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(PICTURED BELOW in AFTER LIFE Tony Johnson talks regularly with Anne on the bench at the graveyard next to their spouse head-stones)

Francis Schaeffer pictured below: 

(King Solomon the author of ECCLESIASTES pictured below)

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Billy Graham on Woody Allen Show 1969

Dick Cavett and Woody 

12 questions for woody 
https://youtu.be/hpniYxRjX3o

Woody scene in STARDUST MEMORIES 

Scarlet thinks Woody is innocent 

https://youtu.be/WIX8hunX-KM
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Discussion of Woody’s autobiography 

—Lazy boy
https://youtu.be/WLHoiauGdVc
Heroes 
https://youtu.be/RTUmrAfrRYc
Born Louse
https://youtu.be/jPai4z-rC-E
—Woody interview on death
https://youtu.be/Uhjg1dKkBRM

Hannah and her sisters FAVORITE SCENES 

—Woody wording about brain tumor

Dick Cavett show 1971 with Woody 

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FREUD’S LAST SESSION | Official Trailer (2023)

129 129 Lewis watches with relief. INT. FREUD’S STUDY – CONT. 130 130 Freud watches Lewis step back inside. 

LEWIS Transport planes. Ours. Freud takes this in.

 FREUD I was afraid. 

LEWIS So was I. 

FREUD What were we thinking? It was madness to think we could solve the greatest mystery of all time. 

LEWIS There’s a greater madness. Not to think of it at all.

Letter May 4 Letter (Part#5 ) woody distraction / Schaeffer Distraction/ Ricky /Lenny Distraction / Solomon /Cycle

May 4, 2020 

Woody Allen c/o Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10018

Dear Woody, 

You got to take the time to watch the film series AFTERLIFE on Netflix since Ricky Gervais, you and Solomon in ECCLESIASTES talk about so many of the same nihilistic themes on life!!!

On page 390 of your autobiography you assert: 

For students of cinema, I have nothing of value to offer. My filming habits are lazy, undisciplined, the technique of a failed, ejected film major. As for writing, for those interested, I rise and after breakfast, work in longhand on yellow pads lying across my bed. I work all day and usually work at least part of every day of the week. This is not because I am a workaholic but because work keeps me from facing the world, one of my least favorite venues.

Woody you are saying that there is nothing left with this Godless, meaningless universe but to only DISTRACT ourselves. 
(Francis Schaeffer shown below)

Francis Schaeffer two months before he died made the following comments in Knoxville, TN in 1984:

If you take away the biblical view of who God is and man being made in his image then there is no basis for a distinction between human life and other forms of life…
(L’Abri in Switzerland pictured below)

What I’m saying is without the Bible it isn’t just that you don’t know how to go to heaven, but without the Bible you don’t know who people are and you don’t know what this world is. When you watch the birds fly across the sky  if you really don’t have the Bible to tell you who created this world and what the world is even the birds flying across the sky is very different. We have many people that come to L’Abri that have thought this out to the very end properly and that is there is no meaning to life, no meaning to life, no meaning to human life. They are not wrong. They are right.

The younger generation who grab the needle and shoot it up because they can’t find any meaning to life, they are not wrong. They are right. if you take the Bible away it is not just that people are lost for eternity, but they are lost now. They have no meaning to life…. If I was talking to a gentleman I was sitting next  to on an airplane about Christ I wouldn’t necessarily start off quoting Bible verses. I would go back rather to their dilemma if they hold the modern worldview of the final reality only being energy, etc., I would start with that. I would begin as I stress in the book THE GOD WHO IS THERE about their own [humanist] prophets who really show where their view goes. For instance, Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner from France, in his book NECESSITY AND CHANCE said there is no way to tell the OUGHT from the IS. In other words, you live in a TOTALLY SILENT  universe.

The men like Monod and Sartre or whoever the man might know that is his [humanist] prophet and they point out quite properly and conclusively what life is like, not just that there is no meaningfulness in life but everyone according to modern man is just living out some kind of game plan. It may be knocking 1/10th of a second off a downhill ski run or making one more million dollars. But all you are doing is making a game plan within the mix of a meaningless situation. WOODY ALLEN exploits this very strongly in his films. He really lives it. I feel for that man, and he has expressed it so thoroughly in ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN and so on.

