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Why Can’t Woody Allen Escape the Past? · Boomer Has It!

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: On October 5th, Woody Allen starts shooting his 51st film in Madrid, just over a month before he turns 91.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: And before you start asking about his insurance arrangements, it's worth noting that his mother lived to be 96 and his dad just over 100.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we may have Woody Allen to kick around for a few years yet.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And people have been kicking him around, especially in in the States, where accusations of sexual predation have dogged him for some years now.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just this weekend, Michael Kane announced that he would never work with him again.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Although it's worth noting that Alan hasn't asked Michael Cain to work with him again, and that Cain at 93 is already announced for term.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: But people who've worked with him in the past have been lining up to say they'll never work with him in the future.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why is he working again?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: And with all these accusations swirling around him, is it even okay to watch his films?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm JB Miller in London.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Jim Jelamis in South Bend, North Dakota.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're not.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: I've I'm in Westport, Connecticut.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Westport, Connecticut, and this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Jim, we are both Woody Allen fans, and we've re-watched some of his films recently, which we'll get to.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you're still a New Yorker, which I'm not anymore.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's always been Woody Allen's central.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was born in Brooklyn, uh, moved to the Upper East Side.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's used to play clarinet at the Carlisle Hotel.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so many of his films have been uh set in New York and even defined the city for lots of people.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: What do New Yorkers think of him now?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll tell you, this New Yorker will never work with him again.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I promise you that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God for that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Me, though I never have in the past, and there are no plans to in the future, but I can definitively say I'll never work with him again.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Phew, got to get that out of the way.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, as for New Yorkers, you know, I've I've been taking on official polls and I I get mixed results.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of a lot of people, some people in their 20s and 30s, they're just they're vague about him.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: They his reputation brands him as a bad man.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, more sophisticated people of a certain vintage, I'm talking about 30s or 40s, they'll say, you know, the age-old argument.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do you separate the personality from, you know, and the public profile from uh the artwork or whatever those types of people leave behind?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, there's a long list of these types of people, right?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Who um love them and hate them.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Roman Polanski, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Pablo Picasso, J.K.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Rowling, Kevin Spacey, Kanye West.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that is a big list.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that our discussion today, though?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it is.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Woody Allen's a a unique case for a number of reasons.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: One is just the pure longevity of his of his career.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's been uh he you know, he goes back to the 1950s.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: He worked on the Sid Caesar show, then he became a public figure by 1963.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: He was doing stand-up at the bottom line in the village, and then he was in movies.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he's been uh you know on the public, he's had a public profile for over 60 years, and he's still working.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's still working.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and I I was thinking about this because you know, he also, you know, he defines New York in a certain time.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: He really captured the zeitgeist of New York in the 1970s.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: He more than that, didn't he capture it, he sort of, he sort of created an aspect of uh, you know, he he he depicted uh a sort of Jewish wasp culture, the met-going New Yorker crowd, very sort of upper middle class crowd, very white crowd.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: He got criticized for not having people of color in his films.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't his his New York.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so he captured, I think he captured New York uh in a time and a place the way Federico Fellini captured Rome in the 60s and 70s, and Truffo captured Paris in the 70s, and um maybe um uh Al Madovar has captured Madrid more recently.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but Fellini died at the age of 73, and he wasn't making films about Rome, you know, for a number of years.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and Woody Allen just kept going, and I think he has not moved on.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of aesthetic problems with him, even beside, well, really besides the objections to his personal life, which I think are a whole other discussion, and we're gonna discuss both.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what should we start with?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much to discuss with Woody Allen, he is a big subject.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I thought it was interesting that you you said that the younger people you encounter kind of know uh what they know of him is something um wrong or they're sort of ill at ease or something.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's the what am I saying?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: The younger people you meet seem to know that there's something amiss about Woody Allen, even if they're not sure what it is.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: They know they're not supposed to like him, perhaps.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is that yeah?