His name may have become synonymous with scandal, unproven sexual assault allegations and constant public mud-slinging between him and his son — award-winning journalist Ronan Farrow — yet at 84, Woody Allen seems as upbeat about his work as he’s ever been. His latest film, A Rainy Day in New York, became a surprise global box office hit when it was released digitally in some territories last month, amidst the continued coronavirus crisis which saw cinemas around the world being closed down.
A Rainy Day in New York has not had an easy time of it in general. First it was shelved by its original backer, Amazon, over resurfacing sexual assault allegations made by Allen’s adoptive stepdaughter Dylan Farrow decades earlier. Furthermore, the film was disowned by some of its own cast, notably young Jewish actor Timothée Chalamet who expressed some regret over working with the legendary director. Allen has since claimed that Chalamet felt that he had to distance himself from the film after being nominated for an Oscar for his role in Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film Call Me By Your Name and didn’t want to harm his chances.
Talking to me from his home in New York, Allen seems less bitter about the whole Amazon debacle than I had anticipated. Does he feel in any way vindicated by the film’s success? “Not at all!” he shouts down the phone in his reassuringly familiar Brooklyn accent. “I have a nice relationship with Amazon, and you know… we parted very friendly. Amazon did not want to put the film out, and so we put it out and it’s done very well. Amazon has its own reasons – they’re an enormous company with a million different motivations and products they sell, so I parted company with them amicably and it’s fine.” It’s a statement which feels more like a dig than a compliment, and I suspect Allen is a little more miffed about the whole thing than he’s letting on.
Still, in completing one film almost every year, Allen has now made 48 films in just over five decades. How does he do it? “I wish I could tell you it’s difficult, but it isn’t really,” he says. “Most people waste a lot of time raising money and I generally have the money to begin with to make the film, so as soon as I finish the script we go right into production. It’s not a big deal, I’ve done it a million times and we’ve had a good operation. A year’s time is not a big deal, I still have plenty of time left over to be with my family, my children, to travel, go to ballgames [he is an avid baseball and basketball fan] and to play with my jazz band.”
Allen’s family today consists of his wife of 21 years, Soon-Yi and their two adopted daughters, Bechet who is 22, and Manzie, 20. Despite the scandal surrounding the start of their life together — Soon-Yi was the adopted daughter of Allen’s ex-partner of 12 years, Mia Farrow — the couple have now been together for over 25 years.
In a world with no cinemas, no theatres and no ballgames, I ask him how he’s been coping under the current COVID-19 crisis. “It’s terrible, it’s terrible for everybody in the world, and certainly those of us in New York had a very bad dose of it. Everything that makes a great city, everything that represents civilisation, is shut down and not there. I’ve been waiting months so that I can touch my face again. I mean, it’s just ridiculous.”
In A Rainy Day in New York, Liev Schreiber plays a film director experiencing a crisis of confidence and self-doubting his most recent work. I ask Allen if he’s ever been in this position himself. “I’m in it all the time,” he says. “I’m constantly in it, thinking about my work and I always have a cultural crisis. I always think, Oh God… it’s terrible, it’s not good enough, I’m not growing into my work, I’m not accomplishing anything, I’m not living up to my potential—so to me it’s an endless series of crises.” Does he have a least favourite of his own films? “I have so many… I wouldn’t know where to begin, so I really can’t answer that because I’ve been disappointed in so many, so it would be easier to name the couple that I’d liked.” I ask which ones but he doesn’t reply — possibly because the line to New York is terrible.
Back to his new film, in which Chalamet and Elle Fanning star as two college sweethearts whose plans for a romantic weekend in New York are dashed by a series of unexpected events. Fanning’s character is caught in a whirlwind of neurotic men all wanting a piece of her, either intellectually or physically. Having been warned off asking Allen anything potentially controversial, I ask carefully if he feels that such a story —older and more accomplished men pursuing and lusting after a young girl — could be misconstrued.
“This girl is just a spiritual and creative inspiration to the other men,” he begins. “They don’t really lust after her in any way. To the director of the film she seems like a fresh person who intellectually loves his films and writes about them and he feels, from her, like he’s getting through to an unspoiled mind. His attraction to her is strictly as an inspiration to his work. The same would be for the author [played by Jude Law]. The author feels she’s a girl unspoiled by all the terrible things that one goes through in life and he’s inspired as a writer. So they don’t have any designs on her either than spiritually or creatively, other than the movie star [Diego Luna] who wants to go to bed with her.”
We discuss his enduring tradition of working with up-and-coming actors — in this film, such names as Chalamet, Fanning and Selena Gomez. “Well, you know, it’s easy, I hire talented people and I don’t have to work with them so much. I get a lot of credit for directing, when in fact it should be really for hiring. These are first grade actors and actresses, so I hire them and I don’t really have to do much with them.”
One of Allen’s hallmarks is an apparent determination to take down every last preconceived idea people have about him, sometimes even to his own detriment. He insists that he is not the intellectual most people see him as. “As I said in my book [his recent autobiography Apropos of Nothing], I think I look like an intellectual. It’s just the way that I look but it’s deceptive because the way someone looks is not necessarily who they really are.”
Next I ask him how much he feels part of the Jewish community as a whole, and how this association is apparent in his work.
“I was brought up in a Jewish household. My writing is reflective of my childhood, just like an Italian person’s would be, or just like Spike Lee writes about his own upbringing in ways that I could never understand the nuances of. I make no bones that the characters in my movies are Jewish… I’m very happy that Jewish people in general get a kick out of my work.”
Allen is well-known as an atheist with a life-long disdain for organised religion. Are these views as strong as ever? “I never quarrel with a person who in the privacy of his own or her own moment has religious intimations, feelings or beliefs,” he tells me. “They’re completely entitled to those, obviously, and theirs may be more accurate observations than mine. But my own feeling is that when they organise, they make the rules, and when they wear costumes and lock into rituals, then it becomes commercial nonsense. To me it’s a big commercial hustle, all the religions are.”
In his autobiography, Allen writes that — just like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire — he has always lusted after magic. In which case, I ask him, how does he explain that his work is so honest and realistic?
“When you write something, you want to be honest, because the audience will know that you’re not being honest and if you’re being deceptive they’ll sense it. I certainly think the real world is a very harsh place. The terms of existence are very harsh, very unpleasant and terrible and tragic in the end. It’s not a very good deal and one would long for the magical life or the less realistic life. The one you see in Hollywood musicals and movies where people don’t get sick and where they find love, and the love is true and the men are all charming, brave and witty, and the women are all lovely to look at and are supportive and understanding.”
I’m prompted by his PR that we have time for one more question. How he would like to be remembered once he’s no longer with us?
“I have zero interest in any kind of legacy. So I could not care less how I am remembered; they could remember me as a serial killer or they could remember me as an artist or they could not remember me at all… Or they could take all my films and destroy them when I die. To me, once you die, once your life is over and you’re a non-existent factor, it is a total irrelevance how you’re remembered. I don’t really care how they remember me. Once the lights go out, that’s it. It does not matter to me at all in any way whatsoever.”
A Rainy Day in New York is available to stream online on a number of platforms including UK Jewish Film from June 5.