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(Seen above: Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE)

What does a person who holds to the nihilist point of view have to do with useless life but to try and distract himself?

In the first episode of season one of AFTERLIFE is the following conversation:

Matt: Tony this is Sandy’s day. Could you take her under your wing and show her what’s what?

Tony: Here’s what’s what, humanity is a plague. We’re a disgusting, narcissistic, selfish parasite, and the world would be a better place without us. It should be everyone’s moral duty to kill themselves. I could do it now. Quite happily just go upstairs, jump off the roof, and make sure I landed on some c**t from accounts. 

Matt: Lenny could you do it?

Lenny: Sure.

Tony: Let me guess the bullet points: Get in and eat in front of the computer. Go to the pub and eat in front of the quiz machine. Go home and eat in front of the Television. Go to bed and I assume you eat in bed?

Lenny: There are emergency snacks around. 
(Tony gets up to leave.) Tony: Do you want anymore donuts fat boy?

Lenny: Yes please. 
Sandy: Do you mind him talking to him like that? 
Lenny: He is a mate. It distracts him.

In another place Tony says he drinks all night to fill up the time! The goal is to just pass the time. In Solomon’s day he saw man caught in endless cycles and not making any progress but just chasing after the wind!! 

Francis Schaeffer discusses King Solomon’s words in ECCLESIASTES below: 

 Solomon is the universal man with a empire at his disposal. Solomon had it all.

Ecclesiastes 1:3

English Standard Version (ESV)

³ What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?

Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes.

(Added by me:The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” )

Man is caught in the cycle

Ecclesiastes 1:1-7

English Standard Version (ESV)

All Is Vanity

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

² Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
³ What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?
⁴ A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
    and hastens to the place where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
    and on its circuits the wind returns.
⁷ All streams run to the sea,
    but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
    there they flow again.

⁸ All things are full of weariness;
    a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
    nor the ear filled with hearing.
⁹ What has been is what will be,
    and what has been done is what will be done,
    and there is nothing new under the sun.
¹⁰ Is there a thing of which it is said,
    “See, this is new”?
It has been already
    in the ages before us.

_____________

Solomon is showing a high degree of comprehension of evaporation and the results of it. Seeing also in reality nothing changes. There is change but always in a set framework and that is cycle. You can relate this to the concepts of modern man. Ecclesiastes is the only pessimistic book in the Bible and that is because of the place where Solomon limits himself.He limits himself to the question of human life, life under the sunbetween birth and death and the answers this would give.

Ecclesiastes 1:4

English Standard Version (ESV)

⁴ A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.

___________________

Ecclesiastes 4:16

English Standard Version (ESV)

¹⁶ There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

__________________________

In verses 1:4 and 4:16 Solomon places man in the cycle. He doesn’t place man outside of the cycle. Man doesn’t escape the cycle. Man is only cycle. Birth and death and youth and old age. With this in mind Solomon makes this statement.

Ecclesiastes 6:12

¹² For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?

____________________

There is no doubt in my mind that Solomon had the same experience in his life that I had as a younger man. I remember standing by the sea and the moon arose and it was copper and beauty. Then the moon did not look like a flat dish but a globe or a sphere since it was close to the horizon. One could feel the global shape of the earth too. Then it occurred to me that I could contemplate the interplay of the spheres and I was exalted because I thought I can look upon them with all their power, might, and size, but they could contempt nothing and I felt as man as God. Then came upon me a horror of great darkness because it suddenly occurred to me that although I could contemplate them and they could contemplate nothing yet they would continue to turn in ongoing cycles when I saw no more forever and I was crushed.

THIS IS SOLOMON’S FEELING TOO. The universal man, Solomon, beyond our intelligence with an empire at his disposal with the opportunity of observation so he could recite these words here in Ecclesiastes 6:12, “For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?”

