Friday, 5 April 2024

Writing ‘Hud’: A Conversation

Hud (Directed by Martin Ritt)
The distinguished screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., first met as young writers at MGM and were married in 1946. Irving Ravetch, born in Newark, New Jersey, was an aspiring playwright, who’d attended UCLA before coming to MGM. Harriet Frank, Jr., was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and eventually attended UCLA while her mother was working as a Hollywood story editor. After their marriage, the Ravetches worked independently for over ten years before beginning their first collaboration on Martin Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer (1958) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. This experience initiated a remarkable series of collaborations with Martin Ritt that extended over eight films and included Hud (1963), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal, for which the Ravetches were nominated for an Academy Award; Hombre (1967), also with Paul Newman; Norma Rae, featuring Sally Field, for which the Ravetches received their second Oscar nomination; and Stanley and Iris (1990), starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda. They also wrote various scripts for other directors, including an adaptation of William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), directed by Delbert Mann and starring Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire, and an adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Reivers (1969), directed by Mark Rydell and featuring Steve McQueen.


For Hud they took a minor character from Larry McMurtry’s first novel Horseman, Pass By, and transformed him into one of the most eerily compelling characters in motion picture history. The Ravetches’ uniquely close relation with the film’s director Martin Ritt, and also with its leading actor, Paul Newman, led to a devastating cinematic character study of evil and self-absorption.

– The following extract is from a conversation with William Baer in which Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. discuss their screenwriting collaboration, working with Martin Ritt and the depiction of evil in Hud:




BAER: After the success of ‘The Long Hot Summer’ (1958), you wrote your second film for Martin Ritt, an adaptation of Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury’ (1959). Then you wrote screenplays for Vincente Minnelli (‘Home from the Hill’, 1960) and Delbert Mann (‘The Dark at the Top of the Stairs’, 1960). How did you come upon the source material for your next film, Larry McMurtry’s first novel, ‘Horseman, Pass By’?


RAVETCH: I found the book in a bookstore, took it home, and read it. Then I asked Harriet to read it.


FRANK: It’s a beautifully written book. McMurtry was very young at the time, and it was clear that he was a very gifted writer.


RAVETCH: And since we’d enjoyed working with Marty and Paul so much, we wanted to do it again, and we thought the book could be adapted in such a way as to create a leading role for Paul. So we acquired the rights to the book.

BAER: Before we get to the specifics about writing ‘Hud’, I’d like to ask you about your approach to literary adaptation and literary collaboration. First, let’s talk about adaptation. In the past, you’ve referred to your scripts based on other literary sources as being more like ‘hybrids’ than adaptations.


RAVETCH: Yes, very much so. The Long Hot Summer, for example, was probably 95 percent ours and only 5 percent Faulkner. The Hamlet’s a marvelous book—brilliant and hysterical—and Faulkner’s Barn Burning is one of the great American short stories, but in actually writing the film, we basically took one of the characters from the novel, altered him drastically, and then created a new story around him. On the other hand, The Reivers, which we did many years later, is almost entirely from the book. It’s 100 percent Faulkner because we found it readily adaptable to film. So our approach to adaptations, whether it be Faulkner or someone else, really runs the gamut because it’s always crucial to focus on what’s best for the film.


BAER: Faulkner, who was a screenwriter himself, seemed to understand that approach since he called ‘The Long Hot Summer’ a ‘charmin’ little movie.’


RAVETCH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. Faulkner is absolutely our favorite novelist of all American novelists, and we always worried that he might have hated what we did in The Long Hot Summer.


FRANK: Faulkner’s definitely America’s glorious writer, but you’re right. He knew all about screen adaptation. He’d worked with Howard Hawks, and he worked on the screen adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, so he knew from personal experience that film and fiction are two very different mediums.


BAER: So how do you collaborate? How do you actually go about creating a script together?


