TV Monday night's special episode of Jonathan Creek was fairly entertaining for much of its duration, not least for Who fans of a certain vintage for featuring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith, the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller from the Big Finish / BBC Radio 7 audios in a few scenes together (c'mon Steven, look at them, you know you want to...)
David Renwick's scripts for Creek have always required a certain suspension of disbelief from the audience because of the outlandish unravelling of the mysteries. Much of the time that's been relatively easy to do because all of the information has been available, you just needed to be looking the right place and at the climax I've generally been very impressed with the narrative slight of hand, which is how it should be.
Monday night's story The Judas Tree failed, right at the end, because it expected the audience to swallow two facts and this is your final spoiler warning.
(1), (a) or firstly, a woman was apparently murdered (in order to frame someone), but it turned out it was in fact a double, the woman and her husband being culpable. There's no indication that the victim has received any plastic surgery and yet we're told because the locals don't really know who the apparently but not really deceased wife is, and because the husband identifies the body as his wife, no one in the process from the body being picked up to the ambulance-men, the police, the coroner and the people at the funeral home (and this is specified in the dialogue) noticed that the person being buried was not the wife. In the forensic 2010s.
Secondly, the husband and wife are summoned to a rendezvous with Creek and his assistant where the secrets are revealed. They each thought the other had asked them to meet. Then it's revealed the housekeeper texted each of them apparently anonymously in order to create the meeting. How is this possible without the caller id indicating that the text wasn't coming from the spouse's mobile? Even if the housekeeper managed to procure a disposable phone and the two relevant telephone numbers, why would these two deeply suspicious people turn up together at a moment when they really should be apart due to a pre-ordained plan?
Nitpicking? Certainly. But it's disappointing that Renwick, who's usually so good at spotting these kinds of inconsistencies seems to have gotten lost somewhere in there. I'd also worked out the two other big mysteries in the episode as soon as I'd seen them. That doesn't feel right either.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Count Mercury Goes To The Suburbs (1997)
Then See below.
Now Search for Count Mercury Goes To The Suburbs and it appears on dozens of Woody Allen biography pages which is a good indication that they’ve copied their details from its internet movie database page, which seems to be the main resource for information.
We discover that it was a short film directed by Joel Bruns (whose only other credit are as actor, cinematographer and camera and electrical department on another shot called Excerpt of Emerald City) and based on Woody’s short prose work Count Dracula from the Getting Even collection. Abdul-Khaliq Murtadha appears as Count Mercury (whose lately worked on television).
And I’ve not been able to find a copy anywhere.
The short story is online, and it’s a very funny and well worth reading tale of how the Count (as played it appears by Woody himself in prose form) is caught out on a visit to a baker’s shop. Which will have to do for the purposes of this project.
By way of compensation, here’s Vincenzo Natali’s contribution to Paris, J'Taime, Quartier de la Madeleine, which is on a similar theme and probably about as long:
Now Search for Count Mercury Goes To The Suburbs and it appears on dozens of Woody Allen biography pages which is a good indication that they’ve copied their details from its internet movie database page, which seems to be the main resource for information.
We discover that it was a short film directed by Joel Bruns (whose only other credit are as actor, cinematographer and camera and electrical department on another shot called Excerpt of Emerald City) and based on Woody’s short prose work Count Dracula from the Getting Even collection. Abdul-Khaliq Murtadha appears as Count Mercury (whose lately worked on television).
And I’ve not been able to find a copy anywhere.
The short story is online, and it’s a very funny and well worth reading tale of how the Count (as played it appears by Woody himself in prose form) is caught out on a visit to a baker’s shop. Which will have to do for the purposes of this project.
