Then For quite some time before starting this project, I wonder abut the extent to which I should include television credits or projects in which Woody appeared as himself. There are a multitude listed at the Imdb, including contributions to documentaries with subjects as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Stanley Kubrick to sitcom appearances and publicity interviews. Ultimately I decided to arbitrarily stick to anything listed in the sections were he’s credited as a writer, director or actor thereby including anything in which he’s made a major artistic contribution.
Now Woody has a writing credit on Jean-Luc Godard’s Meetin WA and as a rare treat, here is the whole thing. It’s about half an hour long:
Filmed from what we can gather just after the release of Hannah and Her Sisters, Woody talks about the differences in shoot style between Gordon Willis and Carlo Di Palma, the effects of television and video tape on the audience and film technique and the two directors compare their attitudes to their back catalogue. Woody seems constantly perturbed by the approach to questioning, not quite sure whether to address Godard or his translator, usually plumbing with whoever spoke the most English on that occasion.
As a piece of art it doesn’t quite work, mostly coming across as a fairly good interview constantly under attack by Godard’s directorial ticks, as though his later film Éloge de l'amour has invaded an old episode of The South Bank Show. Godard constantly removes the context of whatever Allen is saying and cuts him off mid-sentence for an inter-title and some jazz music apparently as a homage to the similar approach used in Hannah, which Woody confirms was influenced by novels and not cinema as Godard suggests.
But nonetheless it’s worth half an hour of your time because it offers Allen at his most articulate and he is right that something about cinema as a kind of portal has been lost and how disappointing it is that most “kids” will see the cinema greats for the first time on television, constantly distracted by process. I’ve already suggested it’s that which spoiled A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy for me. I (we?) just watched Meetin WA streamed online; how different would my (our?) experience have been if we'd seen it in a cinema?
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