FRANK: First, we talk out an outline, and since we want to stay married, we talk it out very amiably. At that point, we’re not laying out an absolute chapter-and-verse for every single moment in the screenplay; we’re, instead, creating large blocks of organization, so we can visualize the line of the story, and get ready to go. We usually start with a one-page outline listing about thirty-five to forty-five major scenes.



BAER: Irving once said that ‘The script is not so much written as it’s talked onto the page.’


FRANK: That’s right. That’s how we do it. Once we’re ready to begin, we start ‘talking’ the screenplay to each other. Out loud. It’s a line-for- line conversation. In truth, we get so involved that we can’t even tell who starts a line or who finishes it. It’s a very animated, running conversation where we act out the lines – Irving’s a very good actor and I’m not! – along with a running commentary like, ‘That’s good,’ or ‘That’s lousy,’ or ‘Why not try this?’


RAVETCH: And there’s no ego involved. None. Over the years, we’ve heard about a number of other collaborators who do a lot of screaming at each other, but we never raise our voices.


FRANK: We want to stay married!


RAVETCH: Yes, but as conscientious writers, we can’t let our egos get in the way; otherwise, it will start to interfere with the work and ruin it.


FRANK: And from many years of experience, I can tell you that Irving is never a man of ego. He’s never aggressively critical, although, if he hates something, he’s very honest and plainspoken. So we have none of that push-me-pull-me business. We work things out amicably, and we don’t waste time arguing.


RAVETCH: Who was that married couple at Metro who collaborated on so many scripts? They did The Thin Man and It’s a Wonderful Life.


FRANK: Hackett and Goodrich.


RAVETCH: Yes, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Apparently, they also had a seamless and unegotistical collaboration.

BAER: So who types the script?


RAVETCH: I do. I sit at the typewriter, and Hank paces around. We always work in the mornings, nine to one, five days a week. Usually, we’d get about three pages done each day, and those pages are finished pages. We’d polish them as we go, over and over again, doing our revising as we proceed. So when we’re finished, we’re really finished. We very seldom do any revising.



BAER: How long does a script usually take?


FRANK: About ten weeks.

BAER: Now the McMurtry project, which was eventually titled ‘Hud’, was the first film in a three-picture deal for the newly-formed Salem Pictures, which was established by Martin Ritt and Paul Newman in agreement with Paramount and Columbia. Were you partners in Salem Pictures?


RAVETCH: No, we weren’t.

BAER: But Irving was listed as a producer on the film?


RAVETCH: Well, you know that Hollywood is always pretty loose with the term ‘producer.’ All I did was find the source material.


BAER: But I think you’re being too modest. The whole idea for the picture came from the both of you. Weren’t you involved in the casting?


RAVETCH: Yes, Marty always kept us with him, from the beginning to the end.


FRANK: Yes, he truly embraced us as collaborators. It was a very unusual relationship. Just glorious!

BAER: Let’s talk about that relationship.


RAVETCH: We made eight films with Marty Ritt, and on every single one of those pictures, we were with Marty from the pre-production and casting to the final advertising campaign. We were also on the set every single day, and he invited us to the rushes every single morning. It was a true collaboration, and we always had a marvelous time. Marty Ritt was an extraordinary man in many ways, and unlike most directors, he never insisted on a vanity credit.


FRANK: That’s right, Marty’s films never opened with the credit, ‘Film by Martin Ritt.’ Never. He was a class act, and he was never concerned with ego.


RAVETCH: And he was always willing to try something new, something ‘difficult.’


BAER: Well, ‘Hud’ was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a ‘pure bastard’ – and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.


RAVETCH: Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed – which, of course, fully blossomed in the eighties and the nineties. So, we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that’s important. But he doesn’t care. He’s still unrepentant.


FRANK: In our society, there’s always been a fascination with the ‘charming’ villain, and we wanted to say that if something’s corrupt, it’s still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem – even if it’s Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn’t work out like we planned.

BAER: It actually backfired.


RAVETCH: Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here’s a man – Hud – who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell his neighbors’ poisoned cattle, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father’s property. And all the time, he’s completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, ‘Which character did you most admire?’ and many of them answered, ‘Hud.’ We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.