By way of compensation, here’s Vincenzo Natali’s contribution to Paris, J'Taime, Quartier de la Madeleine, which is on a similar theme and probably about as long:
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Then For me, the optimum time to watch films is 7:30 in the evening, after dinner but before you’re too tired to concentrate. Just after lunch is ok, though it does leave the pregnant pause between 3pm and dinner time, when if you’re in a city centre, the only thing left to do is navigate the rush hour traffic. The strangest time is the morning, just after breakfast which is when I saw Everyone Says I Love You, a week before release in the old Odeon on London Road with my friend Tris, mainly because, if it’s been a particularly good film, you know that there can’t be many things you’ll be doing for the rest of the day which will quite as entertaining.
Now I usually try to listen to the music of whichever film I’m writing about as I’m tapping away which means I have the soundtrack to Everyone Says I Love You on in the background right now. As with the film, it opens with Ed Norton (Ed Norton!) singing Just You, Just Me and I’m grinning from ear to ear, a Cheshire cat grin and I suspect it wouldn’t require Tim Burton, CGI or glasses to tell that it’s in three dimensions. I just know, that when I should be listening to the new Laura Marling album, this is going to be on repeat. Said soundtrack isn’t on Spotify, but I’ve curated this compilation by way of compensation.
Against prevailing expectations, the 90s was a purple patch; only a director at the top of their game, or with extreme confidence would attempt a musical at this point, especially one which bridges three cities and has such a massive cast. It’s not simply the variety of films Woody was directing, but their quality in terms of writing, star power, originality and visual ingenuity. To fixate, as some critics did at the time, on Woody choosing to have his character romance the most famous actress in Hollywood is missing the point entirely.
Though I like musicals, you’d have to ask Rick Altman or even Emma Brokes as to where Everyone Says I Love You fits within the history of the genre. To this layman, choreographer Graciela Daniele’s dance numbers remind me of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort with their highly co-ordinated seeming naturalism and the approach to song must have influenced Joss Whedon in deciding how to deal with the varying voice talent of the cast in Buffy’s Once More With Feeling.
And not just the singing. Like the Scooby gang, these characters seem well aware that they’re in a musical comedy; Natasha Lyonne says as much in the voice over and there’s the wonderful moment went Goldie Horne admonishes Alan Alda for breaking into song for no readily apparent reason. Unlike the Scoobies they seem very happy with the situation, and why not? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could burst into song on the bus, floating in WH Smiths or in a restaurant without people thinking we’re a bit mental or pissed or both?
Storywise, the strongest thread is Woody’s seduction of Julia Roberts, which is of course the comic version of Another Woman which the director mentioned in the Stig Bjorkman interview, though as in that film he avoids the predictable pay off in having Roberts discovering that her intimate thoughts have been “stolen” and yet still leaving Woody with the moral wreckage of changing his life to accommodate this dream girl, only for her to not be satisfied after all. There’s a reason that dreams are aspirational, otherwise we have nothing to strive for.
Courageously, Julia sings. We can tell it’s her voice because her name appears on the soundtrack listing, as does Norton, Lyonne, Allen, Alan Alda, Tim Roth (Tim Roth!) and Goldie Hawn, who it’s reputed was so good Woody asked her to detune herself so that she fitted his aspiration for the characters to sing like real people. Sadly, that isn’t Drew Barrymore – she balked considering her own voice to be too awful for anyone to hear – and in case you’re wondering why she signed up for this kind of musical in the first place, Woody didn’t tell the actors it was a musical until he had their signatures.
These facts are courtesy of the every accurate Imdb incidentally, which also says that Tracey Ullman and Liv Tyler filmed scenes for this film which were subsequently cut. Imagine: Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Natasha Lyonne, Drew Barrymore, Liv Tyler, Gaby Hoffmann and Goldie Hawn on the same shooting schedule. It’s an intergenerational manic pixie dream girl convention. No wonder Lukas “What ever happened appened to Lukas Haas?” Haas looks so happy to be there and Alan Alda so harassed. Sadly, Kristen Dunst was still on e.r. (having already had her uncredited screen debut as one of Mia’s kids in Oedipus Wrecks), Maggie Gyllenhaal making tv movies and Zooey hadn’t started on films yet so it’s not quite definitive.
