HOLLYWOOD ENDING review

Pain. Excruciating Pain.

That’s what I felt throughout the night as I watched Woody Allen’s HOLLYWOOD ENDING. Right before the movie started I lost a crown and an exposed nerve in a molar became exposed to air, releasing a torrent of pain throughout my skull.

Throbbing searing agony. I had a leather keychain strap that I unhooked from my belt and bit down upon, my eyes were welling up with tears. My bottom lip trembling in absolute anguish, yet I didn’t leave. Never left my seat. I tossed and turned in my seat. I was enraptured by a mythological Gemini of thoughts. This was a funny movie… and Woody Allen was going to be showing up when this film was over.

I was concentrating beyond words on the film. Focusing, trying my hardest to forget the exposed nerve somewhere along the back rear top molar area. So, when I say I enjoyed this movie, I want you to understand… I was in torturous agony throughout nearly every second of the film, but through that pain… Woody Allen worked his magic on me.

Before the film itself, there was this 10 minute montage of Woody Allen’s career. What joy to see images from all his films on screen. The sperm pep talk… Every second from MANHATTAN, my personal favorite Woody flick. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. MIGHTY APHRODITE. ANNIE HALL. SLEEPER. BANANAS. LOVE AND DEATH. WHAT’S UP TIGER LILY? ZELIG. PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO. HANNAH AND HER SISTERS. And on and on and on. What a great way to just get in the mood for a new Woody Allen film… a celebration of a career. Whomever is responsible for this montage should be applauded. What a joy!

Throughout that opening, Mike Judge and Richard Linklater, who were sitting behind me, were laughing and clapping. Very cool.

The basic set up of the film is that Woody Allen is playing the character of Val Waxman… a once great director whose bouts of hypochondria and various neurosis has caused an immense amount of career failure. He has become the most legendarily difficult director in the history of Hollywood. His ex-wife Ellie, played by Tea Leoni, left him for a studio head played with the appropriate amount of distance and chill by Treat Williams, who is currently producing the film that Tea wants for her ex… Woody / Val.

This is a set up for certain doom… Woody’s Val is perhaps the most neurotic character in the history of Woody’s career. He is a complete delusional nightmare, that you just could not imagine any studio anywhere wanting to work with this person. He’s just… a nightmare. Every creative decision he makes is nonsensical. From hiring a cinematographer from China, whom he must use a translator to talk to. Then there is this insane production designer that feels the need to build the first 40 floors of the Empire State Building oh… and he would need to build Central Park on a set. Because he needs control over the colors, because he doesn’t want to go with green… it needs to be white, but oh yeah, the cinematographer doesn’t like photographing white… INSANE… Beautiful craziness.

From the trailers, you all know that Woody’s character goes blind due to the pressures of shooting this film, or some other psychological fallacy. Well, there is quite a bit more going on here than just a single gag. The gag takes place after lots of insanity. For example, there is this fantastic loooong scene between Woody and Tea after he nails the gig, where they meet to discuss his ‘ideas’ for the film, and it is a meeting where obviously they’d both rather scream at one another for her going and marrying the beef jerky studio executive. From Woody’s little directing ideas, smoothly and easily and aggressively jumping into personal rants about her brutal backstabbing of Woody… I mean, this scene goes on forever, and I never once even vaguely wanted it to end. I can’t believe how much I loved Tea Leoni in the film. She was just wonderful. Really wonderful. And I’m not someone that likes Tea Leoni. I find that usually I just feel like she is an anchovy, I’d like to pull off of a food that could be delicious without that critter. And ya know… She was great here.

All the insanity and hijinks aside, what really made me love this film was the ending. Now remember, I was in terrible pain throughout this screening. Biting down on things, trying to make the pain go away. Tears streaming down my cheeks. It was horrible. Well, when what happens in the last 5-10 minutes of the movie happened, the pain ran away. It was just gone, and I was laughing and clapping and happy as could be.

Movies so rarely end perfectly these days. As I watched it wrap up, I was just so happy with this film. I mean, by the time those end credits rolled, my agony was replaced with happiness. In the darkness of the theater I saw various shadowy figures readying chairs. That’s when I thought… "Oh hell, Woody is here!"

That’s when I spotted the unmistakable figure of Woody Allen. I was so happy. I mean, Woody is a bit like a Unicorn, something that doesn’t really exist. Sure I’ve seen Woody Allen in films my entire life. Much like Keaton or Chaplin. He is an icon of comedy and the founder of mature immaturity. Here he was coming out in front of an Austin Audience and nothing could ever possibly seem stranger.

