Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear is the thing.
Speaker 1: I've admired Woody Allen's work for as long as I've
Speaker 1: loved movies. I've hosted parties where the only activity is
Speaker 1: just watching Broadway Danny Rose Together. He's been making movies
Speaker 1: for fifty years now. Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and her
Speaker 1: Sister's Radio Days. There's some of the best movies ever made.
Speaker 1: They've got the funniest lines in modern cinema, and though
Speaker 1: he denies it, profound insights into psychology and the human condition.
Speaker 1: I've acted in three Woody Allen movies, and each one
Speaker 1: was a highlight of my career, and like just about everyone,
Speaker 1: I've followed his story. One part of the very private
Speaker 1: Woody Allen's story is very public. Woody and his ex wife,
Speaker 1: Mia Farrow, were in the midst of a bruising custody dispute.
Speaker 1: Mia discovered that Woody had been having an affair with
Speaker 1: her twenty one year old daughter. While the spute was raging,
Speaker 1: Mia told a psychologist that Dylan Faraoh, her and Woody's
Speaker 1: seven year old daughter, accused her father of an incident
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse that was an investigation in New York
Speaker 1: State and Connecticut, and no charges were filed. Woody Allen
Speaker 1: has always maintained his innocence. I've formed an opinion, and
Speaker 1: I've been public about that. My inclination is to trust
Speaker 1: those investigations. I've never claimed to be a journalist in
Speaker 1: my role as host of Here's the Thing, But now
Speaker 1: you know where I stand, regardless of where you stand.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make the mistake of cutting the
Speaker 1: accuser or the accused out of the conversation. Woody Allen
Speaker 1: has a new autobiography, out, Apropos of Nothing. It's a
Speaker 1: book that starts at the beginning. Allen was a Brooklyn
Speaker 1: High schooler who took the subway into Manhattan after school
Speaker 1: to write jokes for forty dollars a week. His jokes
Speaker 1: were a hit, and he met his comedy writing mentors
Speaker 1: like a Burrows and Danny si And when he was
Speaker 1: still in his teens. The book shows that he hasn't
Speaker 1: lost his touch. I've turned eighty four and people for years,
Speaker 1: you know, said to me, you should write down your life.
Speaker 1: You've been a nightclub comedian, a television writer, a radio writer.
Speaker 1: I've directed on stage, I've written for the theater. I've
Speaker 1: you know, done films. I've played jazz, and they said,
Speaker 1: you must have a lot of stories that are interesting
Speaker 1: or amusing or worthwhile or informative, and uh and so
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do for a while, I had
Speaker 1: time off, so I wrote them out in the hopes
Speaker 1: that maybe people would enjoy reading them or learn something.
Speaker 1: It's much more accurate than the things you see in
Speaker 1: the movies. When you see Radio Days or movies that
Speaker 1: are presumably autobiographical, all those little bits that are gathered
Speaker 1: from my life are greatly exaggerated and hopefully made funny.
Speaker 1: You're seeing enormous distortion for theatrical reasons and for entertainment reasons.
Speaker 1: And in your films you don't name names. Everything is anonymous.
Speaker 1: In any hall, there's a wonderful moment when you go
Speaker 1: to the meeting with the entertainer. Johnny Hamer played the entertainment.
Speaker 1: Great to see you all out there. It's swelled and
Speaker 1: he's singing the song and you're sitting there glazed over.
Speaker 1: And not that you disparage people in the book, but
Speaker 1: you're much more direct. You say, I loved Hope and Hopes.
Speaker 1: Movies were funnier than Jerry Lewis. Yes, in a movie,
Speaker 1: you just want to entertain. That's all you want to
Speaker 1: really do. That's all I wanted to really do. In
Speaker 1: the book, you you want to you know, tell the truth.
Speaker 1: Do I think this guy is funny? Do I think
Speaker 1: this movie is funny? Do I love this? And I
Speaker 1: can understand they're interests because I work in the field.
Speaker 1: Just like if I speak to an athlete, I want
Speaker 1: to know, what do you think of this hit? Or
Speaker 1: what do you think of this basketball player? What you know?
Speaker 1: I want to hear it from someone who's in the field,
Speaker 1: And so to a certain degree, I've I've included my
Speaker 1: feelings about these things in the book so people might
Speaker 1: find it interesting. The you left out, by the way,
Speaker 1: in your list of jobs you've had, you left out
Speaker 1: degenerate gambler. Yeah. I was someone who, for no fund
Speaker 1: would work hard at polka and studied it and practiced,
Speaker 1: and I got in to win. Everyone else was playing
Speaker 1: for pleasure. They were having a good time and enjoying
Speaker 1: their lives. I was sitting there, you know, like sweating
Speaker 1: like a mole. God forbid I should make a mistake
Speaker 1: or make a wrong bet or do something, and I
Speaker 1: did win money consistently over the years. Now, when you
Speaker 1: go back, I mean the beginning of the book, because
Speaker 1: there's a volume of people who are familiar with your filmmaking,
Speaker 1: with your stand up routines and so forth, going back
Speaker 1: to the earliest days of your career, but your child
Speaker 1: hood itself for people who don't know that part of
Speaker 1: your life. You said, listen, I'm wearing the glasses, and
Speaker 1: you think I'm an intellectual, and I'm not an intellectual.
Speaker 1: And I could throw a football, I can catch a football,
Speaker 1: I could play baseball. You know you. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have rather been a baseball player. And I have fantasies
Speaker 1: that we would have had much better life. It would
Speaker 1: have been more fun. But I am perceived because of
Speaker 1: what I look like as a bookworm or or a shrink,
Speaker 1: or an accountant, or an intellectual because I have the glasses.
Speaker 1: But I was the opposite of an intellectual. I was
Speaker 1: strictly hung up on sports and comic books and movies
Speaker 1: and never read a book till I was much older,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, And and I was very athletic when
Speaker 1: I was younger. Um, so I would have I would
Speaker 1: have preferred. I don't think I would have been good
Speaker 1: enough to be a major league baseball player, but it
Speaker 1: was quite good. I was always, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the for if not the first one shows, and I
Speaker 1: was quite good. When you get into the big leagues,
Speaker 1: it's a different story. But it would have made my
Speaker 1: father happy to spend his afternoons at the ballpark and
Speaker 1: me playing. And you know, that's a fantasy I've always had,
Speaker 1: but it's a fantasy. Well, I want to talk about musicians.
Speaker 1: I mean I spent an hour last night trying to
Speaker 1: get any CD recordings, not vinyl recordings. I surrendered to
Speaker 1: the fact that I have to go get some vinyl. Now.
Speaker 1: Of Jean Cedric h you talk about him coming to
Speaker 1: teach you. He was the clarinet player with Fat Swaller.
Speaker 1: I used to go and see him play jazz at
Speaker 1: the Child's Paramount, and Manhattan would be a jazz concert
Speaker 1: every week, and he played and I'd sit under. I
Speaker 1: never exchanged the word with him. I just watched him.
Speaker 1: And one day I called him up and asked him
Speaker 1: if he said I'm that guy that it's it's in
Speaker 1: front of you every Sunday afternoon, and he recognized me,
Speaker 1: and I asked if could he help me, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I would have to get two dollars. Now, even then,
Speaker 1: that was a bargain, you know, because this guy was
Speaker 1: a great musician, and he'd come in on the train
Speaker 1: from Harlem and come over the house and sit in
Speaker 1: my living room and try as hard as he could.
Speaker 1: There was a low ceiling that I had of capability,
Speaker 1: and he brought me a little closer to that low ceiling,
Speaker 1: and you know, I just it's it's not one of
Speaker 1: my my real talents. I think I don't really have
Speaker 1: any real talents except as a comedy writer. That's really
Speaker 1: the only talent I've had, you know. To be amusing
Speaker 1: has been my only gift. Uh. We were together in
Speaker 1: Italy for the premier of to Rome with Love and
Speaker 1: we were sitting on a dais. I remember this vividly,
Speaker 1: and everyone would say up and say, Woody, I have
Speaker 1: a question for a Woody, you know, and they and
Speaker 1: they wanted to direct all their questions to you, obviously,
Speaker 1: And when they did ask me a question, I talked
Speaker 1: about how your greatest gift is as a writer, and
Speaker 1: I saw you nod your head. There was a slight
Speaker 1: nod of your head, as if the recognition of your
Speaker 1: writing is more important to you than anything. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: only make the films because I write them. I've never
Speaker 1: filmed anybody else's script or had any inclination to adapt something.
Speaker 1: I make the film because I write the film, and
Speaker 1: I just feel I'm the only one who's really going
Speaker 1: to know how to mount it, so it's congruent with
Speaker 1: what I wrote. I see myself fundamentally as a writer.
Speaker 1: I direct out of necessity, and I try and do
Speaker 1: the best job that I can. Um. I think I've
Speaker 1: improved over the years if you look at Take the
Speaker 1: Money and Run or Bananas when I first started, forgetting
Speaker 1: about whether you enjoyed the films or not, the technique
Speaker 1: has improved. I think I'm much better filmmaker now. But
Speaker 1: you know that's just technical, uh, you know, development that
Speaker 1: comes with years of working. I'm doing it only to
Speaker 1: get my story mounted in such a way that the
Speaker 1: audience can appreciate what I've written. You tell the story
Speaker 1: about gene Cedric and the lessons than him coming to you.
Speaker 1: There's a parallel there with a burrows and you camping
Speaker 1: out briefly in front of the barras Ford to see
Speaker 1: a Burrows. Is that a component you think of your
Speaker 1: success is that you're ready to just show up and
Speaker 1: say hey. I wasn't ready. My mother was a pushy lady.
Speaker 1: I didn't know him from a hole in the wall,
Speaker 1: and she said just go over to his house and
Speaker 1: ring his bell. And I was such a naive kid.
Speaker 1: I thought, gee, I guess that's what I should do.
Speaker 1: And and it turned out that he was a lovely guy.
Speaker 1: He had no connection with me, what sort of except
Speaker 1: some vague tenuous connection with some relative by marriage. I
Speaker 1: mean there was really like ten degrees of separation. But
Speaker 1: he could not have been warmer or nicer. And it
Speaker 1: was just one of many good breaks which I've had
Speaker 1: all my life. Relating to my career, I've had nothing
Speaker 1: but luck and good breaks and people helping me and
Speaker 1: people kind to me. And when I referred to my
Speaker 1: career as tremendous amount of luck, people said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't just be luck. A huge amount of it
Speaker 1: is luck. But one thing that was revealed in this
Speaker 1: book is this engine of a memory. I mean, you
Speaker 1: remember everything everybody. If I wanted to or the reader
Speaker 1: of the book, I could pour out many more details
Speaker 1: about all that stuff, but that's no achievement. You you
Speaker 1: either remember you don't. I mean I didn't research the book.
Speaker 1: I just sat down and started writing it from scratch
Speaker 1: and wrote it. You just remember things or you don't
Speaker 1: remember them, and and I do. But what I don't
Speaker 1: remember is when guys come up to me now and
Speaker 1: and they'll bark a line at me, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, and they'll say it's it's
Speaker 1: from your movie, or referring to some film I did
Speaker 1: thirty forty years ago that I haven't seen since I made.
Speaker 1: I guess when you're a kid, your brain is so
Speaker 1: soft and absorbent, and and you know you remember those things.
Speaker 1: Tiger Lily is the first film you direct, correct, And
Speaker 1: that was an odd little Labyrinth project. Some guy called
Speaker 1: me and said he bought a Japanese film that I
Speaker 1: dubbed it with comic American. I don't. I don't count
Speaker 1: that as anything. I I was even gonna sue to
Speaker 1: keep that from coming out because I was I thought
Speaker 1: it was such junk, and uh, you know, it was successful.
Speaker 1: So my manager at the time said, shut up and
Speaker 1: go with the flow. And don't make a fuss, and
Speaker 1: I didn't take the money and run is the first
Speaker 1: one you direct? Yeah, that's the first time I really
Speaker 1: wrote the picture and then directed it and got the
Speaker 1: picture that I was capable of doing to the best
Speaker 1: of my ability at that point in my life. And
Speaker 1: who made the suggestion at that point that you direct?
Speaker 1: Whose idea was it that you direct? That was my idea.
Speaker 1: I came up with the idea. I thought, if I
Speaker 1: could direct this, then uh, then I'm going to get
Speaker 1: what I want. I don't have to and if I'm
Speaker 1: in it, I don't even have to deal with an actor.
Speaker 1: I can. I know what I want. I set the
Speaker 1: shot up and then I walk around in front of
Speaker 1: the camera and do it. I do it the way
Speaker 1: I hear it, the way I wanted to express to
Speaker 1: the audience. And people used to say, isn't it hard
Speaker 1: to write and direct? But it wasn't. Doubly hard. It
Speaker 1: was half as hard. Take the money. Everyone who was
Speaker 1: the cinematographer do you recall on that film, Leicester Shure
Speaker 1: Lester Shaw In the one experience I had directing, what
Speaker 1: was revealed very quickly was something I knew from the
Speaker 1: other films I made, which I wasn't that fascinated with cinematics.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that keen on lenses and which side of
Speaker 1: the line and where do we put the camera? And
Speaker 1: I almost fantasized, I fantasized almost that I would have
Speaker 1: a job I'd create. Roberts, the director of Just the Acting,
Speaker 1: did you find you had an affinity for the camera.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an affinity. There was a common sense way
Speaker 1: my joke would look good, and I did it. Comedy
Speaker 1: doesn't require a lot of fancy angles and a lot
Speaker 1: of lamboyant cinematography. You want it nice and simple. You
Speaker 1: want the owners to see it. You want it lit
Speaker 1: so they can see it and clear. So it was
Speaker 1: easy for me. I mean, there was no Some guy
Speaker 1: said to me at the time, one of the studio heads,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you feel being responsible from million
Speaker 1: dollars that was the budget to take the money and run?
Speaker 1: And and I thought to myself, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: how do I feel? I feel fine? This is a
Speaker 1: piece of cake. You have to see the person put
Speaker 1: the gun down on the table if you want the
Speaker 1: joke to work. It does not rocket science. Later on
Speaker 1: I became more and more interested in cinematography and making
Speaker 1: the film work for you as well. But but always,
Speaker 1: if you don't have a story to tell, a good story,
Speaker 1: you're dead. And if you have a good story, you're
Speaker 1: way ahead of the game. Even if you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're doing when you're writing, do you show anybody?
Speaker 1: Are there people that you trust who you want to
Speaker 1: even if it's one person? Is there anybody that you
Speaker 1: bounce your material off of and you want their opinion? No?
Speaker 1: Not really. I finished the script and I would always
Speaker 1: give it to Juliet Taylor to uh, give me some
Speaker 1: suggestions for casting, and go No, I did it all.
Speaker 1: I found that to be not a good thing to do,
Speaker 1: because you get a million opinions and some of them
Speaker 1: are good and you should probably take them, but you
Speaker 1: don't know which ones the good ones are, and you
Speaker 1: get some that are meaningless and people don't understand. So
Speaker 1: you wouldn't bounce it off of Rollins, who would tell
Speaker 1: you whether the thing could get made and base the money.
Speaker 1: Would you ever bounce the script off of Rollins? I
Speaker 1: wouldn't bounce the script of him, but I would ask him,
Speaker 1: you know, you think it's worth it for me? To
Speaker 1: do this project. Never do you think this is funny
Speaker 1: or do you think what times? I remember, Jack Rollins
Speaker 1: didn't think it was a worthwhile project. Where did you
Speaker 1: first come in contact with him? Well, he was a
Speaker 1: manager around town that was a legend. He had discovered
Speaker 1: Harry Belafante when no one thought a black calypso singer
Speaker 1: would be anything. And Jack was already saying he's going
Speaker 1: to be a movie star, not just the calypso singer,
Speaker 1: He's gonna be everything. And then suddenly two years after that,
Speaker 1: he went and brought Nichols and Made to New York
Speaker 1: and people said, oh, these two kids are intellectual, they're
Speaker 1: improvisational people from Chicago. They'll never make it. And one
Speaker 1: of them was Mike Nichols, the other was Elaine May
Speaker 1: and Jack just had a was a legend for having
Speaker 1: foresight into major talent. And people were saying, you should
Speaker 1: really be handled by Jack and and and so I
Speaker 1: gave him my writing and said I'd be interested. He'd
Speaker 1: never handle a writer before, and he said he would
Speaker 1: handle me. And then I made the accidental mistake of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes I think of being a stand up
Speaker 1: comic myself and for that moment on he wouldn't let go.
Speaker 1: He said, absolutely, I think it's a great idea. We
Speaker 1: should pursue that, and just wouldn't let me. I couldn't
Speaker 1: disabuse him of that notion. I was nervous, I was scared.
Speaker 1: I was only half serious when I said it. But
Speaker 1: he wouldn't let it go, and so I listened to him,
Speaker 1: and he pushed me, and I became a stand up
Speaker 1: comedian and kept succeeding in spite of myself. I thought
Speaker 1: I was no good. I was nervous, I hated doing it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't enjoy it. There was nothing about it that
Speaker 1: was positive for me, except when I get out on stage.
Speaker 1: I scored all the time from the first night on.
Speaker 1: And I said, why do I have any contribution to
Speaker 1: make us a comic? There's a million comics around. Why me?
Speaker 1: And he said, I think you have a unique country
Speaker 1: usual to make And I listened to him because he
Speaker 1: had a very compelling personality, not a dominating personality. He
Speaker 1: was one of the only men I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life that had true wisdom. He could make the
Speaker 1: hard decisions where there was no clear cut right answer.
Speaker 1: He vibrated common sense and good thinking in a business
Speaker 1: that's short on both of those things. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's hustling and backbiting, and ninety of the people are
Speaker 1: fighting for their lives and scamming and trying hard to survive.
Speaker 1: He was not like that. He always advised me, don't
Speaker 1: ever think about the money. Think only about the project.
Speaker 1: So I never give a moment's thought to money. There
Speaker 1: was a combination of my own innate feelings that money
Speaker 1: was not important and Jack's confirmation of that, which really
Speaker 1: solidified it. Um, when you stay scored, I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of funny, because of course I'm from that general
Speaker 1: issue where everybody knows word for word. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the moose mingled, he's scored. Some guy was trying to
Speaker 1: sell him insurance for an hour and a half. They
Speaker 1: give out prizes for the best customer of the night.
Speaker 1: First prize goes to the Burkowitz Is, a married couple
Speaker 1: dressed as a moose. The moose is furious. He and
Speaker 1: the Burkowitz is lock antlers in the living room can
Speaker 1: knock each other unconscious. Now, I figure it has my chance.
Speaker 1: I grabbed the moose, strap him on my fender, and
Speaker 1: shoot back to the world. But I got the Burgerwitzes.
Speaker 1: That's something that's seared in my memory, like Jonathan Winter's albums,
Speaker 1: Nichols and May albums, Bob and Ray. And interesting how
Speaker 1: you mentioned Jack Rollins for people who don't know he
Speaker 1: was a big part of your career. You mentioned him
Speaker 1: in the same kind of language I applied to Lauren Michael's.
Speaker 1: Lauren is someone who There are very few people who
Speaker 1: are really smart in a way that applies to the
Speaker 1: business itself. You can be around I've been around men
Speaker 1: and women running the studio, they're running the company, they're
Speaker 1: the head of the agency, and some of them are
Speaker 1: very area tyed people, but not in any way that's
Speaker 1: going to translate into making movies or so forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: they know how to put people together who make movies.
Speaker 1: You know, Jack Warner, Harry Cone, these guys, some of
Speaker 1: them xanic. They didn't know shit about movie making, but
Speaker 1: what they knew was how to get ahold of people
Speaker 1: and close the deal with people who did know about
Speaker 1: movie making and assemble them and put them together. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: when you make films, I mean it's uh, they're not
Speaker 1: all created equal in terms of the kind of experience
Speaker 1: you have. I've made films where we had a lot
Speaker 1: of fun that it was a joy. I always separate
Speaker 1: out how well the film performed. I don't never think
Speaker 1: about how successful was. I think, oh, I had a
Speaker 1: good time. That was a good expenditure of my time.
Speaker 1: I want to start with actors and actresses who are
Speaker 1: in your career of filmmaking, just to pick a couple,
Speaker 1: because there's so many people to choose from. Who are
Speaker 1: actors or actresses that you really enjoyed working with them?
Speaker 1: You thought, wow, this has really been a pleasure to
Speaker 1: work with them. Well, Keaton, who certainly you know, I
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun working with her, and I've
Speaker 1: had fun working over the years with many of the
Speaker 1: actors and actresses I worked with that good times for
Speaker 1: them as Stone, I had good times with Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker 1: I had very nice times with Naomi Watts. I've had
Speaker 1: generally good experiences over the years. Maureen Stapleton was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to work with. You know, I've been
Speaker 1: very lucky. I've made fifty movies and I've never had
Speaker 1: any real conflicts or problems that we've always had laughs.
Speaker 1: Elaine Stritch was a lot of laughs. You know, I
Speaker 1: keep mentioning women here because so many of my films
Speaker 1: did feature women, and and the ones that didn't, I
Speaker 1: was the guy so frequently. I didn't work with a
Speaker 1: lot of famous men. I worked with some, but not
Speaker 1: a lot. I remember when we worked together and you
Speaker 1: would call me Mr Allen. I thought that was the
Speaker 1: funniest thing in the world that anybody would refer to
Speaker 1: me so politely. No one ever called me mister Allen
Speaker 1: before or since. Mr Woody Allen, even during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Allan is the quintessential Manhattanite and has been ever since.
Speaker 1: He formed an instant passion for the borough while visiting
Speaker 1: Times Square with his dad as a young child. I'm
Speaker 1: quarantineing in Manhattan. I go out with my wife for
Speaker 1: a walk in Central Park. New Yorkers have responded gallantly
Speaker 1: and sensibly. Once in a while you get a boom
Speaker 1: that doesn't, but for the most part they do, and
Speaker 1: because of it, the city's made tremendous progress, and we'll
Speaker 1: start to open up, you know, in the near future.
Speaker 1: I'm not one who wants it to open up prematurely,
Speaker 1: because it's pointless. I mean, I'd love it to open
Speaker 1: up today fully, but you know, just to have it
Speaker 1: open up and then take a big step backward with
Speaker 1: deaths and hospitalizations is pointless. But I never thought of
Speaker 1: moving out of it, or or going to the country,
Speaker 1: or hey, wait a second, take it easy, thal. I
Speaker 1: had to take my chances. Uh, in the streets. It's Manhattan.
Speaker 1: It will always be Manhattan, and I'll always love it.
Speaker 1: It's it's is a ghost down of course now, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but it will come back lit. When nine
Speaker 1: eleven happened, I went over to Europe like the next day,
Speaker 1: or I was scheduled too, and I was on all
Speaker 1: the European news shows because I was in New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and they were saying, Mr Allen, will New York ever
Speaker 1: be the same again? Or does this mean the death
Speaker 1: of humor in New Yorker. I'm thinking, my god, you know,
Speaker 1: you look up after a period of time, and New
Speaker 1: York will go on and everyone will be at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden will be in the theaters. New York is
Speaker 1: much bigger than these um terrible things, and it's bigger
Speaker 1: than the pandemic. The rest of my conversation with Woody
Speaker 1: Allen coming up. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. For someone who didn't get into making
Speaker 1: movies for a love of the craft, Allen makes some
Speaker 1: beautifully crap the movies. He credits as cinematographers for much
Speaker 1: of that. My camera, guys is like the N seven Yankees.
Speaker 1: I mean, I worked ten years with Gordon Willis and
Speaker 1: thirteen years with Carlo de Parma. I worked with Film
Speaker 1: of Siegmund, I worked Spendquist, Darius Kanji amazing cameraman, I mean,
Speaker 1: one after the other. Now Vittorio Stararo, I've done a
Speaker 1: number of pictures with. I mean, these are these are
Speaker 1: the finest cameraman in the world. And and there you know,
Speaker 1: they make life easy on the set because they know
Speaker 1: what they're doing, and of course they have different, very
Speaker 1: different methods. Someone like Gordon was very specific and very
Speaker 1: thought out, whereas Carlo Deparma was more like me. You know,
Speaker 1: come in the morning and neither one of us would
Speaker 1: have any idea what's seen we were even doing, and
Speaker 1: we you know, learned what the scene was and we
Speaker 1: look around the set. Now it's already ten o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, and we finally figured out what we want
Speaker 1: to do was very less, a fair and very loose,
Speaker 1: but we got it done. You know. It was just
Speaker 1: his way of working. In mind. Gordon was much stricter.
Speaker 1: He needed real structure and had to impose that structure
Speaker 1: on everyone. And I felt Gordon was a great artist
Speaker 1: and and I would always defer to him. Did Gordon
Speaker 1: watch shot sheets? No, we never. We never drew any
Speaker 1: pictures of anything or listed anything. I was very spontaneous
Speaker 1: that way, and Gordon agreed with that. But he wanted
Speaker 1: to sit with me for an afternoon always before we
Speaker 1: filmed and go over every scene in the picture and
Speaker 1: every shot in the picture, but every scene and generally
Speaker 1: decide how we were going to do it, whereas with Carlo,
Speaker 1: we didn't even know what the scene was even that
Speaker 1: they were going to shoot it. We uh and I
Speaker 1: generally don't plan very much. Victorio Stararo likes the planting.
Speaker 1: She's very organized and likes to put and that's who
Speaker 1: he gets that beautiful look. Other cameraman i've worked with
Speaker 1: are more, you know, relaxed, as Nikast who did a
Speaker 1: number of films for Bergman. You know, it was used
Speaker 1: to working with no lights practically, and quickly and no rehearsals.
Speaker 1: I never rehearsed, so it worked out very well with him.
Speaker 1: I've never rehearsed. I've heard one film in my life, Interiors,
Speaker 1: and I regretted rehearsing it. I never hearsed anything before that,
Speaker 1: and certainly never anything after. When you make that leap,
Speaker 1: what's the voice in your head that says, I'm ready
Speaker 1: to do this super serious film, I'm gonna do a
Speaker 1: Bergman asked drama. I never wanted to be a comic filmmaker.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be a serious filmmaker. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to make the films Bergman was making, the plays
Speaker 1: it Off, the Miller and Tennessee Williams were doing. But
Speaker 1: my gift was in comedy, and I couldn't get into
Speaker 1: things without getting in through comedy. So at the first
Speaker 1: possible opportunity to do something that was not comic, I
Speaker 1: did it. And I didn't pull any punches. I was
Speaker 1: not making what passed for drama in commercial films, you know.
Speaker 1: I was doing a real European style film, you know,
Speaker 1: with all the incompetence at my command. If it was
Speaker 1: up to me, if someone would have financed me, I
Speaker 1: probably would have made Interiors as the first movie I
Speaker 1: ever made, and continued making these serious films that nobody
Speaker 1: would come to see, or that I was not so
Speaker 1: good at making. So when you decided to do interiors
Speaker 1: on the heels of Annie Hall, is that one of
Speaker 1: the junctures where Rolins as to you, are you out
Speaker 1: of your mind? No? Rollins would have said, I don't
Speaker 1: remember having this conversation, but he would have said, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to go where you want to go artistically,
Speaker 1: you know. And over the years I've had many, you know,
Speaker 1: offers to do any Hall two. And even now at
Speaker 1: this late stage, I'm, as I say, eighty four and
Speaker 1: Keaton's ten years younger than me. We people have said,
Speaker 1: why don't you do the two characters from any who
Speaker 1: are in the later part of their life and see
Speaker 1: what's happened to dinner? But I never have any interest.
Speaker 1: Not that long ago, Turn the Classic Movies had a
Speaker 1: discussion of any Hall and they wanted me to be
Speaker 1: on the panel to come back, I think with Marshall
Speaker 1: Brickman or maybe Keaton or I can't remember who, but
Speaker 1: I didn't go. And I love Turn the Classic Movies
Speaker 1: enormously but I I don't like to sit there and
Speaker 1: talk about the past. And so after any hall, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't give a moment's thought except I wanted to
Speaker 1: do interiors, and I did it. But I'd like to
Speaker 1: make that picture over now. I think if I could
Speaker 1: do it now, I bring Maureen Stapleton in earlier and
Speaker 1: I can make that picture better now. But the boat sailed. Um.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple more questions about movies and about
Speaker 1: music and so forth. But as I mentioned to you,
Speaker 1: the people that I work with have required me, that
Speaker 1: is the word. I am required by them to open
Speaker 1: up this can of worms here. And I've got just
Speaker 1: some quick questions. I want to ask you about these
Speaker 1: other difficulties in your life. And one question that was
Speaker 1: submitted to me was that you wrote that the accusations
Speaker 1: about Dylan were so ludicrous that when it was leveled,
Speaker 1: you didn't give it a second thought. Uh why was
Speaker 1: it so ludicrous? To you? You said ludicrous? I mean
Speaker 1: you're a man of very specific words. Why was it ludicrous? Well,
Speaker 1: the thought that anyone could take it seriously? Why? Uh?
