I am a long-time admirer of Woody Allen's films (at least most of them) and have read several books that evaluate his films, his film messages, and his filmmaking craft and have found them to be intellectually pretentious, so much so that their authors reminded me of the pretentious characters he so humorously satirizes in his films. While this book shows Allen to be a very intelligent and knowledgeable filmmaker (no surprise), it also reveals him to be a dedicated filmmaker who can be refreshingly modest and wise and shrewd in his judgment of people and social mores. He admits that in his very early films he just pointed the camera at where the action was, and that he learned a great deal from the exceptional cinematographers that he subsequently employed, e.g., Gordon Willis. It's well known that Allen is not particularly communicative with his actors, both in the initial interview and while directing, so it's revealing to hear him say that "90% of my films" is in the casting; that is, he gets the most suitable actor for the part and then simply lets the actor employ his / her craft on the set. The interviews reveal that Allen is well-read in literature, and it's no surprise that writing the script is his favorite part of filmmaking, and also worth noting that he can sometimes complete an entire script in a day.
I liked the structure of the interviews in that they started with his first film and then discussed each subsequent film in chronological sequence. The interviewer, Stig Bjorkman, is a Swedish filmmaker and critic who is obviously well-versed in Allen's films since many of his questions and observations reflected a detailed knowledge of various scenes and characters in Allen's films. It certainly helped the rapport between interviewer and interviewee that they both shared a love of Bergman films. Allen acknowledges that, by and large, the studios have given him a great deal of creative freedom with his films, but that European audiences may have sustained his autonomy in recent years.
As mentioned, Allen comes across in these interviews as a dedicated, hard-working and creative filmmaker, and although he resembles the stock character he so often portrayed in his films in certain ways, in many other ways he is different from that character, e.g., he was a reasonably athletic adolescent. Nonetheless, some of those "neurotic" features are much in evidence in these interviews. He's obsessed with death and has a morbid fear of "perishing" (perhaps it's why he's such a workaholic). On numerous occasions, he cites Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" as a book that's shaped him both intellectually and emotionally. Of course, Woody always said that he "didn't want to achieve immortality through his work, but by not dying." He also reveals that he's not the hypochondriac he's portrayed but instead he's an "alarmist"; that is, he doesn't think he's always sick, but instead, when he does get sick, he thinks it's fatal!
One irritant in these interviews is that Bjorkman, a typical left-wing European intellectual, makes numerous anti-American observations to Allen, presumably trying to get him to follow up and agree. To his credit, Woody (a liberal), doesn't take the bait, and instead makes reasoned and balanced observations on American politics and society. If you enjoy Woody's films, these revealing interviews should be worth your while.
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