BAER: Paul Newman actually took much of the blame on himself, feeling that he’d portrayed Hud as far too vital and appealing and charming. But Martin Ritt disagreed, saying that the film clearly revealed Hud for exactly what he was, and denying that any of the film’s creators could have possibly anticipated the rising cynicism of the baby-boom generation. How do you feel about that?


RAVETCH: I think they were both right, and both innocent. We could have never anticipated the reaction of those audiences, especially the young people, and if we had known beforehand, we would have definitely done things differently.

BAER: That was a time when young people were looking for rebels to emulate.


FRANK: That’s right.


RAVETCH: That’s true, but Hud’s more than just a bit rebellious. He’s truly villainous. But, of course, that’s the way things have gone in our society. In many movies today, there’s a stream of endless violence and murder and high-tech fireballs, and the young audiences are eagerly clapping, and laughing, and banging their feet. They love it. So what have we created? What kind of society is that? Back in the early sixties, we knew something was in the air, but we never could have anticipated what’s come to pass.

BAER: In McMurtry’s novel, Hud’s a minor and infrequently seen character, so one of the key changes in the script is the expansion of Hud’s role. Was that alteration made to accommodate Paul Newman?


RAVETCH: Yes, we were specifically trying to create material that would interest both Paul and Marty. So we enlarged the character of Hud and wrote the part with Paul in mind.



BAER: Many critics have drawn comparisons between ‘Hud’ and ‘Shane’ since, in both films, a young boy is attracted to a charismatic man. Shane, of course, despite his past, is an admirable western hero, but Hud is not, and young Lon must decide whether he will be lured into the immoral but seemingly exciting lifestyle of Hud, or whether he’ll eventually side with his grandfather, Homer Bannon, a man of high integrity and old-fashioned values. Was it a complete coincidence that the role of Lon was played by Brandon de Wilde, who’d also played the part of Joey Starrett, the young boy in ‘Shane’?


RAVETCH: I never thought about that before.


FRANK: I don’t think it ever crossed our minds.


RAVETCH: I can certainly see that there’s lots of parallels in the two stories, but the casting of Brandon in Hud was just a coincidence. He was the only young actor we could find who we felt was right for the part...

BAER: Alma’s an excellent counterpart to Hud, who, as his father clearly states, is an ‘unprincipled man.’ But in the novel, Hud’s even worse, and I’d like to ask you about two important changes that you made in the script. The first is the fact that in the novel, Hud actually rapes Halmea, whereas in the script his assault on Alma is thwarted by Lon’s intervention.


RAVETCH: Well, the change highlights Lon’s significance in the film, and it also helps to keep Hud human. We didn’t want to create a character who was totally and simplistically evil, so Lon’s intervention prevents the drunken Hud from going too far.


FRANK: Also, in the film, Alma’s definitely attracted to Hud. There’s a real chemistry between them – there’s clearly something in the air – and the two of them are playing a very sophisticated, sexual ‘card game.’ But when Hud gets drunk, he ruins everything, and his attempted rape both insults and violates Alma, and she decides to leave. But up to that point, things might have worked out if Hud hadn’t been so crude and vile. At the bus station, Alma clearly admits it, saying, ‘You want to know something funny? It would have happened eventually without the roughhouse,’ and Hud’s final comment to the departing Alma is: ‘I’ll remember you, honey. You’re the one that got away.’ So thwarting the rape in the film allowed for much more subtlety in their relationship.

BAER: Similarly, at the end of the novel, Hud actually shoots his wounded father-in-law, claiming it to be a mercy killing, and he ends up indicted for ‘murder without malice’ – although he expects to get a suspended sentence. In the script, however, Hud doesn’t kill his father, who dies of his injuries and a broken will.


RAVETCH: That’s another attempt to humanize Hud, so he wouldn’t be one-dimensionally evil. In that scene at the end, with his father dying in his lap, there’s a subtle sense of unspoken grief. Hud’s a villain, but he’s a villain with seeds of something worth preserving.


FRANK: What? Leave the room! We’ll have none of that, Mr. Ravetch!


RAVETCH: But he’s human; he’s not all dark.


FRANK: We can discuss that tomorrow morning in divorce court!



RAVETCH: But in that crucial scene with Lon and his dying father, Hud tries in some way – a very laconic way – to give the young boy some kind of consolation. There’s something decent going on.


FRANK: But not nearly enough. There’s something in the American psyche that’s sadly attracted to the dangerous, the flamboyant, and the immoral. And that’s exactly what we were trying to show in that film.


RAVETCH: Well, now you can see how we collaborate!


FRANK: Yes-no, yes-no, back-and-forth.


BAER: Let’s try another important topic. One of the most famous scenes in the film is the killing of Homer’s herd of cattle to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease. The scene is expertly directed by Martin Ritt and powerfully shot by James Wong Howe. A number of critics have suggested that the scene, in some way, recalls the terrible human genocides of the twentieth century. Was that on your minds when you were writing the scene?


RAVETCH: Yes, we certainly had that in mind when we were writing that scene.


FRANK: Yes, the undertone was clearly intended.


RAVETCH: Definitely...



BAER: Let’s talk about the end of the script. Just like in the novel, young Lon leaves the ranch to get away from Hud, and he hitches a ride with a trucker who recalls Lon’s grandfather, Homer, and refers to him as the ‘old gentleman.’ But this scene was eventually cut from the movie. Do you know why?


RAVETCH: It was too much of a dying fall. Marty always had a gutsy, muscular attack on life in general – and, in his films, he would always opt for the punchiest moments he could get. And it definitely seemed more dramatic to end the film with Hud shutting the door and making his ‘The hell with you’ gesture.


BAER: Was the script ending ever shot?


RAVETCH: No, Marty was satisfied with closing on Paul, and so were we.


BAER: Let’s talk some more about that final scene. The film ends with Hud completely alone on the deserted ranch. He goes into the empty house, gets a beer, and comes back to the screen door. Then he looks out, as if wondering if he should go after Lon, but then he shrugs, makes a dismissive hand gesture – as if to say, ‘the hell with it’ – and shuts the door. It’s a very powerful ending – reminiscent of the Greek tragedies and so many of Faulkner’s novels – illustrating the fall of a once-great household. Did you think about that larger theme as you were writing the script?


RAVETCH: Not specifically, although it’s clear that the film is about the fall of Homer Bannon and everything he’d built and stood for. But in writing the very end of the film, we relied more on a gut instinct that that’s exactly how Hud would have reacted under those circumstances. He’d be consistent. He’d be Hud. It’s an odd movie in a way because Lon is the central character in that he’s the one who has to make the crucial choice, but Hud’s also the main character since he’s always at the center of everything. So Marty decided – we all did, in fact – to end the film with Hud...



– William Baer: Hud: A Conversation with Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. Michigan Quarterly Review vol. XLII, no. 2, Spring 2003. For the full article see here

  

Friday, 8 March 2024

Woody Allen: The Art of Humor



Woody Allen’s career in comedy began in 1953 when he left college to write jokes for Garry Moore and Sid Caesar. In the early 1960s his stand-up routines in the comedy clubs of Greenwich Village brought him widespread recognition leading to several successful television appearances. In 1965 Allen wrote and made his acting debut in What’s New, Pussycat? Allen directed his first feature film Take the Money and Run in 1969 which he also wrote and starred in. The films which followed (Bananas, Sleeper, Love and Death) were commercially successful and critically acclaimed. In 1977 Allen wrote, directed and starred in Annie Hall alongside Diane Keaton. The film went on to win four Academy Awards, establishing Allen’s breakthrough style and themes which he went on to develop in Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours. The following extract is from an interview with Woody Allen conducted by Michiko Kakutani in 1995 in which Allen discusses his writing career.

INTERVIEWER

When did you start writing?