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and you know, he brought it on himself.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: And should we, I mean, should we do a quick rundown of his his transgressions?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's get it out of the way, really.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Let's that's a good idea.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do that.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and one thing that really riles um women of all ages is that he tends to date 17-year-olds, or he has dated a couple of 17-year-olds.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um in real life, this is not his character.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: In real life, in real life, in real life, in his 40s, he dated uh an actress named Stacy Nelkin.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when he was in his 40s, he dated a uh former model named Babby Christina Engelhart.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh he he she was 16, he was 41.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: His films typically cast him as an older man with a younger love interest, although that's not so different from Hollywood, patriarchal Hollywood.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Would you agree?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I would agree with that, and he stopped doing that at a certain point.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: He there was an interesting podcast that we both listened to um with um Bill Maher, and he he said something I thought that was interesting.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: He said that he had he started introducing stuff surrogates in his films when he um uh was too old to be the romantic lead.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and Bill Maher was saying, you know, we miss you in the films, and he's saying that he stopped being in his films when he was told to be the romantic lead.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: It never occurred to him, it never occurred to him to play just an older character with older concerns, or dating someone who is closer to his age.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a film people would be interested in.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be interested to see that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Woody Allen at 75 dating a 75-year-old woman or meeting a 75, you know, the problems of romantic love in your 70s, meetings.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a really interesting film.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: But he's this is my problem.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's stuck in the past, and he's still thinking in terms of the young romantic lead.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And in his mind it might be him, but on screen he realizes it has to be a younger actor played by uh someone else.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sorry, I interrupted you, but you you're you were saying that it's it is Hollywood, it's a Hollywood cliche almost, that it's the older, older guy with the younger.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's changing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: There have been films that have reversed that conceit recently.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, there are many.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: There are many that have reversed that conceit, but it's it rankles women, and I don't blame them.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's it's boring.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it I think there was a time, maybe there was a time we could see Fred Astaire with uh a younger ingenue because he was dancing, and you know, he's Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Sean Connery, going through, you know, the major actors of the 40s, 50s, 60s, even up to the 70s.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but uh, you know, women are are tired of it, and men are too, I think.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a little bit, it's a little tedious.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then and then, you know, maybe we should just get this out of the way, the legal events of Woody Allen's life.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: He was uh in January 1992.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going back a ways.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: It emerged that he, around age 56, was having an affair with a young woman named Soon Yi, who was 21 at the time, the adopted daughter of Alan's long-term partner, Mia Farrow, and her ex-husband, the conductor and pianist Andre Previn.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um that was the end of Alan and Pharaoh.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um they never lived, Alan and Pharaoh never lived in the same apartment.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: But in the summer of '92, she accused him of molesting their seven-year-old, seven-year-old daughter Dylan.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, for the record, the allegation was investigated in two jurisdictions: Yale, New Haven Hospital Sexual Abuse Clinic and New York City Child Welfare Administration.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Neither found any evidence that this child had been molested.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that wasn't the end of the pro his problems, his legal problems.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: The the second one is he brings it on to himself.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he he launched a custody, but very ugly custody battle against Mir Pharaoh.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can I can I just put it in interject?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've no I have no idea why he would fight a custody battle.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he ever wanted.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, I was gonna say, I don't think he really wanted to have those children in his house.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: He does have two daughters with his wife, Sun Yi.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um often custody battles are waged by um angry husbands or partners to get back at their partners.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um not that Mia Faro has necessarily been the best mother over the years.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: She seems to have a very large family.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of his her children are adopted, and she can't always look after them.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: But and there have been a split, there's been a split in that family.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Some people, some of the adopted children have had nothing good to say about her and have split with her.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: But um, okay, yes, sorry, get back to his custody battle.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was fighting a custody battle, which got him into more um more trouble, I believe.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: More trouble, and and I think it's important to note that this is 1993.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: This goes way back, and it was an ugly period.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: It was in the media for a long time.