Woody Allen’s Curse

An interview, on the release of his latest film:  The legendary director talks about the delicate balance between filmmaking and daily life.

By: Kam Williams
   Born Allan Konigsberg in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 1, 1935, Woody Allen got off to an early start in his glorious entertainment career.
   He was already selling snappy one-liners to established comics while still in high school. In college, he moonlighted as a gag writer for Bob Hope until he was suspended from New York University. At that point, he embarked on a brief but celebrated career as a stand-up comedian until 1965, when he was hired to write the script for What’s New Pussycat?

Woody Allen is back on the big screen with another New York City-based period piece, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

   The next year, Woody’s rise continued as he directed his first film, What’s Up Tiger Lily? At this point, a meteoric movie career took off, as he wrote, directed and starred in a string of brilliantly introspective, instant classics invariably revolving around a highly neurotic New Yorker (usually a writer) played by himself.
   Early success, such comedies as Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972), Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), culminated with Annie Hall (1977), for which Woody won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
   In the intervening years, this prolific director diversified his offerings, plunging headlong into drama, while producing an average of a film a year. Even his more sophisticated subject matter met with critical acclaim. Overall, Allen has been nominated 22 times for Academy Awards, winning again in the Best Original Screenplay category for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).
   Unfortunately, this inspired genius’ personal life hasn’t paralleled his phenomenal career. His first marriage to Harlen Rosen lasted only a half-dozen years. His next nuptials, with actress Louise Lasser, who appeared in five of his movies, lasted only seven. Though memorable for her role as Nancy, Fielding Mellish’s girlfriend in the zany Bananas, Ms. Lasser is perhaps best known as the title character in the madcap television soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
   Allen’s long-term relationship with Mia Farrow produced a biological son and several adopted children. Ms. Farrow, as his favorite co-star, appeared in 10 Woody Allen movies, including Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days (1987). The pair’s final collaboration came with the eerily prophetic Husbands and Wives (1992), in which Woody and Mia played a couple caught in the throes of separation and divorce.
   Almost simultaneously, Woody’s assignation with step-daughter Soon-Yi came to light, signaling the onset of an ugly end to his common-law marriage with an understandably miffed Mia. After being mired in the tabloids and the courts for months, Woody ultimately moved on, eventually marrying Soon-Yi in 1997. Allen then resumed his moviemaking career, again hitting his stride with Celebrity (1998), Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and Small Time Crooks (2000).
   If you wish to enjoy a close brush with the Allen genius, the collection of Woody Allen manuscripts is housed in the Rare Books Division of the Princeton University Library. Among documents in the collection are original, early drafts of the screenplays for such eventual hits as Play It Again, Sam, Annie Hall, Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Hannah and Her Sisters and many others.
   Woody’s own working copies of his scripts for Celebrity and Deconstructing Harry are also available in this fairly exhaustive, encyclopedic assemblage. The library makes photocopies of the originals available for perusal. It’s eyes only, as readers may not photocopy any manuscripts.
   TimeOFF spoke with the legendary icon on the eve of the release of his latest opus, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, a trademark romantic comedy caper set in his beloved hometown in the 1940s.
TimeOFF  How’d you come up with the storyline for The Curse of the Jade Scorpion?
Woody Allen  This was an idea that occurred to me spontaneously on the street once. And I threw it in a drawer where it lay for some years along with Small Time Crooks and another film that I just finished shooting called Hollywood Ending. These were all Hollywood comedies that I wanted to get to, but simply didn’t have the time, cause I was doing other movies.
TO  Jade Scorpion is somewhat similar to Small Time Crooks, a comic crime caper.
WA  It’s different in the sense that it’s also a romantic bantering picture. You know, I grew up on those Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell movies and Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn movies where you knew they’d get together, but you never knew how because they seemed to hate each other so much. And they were always insulting each other and topping one another. I’d seen Billy Wilder and other directors do it and I always loved it when I was a kid. And The Curse of the Jade Scorpion seemed to fit right into that form which enabled me to do it.

Elizabeth Berkley (left) co-stars with Mr. Allen in his latest feature, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

