Hypnotizing Woody Part Two

By: Scott Collura
Date: Sunday, August 26, 2001

In part one of CINESCAPE's Woody Allen interview, the filmmaker discussed his newest film, the screwball comedy THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION. Here he continues to talk about the casting of the film, his alleged "popularity" among Hollywood actors and his thoughts on the state of the industry as a whole.

As Allen has aged, he has begun to ration out the lead roles in his films to other actors. John Cusack played a very Woody Allen-esque playwright in BULLETS OVER BROADWAY while Kenneth Branagh took the lead in CELEBRITY. The director acknowledges that he also considered other actors for the part he eventually assumed in JADE SCORPION.

"I would have been very happy to cast any one of a number of actors," Allen says. "I would have loved Tom Cruise to have done it, or Tom Hanks to have done it. Someone with a sense of humor. I mean, Dustin Hoffman could certainly do anything better than me. [But] these guys never stop working. It's very hard to get them for nine weeks straight for no money.

"I finished another movie since this [Hollywood Ending]," he adds. "And I'm in that, and that role I think I'm the best person to play the part. I really do, and I think you'll [agree] that I'm the right casting for it because it's a New York, neurotic film director. So it's right up my alley."

As for casting the rest of the picture, Allen says he doesn't have any particular performers in mind when writing the script. Instead, the casting process begins during pre-production when the filmmaker begins to visualize actors who could match his written word. For this film, the ensemble cast called for a philandering blowhard (Dan Aykroyd as Woody's boss and Helen Hunt's married boyfriend), a femme fatale (Charlize Theron) and a "Gal Friday" type (Elizabeth Berkley).

"Dan Aykroyd took a lot of thinking," Allen relates. "I had enjoyed him over the years as a comedian, but the part was very difficult. We needed a guy who was taking advantage of Helen, big and blustery, but also likable so the audience just wouldn't hate the guy. And funny, because I want the characters to be comic, and also attractive enough so that you would believe Helen [would] get involved with him and make a fool of herself over him.

"Charlize Theron is an obvious choice

," he continues. "She's like a force of nature who can [also] act. She's not just one of those Hollywood women [who's] ravishing and sexy, because I've used her in two pictures now. She actually contributes and acts. Elizabeth Berkley I had only seen [her] in that Vegas showgirl movie one night, and couldn't take my eyes off the screen! And I thought to myself, 'She could be funny.' This is a girl who's sexy and she's got a lot of energy, and if you used her right she could be a funny girl."

Of course, it would seem that Allen has the luxury of choosing whatever actor he would like for a part. His ensemble casts have become highly desired gigs among the movie star crowd, with such names as Sean Penn, Hugh Grant, Billy Crystal and Goldie Hawn filling the roster in recent Woody films. Still, Allen points out that not as many actors are willing to work with him as it may seem.

"Let me dispel that," he says. "There are plenty of actors and actresses that may say they want to [work with me]. But when the time comes and I offer them a part, they want $10 million. We can't pay that -- the film doesn't cost much more than that, really. So while there are a number of them that say they will do anything to be in one of my films, they're just saying that. There are some who will do it and that only comes from the fact that if you offer people some decent material, [they're] so starved for it that they're willing to work for no money even though they're big stars."

Allen is acutely aware of the films that pass for comedies nowadays. He calls them "the toilet joke comedies," and while he is no fan of such films, he does think he has benefited in a way from their predominance in Hollywood.

"[These actors] get scripts thrown at them all the time," Allen says. "But [they're] special effects movies, stupid movies geared to 14-year-olds. So when they get a part that they think would be fun to play -- maybe not out of Shakespeare, but still not insulting to their intelligence and [that] at least attempts something -- they're happy to do it."

Such

talk returns Allen to the topic of the big studios, and their "art for commerce" approach to moviemaking. Woody is no fan of their methods, to be sure, but the notion of test screenings where a studio tests a movie in front of pre-release audience in order to gauge how well it will go over is particularly abhorrent to him.

"I think it's so antithetical to anything [that's] healthy about filmmaking," he stresses. "When I give my film to DreamWorks, they can go and test-screen it without me [for] marketing ideas, but I never have screened a film to work on the film. If you work with test screenings, you're inviting the audience to collaborate on the film with you. To picture Kurosawa or Fellini or Bergman or Bunuel screening things for an audience and then asking them what they like and changing their films... you'd never get a decent film from any of these people. You'd get homogenized crowd-pleasing, the product of people that don't have the slightest flair for moviemaking at all."

Disdainful as he is for the run-of-the-mill junk that crowds multiplexes nowadays, Allen is turning to films from other countries more and more.

"When you look at the films that came out over the last year, there are some very good foreign films but there's not a lot of really good American films," he says. "There are a couple that people fight to get out, but mostly the good films have been European films. Because they're serious people making serious films. They have grown-up intent. Whereas the other films we're talking about are all formula stuff. You know, they get a star and they get a combination of people and a nice safe subject. And you don't enjoy the movies as much, I'm sure, as you used to."

On the subject of his own films, Allen claims to be as open to criticism as he is quick to mete it out towards other filmmakers. And, he says, that assessment can come from anyone on his set.

"I do listen to anyone who speaks to me," he explains. "Most of the time I do [a scene] and move on, but if anybody there - I mean it could be the craft services caterer or the camera focus puller says, 'I don't think you were too great in that scene. I thought you were making too many faces,' I'll do it again. I have no problem accepting their estimation [or] their appraisal. I do it without making so many faces this time, in case they were right. Anybody is free to catch a mistake that I make or bad moment."

"And," he adds, "they do with impunity and no sensitivity at all! But I don't mind that."