In short, the film is magical. I’ve seen criticism from people who don’t like the fact that other than the Allen/Roberts mash-up it doesn’t have a strong storyline but wittingly or otherwise isn’t that just a comment on the fact that some of the best musicals don’t have a strong storyline? Aren’t they a pageant, a series of incidents which sometimes make some narrative sense but not always? Don’t they often include moments like the death of Grandpa which are generally just a prelude for some more song and dance? Frankly if I didn’t have another twenty-odd Woody Allen related films I’d be spending the rest of the year proving it.
Who is Toby Jones?
TV Posted because I've not seen anyone else mention it, which is extraordinary, a shot from the series trailer for Doctor Who ...
Toby Jones wearing the Doctor's clothes. My guess? It's an interesting approach the double banking episode where Matt has to be filming something elsewhere and which is sure to muddy the waters further when it comes to pub quiz questions about which actors have played the Doctor. Damn you, Richard Hurndall ...
Toby Jones wearing the Doctor's clothes. My guess? It's an interesting approach the double banking episode where Matt has to be filming something elsewhere and which is sure to muddy the waters further when it comes to pub quiz questions about which actors have played the Doctor. Damn you, Richard Hurndall ...
General Election called.
Politics Since I've already decided who I'm voting for (expect formal endorsement in due course), the next four weeks of news television and radio, especially the Today programme, will essentially look and sound like this to me:
"This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!"
"No it isn't!"
"Oh look, this is futile!"
"This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction!"
"No it isn't!"
"Oh look, this is futile!"
Really? That's what you're fixating on?
TV I had posted a grumpy post dissecting a Mail article about Karen Gillan's mini-skirt but I've pulled it because it involved linking to the Mail and the Telegraph and they're not worth the hits. So instead, here's a fun interview with Matt Smith from Esquire:
"Esq: David Tennant wrote himself into Doctor Who folklore by putting predecessor Peter Davison on a pedestal, and then promptly shacking up with his progeny (actress Georgia Moffett). Do you feel the pressure to follow suit?
MS: “My god, I’ve got to go and find Tom Baker’s daughter! Who’s still alive? I’ve yet to meet any Time Lords’ offspring, but if I do, I shall be sure to let you know.”
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: The Sunshine Boys (1996)
Then I bought the dvd at the old Virgin Megastore remainder shop at Cheshire Oaks not even aware that Woody had made the film. Only now did I get around to watching it …
Now … largely because of the lurid cover and the few negative reviews I’d seen online. They were wrong. Despite its tv origins (the act break fade outs are still intact), this is very funny, charmingly acted film which is far better than it has any right to be. Neil Simon’s original theatrical version of The Sunshine Boys was produced on Broadway in 1972 and is the story of real life Vaudeville team Lewis and Clarke being reunited after ten acrimonious years to recreate one of their old acts for a history of comedy television show.
A film followed in 1975. Woody was asked to direct (at about the time of Love & Death?) but was more interested in playing Lewis and so it passed to Herbert Ross with Walter Matthau and George Burns in the title roles. Then, twenty years later this television version was made with Simon updating the script, re-characterising the figures as old television performers cast to appear in a kids film and adding zeitgeisty references to playing Nintendo (and such a shame that a scene of Woody playing said console machine couldn’t be accommodated).
Peter Falk replaces Walter Matthau as Clarke and Woody finally gets to play Lewis. It’s their chemistry which really makes the piece work. The weight of the story is with Falk’s absent-minded, cantankerous stop-out who may have one toe in dementia or putting on his dementedness or a bit of both. Allen has more of his marbles and a clearer understanding of the modern world with the exception of an obsession for trying to out bargain shopping channels.
Both actors are at the top of their game; Falk has more work to do – his is the more character based role as he stumbles around almost as though, as Lewis suggests, Clarke can’t quite believe the sixties are over. But Woody is a revelation. He’s funny, touching and seems very much at ease reading someone else’s words and giving them the requisite timing. At one point I began to map out a different career for him, where he’d alternated acting and directing more, perhaps turning up in a John Hughes film during 80s or in Pulp Fiction as Mr Wolf instead of Harvey Keitel.
