on the weekends. I can get the results of my biopsy quickly.

[European backers support me when Americans won’t] You’d think that after a hit like Midnight in Paris (2011) – made a lot of money, not by The Dark Knight (2008) standards, but by my standards – there would be some companies that would want to do a film with you. But I didn’t get a single offer. Not one … and then an Italian company I’d been talking to for years was willing to put up money.

Making films is a very nice way to make a living. You work with beautiful women, and charming men, who are amusing and gifted; you work with art directors and costume people … you travel places, and the money’s good. It’s a nice living.

[The French] think I’m an intellectual because I wear these glasses, and they think I’m an artist because my films lose money.

I have one last request. Don’t use embalming fluid on me; I want to be stuffed with crab meat.

Editing is that moment when you give up every hope you have of making a great piece of art and you have to settle with what you have.

I’m very happy doing films. I wrote a novel, but it didn’t come out well and I put it away. I would like to write for the theatre again, and I will continue to write for The New Yorker. But I don’t have to knock myself out to do one film a year – a year’s a long time to make a film. I don’t make these films like, say, Steven Spielberg, where I take three years and a hundred million dollars. My films are much less ambitious. It’s easy for me. I finish a film and I’m sitting around the house and have other ideas; I get them together and I write them. I don’t require much money to make a film, so it’s not hard for me to get funded. And I’m a good bet for an investor, because I work fast and inexpensively. And when the film is released, before you know it, the small amount that it cost, they’ve made back. Then once in a while, if I hit one that is popular – like Match Point (2005), which made a hundred million dollars – then everybody makes a lot of money on it. Everybody except me. [2011]

There are worse things than death. Many of them playing at a theater near you.

I am not a hypochondriac but a totally different genus of crackpot.

My parents both lived to ripe old ages but absolutely refused to pass their genes to me as they believed an inheritance often spoils the child.

Salary

What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)

$66,000

Where Are They Now

(August 2003) Is currently filming his follow-up to Anything Else (2003) in New York.

(November 2004) He is currently directing his original play “A Second-Hand Memory” at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.

(October 2005) Plays clarinet every Monday night at the Café Carlyle in Manhattan.

(December 2007) European concert tour (Brussels, Luxembourg, Vienna, Paris, Budapest, Athens, Lisbon, Barcelona, San Sebastian, La Coruna) with the Eddie Davis New Orleans Jazz Band.

Related posts:

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in the film. Take a look below: