INTERVIEW
ONE: "Woody Allen," a radio interviewer says into his microphone,
"You're a film director, a musician, a scriptwriter, an actor, and a
comedian... which of these roles do you prefer?" "Yes," Woody
says succinctly. "Yes which?", the interviewer asks, eyeing his
precious tape time rolling away. "Yes, all of them. Whichever one I'm not
doing." "I, ah see. And how do you get your ideas?" "They
come to me all at once," Woody says, completely deadpan, like a highly
intelligent mouse talking to the cat in a Disney cartoon. "I see the
opening credits unfold and then the first scene... and then the rest of
it." "You mean you see all of it at once?" "Yes."
"How long does that take?" "In the case of Bananas, eighty-two minutes." "All
of it at once?" the interviewer asks, incredulous. "Yes," Woody
says. "You're not sending me up, are you?" "No," Woody says
seriously, "Not at all.
In
his green carpeted suite at the Dorchester Hotel, Woody Allen is sitting
quietly on a large couch awaiting the next interviewer. His press lady is on
the phone trying to find him a late night flight back to New York. Charlie
Joffee, Woody's friend and business partner and the executive producer of Bananas is prowling around, chewing on one of
the Bolivar Habana cigars he wears in the corner of his mouth, looking out
windows.
Woody
is wearing his basic outfit for the week, worn bell bottom jeans with a dark
blue patch on the ass, a quiet plaid sports jacket, and black and white saddle
shoes. His red hair is long in the back, it whirls out over his collar from
around a central bald spot. With his freckles and horn rimmed glasses, he looks
like he could be an entering freshman at some great mid western university.
He's 35.
"I
hope all this sells the picture," Charlie grumbles from around his cigar.
"It won't, Charlie, it won't," Woody says quietly, "It won't
make any difference at all."
"Three
weeks we're having this argument," Charlie tells the room, in an
aggravated voice. He sighs. "Three weeks. And I'm starting to think maybe
he's right."
INTERVIEW
TWO: "You're often portrayed as a loser in your films, Woody... Are
you?" "I was. Now, I'm a winner." "What happened?"
"It's a strange story," Woody says, shifting into total fiction,
"I was originally the son of a Presbyterian minister. Then I became an
atheist. It might seem strange but two years ago I found religion again...
Judaism." "How did that come about?" "Well, it's a
difficult story to tell, I ran into some Jews... and they seemed happy... so I
took on a Hebrew name, Yitzhak." "And how do you spell that
exactly?" "Y---i---t---h---Chak."
First published in "Rolling
Stone", September 30, 1971
Interview
Three
Woody
Allen was born in Brooklyn, where he listened to his mother and practiced his
clarinet. He went to Midwood High School and NYU for a while. He quit school to
write gags for people like Jack Paar. Then began working as a comedian in small
New York nightclubs like the Blue Angel.
"If
you remember," Woody says, "there was that whole rush of comedians in
the Sixties. Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Mort Sahl. Bill Cosby
and I were on the tail end of it. Just like a lot of folk musicians, we got our
start in small clubs that just don't exist anymore, which is maybe why there
aren't that many young comedians any more either."
Woody
wrote a film script entitled, What's New Pussycat?, Charles Feldman, a producer, liked
the title and bought it. Warren Beatty was supposed to play the role of the
playboy who is irresistible to women, Instead Peter O'Toole wound up doing it.
"I
don't like that movie at all," Woody says, "it was not a good
experience for me. Six months in Paris waiting around for Charlie Feldman to
decide where to send us next. I think he really wanted Rock Hudson for the
lead." "But Peter O'Toole is such a good actor," someone says,
"He has such amazing eyes."
"They
put drops in them before each shot," Woody says, "And then they shine
a baby spot in them form on top of the camera. Sam Speigel has him fix his nose
for Lawrence of Arabia. Never trust a man who's had his nose fixed."
INTERVIEW
THREE: "Seriously, Mr. Allen, how do you get your ideas?" "I
have a Negro gentleman in my apartment. In my closet. And whenever I need an
idea, he gives me one." "And do you pay him?" "Well, I sing
the a blues for him now and then." "And that's sufficient?"
"He seems happy." "So you... you keep a colored man in your
closet to give you ideas... who you don't pay... is there no organization in
the United States to protect him?" "None at all, Every American has
one."
What's New, Pussycat? was followed by What's
Up, Tiger Lily?
Which began its life as a Japanese spy thriller and ended up as an adventure
into Broadway Jewish surrealism with dialogue dubbed by Woody and friends and
music by the Lovin' Spoonful. "All we did," Woody says, "was put
five people in a room and keep them there improvising as the film ran. It was a
nuisance but OK. We still haven't seen any money from it though."
"We
got a lawsuit comin' up on it," Charlie says, "Everything we do seems
to end up in court."
All
afternoon, Woody has been asking about a jazz club on Oxford Street where a
musicians' benefit is to be held. Woody is an absolute freak on Dixieland,
"The real stuff, not what the Dukes of Dixieland play but King Oliver,
Jelly Roll Morton. George Lewis is without a doubt the greatest clarinet player
that ever lived. Black, illiterate, untaught, the man was just a genius..."
