Hey folks, Harry here with one of the best films that has come out this year, MATCH POINT. This is a stunning film from Woody Allen that hit me square in the chest and left gasping for air. Incredibly powerful. Not business as usual from Woody. A great reassuring date film. Ahem. Here's Sheldrake with his take - plus Woody talking more about the film and what he's going to be up to next!
Includes his announcement of his new movie with SJ, SCOOP, also set in London.
MATCH POINT
Writer and Director: Woody Allen
December 2005
Sheldrake here, reporting live from Rockefeller Center as we close in on Christmas. I started a new job in this area a couple of days ago, and today was the first time I could get out for a walk at lunch. I lit out across the territory, as it were, and pushed and shoved with cheerful yuletide malice through the crowds of tourists, here for their holiday, and for, like it or not, mine. There’s a huge lighting framework set up across from 1 Rock Centre today—for the television, don’t you know—and the people were lined up to see what they could see of the green and red, evergreened and beribboned and—festooned!—
holiday sets. I could hear a murmur going through the crowd – as you drew closer to the concrete ramp that jetted up from the ice rink east of Fifth Avenue, who was that—there, at its base – oh God – AL ROKER was there! I mean—he was here! He—was! You know, I see Al floating hither and yon around New York a lot, and the thrill is, no offense, just not there for me, not the way it was when, one time last year, I was buying deli at Whole Foods next to Angelina Jolie and her baby. But for these folks from the big Red Triangle between New York and L.A. and Austin, the Big Wherever, Al was IT! He was the moving sculpture, the sweet perfume of the celebrated, a Macy’s float that walked and talked and seemed so nice, like a real regular fella - the very thing they longed to see when they set foot in Rockefeller Center – for some the reason they’d come to that place to begin with! And he was a wish fulfilled for many of them. He was the McDonald’s of personality, a place where they could order up the same A.M. bacon and eggs cheer that they ordered up from him on the television every morning at home, and it always tasted the same way. There’s nothing an American from T.B.W. likes better than Just Like I Like It with No Surprises and Al, endearingly, has none to threaten us with, unless he loses his focus someday and takes to grabbing that second helping of pie again. He made their Holiday, as they gathered there in midtown, in the gaudy Art Deco cheeriness of the Plaza and the Ice Rink and the Kenneth Cole shop and the Associated Press Building and Dean and Deluca’s and the Japanese candy stores and Berlitz Language Schools and Saks Fifth Avenue and the wreathes and tinsel and colored lights and, and, oh God, THAT TREE. That incredible, enormous, dazzling tree,
Where you find tourists you find cameras, and in New York lucky tourists with lucky cameras, because this time of year New York really can look like a series of perfectly composed holiday postcard shots, and when you’re in that frame of mind you’re not far from hearing Gershwin in your musical inner ear and not far from seeing the black and white frames of exploding fireworks from Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN in on the backs of your eyelids. Woody’s biggest achievement, as time passes, may be reckoned to be, not his writing, but that he figured how to convincingly depict photographically the New York that many New Yorkers live- New Yorkers who choose to live here because they carry the cities romance like music in theirs minds and hearts. It isn’t the city of the waterfront, or the city of the hip-hop star, but the city of middle class-to-wealthy creative types. My kind of people.
Now, I love Woody Allen. MANHATTAN, ANNIE HALL, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, MIGHTY APHRODITE, LOVE AND DEATH, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, CELEBRITY—yes, damn straight, I said CELEBRITY—SHADOWS AND FOG, DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, which I recently saw again—these movies have been the touchstones of my own creative and cinematic education and development, and through Woody, like many of you out there, world cinema opened up to me too.
So what’s happened to him lately? The films in the last several years haven’t just been not very good, they’ve been, to use a favorite word of his, terrible. Distracted, unfocused, underwritten, trivial. And a lot of people, me included, were wondering if that was it. If that was true, Woody had nothing to be ashamed of. He’d put an astonishing body of work behind him. But…
…but we were thinking, please, not just yet. Because some of us really need Woody Allen films. For some of us it’s the highlight of our year. It’s a reminder of who we are as New Yorkers—of the kind of New York we want to live in. And, yes, we’ve always known the day would come when the richest part of the flow would stop. With each passing year it’s more certain. And we were looking on these latest films with a sinking feeling that we weren’t going to get one more, just one more, really great movie from him. One for the vaults.