ALLEN

Before I could read. I’d always wanted to write. Before that – I made up tales. I was always creating stories for class. For the most part, I was never as much a fan of comic writers as serious writers. But I found myself able to write in a comic mode, at first directly imitative of [Max] Shulman or sometimes of [S.J.] Perelman. In my brief abortive year in college I’d hand in my papers, all of them written in a bad (or good) derivation of Shulman. I had no sense of myself at all.

INTERVIEWER

How did you discover your own voice? Did it happen gradually?

ALLEN

No, it was quite accidental. I had given up writing prose completely and gone into television writing. I wanted to write for the theater and at the same time I was doing a cabaret act as a comedian. One day Playboy magazine asked me to write something for them, because I was an emerging comedian and I wrote this piece on chess. At that time I was almost married – but not quite yet – to Louise Lasser; she read it and said, Gee, I think this is good. You should really send this over to The New Yorker. To me, as to everyone else of my generation, The New Yorker was hallowed ground. Anyhow, on a lark I did. I was shocked when I got this phone call back saying that if I’d make a few changes, they’d print it. So I went over there and made the few changes, and they ran it. It was a big boost to my confidence. So I figured, Well, I think I’ll write something else for them. The second or third thing I sent to The New Yorker was very Perelmanesque in style. They printed it but comments were that it was dangerously derivative and I agreed. So both The New Yorker and I looked out for that in subsequent pieces that I sent over there. I did finally get further and further away from him. Perelman, of course, was as complex as could be – a very rich kind of humor. As I went on I tried to simplify.

Love and Death (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

Was this a parallel development to what you were trying to do in your films?

ALLEN

I don’t think of them as parallel. My experience has been that writing for the different mediums are very separate undertakings. Writing for the stage is completely different from writing for film and both are completely different from writing prose. The most demanding is writing prose, I think, because when you’re finished, it’s the end product. You can’t change it. In a play, it’s far from the end product. The script serves as a vehicle for the actors and director to develop characters. With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don’t have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn’t bear much resemblance to the script – at least in my case.

INTERVIEWER

So you would have much more control over something like a novel.

ALLEN

That’s one of its appeals – that you have the control over it. Another great appeal is that when you’re finished you can tear it up and throw it away. Whereas, when you make a movie, you can’t do that. You have to put it out there even if you don’t like it. I might add, the hours are better if you’re a prose writer. It’s much more fun to wake up in the morning, just drift into the next room and be alone and write, than it is to wake up in the morning and have to go shoot a film. Movies are a big demand. It’s a physical job. You’ve got to be someplace, on schedule, on time. And you are dependent on people. I know Norman Mailer said that if he had started his career today he might be in film rather than a novelist. I think films are a younger man’s enterprise. For the most part it’s strenuous. Beyond a certain point, I don’t think I want that exertion; I mean I don’t want to feel that my whole life I’m going to have to wake up at six in the morning, be out of the house at seven so I can be out on some freezing street or some dull meadow shooting. That’s not all that thrilling. It’s fun to putter around the house, stay home. Tennessee Williams said the annoying thing about plays is that you have to produce them – you can’t just write them and throw them in the drawer. That’s because when you finish writing a script, you’ve transcended it and you want to move on. With a book, you can. So the impulse seems always to be a novelist. It’s a very desirable thing. One thinks about Colette sitting in her Parisian apartment, looking out the window and writing. It’s a very seductive life...

Manhattan (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

A lot of writers find it very hard to get started on the next project, to find an idea they really want to work on...