When the lights came on and I found myself and the rest of the Austin audience staring at Woody… A smile stretched across my face.

What happened at that point was a series of questions from the audience and a series of the most amazing answers that I’ve ever seen come out of a ‘celebrity’ or a director. Everything that Woody said was just fantastic. I can’t even pretend to do his quotes justice, but he had me crying from laughter.

One person asked him how auto-biographical the film was, and Woody went on to explain that he has never been fired from a project, that he has never been considered a difficult director, and he certainly is not a hypochondriac. Rather, he clarified, he is an alarmist. You see, a hypochondriac truly has nothing wrong with them, but say he has excessively chapped lips, he just assumes the worst and believes he has lip cancer or something worse.

Later someone asked him about being a perfectionist, to which he adamantly refused to be labeled as such. He apparently never does any research, doesn’t do a lick of rehearsal, thinks first or second takes are just great, doesn’t like to do coverage, he just shows up on set and just kinda figures it out all right there all of a sudden like. He made SCENES FROM A MALL and was shocked at all the work and research and rehearsal that Paul Mazursky was wanting to do. Not only did Woody have to do rehearsals, but Paul took them to a mall, A REAL MALL…. Now when Woody was lamenting the experience of actually walking around a REAL MALL, Mike Judge literally started doubling over in laughter and saying, "a real mall… A REAL MALL" interspersed with disbelief laughter that I was sharing. For some reason Woody Allen lamenting going to a mall was beautiful. Just pristine set of aces cool. Lovely even.

Through all of this, I just was amazed. This was Woody Allen, that guy on screen, maker of those movies, for real… here and now in the theater that I have seen so many movies in. That I’ll be seeing ATTACK OF THE CLONES in in another 2 weeks. Woody Allen. When asked about his favorite films, he’d start chiming off on BICYCLE THIEF and Fellini and JULES AND JIM and on and on. On movies he’s liked recently, he would lament the work of Hollywood and even himself, but sing the praises of AMORES PERROS and Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and so on. He’s a huge European and Foreign film fan. Feeling that Hollywood spends too much time on entertainment instead of artform.

It was beautiful to see him sadly stating how he never thinks he’ll ever make a great film and how he never has made a great film. How disappointed he was in the lack of acceptance that MANHATTAN had, though he liked that film. He doesn’t seem to embrace ANNIE HALL as much as those that love it have. His favorite actress he’s worked with is Diane Keaton, who he feels could have been as big as Lucille Ball, had she chosen not to be more obscure. I have to say I was really touched by how well he spoke of her. It was quite touching. In talking about the great women he’s worked with he didn’t leave out Mia Farrow, which I thought was a touch of class.

Another asked if September 11th and the tragedy that occurred to the World Trade Center and New York would be reflected or change his future work. Woody stated how much he deplored what had happened in New York, that it was a terrible tragedy, but that it doesn’t really affect his work. He isn’t a political filmmaker. For him, the absence of the World Trade Center doesn’t affect the lives of two lovers having an argument in Central Park other than the Towers won’t be in the background somewhere. For those two people, it is the conflict between lovers that is important, not terrorists and deaths.

In all, Woody Allen was the dream of what you’d expect from Woody Allen. He used Reed Richards style dialogue with a wit and a charm that couldn’t help be bring the utmost in laughter and warmth from the crowd.

My favorite answer was when someone asked about the proliferation of psychologists in his movies as a device, to which I could see him get a bit aggravated. He readjusted himself in his seat.. Sat up, coughed and said that in the beginning you had comics working in the silent medium and it was all about movement and timing. The physicality of slapstick. But with the advent of sound, you couldn’t just chase trains all over the place anymore. All of a sudden you had situational comedy and intellectual comedy. The sort of comedy that challenges him, that makes him sit up and want to write is the comedy of the mind and perceptions.

That is what I love about Woody Allen comedies. They make you laugh at your own realizations about the characters. That’s the reason why I have all his films on DVD, I love rewatching them and finding new jokes and new meanings buried in layers of cinematic deliveries. Sometimes the humor is physical, verbal, situational and often times somewhere in-between. Woody’s films have laughs between the frames. I love his films, and HOLLYWOOD ENDING is no different. Now excuse me, I have to go to the dentist.