But
there's a screening Woody is supposed to attend and he has to eat dinner
somewhere and as Charlie and the press lady gather their things to go, Woody is
a little confused. "You're gonna practice your clarinet, right?",
Charlie says. "Right," Woody nods, "Should I eat now or
later?" Back and forth. Woody's worn out. But he wants to go dig some
music. Maybe they can catch dinner after the screening. But Charlie's got to
pick up his wife. "Pick me up quarter to eight," Woody says finally,
"And if I eat before, I eat, right?"
First published in "Rolling Stone", September 30,
1971
INTERVIEW
FOUR: "What is Bananas about, Woody?" "The film is
about the lack of substance in my movie." "You mean in America?"
"No, there's lots of substance in America, The theme is that the film is
empty. The lack of substance puts you to sleep. It's an hour and a half
nap." "Why have you made it then?" "To confuse my enemies
who, are legion." "And what do they want?" "To make me
think like them." "Which is what, exactly?"
"Numerically." "And you think?" "In letters,
usually."
The
next day, Woody is sitting on the arm of the very large sofa again waiting for
the next interviewer. "I didn't get to the jazz club last night,"
Woody says, "The screening ran too long." As he sits he rolls a two
shilling piece over his fingers, like a small-time hood in a Hollywood musical.
Over and over the coin tumbles, from finger to finger, with never a miss.
"I
taught myself to do it," Woody explains, peering out from behind his
glasses, "As a party trick. Actually, there's nothing worse for impressing
a girl."
INTERVIEW
FIVE: "Are you in analysis?" "Yes, I have been for the past 13
years." "And what has the analyst done for you?" "He's
agreed with me, that I need treatment. He also feels the fee is
correct......"
"How
about your parents?" "My mother speaks to me once every two years and
asks me when I'm going to open a drug store. My father is on my payroll."
"Were they always like this?" "Yes but younger." "And
you're an only child?" "I am an only child, I have one sister."
"And she's not connected in your life?" "Not in any way. She's
just someone I know as a person my mother gave birth to some years ago."
Woody
is fully booked for the next year. He is going to star in the film version of
his Broadway play, Play
it Again, Sam.
"They didn't want me in it until Bananas
started doing well. I wouldn't want to direct. I'm doing it to get more people
in to see my films."
After
that, he goes out to the coast to direct the screenplay he's written based on
Dr. David Reuben's, Everything
You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask. "It's gonna be a funny film
about sex. Truly. What people would call dirty." Woody keeps busy. He does
occasional pieces for the New Yorker and has written a play which is going to
open at the American Place Theater in New York.
"I
won't write for Broadway again. It forces you into a cycle of writing
amusements, light comedies, that a certain kind of people like to see. I won't
write a film like Bananas again either."
"They
say it's a political film but I don't really believe much in politics, Groucho
has told me that the Marx Brothers films were never consciously
anti-establishment or political. It's always got to be a funny movie
first."
"It's
possible that violence will be needed to bring about a change. I'm not
convinced otherwise. I don't understand a government that can firebomb villages
in Indo-China but not poppy fields in Turkey."
First published in "Rolling Stone", September 30,
1971
INTERVIEW
SIX: "Have you patterned yourself after any people in show business, like
the Marx Brothers?" "No. My idols are Frank Sinatra and Fatty
Arbuckle." "Really, ah, I was wondering by asking that question what
makes you put a large colored lady in a witness box and have her identify
herself as J. Edgar Hoover?" "What else do you do with a large
colored lady? There are so many of them in the States."
It's
Friday afternoon and Woody is walking in Hyde Park, unrecognized, he's sitting
on benches and standing in bus queues, for a photographer.
"I'm
a purist." Woody says, eyeing a bee that is hovering near his head,
"I don't drink or smoke cigarettes. I never get high or take acid. The
thought of putting anything foreign in my system offends me."
"When
I was in Play
It Again Sam, I
didn't work on Moratorium Day, for my own reasons. Kids came to me and said,
"That's great, man." It seems so easy now, to salt things with
relevant themes. "The kids are exploitable. They've made a lot of
millionaires in the last ten years, what with drugs and records and clothes.
Music is just too easy. I like it, but their excuse for not reading, for not
thinking... and then they hang it on McLuhan's global electric thing... "I
went to see Woodstock... which cost five dollars. The kid in front of me kept
saying, "Beautiful, Beautiful" as though he were trying to convince
himself. John Sebastian sings a song about kids and everyone shouts. There's no
discrimination or real art involved in it at all."
Five
lanes of traffic whiz along Park Lane, the street Woody needs to cross to get
back to his suite. "The truth is," he said, "There have never
been very many remarkable people around at any one time. Most are always
leaning on the guy next to them, asking him what to do."
He
stood on the curb, a very slight man with red hair, and waited a long, long
time for a pause in the flow of cars. Finally it came and he scooted across the
avenue back to his hotel.
INTERVIEW
SEVEN: "Mr. Allen, let me ask you a question I have always wanted to ask
someone in your line, did anything funny happen to you on the way over
here?" "A comedian is often asked that question. Nothing funny has
ever happened to me on my way to the theater. My life is not a series of
amusing incidents."
Robert Greenfield
began his career as a sports writer. He has published book reviews in New West magazine and The New York Times Book Review.
From
1970 to 1972 Greenfield was employed as an associate editor with Rolling Stone magazine's London bureau. During this
time he interviewed numerous musicians and writers, including Jack Bruce, John Cale, Neil Young, Elton John, Nico,
the Rolling Stones, Jackie Lomax, Leon Russell, Stone the Crows, Woody Allen and Germaine Greer.
