this is the most godawful keyboard ever half way through the essay the whole thing disappears...duh
and me an expert in data entry, hehe
was just talking about allen's films as portrayals of everyman speaking his truth..blamo it's gone
so now the crystalization of the thoughts I was having, hehe...if that can be
every allen movie I've seen latest being 'everyone says I love you' which is a great title in and of itself..oh boy do we need that kind of enthusiasm these days...news so full of corpses and crud...it's a reality check, an allen movie, we're still here, yes we know about Auschweitz, and Bosnia, and Rowanda, ok? got it..but that gets us stifled, that global news..we should be part of it, can't for whatever reason...and so we're in our own lives being exposed to culture whatever our means and education, and here comes allen with a cute little flick that has its own music and dancing and so forth and it's cute for an adult like a toy is cute for a kid..not a distraction so much as an affirmation of what it is to be a human being in this century. it's our daily life on a platter, with jokes.
allen says he writes the dialogue as he goes along filming the piece..the words come out like so many pennies in a pile, ready to go to the boxoffice and produce tickets to see it...it seems to flow out of him based on what he knows about life..dialogue being the words that are prompted to be spoken by his characters, he says he knows what he wants, that he has a part of each story and that he incorporates himself into the script as one of the characters in addition to being its creator.
he throws in good laughs and we are comforted that there is humor to be had, that we can alleviate our own little stressors, cupboard doors hanging open waiting to be banged shut with a laugh. Our nervousness, discomfort, indecision, are decided by the way the story turns out, you come away with a bit of comfort in the knowledge that here's a guy who sees it like it is with a spoonful of sugar to make it go down better. his movies are like everyman mantras for the times we live in. they're comfortable to watch, a bit schmaltzy in that they're full of a lot of references to his own ethnic origins and yet they're about everybody's stuff, they cross all the lines of human interaction and they take the modern, today exposures we all have and they tie them up in a neat package of immediate origin. They could be relevant in Afghanistan or Iowa because they're about how people treat one another, their motivations and the outcomes of decisions made. allen throws in the necessary humor to treat us to a breakfast of champions, a salad of our unknown desires and hopes. His stories bring about a thought process in the viewer that helps him cope with his own bowl of Cheerios. The viewer might not have thought that everybody else knows how he feels about the lady in the house across the street but now he knows how he behaves tells his story without him even having to say so. He also feels comfortable in that knowledge because Allen helps him to see that he is a human being, his feelings matter, he can only be ok wearing his own pair of shoes, nobody's going to wear them for him and he's going to maybe get a blister but it's alright, he has to break them in...use them to get around..
Allen says little about ethic and a lot about what works in film, lighting, camera and crew, actors, scripts, he has his own technique, method, largely coupled with his purpose as a comedian which I'd say is his forte, selfdeprecating humor being his stock in trade. Even in the interviews he calls himself lazy, he doesn't take the shot that will make the scene absolutely perfect but goes for the overall package that will produce the film and get it marketed He talks about never enough budget for what he wants to do and then says he builds scenes with elaborate costuming and then doesn't use it because it doesn't flow into the story like the creek after a rain, it's sometimes too much, but hilarious in it's own right as though he were building a comedy series of short skits and then tossing them into the bin with all the other rejects from other stories he produced. I think those could maybe be a big loss for us, like one clip from an early movie with Louise Lasser where he and Lasser were costumed in spider outfits on a big cable web talking about her having him for dinner... could be that little skit might have gone into Allen's version of a laugh-in sort of comedy series...but it becomes like many of his rejected scenes 'one for the bin'.too bad, it looked pretty funny
I had some other thoughts on why allen's work is so good for us audience people...it takes skill and that's good to know how he does his work but I think it's more important that he's out there making films for us because personally I come away happy and fortified by seeing his movies, they're all pretty cutesy in a good way, wholesome, aesthetic in that they reaffirm what it means to love someone and finally, funny.
of course, allen is self-indulgent in that he's most often in the picture, has a part, controls dialogue and filming but that's him, that's how he does it. He's tireless getting it the way he wants it, comes up with the story based on an agenda he's conceived along the way. He pulls it off in a series of scenes that lead up to the closing chapters and like a book of fairytales, there to be reread and relearned by the viewer so that they too are steeped in the brew of Allen's concepts. His work is neatly packaged, forthright and human in a way that portrays us as a people, New York being his favorite place. There's all kinds of people in New York. There's good food and literalness on the sidewalks and streets, the city, the buildings, rivers, ocean shores. People I know who live there wouldn't live anywhere else because as a big human antpile of humanity, everybody kinda gets along, slogs through the traffic, queques up for a hotdog, watches the latest 'look at me guy' parade down the street looking very odd, and has an opinion on the subway when there's a new mayor about to be had. That's just how it is. It's great.
Talk about capturing the flavor..As allen passes into his dotage, I think we can reflect a bit on what he's given us in his films. He's a wonderful, human sort of director, actor, writer, comedian. I talked to someone about reading this interview book and they said 'oh, that pervert' referencing his relationship with his adopted daughter/wife from his marriage to Mia Farrow. Well, that's how it is in these times, we don't make any bones about how we get to where we are, we just do it and if it feels right to us, we keep it. His movies are like that, his characters search for what feels right and most times they try to hold onto it, or not, but the passage there is what makes the story. I for one really enjoy the journey. Not really interested in the man's personal life. Who cares. His stories are about everyman and he's one a those...