TO  How did you come to choose Helen Hunt to play opposite you here?
WA  I’ve worked with a number of really great comedians over the years: Diane Keaton was one, Goldie Hawn, Tracey Ullman, Julie Kavner and others. They all could’ve played this role, but I don’t think any would’ve been the character like Helen was. When she walks into the room, she has that air of authority. She projects that intelligence, she’s got that cutting sense of humor, so she was the obvious choice when we were casting.
TO  How about Dan Aykroyd?
WA  Actually, his was a tougher part to cast because that character has got to exploit Helen and be sort of a scoundrel, and yet be blustery and a big blowhard in the office. He also had to be sort of likable and funny, so he wasn’t just a distasteful character. And he also needed to be attractive enough so that you’d believe that Helen would make a fool of herself over him. And Dan Aykroyd was the only person we could think of, and fortunately, he was available.
TO  What can you tell me about the casting of Charlize Theron?
WA  A staple character of those 1940s movies was the spoiled heiress, the young beautiful girl with rich parents who lives only a sybaritic life and needs to be tamed by the virile private eye. This is our version of that. The equation isn’t exactly the same, but that’s the idea. That my character is able to exploit her yen for thrills. That she would be attracted enough to that relationship, however transient it might be.
TO  Was this a fun movie to make?
WA  Everything fell in very easily. I shot it very quickly in nine weeks. All the locations came easy. It was an easy picture to do.
TO  How’d you come up with the title of the movie?
WA  I was trying to come up with one of those lurid titles that was kind of pulp fictiony of the ’40s.
TO  Why’d you set it in the 1940s?
WA  That type of banter between men and women was very indigenous to that time. And I like to do period ’20s, ’30s and ’40s, because I like the music, the clothing styles and the visuals. I like the way the women looked, the automobiles and the romance of the era. In the ’20s, the gangsters with the violin cases and the machine guns. And then in the ’40s, the soldiers and sailors kissing their girlfriends goodbye. It works well visually, so I do a lot of period films in those three decades.
TO  Was this film a deliberate return to your early style of comedy, sort of vintage Woody Allen?
WA  My approach is the same as when I started making films. I just go with the idea that I have at the moment. I’ve always made what I felt like making at the time, whether it was a musical, or Zelig, or Interiors, a period piece or a black-and-white. So, if tomorrow I woke up with a desire to make a very heavy film about religion in medieval Norway, I’d do it. And I’d be aware of the fact that I’d get fewer people in to see it, but I never cared about that much. Although I’m gratified when a movie does well, I would never make a film just to get people into the theater.

"People think I’m secretive and eccentric, but I’m not," says Mr. Allen. "And the actors have a set of expectations that got built up by the press."

TO  How do you assess yourself as an actor?
WA  I’m not an actor, really. I can play a few very, very limited things. A New York neurotic character close to what I am, a writer or musician. And I can play a lowlife, because I just can. It’s just something that I can do.
TO  How about Woody Allen the director? Every actor I interview would love to work with you, but there is also a little awe and fear of you as a demanding taskmaster.
WA  Funny, isn’t it? That’s part of the mythology, pro and con, about me. People think I’m a recluse. And that I’m a formidable character. It’s just total mythology. Nothing could be further from the truth. I live in New York. I walk around the streets all the time. I go out for dinner with my family. I’m a creature of middle-class habits. I practice my instrument. I play every Monday night. I go to the Knick games. I watch television. I work every day.
TO  There’s still the mystique.
WA  People think I’m secretive and eccentric, but I’m not. And the actors have a set of expectations that got built up by the press. I don’t know that person they think they’re going to be working with. When they come, they usually anticipate someone who’ll yell at them to get a career performance out of them, but I’ve never gotten anything out of someone that wasn’t there before I met them. So, they’re usually surprised when they discover that I’m not only low-key but almost apathetic. I’m disorganized. I don’t like to rehearse because it bores me. And I’m not a perfectionist at all. If I shoot a scene and there’s a mistake in it, I don’t do another take because I don’t have the patience. The film is never my first priority. It’s always either family, or the Knick game or my clarinet practice. The film is just one part of my life. I go home early. I never work nights, only till 5:30 or 6 o’clock.
TO  How do you get so many great performances out of people?
WA  I get out of their way. I tell them. ‘You want to change the script? Change it. If you want to ad-lib, you can ad-lib. As long as you’re in character, make up your own lines. If you don’t like your costume, tell me what you would like to wear.’ I give them enormous freedom. After a couple of weeks all that mythological stuff from the press gets dispelled.
TO  What was it like for you growing up in New York?
WA  We had no money, but my parents shielded me from that. I didn’t know my lean times were lean. Both of them had to work all the time. But I never missed a meal. Or went without clothing.
TO  But you went to work at a young age.
WA  I started working the minute my first gags were purchased. I made a lot of money by the low standards of what my parents were making. While my father was driving a cab and bringing home $50 a week and my mother was making $40 a week working for a florist, at 16, I was writing jokes for a $100 a week, which was more than both of them put together. I never knew any lean times. And by my late teens, I was making $1,000 a week. Because show-biz salaries are so exaggerated, I was making more money than a college professor or school teacher or someone doing a much more socially significant job. What could be lower than writing jokes for stupid acts for dopey nightclub comedians? And I remember friends telling me at the time, ‘Someday, you’ll realize what you’re doing, and you won’t be happy.’ And they were right.
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion opens at area theaters Aug. 24. TimeOFF will review the film in the Aug. 24 edition.