ALLEN

Probably they are casting aside ideas that are as good as the ideas I choose to work on. I’ll think of an idea walking down the street, and I’ll mark it down immediately. And I always want to make it into something. I’ve never had a block. I’m talking within the limits of my abilities. But in my own small way, I’ve had an embarrassment of riches. I’ll have five ideas and I’m dying to do them all. It takes weeks or months where I agonize and obsess over which to do next. I wish sometimes someone would choose for me. If someone said, Do idea number three next, that would be fine. But I have never had any sense of running dry. People always ask me, Do you ever think you’ll wake up one morning and not be funny? That thought would never occur to me – it’s an odd thought and not realistic. Because funny and me are not separate. We’re one. The best time to me is when I’m through with a project and deciding about a new one. That’s because it’s at a period when reality has not yet set in. The idea in your mind’s eye is so wonderful, and you fantasize it in the perfect flash of a second – just beautifully conceived. But then when you have to execute it, it doesn’t come out as you’d fantasized. Production is where the problems begin, where reality starts to set in. As I was saying before, the closest I ever come to realizing the concept is in prose. Most of the things that I’ve written and published, I’ve felt that I executed my original idea pretty much to my satisfaction. But I’ve never, ever felt that, not even close, about anything I’ve written for film or the stage. I always felt I had such a dazzling idea – where did I go wrong? You go wrong from the first day. Everything’s a compromise. For instance, you’re not going to get Marlon Brando to do your script, you’re going to get someone lesser. The room you see in your mind’s eye is not the room you’re filming in. It’s always a question of high aims, grandiose dreams, great bravado and confidence, and great courage at the typewriter; and then, when I’m in the midst of finishing a picture and everything’s gone horribly wrong and I’ve reedited it and reshot it and tried to fix it, then it’s merely a struggle for survival. You’re happy only to be alive. Gone are all the exalted goals and aims, all the uncompromising notions of a perfect work of art, and you’re just fighting so people won’t storm up the aisles with tar and feathers. With many of my films – almost all – if I’d been able to get on screen what I conceived, they would have been much better pictures. Fortunately, the public doesn’t know about how great the picture played in my head was, so I get away with it.

INTERVIEWER

How do you actually work? What are your tools?

ALLEN

I’ve written on legal pads, hotel stationery, anything I can get my hands on. I have no finickiness about anything like that. I write in hotel rooms, in my house, with other people around, on matchbooks. I have no problems with it – to the meager limits that I can do it. There have been stories where I’ve just sat down at the typewriter and typed straight through beginning to end. There are some New Yorker pieces I’ve written out in forty minutes time. And there are other things I’ve just struggled and agonized over for weeks and weeks. It’s very haphazard. Take two movies – one movie that was not critically successful was A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. I wrote that thing in no time. It just came out in six days – everything in perfect shape. I did it, and it was not well received. Whereas Annie Hall was just endless – totally changing things. There was as much material on the cutting-room floor as there was in the picture – I went back five times to reshoot. And it was well received. On the other hand, the exact opposite has happened to me where I’ve done things that just flowed easily and were very well received. And things I agonized over were not. I’ve found no correlation at all...

Crimes and Misdemeanours (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

Why did you start out writing comedy?

ALLEN

I always enjoyed comedians when I was young. But when I started to read more seriously, I enjoyed more serious writers. I became less interested in comedy then, although I found I could write it. These days I’m not terribly interested in comedy. If I were to list my fifteen favorite films, there would probably be no comedies in there. True, there are some comic films that I think are wonderful. I certainly think that City Lights is great, a number of the Buster Keatons, several Marx Brothers movies. But those are a different kind of comedy – the comedy of comedians in film stands more as a record of the comedians’ work. The films may be weak or silly but the comics were geniuses. I like Keaton’s films better than Keaton and enjoy Chaplin and The Marx Brothers usually more than the films. But I’m an easy audience. I laugh easily.

INTERVIEWER

How about Bringing Up Baby?

ALLEN

No, I never liked that. I never found that funny.

INTERVIEWER

Really?

ALLEN

No, I liked Born Yesterday, even though it’s a play made into a film. Both The Shop Around the Corner and Trouble in Paradise are terrific. A wonderful talking comedy is The White Sheik by Fellini.

Stardust Memories (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

What is it that keeps a lighthearted or comic film from being on your list of ten?

ALLEN

Nothing other than personal taste. Someone else might list ten comedies. It’s simply that I enjoy more serious films. When I have the option to see films, I’ll go and see Citizen Kane, The Bicycle Thief, The Grand Illusion, The Seventh Seal, and those kind of pictures.

