"I wanted to make a fiction film"

Film The AV Club interviews Terry Zwigoff and offers up an interesting titbit:

"AVC: The Criterion edition of Louie Bluie includes an approving quote from Woody Allen on the back. What’s your association with Woody Allen?

TZ: I was asked to do a documentary about him by his producer Jean Doumanian, years ago. I met him, and spent about a week out there with him, and he was very nice, very generous. But she clearly wanted to do a film about his band touring Europe, and I was more interested in other aspects of his life. So they got Barbara Kopple to do that thing she did, Wild Man Blues. I liked the last scene in that movie, with his parents. That’s more like what I would’ve wanted to do.

AVC: Was that after Crumb?

"TZ: Yeah. Right after Crumb, before I made Ghost World. One of the reasons I bowed out of doing it was because I wanted to make a fiction film, and Ghost World was my chance. It was either do this documentary on Woody Allen, who I admired very much, or do Ghost World."

Much as I love that final scene and would have liked to have seen Zwigoff's version of Woody Allen's life, I think I much prefer the existence of Ghost World. A bit later there's some comment on Woody's directing style and one of the reasons he likes to write his own films and goes some way to explaining why he's an auteur when other film makers just aren't.