Sarah Jessica Parker appears as Clarke’s niece. It’s tempting to wonder if she asked Woody if he’d seen Miami Rhapsody which was shot in the same year though, assuming they were shot in the same order as release, it must have been a bit strange appearing a faux Woody Allen film only to find herself acting with him not to much further down the line. She’s as good here, and certainly holds her own against the two wise-acres. But it’s a neat cast with with Michael McKean, Liev Schreiber, Edie Falco and Whoopi Goldberg in supporting roles, Liev very early in his film career.
Director John Erman has a long career in television, working Peyton Place and My Favourite Martian as well as The Empath episode of Star Trek in the 60s through to tv movies in the past couple of decades with the odd feature here and there including the infamous Bette Milder weepy Stella. Some of the reviews I’ve seen have suggested that The Sunshine Boys is flatly directed, but in fact Erman is just cleverly giving his actors room to work and the script space to breath unafraid of its theatre origins. The effect is akin to one of the old BBC Play of the Month or Performance slots which were about being faithful to the text rather than television trickery.
Really? That's what you're fixating on?
TV Ooh look, the Telegraph's decided to have a go about Doctor Who being sexed up.
Both articles shift towards the positive at the end with some other unattributed quotes from interviews given to other papers and a quote from the Points of View forum (as though the rest of the web isn't awash with such things) but who reads that far down? But really? That's what you're fixating on?
And why are you implying one thing without being able to offer the comments and sources to back it up?
"The return of Doctor Who to television screens on Saturday night has led to a host of complaints and comments on online message boards that it is 'too sexy'."Oooh look, The Mail have rewritten the same story for themselves except in their case:
"The revealing outfit prompted a flood of comments on online message boards, with a section of fans accusing producers of 'shamelessly sexing up' the long-running family show and labelling it 'slutty'."Here it is again at the Metro. After spending a few paragraph lasciviously describing the "offending" scenes all the articles offer these unattributed comments. Both of them. Hardly a host or flood is it?
'Why did she dress up as a tarty policewoman? Surely that's not fitting for a family show.'The Digital Spy people have gone to work and found that the second incoherent mumble is from a Yahoo Answers thread. They seem to think the other comment is a rewrite of something from their own forums but this blog entry also has the phrase "tarty policewoman". Either way, googling that quote doesn't reveal a source and neither are from anyone who could be considered from somewhere fans congregate as they suggest.
Another said: 'They've completely demeaned Doctor Who by replacing good episode stories with slutty girls.'
Both articles shift towards the positive at the end with some other unattributed quotes from interviews given to other papers and a quote from the Points of View forum (as though the rest of the web isn't awash with such things) but who reads that far down? But really? That's what you're fixating on?
And why are you implying one thing without being able to offer the comments and sources to back it up?
miniblog archive
TV I've posted a review of last night's Doctor Who to Behind The Sofa. My views aren't particularly controversial. I loved everything but the title sequence.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Then It was towards the end of my third year at undergraduate university in Leeds. I had a friend, a seven foot tall friend called Dave (sometimes Bambi) and he’d invited me out to meet some of his course mates. We sat on the roof of the DryDock pub on Woodhouse Lane which is a converted boat and looks like this:
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The plan had been to see Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkey which had been released that night. But we drank. A lot. So much in fact that we forgot the time, ran late, rushed down to the cinema and by the time we got there it had sold out. Which considering the state we were in probably wasn’t such a bad thing. I remember the moment clearly because Dave picked me up off the ground and carried me through the foyer in anger. He was very tall and very strong. I was embarrassed and told him so. We went to see Mighty Aphrodite instead. By then I was half asleep (one of the effects alcohol has on me) and don’t remember much else about the experience, other than that it was a packed house and we were stuffed in at the back.