INTERVIEWER

When you go to see the great classics over again, do you go to see how they’re made, or do you go for the impact that they have on you emotionally?

ALLEN

Usually, I go for enjoyment. Other people who work on my films see all the technical things happening, and I can’t see them. I still can’t notice the microphone shadow, or the cut that wasn’t good or something. I’m too engrossed in the film itself.

INTERVIEWER

Who have had the greatest influence on your film work?

ALLEN

The biggest influences on me, I guess, have been Bergman and the Marx Brothers. I also have no compunction stealing from Strindberg, Chekhov, Perelman, Moss Hart, Jimmy Cannon, Fellini, and Bob Hope’s writers.

Annie Hall (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

Why do you think you started writing as a kid?

ALLEN

I think it was just the sheer pleasure of it. It’s like playing with my band now. It’s fun to make music, and it’s fun to write. It’s fun to make stuff up. I would say that if I’d lived in the era before motion pictures, I would have been a writer. I saw Alfred Kazin on television. He was extolling the novel at the expense of film. But I didn’t agree. One is not comparable with the other. He had too much respect for the printed word. Good films are better than bad books, and when they’re both great, they’re great and worthwhile in different ways.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think the pleasures of writing are related to the sense of control art provides?

ALLEN

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to. Writing is very pleasurable, very seductive, and very therapeutic. Time passes very fast when I’m writing – really fast. I’m puzzling over something, and time just flies by. It’s an exhilarating feeling. How bad can it be? It’s sitting alone with fictional characters. You’re escaping from the world in your own way and that’s fine. Why not?

INTERVIEWER

When you’re writing, do you think about your audience? Updike, for instance, once said that he liked to think of a young kid in a small Midwestern town finding one of his books on a shelf at a public library.

ALLEN

I’ve always felt that I try to aim as high as I can at the time, not to reach everybody, because I know that I can’t do that, but always to try to stretch myself. I’d like to feel, when I’ve finished a film, that intelligent adults, whether they’re scientists or philosophers, could go in and see it and not come out and feel that it was a total waste of time. That they wouldn’t say, Jesus, what did you get me into? If I went in to see Rambo, I’d say, Oh, God, and then after a few minutes I’d leave. Size of audience is irrelevant to me. The more the better, but not if I have to change my ideas to seduce them.

INTERVIEWER

What sort of development do you see in your own work over the years?

ALLEN

I hope for growth, of course. If you look at my first films, they were very broad and sometimes funny. I’ve gotten more human with the stories and sacrificed a tremendous amount of humor, of laughter, for other values that I personally feel are worth making that sacrifice for. So, a film like The Purple Rose of Cairo or Manhattan will not have as many laughs. But I think they’re more enjoyable. At least to me they are. I would love to continue that – and still try to make some serious things.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (Directed by Woody Allen)
INTERVIEWER

It seems as though when an artist becomes established, other people – critics, their followers – expect them to keep on doing the same thing, instead of evolving in their own way.

ALLEN

That’s why you must never take what’s written about you seriously. I’ve never written anything in my life or done any project that wasn’t what I wanted to do at the time. You really have to forget about what they call ‘career moves.’ You just do what you want to do for your own sense of your creative life. If no one else wants to see it, that’s fine. Otherwise, you’re in the business to please other people. When we did Stardust Memories, all of us knew there would be a lot of flack. But it wouldn’t for a second stop me. I never thought, I better not do this because people will be upset. It’d be sheer death not to go through with a project you feel like going through with at the time...

INTERVIEWER

Don’t you think that as serious writers mature they simply continue to develop and expand the themes already established?

ALLEN

Each person has his own obsessions. In Bergman films you find the same things over and over, but they’re usually presented with great freshness.

– Extract from ‘Woody Allen, The Art of Humor No. 1. Interviewed by Michiko Kakutani. The Paris Review. Fall 1995, No. 136.’