Woody, the common theme between you, Ricky and Solomon is you all are looking for the big answers to life in a limited area and that is restricted to life UNDER THE SUN. Let me another suggestion: 

1. Rom. 3:10, “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one . . . “
2. Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
3. Rom. 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
4. Rom. 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
5. Rom. 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
6. Rom. 10:9-10, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
7. Rom. 10:13, “For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002

PS: What is the meaning of life? Find it in the end of the open letter I wrote to Ricky Gervais on April 23, 2020 and it was published on my blog under the title Open Letter #6 to Ricky Gervais on comparison of the Tony of AFTER LIFE to the Solomon of ECCLESIASTES, Both are searching for answers UNDER THE SUN but are coming up empty!.

Francis Schaeffer in the film WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?

Francis and Edith Schaeffer

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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE 

Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer

(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are burie

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Mandeep Dhillon as Sandy on her first assignment in ‘After Life’. (Twitter)

A still from ‘After Life’ that captures the vibe of the Tambury Gazette. (Twitter)

Michael Scott of THE OFFICE (USA) with Ricky Gervais 

After Life on Netflix stars Ricky Gervais as a bereaved husband (Image: Netflix)

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Psychiatrist played by Paul Kaye seen below.

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Big time director Woody Allen and wife Soon-Yi Previn along with daughters Bechet and Manzie Tio were at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, CA on June 15th, 2012

Woody, Soon-Yi and their children

Woody Allen y Soon-Yi Previn: la relación más extraña de la farándula

From left to right: Marion Cotillard, Alison Pill, Owen Wilson, and Woody Allen. “Midnight in Paris” will be available on DVD starting Dec. 20.

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CREDIT: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Above: Woody Allen directs Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson in “Midnight in Paris.”

FacebookTwitterPinterest ShowRoger Arpajou © 2011 Mediapro, Versatil Cinema & Gravier Productions/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

On the Set

Woody Allen (left) and Owen Wilson discuss a scene during one of the film’s many night shoots.

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Kindred Spirits

Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson are offered suggestions by director Woody Allen.

Says Cotillard: “Woody Allen in a way found his kind of spiritual son. It was like it was meant to be. Owen fits so perfectly in Woody’s universe, it was really organic and made total sense.”

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CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

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WOODY ALLEN, MIA FARROW, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, 1989 

– Image ID: BPD7JK 

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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid To Ask)

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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid To Ask)

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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid To Ask)

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(Cliff learns that Professor Levy has committed suicide)

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Woody directing CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS below

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JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS, WOODY ALLEN, MATCH POINT, 2005 

– Image ID: BPP133 

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LOS ANGELES, CA. December 08, 2005: LtoR: JONATHAN RHYS-MEYERS, SCARLETT JOHANSSON, WOODY ALLEN & EMILY MORTIMER at the Los Angeles premiere of their new movie Match Point. © 2005 Paul Smith / Featureflash 

– Image ID: T5557A 

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Cannes Film Festival 2005 – ‘Match Point’ Photocall – Palais des Festival 

– Image ID: G8853G 

(Match point) 

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a-midsummer-nights-sex-comedy

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Woody Allen as Andrew in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S SEX COMEDY

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Hannah and her sisters 

(Annie Hall below)

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Woody Allen in Manhattan 

Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway in “Manhattan.” The film has taken on new meaning in recent months.Credit…Getty Images

Manhattan opens in breathtaking style: we are immediately blessed with shots of the finest sights of New York- the city skyline, the Queensboro bridge, the interior of the Guggenheim. A

Manhattan 

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Irrational Man

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Woody Allen on the set of Blue Jasmine. Photograph: Warner Bros

Woody Allen wrote the lead in Blue Jasmine with Cate Blanchett in mind

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LOVE AND DEATH (1975) WOODY ALLEN (DIR) LADT 001 VS 

– Image ID: BKDHRK 

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Love And Death

The 5th film written and directed by Woody Allen

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(Cafe Society)

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Deconstructing Harry

‘Deconstructing Harry‘ is the 27th film written and directed by Woody Allen.

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