Now I’ve not been able to find a trailer online, but the print advertising for Might Aphrodite is one of the most gratuitous examples of misrepresenting the product. You can see the standard poster above: there’s Mira Sorvino looking gorgeous standing next to a list of the actors superimposed on the intercom system for an apartment block. It suggests seduction, it suggests erotic thriller actually. Now, I really wish I’d been more intellectually conscious during the cinema viewing so that could report the audiences reaction, when straight after the credits, Woody cuts to a Greek amphitheatre and the ancient tragedy in full swing and is threaded throughout the story (“Um, this is Zeus. I'm not home right now, but you can leave a message and I'll get back to you. Please start speaking at the tone.”)
Over the past few months, I’ve been trying to quantify what it is about these films, beyond the credits, dialogue and mis-en-scene that mark them out as “Woody Allen” films, what makes them so unmistakable, that David Frankel or Rob Reiner & Nora Ephron couldn’t quite capture, and it’s this. It’s taking a fairly standard tv movie of the week story and throwing a “quirky” random element. Disillusioned sports writer seeks out the mother of his adopted child and it transpires she’s a prostitute so he tries to transform her life, is the stuff of a cable movie from the Eighties with Mark Harmon. Except would Hallmark have included a Greek chorus commenting on, then ultimately becoming part of the action? The moment when F Murray Abraham’s Leader hands Woody a pen so that he can write down Linda’s details is one of my favourite in all of these films.
That’s the clear difference with Charlie Kauffman’s films too. Kauffman takes an already surreal story idea then ads a twist. Woody’s stories tend to be fairly broad even repetitive tales of human failings which appear in Greek tragedies and comedies, but it’s the telling which changes. Admittedly, the chorus merges the storytelling elements of the voiceover and caption in Hannah or the faux-documentary interviews in Husbands and Wives with the metaphysical advice beings of Play It Again Sam and Alice. But Woody knows that by including these elements he’s increasingly the intellect of what could have been a baudy end of the pier show, with him as the dirty old man some assume him to be ogling Sorvino’s mammaries. There are even jokes which are only funny if you have a broad understanding of Greek theatre and psychoanalytical theory.
A pre-Burton Helena Bonham Carter is in the Mia role and Peter Weller sits in for Tony Roberts but in their brief scenes neither can do much in the face of Mira Sorvino’s multi-award winning performance. Once she appears half an hour in, all fall in her wake, including Woody who just sometimes seems in awe. With her monotone Mickey Mouse voice, perfectly controlled movements and poise, she should be a cartoon character, the dumb blonde parody. Yet she’s entirely sympathetic, the infinitely bouncy lilt to her voice and clothes her way of masking a life too dark for extrapolating in what’s really just a light comedy. Few of her roles since have exploited this unique quality and that’s why out of all the performers who appeared in Woody’s films in that period, she was the one deemed worthy of an award.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Miami Rhapsody (1995)
Then When I was working in Birkenhead, researching public sculpture at the local history office, there was a Blockbuster Video on the route to the library. Birkenhead Blockbuster seemed to be the local clearing house for unboxed ex-rental tapes, which they were selling for fifty pence. It’s there that I bought a copy of Miami Rhapsody on the strength of the name. Knowing nothing about it, I watched in abject horror as I realised that it was a “copy” of a Woody Allen film and even then being in thrall to the master thought it blasphemous, unfunny dreck and said as much when I made my own inlay card for it later.
Now In Miami Rhapsody, director David Frankel does for Woody Allen what, Paul Verhoven attempted in Basic Instinct, Steven Soderbergh tried with The Good German and Todd Haynes succeeded with in Far From Heaven, taking the style of another director and inject a slightly different spin on it. With the presence of Mia in a matriarchal role, a casual observer might suggest that she’s saying to Woody, “see what you do isn’t that special”. Except this isn’t just a parody, or rough copy as New York Magazine (and many others suggested in a contemporary review, but an affectionate homage and one which I’m far kinder towards twelve years later.