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: He lost the battle, he spent a lot of money on it, including six figures, the tune of$100,000, hiring a public relations agency to smear his ex-wife.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: Were they ever married?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: No smear Mia Farrow.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: His ex-partner to smear her, and he lost that battle.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then it it this reared its ugly head in 2014 when Dylan Farrow, older, made a public statement that accused him of molestation.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: It I'm only bringing it up because it's it's really a sort of like the last volley in this battle.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And there were some interesting editorial choices.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think the New York Times would have run it, but they did through an online blog from the editorial columnist Nicholas Christoph.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: So naturally, um, they had to find a way to for the other party to respond, and and they gave Woody Allen a uh response in the editorials, uh, the opinion pages.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um meet the Me Too the Me Too movement wasn't good to him.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: And from you know, this from period of night, what 2018 to 2021, so huge repudiation, the whole body of his work from the Me Too movement, uh, and then a re-examination of that whole sorted affair in an HBO docuseries.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that brings us to the present, and maybe because a lot of this happened in the 90s in the early aughts, that younger viewers, cinephiles, listeners might not know the whole story about Woody Allen or or understand his vast filmography.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: 50 directed 50 movies, starred or or wrote many others.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he he's got a huge body of work, but just going back to his private life, uh, I mean, uh so many people have said to me they don't like him because he um somehow married his daughter.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it there's a lot of misinformation out there.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And in the defense of that Sunnyi Woody Allen um relationship, it's the longest relationship of his life.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: They've been married for 30 almost 35 years.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've uh have two two two daughters together.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he um third time lucky with him, you know.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I just think it's hard to argue with a marriage that uh seems to be uh that long-lasting, that's comfortable, that I guess happy.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: There is I think um they have a very old-fashioned relationship because he's he act he's talks about her quite patronizingly, a Sun Yi, and there's a huge age difference.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he sort of acts like her um Svengali.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's that's their business, you know, they're still together.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um are you constantly correcting to having a feeling you have to correct people when they misunderstand that story?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's a complicated story, I understand.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yes, he and Mia Farah would never marry, they never lived together, um, they adopted uh one or two children together, they have a birth child together.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, there's definitely a connection there, and she was the woman scorned.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can understand why she was very upset at um what happened.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I think there was um some pretty poor behavior of both sides, and uh maybe worse.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what happened um in that house.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: The HBO documentary is pretty convincing and uh convincing of what that he some in maybe some moment of madness, he somehow abused uh his um young uh girl, you know, one time seven-year-old, you know, that does not excuse the fact uh that it was only once, but there's there's not a history of any uh other accusations of you know pedophilia about him.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think dating a 16 or 17-year-old is a different, it's a different uh you can criticize that, but it's a different criticism.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's different it's a different criticism, and then you always have to ask yourself, um, if you you know, again, he he never faced trial, never faced charge.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: He he he was acquitted or not even acquitted in it's just about his uh two jurisdictions.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um how do you how do you re-litigate through documentaries?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is it fair?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is it honest?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think there's something to be said for it.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you know, the law enforcement and the the court system's flawed.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um a lot's kept private, a lot doesn't enter into the public record.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe, you know, maybe we look around the the edges and it reveals a little more.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a complicated case, and the fact that uh he was acquitted twice doesn't mean um you know that he's innocent, it just means he was acquitted twice.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I don't know.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what to do with that, but it was on the record.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the HBO documentary is very much on the record, and so you can watch it.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's disturbing.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that hasn't stopped me enjoying his films and watching his films.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: It has uh stopped people I know from watching his films or liking him.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm I'm looking at uh the this vast filmography.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we have a list in front of us, everyone, and it's uh it's all his films, all 50 of them, plus where he's contributed as a voice actor or an actor or writer.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the the scandal was put to bed in 1992, I think, and he went on to make uh by my count, two, four, six, seven more films, including Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, which delivered a, I think, an Academy Award for its lead actress.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Mira Cervino.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone, you know, a lot of and I and you asked earlier about, you know, how does how does New York look upon him?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, in those times of the, you know, the post-breakup of Mia Faro, he and Sun Yi were kind of, they were an item and they were the man and woman about town.