Forget that noise. MATCH POINT is one for the vaults. MATCH POINT is a masterwork, easily his best film since CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS.
The basic story: a poor tennis instructor in London makes a friend from a prominent British family, marries the friend’s sister and moves up in business through the family’s connections. He also nurtures a yen for his friend’s American fiancée and commences an affair with her that develops to the inevitable point where the American girl wants to cash in the promises he’s made to leave his wife—and his job and social position, which derive entirely from his wife’s family--and be with her. And so he arrives at his decision point—at his Match Point.
What’s so great about this movie? Some it’s in the writing, some in the casting and directing. The movie casts a cold and unsentimental eye on a the sort of man who fascinates most of us, one who, while rather likeable in person, through his own actions in the film discovers—perhaps to his own surprise—that he has nothing resembling a governing conscience and that, like Noah Cross, discovers that under the right circumstances he is capable of anything. What he does not reckon with, perhaps, is that he thereafter discovers that, while he has no governing conscience, he has a convicting conscience that will hold his feet to the fire for what he has done for the rest of his life. The director keeps us at a distance from the character so we can see him and observe him, even envy him—but we never quite identify with him. We sense something corrupt in him from very early on in the film, and when he commits his final act—an act which, I think, ranks with one of the most horrible ever committed in mainstream American Cinema—when was the last time you gasped in moral outrage and anger at a character’s act in a movie?--we’re relieved we didn’t like him any better than we did. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers gives a performance here that is tortured, young and brilliant. His character reminds us there are some men you don’t want to discover a fundamental truth about existence: that conscience, as a tool, has its limits in being a useful guide for a successful life.
So, on the one hand, it’s a Dostoevkian tale of a corrupt conscience. And then we have the incredible Scarlett Johansson, who takes the opportunity the movie gives her to turn her role into a sort of Henry Jamesian character—an Isabel Archer or Daisy Miller: a tough, crass, smart American girl, sure of herself, sure of her ability to deal with a lot of fell Europeans, but ultimately in way over her head, buried by the centuries of connections and deals for power.
AND THEN the thing turns into a bloody Hitchcock film (one from the fifties/sixties) at the end, with the business with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and the English detectives. They’re the same sort of trudging British public servants that never miss a trick that Hitchcock used in movies like Frenzy and Dial M for Murder. Or are they?
The movie tries to make something out of the idea of luck, and how it operates in our lives, but for me this was the least significant part of the film (though it does let the writer gives us a nice twist with the detectives at the end. But Woody, in the interviews, makes it clear that this was done to give the film an extra philosophical dimension. Maybe. I think it was done to give the film a nice plot twist—a far better reason, as far as I’m concerned.
Recently, I ran into Scarlett, Jonathan and Woody at a cocktail party here in Manhattan. Briefly: Scarlett is the single most poised twenty-one year old, male or female I’ve ever met. Jonathan is just a hell of a guy, and spent ten minutes with me coaching me on how to meet Woody (and what to say to him) when I, for the first time I can remember, found myself speechless at the prospect. What the hell do you say to Woody Allen? I didn’t say much when the moment came, just squeaked out, “fantastic film,” or something like that. Woody was gracious and thanked me, then his wife, who obviously protects him from well-wishers, grabbed him and got him out of the room. But, after 25 years in New York, I’m glad I got the chance to meet him.
Merry Christmas from New York, everyone. There’s a little Woody interview I copped from Lincoln Center at the end. Enjoy!
Mr. Sheldrake
December 2005
NY, NY
WOODY ALLEN INTERVIEWED ONSTAGE AT ALICE TULLY HALL, LINCOLN CENTER BY WENDY KEYS AT “AN EVENING WITH WOODY ALLEN”
Q. Where do your stories come from – your imagination, your life experiences?
W: They just ** come. Spontaneously for the most part. I just was lucky to get a number of ideas, and some of them make good films, and some of them don’t. The ideas just seem to flow. They always did when I first started, they still do. And as I say, they’re not all great, or even GOOD, but they’re there.
Q. Tell us about your writing process.
W: I finish a film, and hide out for a couple of days, then I take a walk, or stay in my bedroom…
LAUGHTER
…and then I start thinking about what I’d like to do next, and I go my drawer, and look at my notes on, you know, pieces of paper, or napkins, or matchbook covers, that might have occurred to me during the year. And I look at those and some of them seem like they might be good, and some of them just seemed great when I wrote them. And then I start to think about, or take an idea that happens to interest me, and I start to develop it, and I think about it, and think about it, and I see if it goes anyplace, and, eventually, if it holds up, I write it.