Frankel is clearly a fan. As well as hiring Mia (who had to know what she was getting herself into), Scenes from a Mall’s Paul Mazersky plays her screen husband. His observation of Woody’s style is superb from the camera movements to choice of editing to the performances. As Roger Ebert notices, the film opens with an Annie Hall style confessional to camera from Sarah Jessica Parker (who’s mainly the “Woody Allen” figure for the duration) as she spends the film coming to terms with what she wants from relationships, stories of lust and infidelity amongst her family and friends spin about her, told in the anecdotal style of Radio Days.
If Stephen Spignesi had updated his Woody Allen Companion he would have had a field day looking for in-jokes. The film opens with the credits on titles cards against a black background (albeit with the wrong font) and a Louis Armstrong tune. At one point Martin Landau’s plotline from Crimes and Misdemeanours is retold with Kelly (Emily Gilmore) Bishop in the Angelica Houston part but with a much more positive outcome. At another, Jeremy Priven walks through dressed as Fielding Mellish from Bananas, brown rimmed glasses intact. Though cinematographer Jack Wallner is no Gordon Willis (who is?), he succeeds in painting Miami with the same beauty as Manhattan, except with a gold hue replacing black and white, and there are some technically very impressive steady-cam shots that drift through the city for many minutes.
The film has a raft of sweet performances. Jessica Parker is still a couple of years away from Sex In The City were her on-screen persona seemed to stiffen somehow and her delivery of some of the Allen-tinged zingers is eerie, her timing impeccable. The film captures Antonio Banderas in the same year as Desperado made him a star in the English speaking world and gives him plenty of room to show off his charisma. Mia’s playing a perfectly Mia character, slightly embarrassed that she should be the object of anyone’s affection able to show the facility for light comedy denied her in Husbands and Wives. Carla Gugino is also worth a mention simply because she’s one of my favourite actresses and um, that’s it. She’d later work with Banderas again on the Spy Kids movies and Priven on Entourage.
There are a few weak spots. There’s a certain narcissism amongst the characters which Woody would not have left uncommented upon or unpunished. Naomi Campbell appears playing a model and Kevin Pollack’s mistress and offers a non-performance but not in the Robert Bresson sense (think Jennifer Tilly’s character in Bullets Over Broadway), apart from in one moment in which she has to become really angry which she manages to be almost naturalistically convincing. The storytelling is often muddled and episodic as for periods Jessica Parker reacts to other people’s confessionals as though Frankel can’t decide whether he’s trying to create an ensemble piece like Hannah or a linear story with a single main protagonist like Manhattan.
But Frankel isn't always slavish to Allen and like the aforementioned directors injects elements which Woody hasn’t yet, almost as a commentary. One of my favourite moments has Banderas visiting his mother and the scene, though still one handheld shot in a style similar to Carlo Di Palma, the scene is played entirely in Spanish with subtitles and lacks the cultural orientalism of the later Vicky Christina Barcelona. The attitude to sex is far more explicit. People don’t just talk about it, we see them doing it. A lot. In lingerie. As Jessica Parker’s character asks her mother at one point “Now is the age in which you decide to become promiscuous?” It was 1995.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Don't Drink The Water (1994)
Then With the internet came two things. Access to a whole new world of information, and in the years before I bought a dvd player, films that had only been released on NTSC tapes in America. No region coding but slightly inferior picture and a three month wait because of surface mail. I ordered three films: Another Time, Another Place, a Lana Turner vehicle featuring an early appearance from Sean Connery filmed in Polperro where my parents enjoyed their honeymoon; Beautiful, a Minnie Driver vehicle about beauty pageants because of my Minnie Driver fixation and Don’t Drink The Water because I thought I was buying the 60s version.
Now Don’t Drink The Water, or Blossom grows up. I was a huge fan of Blossom and never missed an episode of its five year potter through Channel 4’s early evening schedule. It was about teenagers who were roughly my age and though it did tend to be very “issue” led (one issue being “Shall we go to the Oasis concert?”) the scripts were often much sharper than they had any right to be. Though shot during that sitcom’s reign of terror, it’s quite surprising to see Mayim “Blossom” Bialik in a more mature role with bosoms and looking sexy in a pink dress. She acquits herself well, coming across like a young Sarah Jessica Parker and certainly makes sense in a couple with Michael J Fox, even if he’s a whole sitcom generation (Family Ties in his case) ahead of her.