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I recall my wife walking down Park Avenue at lunchtime, talking to her friend, sharing an anecdote about if I have about what she'll do if we're out to dinner with friends, and she sees that I have food in my teeth.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: She will rest her chin on her hand on the table, like she's casually listening.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: She'll smile and she'll take with her pinky finger, she points at my at her teeth to give me a message.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And as she was telling that story, a couple passed them.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: And her her companion, her lunch companion said, By the way, you just told that story in front of Soon Yi and Woody Allen, and they had a good laugh over it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And in the next in Woody Allen's next film, there was that scene with a person with a foot stuck in their teeth.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Where does he get his ideas from?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great New York moment.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have uh I just can't think of the only London moment that's equivalent, is so I once saw Francis Bacon and stumble across the street in Soho on his way to the colony room.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And but uh that's I've never had a Woody Allen moment.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's priceless.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it's just it just it's what it comes with the you know, he's part of the drapery of New York City.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's just I mean, there's the New York Yankees and you know, all our sports teams, and there's the mob and you know, all the stuff that makes New York good and bad, and he's he what I would say was a fixture, as you pointed out, he's just basically more of himself right now, not a man of the times.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he might still be seen, what ringside or courtside uh at a Knicks at a Knicks game.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: A Knicks game, yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: He watches the Knicks, he watches the plays the clarinet.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he and um Spike Lee.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: There are certain New Yorkers.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when when when Andy Warhol died, I thought, oh my god, that's he's he was such a New Yorker.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was that I would see him.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I rented him a few times, and I couldn't imagine New York without uh without Andy Warhol.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, New York went on.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: It survived that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But there's certain personalities that seem very, very New York, and Woody Allen, I guess remains one of them because he's still alive, he's still living in New York, although he's gonna head to Madrid soon to make this film.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I assume he's making Madrid because he's getting financing there.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: He his stateside financing has kind of dried up, and I think he has um maybe a better reputation in Europe.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Europe is maybe not as with different ways to look at it, punitive or moralistic than uh as Americans are.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Forgiving.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh forgiving.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: They may be more forgiving and less moralistic.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um Polansky, you know, his head uh still lives in Paris.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was a Paris moment.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I saw Polansky once on the street in Paris.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's still uh a Parisian.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: You should have made a citizen's arrest on behalf of the United States.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that case was dropped, but I might be wrong.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that didn't occur to me at the time.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't believe it is, but I think you could have taken it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's a little guy.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I failed to arrest Roman Polanski.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: You could have hit him with a hit him in the head with a baguette and taken him away.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: My first thought.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: My first thought was my god, that's Roman Polanski.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Woody Allen, uh, I never ran into him in the street.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: But so he's got a following in Europe.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: He has a play, uh, he said on the Bill Maher uh podcast that he'd written a play that was making its round in Europe and would soon be done in in this New York.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember if it ever came out in Europe.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would have known about that if it were.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got a following in Europe.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's made other films in Europe, uh, to Rome with Love.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are the other ones?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um Irania is a uh Rifkins Festival.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh his last film, Coup de Chance, was shot in Paris in French, which is quite brilliant because he doesn't speak a word of French.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he had it all translated.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got uh he can get financing.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: The the deal, the the the deal with the Madrid financing was a lot of uh some of the budget came from uh some Madrid uh city cultural.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fund.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the deal was something like 30 or 40 percent of the film has to be shot outside in Madrid, showing Madrid.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the word Madrid has to be in the title somewhere.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Presumably could be, you know, um Madrid sucks or we hit Madrid.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think they'd have that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Lovely Madrid.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so that's one of the deals.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I should probably Madrid probably wouldn't have been in the title, you know, anyway.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so we've gone through his controversies.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: What about the work?