Speaker 1: Fifty seven year old man and good standing has never
Speaker 1: had any problem in his life at all would suddenly
Speaker 1: pick an odd day once in his life to do
Speaker 1: something in the midst of a hustile breakup. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole thing was so preposterous. I I
Speaker 1: thought any common sense personal looking at it would I
Speaker 1: would see it for what it was, the clich accusation
Speaker 1: that one party makes against the other, so common in
Speaker 1: custody cases. How you say you understand me as rage
Speaker 1: about your dating Sunni. Do you think that your dating
Speaker 1: Sunni makes the charges or accusations any more credible. I
Speaker 1: think at the time absolutely, But it doesn't make the
Speaker 1: charges more credible. But it certainly was. I was coming
Speaker 1: from position people were thinking, my god, this older person
Speaker 1: has seduced this young girl and he's taking advantage of her.
Speaker 1: You know, it looked awful. I understood that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can understand that. But you know, we've now been
Speaker 1: married for over twenty years and we have two girls
Speaker 1: in college, and you know, it was tabloid fodder at
Speaker 1: the time, and I understand why it would be. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not naive, but but it had no bearing. The
Speaker 1: charges was something else. The charges were something that were investigated.
Speaker 1: They were not swept under the rug like many women's charges,
Speaker 1: legitimate charges that are swept under the rug. They were
Speaker 1: given meticulous investigation in Connecticut and also for over a
Speaker 1: year in New York. It was given investigation by Yale,
Speaker 1: the top investigators of this kind of thing, and they said,
Speaker 1: there was no thought that this child was ever bothered
Speaker 1: in any way. And I feel better that they investigated,
Speaker 1: and I don't have to feel ever that though this
Speaker 1: thing was side pocketed, I was a celebrity and they
Speaker 1: didn't follow up on it or anything. They really followed
Speaker 1: up on it, and they those were the conclusions they
Speaker 1: came to. And then then lastly, uh, this woman, uh
Speaker 1: Casey Pascal who talked about your face down in the
Speaker 1: lap of your daughter, and she comes into a room. Look,
Speaker 1: I was never alone with my daughter. Then my son
Speaker 1: Moses will testify to this. I was always in a
Speaker 1: room with a lot of people, and they were all
Speaker 1: on the sofa and watching television. I may have sat
Speaker 1: on the floor and laid my head down on our
Speaker 1: lap for a second, but to infer anything sinister from
Speaker 1: that is crazy. But the only question that I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask before all this uh other stuff was thrown
Speaker 1: into the mix, was I mean, here you are on
Speaker 1: this perch, how did you feel, how did you feel
Speaker 1: like like where ever moments where you thought I'm gonna
Speaker 1: leave the country and moved to Paris and just get
Speaker 1: the hell away from everybody and everything, and just no,
Speaker 1: I've never felt that way. All I always felt, you know,
Speaker 1: don't give any of that stuff, it's all rubbish. Don't
Speaker 1: waste a moment on it. Just work. And from the
Speaker 1: day that the false accusation was made, I worked. I
Speaker 1: did a million films, I wrote for the theater, I
Speaker 1: toured my jazz band, I played every week at the
Speaker 1: Carlisle Hotel. I I you know, if you just keep
Speaker 1: your nose to the grindstone and work. I hear the
Speaker 1: voice of Jack Rowlins somewhere. Just work. And I've just
Speaker 1: finished a film in Spain, this somehow called Rifkin's Festival
Speaker 1: of Course in that while he's sean Spanish actor's called
Speaker 1: Elena Anya Gina Gershawn. It's a romantic comedy and it
Speaker 1: came out better than I expected. When I saw the
Speaker 1: picture Funny, it was one of the pictures that I
Speaker 1: had affection for. So just three quick answers here on
Speaker 1: one of the Allen's filmmaking. These are my compilation. So
Speaker 1: number one was you don't pay people competitive salaries. You
Speaker 1: don't pay people money. We don't have the money. I've
Speaker 1: work on a comparatively low budget. These guys make films
Speaker 1: two hundred million, hundred fifty million, you know, and I'll
Speaker 1: be making my films over the years for seventeen million.
Speaker 1: So we can't afford to pay what the actors deserve
Speaker 1: to make. You know, it has to do with the unions.
Speaker 1: If the union said you can't have an actor and
Speaker 1: pay them less than twenty thousand dollars um, then we
Speaker 1: would have to do it. But we pay the union minimum,
Speaker 1: and and they do it when they're off. You know,
Speaker 1: if someone else offers them twenty million dollars to do
Speaker 1: a film, they say goodbye to me and they do
Speaker 1: the film. And I understand that completely. But if they're
Speaker 1: not doing anything and they see the part and they
Speaker 1: love the part, they do it. Sometimes it even costs
Speaker 1: them money because they have to bring their family in
Speaker 1: from California because we can only pay a certain amount
Speaker 1: of luxury. Now, the other myth is that you even
Speaker 1: if the character is a bit up to you, cast
Speaker 1: actors in roles because you believe the actor is like
Speaker 1: that in real life. The actor gives off that vibe.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know the actors. I'm not
Speaker 1: friendly with actors because the actor get without acting, just
Speaker 1: showing up and they present represent themselves in that way. Yes.