Q: Do you enjoy the writing part of it?
A: It’s fun to write—because you don’t have to bother with the test of reality! You never have to leave the bedroom! It’s fabulous—every movie appears like it’s going to be the next Citizen Kane and everything is magical—and then when you have to make it into a MOVIE, it becomes mor difficult, and you have to find the right actors, everything you thought was so great is not so great, and you make a lot of mistakes – and it’s seven o’clock in the morning and it’s freezing cold and you’re trying to get a scene, and the actors, and the noise from overhead jet planes.
Q. You’ve written and directed several films from the woman’s point of view.
A. When I first started writing films, I couldn’t write from a woman’s point of view at all! I wrote everything from a male comic’s point of view. That was the only perspective I had. And then I started dating Diane Keaton and, we went together for a couple of years, and I was so captivated by her talent, that I wanted to write things for her. I felt I knew her well and I could write things right in her groove that she could execute superbly. And I was able to do that, and by doing that, I started to write for women more and more, and then I was writing for women almost exclusively, picture after picture for women. But it evolved in a completely unconscious way.
Q. You began doing standup, like Mike Nichols and Elaine May and others. Did that experience help your film work at all?
A. No, not really.
LAUGHTER
To be a standup comedian, to work in front of an audience, is, of all the things I’ve done in show business, the most harrowing and frightening thing. Acting in film doesn’t require any nerves at all—I mean, you’re acting for a CAMERA, and there’s nothing to that. Acting on stage was, for me, never a problem. The curtain could be down, we’d all have our places, I’d be onstage in the back with Keaton and Tony Roberts and I’d be eating a corn beef sandwich quickly, because I was starved, and they’d say “curtain’s going up”, and I’d finish it—no nerves—
LAUGHTER
But before I went out onstage to communicate as myself with an audience, I was SCARED. I found it to be a frightening thing. So everything else, filmmaking, is a piece of CAKE compared to working in cabaret, or working live for an audience. It’s a nerve-wracking experience.
Q. SJ said you were involved with the hairdos and costumes. Do you work closely with your production designers?
A. I do. I think this comes from being the writer—first, I’m a writer. I have a vision that I want to execute on the screen, and I want to see the costume the way I want, the hair the way I want, it’s very important to me to see the things I want to see up there, so I do get involved.
Q. Do you take special care on the impact of your first shots, which are often noteable?
A. Your sense of drama always kind of pushes you to try something special in your opening and your closing. Those parts seem often seem to cry out for some kind of ** theatricality, and I have ** done that a lot—tried to open with a flourish, and close with some kind of way that doesn’t ** ruin the movie retroactively.
LAUGHTER
Q. You once said Dustin Hoffman could have played any part you play in your films, and maybe have played it better. Would you ever consider casting him?
A. I tried to cast him but he was never available. I wanted him to play Deconstructing Harry, Hannah and Her Sisters…he’s one of a number of people. I only cast myself when there’s a role for me and I can’t get someone else. But he’s one of a number of people, they’re ** in demand and they’re not just ** waiting around for me to call them.
LAUGHTER
Q. The last time I saw you in this theater was for Arthur Krim’s memorial. You had a special relationship with Arthur Krim and United Artists – could you see that happening again?
A. I can’t. I was lucky, I lucked into a relationship with them, at the time Arthur Krim was the head of United Artists, and ** people used to think I was making films on a GRANT almost.
LAUGHTER
I’ve never had to show anybody my scripts, or tell anybody who I was casting, I’ve never had to show dailies, I’ve always had final cut, from my second film on. And this is because Arthur was unique and enlightend and sensitive towards the artist’s needs. I’ve often said, the only thing standing between me and greatness, was me.
LAUGHTER
I mean there’s no reason for me ever to make a film that wasn’t great and yet (silly giggle) I’ve made so many.
LOUD LAUGHTER
I’ve always had budget limitations for that freedom. I could never make a film that we very expensive at all. MATCH POINT was about 15 million dollars, which is nothing in today’s market – I mean, think I read today in the Times that KING KONG was 207 million dollars or something. I always work on a very low budget, and I have often sacrificed my salary for the picture; if the picture came out rotten and I needed to reshot another two weeks, I would give back my salary or part of it or all of it if necessary. I have often had financial limitations on all my films.