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And do the controversies cloud the work?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is sort of a key question.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and for me, um they don't up to a point because um there is that problematic film Manhattan, uh, which we both re-watched recently.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what was your take?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's Manhattan about?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, we should uh not assume people know what the plot is.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's Woody Allen, the Woody Allen character, Isaac, who's 42, and he's dating a high school student who's 17, played by by Mariel Hemingway.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is um until he meets his uh best friend's mistress and ends and uh and transfers his affections to her.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then there's a conflict there.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's uh at the time when that film came out in 1979, it got universally universal great reviews, and I do not remember reading a single review that questioned this relationship between a 42-year-old and a 17-year-old.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's one scene when he's actually waiting outside for her at the Dalton School, he's waiting outside for her.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: I found that scene shocking.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, or were you recently when I well I I re-watched it, I I don't even really remember it that well.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I found it disturbing the first time.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, well, now it is disturbing.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: When I first find it even more disturbing this time around, and I had once again I had to stop it, start it, stop, start again before I could get through the whole thing.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And she's a she's a New York City kid.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: The character's name is Tracy.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: And what happens in New York City schools and other schools is there's pickup at school ends, parents come, they pick up their children, and they're doing that at the Dalton School, and he's picking up his paramour.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, happens to be 17.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you it's kind of disturbing in 1979.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was a laugh, that was a funny scene because of the absurdity of it.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's that uncomfortable reference point because I believe Jeffrey Epstein taught at the Dalton School.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm pretty sure of that.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: He definitely taught he was a math teacher there, for sure.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: He was a math teacher there.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that there is that that's no Woody Allen's fault that he taught that, but there, but it's a reference point in the film.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's hard to see that scene now, at least I I thought of it recently when I re-watched it.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: My god, that's what Jeffrey Epstein taught.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um it is an uncomfortable scene.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: There are other uncomfortable scenes, they're in bed together, and um and she asks him if there's any fantasy that he's ever entertained that no woman has um, you know, has performed for for him, making her the aggressor.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he's shocked.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: He says, actually says, I'm shocked, I'm shocked.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's such a young girl.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: He but he wrote that line, and she looks un and Mariel Hemingway looks uncomfortable delivering that line because it's an uncomfortable line.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, that film now reads differently, it watches differently than it did in 1979.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Are you shocked that when it came out, there was not a single um concern about that?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there must have been.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can't imagine there wasn't.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you read the reviews, I didn't, um, but you probably read from all the major critics.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I read all the periodicals and I read that the Village Voice headline on the front page of the voice So Wonderful, which is a reference to the Is that right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a front page review.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: They absolutely loved it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in a way, we've What about Ms.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Magazine?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Did you read their review?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I did not read the Ms.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Magazine review, but uh have we become more uh more moralistic uh as as uh as a culture, as a society?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I would hope so.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: I uh you know uh need we get into a debate about whether it's proper for a 40-something year old man to date a young woman uh who's at that age?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are young women who are there, they have agency, of course they do, and they are um they're experimenting with their looks and their interactions with potential partners.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that's misleading for some men and some women, and I I it I don't excuse it.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, especially, you know, if you're a parent, I mean, for God's sake, that's why I think the Dalton is a good thing.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a daughter who's 17.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: I have a daughter, I have a 17-year-old daughter.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would not want her die dating a 42-year-old guy.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, when I I remember that when I first learned of his relationship with um with Sun Yi, my first thought at the time was of all the women he could meet in New York, why does he need to date his partner's young daughter?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, there are a lot of women who would be interested in Woody Allen.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: He dated a lot of beautiful women, his own age, including Diane Keaton, uh, for a few years.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Mia Farrow, you know, these are beautiful women, his age, the age appropriate for him.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: 42.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you meet you could meet some uh beautiful 42-year-old women, 45, 50-year-old women.