Woody Allen

This is just something quick, but I was reading the Woody Allen interview in today’s Onion AV Club (and first of all, he just finished a movie starring Larry David!), and Allen said something that really summed up what I was trying to talk about in an earlier post in a much more eloquent and succinct manner than I managed to.  Responding to a question about some of his darker films and whether they actually were dark or just misinterpreted:

“No, my films are misinterpreted all the time. I don’t mind that. Everybody’s films are misinterpreted. But there’s no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them. But those are not any darker than Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and certainly no darker than Cassandra’s Dream or Match Point. These are all quite dark films, and the films that I’m making at the time, contrary to what people might think, are not a reflection of what’s going on in my life. People think that the way I feel in my private life at the moment reflects how I make films, but everyone who makes films, or does any kind of creative art, will tell you that that’s not so, that sometimes when I’m feeling my happiest and everything’s going well in my life, and my love life is wonderful and my health is wonderful, I’ll make my darkest, most depressing kind of thing. And other times, when things are not going well for me and I’m having a hard personal time, I could be making my silliest comedies. I was not in a particularly happy state of mind or place in my life at all when I made Take The Money And Run and Bananas. This is not a good time in my life. There’s no reflection in one’s personal life, and I’ve heard this from other artists as well that people tend to think the product is a reflection of their personal feeling at the time, when in fact it isn’t, really. It’s just a matter of what idea they can come up with, or whatever strikes them inspirationally, having no relation to their personal mood.”

Filed by andyb at August 13th, 2008 under philosophy