Produced for HBO in the years before it became HB-fucking-O thanks to The Sopranos and The Wire, Don’t Drink The Water might not be a great film but for various reasons it is still interesting. As we know, this is the second screen version of the play, the first being that 1969 version with Jackie Gleason which I hated over six weeks ago. I’ve scoured the web looking for production details as to why Woody decided to go back to the well, though as I speculated then, conceivably it’s because he was never happy with the way Howard Morris butchered his original script and was keen to set the record straight or HBO went to him with a budget and like his acting roles he was keen to, ahem, take the money and run. Whatever the reason, it’s certainly a better piece of work than the earlier unfunny one.
Working from the same theatre script, the story about a family stranded in a foreign military dictatorship and the dialogue are roughly the same. But in keeping the film more faithful to the original work, the balance of narrative power shifts to Fox’s ambassador’s son, given the keys to the embassy kingdom by his father at the beginning of the film in scenes reminiscent of the opening of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The rest of the film takes place largely within the embassy, so when the family arrive, the business of them being chased from airport appears in reported speech and their reason for becoming trapped – the army suspecting that they’re spies – almost thrown away in the chaos. The story then roughly proceeds in the same way, though without the sex comedy aspects of the 60s film, Fox and Bialik’s relationship developing more gradually and amiably.
As Entertainment Weekly noticed at the time, Woody makes no concessions for the contemporary audience, filming the text largely as is employing a voiceover and Zelig-style newsreel to explain the political environment. Carlo Di Palma also shoots it using the same handheld improvisational style he was playing about with in Husbands and Wives and Manhattan Murder Mystery, scenes often rushing out in one shot which means that the actors are allowed to perform the piece rather like a stage production. That causes Don’t Drink The Water to have an added layer of poignancy because we’re seeing the older version of the director shooting material created by his younger version, with Fox playing the character he must have had in mind for himself. That he is so respectful suggests that like any artist he understands the development of his craft and his abilities but knows that for all of his embarrassment about his accomplishments in some interviews, you can't really trash what’s gone before because it explains where you are now.
In reality, that is part of the problem I had with the film. Clearly parts of this script are very funny (explaining why theatrical production are still very regular, judging by the number that have cropped up on YouTube) but in film terms it’s crying out for the slapdash approach from the 60s. Some of the moments of chaos look silly without edits and the more naturalist/improvisational approach to the script, especially by Fox, means that some of the one-liners are stepped on or mumbled at the end of sentences. Maybe, like Cusack in Bullets Over Broadway, Woody told him to simply act rather than do an interpretation, but the part needs a clown in places and Fox is too straight-suited here for that and sometimes his more meaningful rendition of a put upon son is at odds with, Dom DeLuise’s priest magician which is largely an exercise in shameless mugging.
There are also some very funny lines (“We’re suing them for low tolerance to tainted meat…” – you had to be there) and sequences even if now they’re not exactly politically correct, especially the material about the Hollanders meeting a visiting Sheik and his several wives (“I count fourteen wives. How do you ever get into the bathroom?”). It’s quite refreshing to see a brief return of the early slapstick version of actor Woody and as in Oedipus Wrecks he has a great rapport with Julie Kavner as his wife, already five years into her stint as Marge Simpson. And despite being a made-for-television piece it still retains that Woody Allen feel; he used the same production staff that worked on his previous few pictures (and beyond – Juliet Taylor cast this too) and the familiar font on black heralds and closes. If only I knew how the production came about. Perhaps, it's nicer not to know and just enjoy the anomaly.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Then When I was at university, Leeds had an amazing choice of cinemas. Screens in the city were balanced across an Odeon on The Headrow with five and the ABC around the corner with another three. In Headingly, on Otley Road we have The Cottage Road, The Lounge about half a mile away and my favourite, the Hyde Park Picture House. Here it is on Google Street View:
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The interior looks like a classic old theatre. Looks in fact, like the theatre in the film. Viewing Bullets Over Broadway was like entering virtual reality. I’ve said this before, but the Hyde Park is were I began my film studies.