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, you know, I have I've come to a conclusion though, after doing the research for this pod, I think I probably listened to three and a half hours of Woody Allen talking because last year he was promoting an autobiography, and this year he's promoting a novel in progress.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: So he repeats himself repeatedly, and one of the things he repeats is when an interviewer broaches the topic of his his legal scam, legal troubles, he says, it doesn't bother me in that tone.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't bother me over and over again.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: And after hearing it three, four, five, six times, sometimes I think me thinks this director doth not protest enough because you have you date your your stepdaughter, and there are it has an impact on other people.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: When you date a young woman not your age, it has an impact on other people, and that's that's the definition of a sociopath.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I agree.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this this came across that I don't know if if you remember this, maybe 10 years ago, there was is it a two-part PBS documentary about Woody Allen?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: They interviewed him.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and one thing that came across I remember from that documentary was he compartmentalizes his life.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's how he gets through his life.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: He compartmentalizes, that's how he survived his setbacks and his challenges.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I, you know, and I think he's oblivious to the fact that he really, you know, and I as I've said it said on the record a few minutes ago.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I don't think it's necessarily fair to criticize a marriage that seems to be successful, but he seemed oblivious to how much he ruptured that family and hurt Mia Farrow, his partner many years.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was hugely public, and he seems to just block that out.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and even in his his response to Dylan back then in the New York Times, he's he basically denied the accusation.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Let's never talk about this again.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I going back to Manhattan, uh students of literature take note.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I believe he stole something from uh Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir Nabakov in Lolita.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you're if you've ever read Lolita and it's quite a ride, you get to a point of the book where you say, Oh my god, this man is going to consummate a relationship with a very young woman.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I it Nabokov softened the blow because as in that scene, uh Lolita reveals that she'd had many affairs before before Humbert, Humbert Humbert.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's how Alan stole that and in it was part of the script.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: He said he he says off-handedly, I can't believe you had three affairs before me.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a weird choice of words, affairs, because they were boys her age, but he called them affairs, as if as if she's an experienced, grown-up, grown-up woman with a man.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of makes her the aggressor, her the sexually right, uh, you know, sophisticated one.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he's shocked by this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah it's a it's a neat little trick, which uh worked in seven 1979.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it works anymore.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I still like the film.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I like that film.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is a uh there are things that are uncomfortable in the film that are not, I don't think are that aren't meant to be uncomfortable really, but they are.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I still like the film.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's still there's some really funny things in the film, and uh Marielle Hemingway is terrific at it.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not her fault uh of the part that's written.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's very good in it.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: She's she's she's amazing.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: She's amazing, but yeah.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, you know, but that's a couple years after after maybe his early masterpiece, Annie Hall, which won the best picture Oscar, and it got a best director and best writing, and I mean, and it got Diane Keaton, the best Oscar for uh best actress.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a and and I re-watched that film recently, and that film is letter perfect.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's nothing it stands up, it really stands up.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: It stands up.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing that feels uncomfortable uh about that.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he does act like a Svangali to her, but she leaves him in the end.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: She gains her own, you know, independence.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're kind of rooting for her to leave him at that point.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I love that film.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: It it and and it's again it captures uh a sensibility.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's I I would say what would you you know and again?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go back to his catalog of work.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I would say it was his first grown-up movie because up till then, me and my friends would go to the movie theater, we'd buy some popcorn, we'd pay our fee, you know, our our you know, whatever, and we we were in it for the laughs.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, take the money and run.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Bananas, play it again, Sam.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Play it again with Sam was kind of kind of sophisticated.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: Sleeper, though, was an all-out slap stick.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: Sleeper was hilarious, hilarious, which we've touched on.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Then all of a sudden, we there was a movie called The Front, where he was an actor, and and I was like, Oh, Woody Allen's gonna be funny, but it it's not funny.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then Andy Hall was hilarious, but very sophisticated.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he said he's so innovative in so many ways.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I I in one of the interviews I heard, he was talking about raising his game during his career and how he wanted a better audience who wouldn't understand better jokes.