Q There’ve been filmmakers who’ve influenced you – have you ever made a film as a deliberate homage, or do the influences just seep through.
A. No I’ve never done it deliberately, although you do develop these relationships with filmmakers and their films that are ** adoring, and something seeps through. It’s like being a musician and listening to Charlie Parker all the time—when you play, you can’t HELP it, the influence is just there. And that’s happened to me, as filmmakers who’ve meant a lot to me have crept into the ** marrow of my ** feeble ** spirit.
Q. You’re an alleged pessimist. But there are many moment of great tenderness and great sweetness in your films. I think of your smile at the end of MANHATTAN, your pleasure in seeing Charlotte Rampling read a book on the floor, or your kisses Diane Wiest
A. I’m not – you know, this gonna turn you ALL off – I think there are small oases—moments of RESpite where—
SCATTERED LAUGHTER
…we forGET—for the moment—we’re distracted from the ABYSMAL NIGHmare—
LOUD LAUGHTER LAUGHTER
--that is human exIStence—
LOUD, CASCADING LAUGHTER
And we do everything we CAN – to try and find little MOMents where we can try to find…
You know, when I was a little kid, and life was so ** grim, I’d duck into the movies, and there would be Fred Astaire dancing, and I would be watching for an hour and a half and everything would be unreal and everyone had tuxedoes and white tails and it was great—and then I’d go back out and there was the real world…and I think everyone tries to find these little moments where we can get BREATHing space, like a cold drink of water on a hot day.
But, I don’t have a good FEELing about…
(thinks about it)
…anything at all.
THE HOUSE FALLS APART WITH LAUGHTER
Q, You once said you were looking for the perfect poetic metaphor for death. Is that still a quest for you?
A. Well, you’d like to try and find something to express your feelings. That’s why I was always really taken with the Bergman film, THE SEVENTH SEAL. He really NAILED it. He really nailed ones innermost terrors about mortaility and he did it in a way that was VASTLY entertaining, it wasn’t cerebral homework. You didn’t feel like you were watching a thesis film, or something that was too ** didactic. It was entertaining. It was show business. And he was showing you the most profound ** terrors that a human being can have. And so I’ve always thought that he—Bergman, got the good one, the good metaphor, and there’s not another one OUT there ** to GET. But I have thought about it a lot, and I’ve tried. I just was never able to do it.
Q. One thing in MATCH POINT was the incredible chemistry between Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.
A. Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, that’s not chemistry, it’s, it’s PHYSICS—they are combustible together. I saw this guy in BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM and I thought he was just ** HOT—
LAUGHTER
And fabulous, and he is a wonderful young kis who is full of emotional and turbulence and torture – the guy goes to get the NEWSpapers and it’s a tragedy –
LAUGHTER
And he communicates it! And Scarlett, she was nineteen when she was in this film, which I know is hard to believe, and she’s just—adorable, and sexy and gifted and – you know, a DREAM girl. And I knew the two of them together would be just absolutely HOT. And…they ARE. And, I don’t usually speak fondly of my own films, I don’t do it out of modesty, but this one came out very well, and Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers are a very HOT team together, as you saw.
Q. You made a second film with Scarlett Johansson in London!
I made another film with Scarlett this past summer called SCOOP. It’s totally unlike MATCH POINT, because I noticed on this first film that Scarlett was very funny—now, MATCH POINT isn’t a comedy, it’s a very serious film—but Scarlett was really very ** witty, very funny, very quick. And so I thought she’d be great to do a comedy with. So I wrote a film called SCOOP, about a high school college journalist who’s vacationing in London and gets involved in a mystery and tries to break the story, as a journalist. And I play in it. I play a seedy show business magician, and Hugh Jackman, she falls in love with him and the two of them are a very good combination as well. And it’s a very, very ** light comedy, and I could almost use the word “trivial.”
LOUD LAUGHTER
But, you know, if you’re in the mood to be entertained…if you get with it. If you don’t get with it (he smiles) it’s DEATH.
LOUD LAUGHTER
But if you get with it, you’ll think it’s funny. I’m funny in it. She’s funny. Really funny, and this is the story of my life. I used to write these movies for myself and Dianne Keaton, and I’d give myself 200 funny lines in the movie, and SHE would come in and have NO jokes, and when the film was over SHE was always the funny one.
LAUGHTER
And it’s happened here as well. I have more of the jokes, but Scarlett is the funnier one in this movie as well.
* * *
And that was the interview.