Speaker 1: For instance, if you're doing a gangster film and you
Speaker 1: hire Tony Serrico, it's all this present himself like the
Speaker 1: president of Harvard. You know, he presents himself like a
Speaker 1: street guy and he doesn't have to act. Isn't come
Speaker 1: in and do a mug's voice. He just comes in
Speaker 1: and talks as he is. And it's magical in a
Speaker 1: world now where you're sitting home and you want that diversion,
Speaker 1: you want entertainment. I've learned through the pandemic that what
Speaker 1: we do, some more than others, obviously, is so significant
Speaker 1: in people's lives. They need to take their mind off,
Speaker 1: they need a break, they need a break, and there
Speaker 1: are streaming services now which are very popular work and
Speaker 1: they have the liberty. Everything is sex and violence. I mean,
Speaker 1: when they write themselves into a corner, somebody steps in
Speaker 1: with a with an automatic weapon and just mows everybody
Speaker 1: down in the room and the Sir Galahad character takes
Speaker 1: his armor off and gets on top of a stone
Speaker 1: slab with a woman and has at it with her.
Speaker 1: Ex and violence have become uh, like like assault in
Speaker 1: cooking has passes for drama when it's right, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're talking like Bunny and Clyde or something, then
Speaker 1: it's fabulous. But when it's just the the the unskilled
Speaker 1: right or unskilled director putting it in because you thinks
Speaker 1: it's intense, then it's embarrassing. Now my last question for
Speaker 1: you is, um, you're writing a typewriter, You've never mastered computers? No,
Speaker 1: you're There was some degree of shame in that response.
Speaker 1: I must say, I'm glad to see that does nostalge
Speaker 1: your rule your life? I mean, everything in your films
Speaker 1: is beautiful old music, and uh does nostalgia just live
Speaker 1: inside you and determine most of the are creative nostalgic.
Speaker 1: But that has nothing to do with the gadget. The
Speaker 1: gadgets has to do with my A D H D.
Speaker 1: I don't have the patients, the master the things. I
Speaker 1: just can't get them, and I I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: in tape recorders. And you know cell phones. I have one,
Speaker 1: and I can answer the phone and and get it,
Speaker 1: you know, dial a number. But I can't do all
Speaker 1: the things. I don't do apps and zooms and or
Speaker 1: I don't even know what they are in some sense. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the nostalgic part of me is a different question completely,
Speaker 1: and I do have a great reverence for the past.
Speaker 1: It I get sucked up. A Camu said it was
Speaker 1: a trapp and I fall into that trap very frequently,
Speaker 1: get sucked up into old music and old films. And
Speaker 1: I don't know why. It's not that my childhood was
Speaker 1: so idyllic that I want to relive it. I don't.
Speaker 1: But the music is very beautiful in are films. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that you are the one that chooses the particular
Speaker 1: songs themselves. You don't have a music supervisor. That's making
Speaker 1: And it's a very simple thing. We edit the film.
Speaker 1: I work with the editor, we edit. It's finished, and
Speaker 1: I simply go into the other room and take some
Speaker 1: vinyl and bring it into this room and I put
Speaker 1: the record down and look at it, and I know
Speaker 1: that's not when I put the next record down, and
Speaker 1: then voila. It's sensational, then the only issue is clearances. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but you know, we do have a music budget.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Helen are the line producer will say to me,
Speaker 1: can you pick a different song because they want, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty tho dollars. But I want to say to you
Speaker 1: that what I really wanted to say to you was
Speaker 1: you get back out there and you keep making movies
Speaker 1: because you are really just such an important part of
Speaker 1: people live. You have made life worth living. Well you.
Speaker 1: I think this is just you being very gracious wrapping
Speaker 1: up your show, and very nice of you to say that.
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine that I've had any impact except
Speaker 1: to provide some Saturday nights in the movie house where
Speaker 1: you could take your day. Global box office returns are
Speaker 1: much reduced in the age of coronavirus, but Woody Allen's
Speaker 1: newest release, A Rainy Day in New York dominated them
Speaker 1: for a time last month. That's true even though Amazon
Speaker 1: dropped plans for domestic distribution after Dylan's claims started getting
Speaker 1: more attention. Woody did give me some hope that Americans
Speaker 1: won't have to cross an ocean to see it. People
Speaker 1: have been talking to me about streaming it and I've
Speaker 1: never done that before. But because of the pandemic and
Speaker 1: people are indoors and not going to be going to
Speaker 1: the movie houses for god knows how long, maybe we
Speaker 1: will make a deal and you'll be able to see
Speaker 1: it on on one of the streaming channels. The word
Speaker 1: is platforms wet, and I do hope you make that deal.
Speaker 1: Alan's revealing memoir is called Apropos of Nothing, and it
Speaker 1: covers everything from the accusations of Dylan Farrow to his movies,
Speaker 1: his mentors, and his marriages. The book is out now
Speaker 1: from Arcade. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear
Speaker 1: is the thing if n