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: He wanted a more sophisticated audience.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we're we're going from early Woody Allen, who was a stand-up, who was a writer on a goofy major network television show, the show of shows, working with.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, think about the think about who he worked with on staff as a writer.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart, uh Neil Simon.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: Neil Simon.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Neil Simon.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's kind of dazzling.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: And even those early films are there's a lot of innovation.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: It take the money and run was um, it was his idea to make it in a documentary format.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was the first time that's ever been done.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, peep Cinephiles who listen to Boomer has it know that there are some great films like Waiting for Guffman and Spinal Tap, or even the the TV show, The Office.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's done in this documentary format.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_02: He was an innovator in that.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: And he he also adapted it for a film, that same technique for a film called Zelig, also highly innovative, very interesting, funny.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Zelig is very technically sophisticated because it's uh it's all like newsreel footage for the 1920s and 30s, where he inserts himself and Neofaro into it.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just watched, rewatched it last night.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's very, very funny.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to, and then another thing I like about Woody Allen is is his films do not um uh overstep their their welcome, outdo their welcome.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: They they average around 90 minutes or less.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I say this as a as a fervent film watcher, and I can't watch two hour, three-hour films anymore, not in one night.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Zelig is an hour and 17 minutes.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's yeah, you know, we in the lot of films are 88 minutes, 87 minutes.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't overstay his welcome in those films.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they're brilliant.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Annie Hall, he was and you don't feel short-changed either.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, they're the length they they need to be.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: They don't need to be any longer.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: They really don't.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: They're the also they were the they're the length of the films he would have grown up with, the 1930s and 40s.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is the length of films.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: So traditional Hollywood tended to be 90 minutes.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Buster Keaton, a film would have been like an hour and 10, hour and seven minutes.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they were shorter films, and he stayed kept making uh writing films in that tradition, that length, which I appreciate.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh Annie Hall was a change.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: He said he sacrificed jokes um in exchange for a character um character development.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I do think the surprise, uh, the success of that film surprised him and his and his producers.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it afforded him um the next film he could make, which was Interiors, which had no jokes at all.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very serious film.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: And me and my friends, of course, we went to the movies and we what's going on here?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is about the McCarthy era.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's about who No, no, that was about the McCarthy era.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Wait, no, I'm I'm confusing with something else.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking about the front.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: The front that was someone else's film.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, the the the the um it was his Bergman homage.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was his Bergman homage, and it was um not funny, no, and it probably got it got worse reviews than it probably deserved because people thought he was no Bergman, he was a Woody Allen.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Bergman was no Woody Allen, Bergman wasn't very funny at all.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but so they did different things.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, it's um to his credit that he tried tried, you know, a film uh that was really different uh from his others.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't keep going in that.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at your the list of films you so after interiors.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's just before Manhattan.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when Annie Hall, uh huge success, very funny film, character development, and uh all the Academy Awards, then Manhattan, the controversial film, then um no, sorry, then interiors, then Manhattan, and then Stardust Memories, which I love, and got uh criticized when it came out as being a a hate uh expressing hatred towards his audience, which is just nonsense.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's Woody Allen plays a film director who's been invited to a uh weekend um symposium sort of uh uh festival of his work in some New Jersey coastal town, and so you see excerpts of some of his early funny films, and then the um it's his Fellini homage.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of Fellini.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it ever?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is it ever a Fellini homage?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I am a huge Fellini fan.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know you are, and I loved um Stardust Memory.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: Naturally, you loved it.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, but there are people who are Bergman fans who didn't like interiors.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's the point I'm making.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point I'm making.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I think maybe interiors was an inferior Bergman homage.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Starter's Memories was a superb um uh Fellini homage.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not that not that Fellini made comedies, although there's some of his stuff, it's very funny, but it it it was a wonderful take on Fellini.