Now With Bullets Over Broadway, both me and Woody are entering unknown territory (assuming for the purposes of this that Woody is a metaphysical construct made up of his films rather like the Bogart that appeared in Play It Again, Sam). This is the first film not covered by the Bjorkman interview (though it is eluded to) and the Spignesi companion. I’m on my own. Unless I google the name of the film, of course. But I like a challenge. But if these reactions start to lose cohesion, you'll understand why.
For Woody, Bullets Over Broadway is the first acknowledgement that he’s becoming too old to play some roles and hires what amounts to an avatar to play the “Woody Allen” character, in this case John Cusack, who fits like a glove. On reading the script Cusack turned up and did an impersonation until Allen told him not to and just act. He might lack some of the ticks and gestures, but his bespeckled playwright David could still only be more like the figure who appeared in these films in the 70s and 80s if a younger version of Allen had played it himself.
Something I hadn’t appreciated before was the extent to which Woody was essentially box-ticking the traditional film genres. Looking across the dvd spines, about the only type of film he hasn’t attempted yet is the western (and I suspect it’s a bit late for that now). Bullets Over Broadway as the title suggests merges the gangster film with the back stage film as a way of discussing the compromise of art or the art of compromise, about how most artists will always follow the money.
Oddly, the relationship between Cusack and Chazz Palminteri’s savant thug Cheech, reminds me of the infamous dinner scene from Interiors. Back then, Woody seemed to have in mind a kind of self-flagellation as the family arrogantly turned on the apparently uneducated new wife of their father. I later imagined what might have happened if she’d randomly spoken up and offered a devastating contribution to their discussion, revealing that she too was educated but had decided that she’d realised that pseudo-intellectualism doesn’t make you clever.
Their reaction would be much the same as happens in the theatre when Cheek pipes up with his first amazing suggest which saves the play having been insulted constantly by David. Thematically it’s very similar – David thinks that he’s superior because of his job and outlook and politics but Cheech has insight – and an unfortunate moral compass which is his downfall. On reflection, I can see now how many of these films are about the internal battle between intellect and passion being externalised. Unless all films are about that and I’ve been missed something all of these years.
Oh god, I think I maybe. Wow. Um. Anyway, the production design in Bullets is impeccable. Look at those curtains.
Great cast as ever too. Diane Wiest in her final role in the Woodyverse as Helen Sinclair, demonstrating her flexibility, cartoon-like but still convincing and unlike anything else Allen has asked her to do before (“Don’t speak. Don’t. Don’t speak.”) Apparently she signed to do the film script/concept/title unseen. Force of nature Jennifer Tilly is in her hay-day bending the voice she’s been blessed without around some sharp comic timing as the gangster’s moll turned “actress” (“Chaarum. Chaarum. Chaarum”). Tracy Ullman as a faded English Rose.
If I have to have a favourite scene, it’s when Jim Broadbent’s rotund stage presence Warner Purcell has to flee Tilly’s dressing room in his underwear, much needed corset included. As he steps into the street, he’s greeted by some fans who are just leaving and they conduct a conversation about the play as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. The way it’s shot harks back to the Are Transvestites Homosexuals? sequence in *Sex or an anecdote from Radio Days, though much, much funnier. That final line is a killer.
Carte Noire renders me speechless
Advertising Some time ago I registered with coffee people Carte Noire for a free sample. Since there have been regular mailshots, but none more surreal than this in which they've cleverly worked my first name into the text. But they also seem to have forgotten that their coffee might drunk by someone other than the ladies. Or at the very least the results are somewhat ambiguous.
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