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was shot in black and white, as Manhattan was.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, Manhattan's a great-looking film.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's shot in widescreen and it's uh it's just it was not only shot in widescreen, but in PanaVision.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Panavision, yes.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: Which I don't maybe you can share some insights about what makes PanaVision special, but it's we should we should go back a little bit to this highly controversial film.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we do anyone a disservice talking about it because it's it's so provocative but interesting and worth talking about in 2026.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's shot in black and white, as you pointed out, Panavision.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the score got this Gershwin soundtrack.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: I would I would say, you know, in certain ways, the the cinematography and the score carry the film in so many ways.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you can get George Gershwin to write, write your score, you're doing it.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing okay.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, it's so dramatic, and the the Gershwin, the uh the Gershwin music, it it captures the cacophony of New York City.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's an ode in many ways.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a false ode to New York City because what you know one of the themes is wherever these wherever these characters go, they're they're talking about their a book they're writing.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're complaining about a book they're writing.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: A very young Meryl Street who's left uh the Woody Allen, whose character is Ike, leaves him for a woman and is writing a book about their their relationship.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: They're everyone's got a book, everyone's complaining about a book, someone's reviewing a book, they are at Art House Cinemas, they are at Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: They're very they're very sophisticated people, and they are so petty and they're so they're so troubled in their lives that you have to ask yourself, who are we handing over the culture to?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: This is the intellectual cognizante uh that resides in this this landmass called Manhattan.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's you know, that's a theme.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: And and he she she, the Mariel Hemingway character, she's kind of, you know, maybe a little bit it is a little bit trite to say she's sort of the pure heart of the film, and that that's why he not only is attracted to her, repelled by her, but goes back to her at the end.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's oh it's kind of striking.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: The ending is really uh it's quite moving, personally for me.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's a dramatic scene where he's running, he can't call her, he can't reach her, so he's running through the city, and it's this climactic sequence, uh uh Irving Berlin sequence.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a moment when he's running through Gershwin, Gershwin.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, thank you.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh running past Stuyvesant Park.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: He's on first sec first avenue, and it's a it's an has an iron gate, and I can peek through the gates, the through the slats of the the iron gate, they're not slats, whatever they're called, rods, and I can see my child's school, friends' seminary.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: And a little further I can see the severe grimace of Peter, the statue of Peter Stuyvesant.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: And he makes his way, bear with me, to her apartment.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: She lives in a doorman apartment somewhere, who knows where.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he sees her in in the lobby, and the doorman is taking her her luggage, and she's wearing a pleated skirt and a grown-up looking, she looks very grown up and her hair's pulled back.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's kind of um it's kind of shocking to see her in looking so mature, and I think that's the look on his face when we we see when they finally lot lock eyes on each other.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they share some they share some great words, yes.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: You wanted to tell us what they what she says to him, Mr.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Miller.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's been saying that she's been in uh invited to um to study in London, and he's tries to talk her, talk her out of it.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then uh he leaves her and he starts seeing um uh a Diane Keaton character, and then um she breaks up with him and uh Um, she re he realizes he really misses Tracy and can't reach her.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he runs to her apartment.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: She's leaving.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Where are you going?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, I'm going to London.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he's can't believe it.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: He says, What you know, now?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: You mean if I'd come here five minutes later, I would have missed you?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, Yes.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and he says, You shouldn't go.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Don't go.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: She says, now you tell me, you know, you're all for it, just a f you know, not long ago.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he says, No, yeah, you he says, if you go, you'll change, you'll get corrupted.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, What does she say?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone gets everyone gets corrupted.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: You have to treat you have to have faith in people.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: She says, You have to have faith in people, which is and then you know, you might say all these characters are faithless in in every character, every adult in the film is faithless.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she sort of ends up being the most adult, sort of in the in the film, and the most sort of level-headed in a way.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all right, we've given away the ending.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: I should have said there were spoilers ahead.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I want to say though, it you know, here we are, we've come a long way since Manhattan, we've come away, a long way since Hollywood's leading men have taken on and in romantic partnerships in real life and in in their films with younger actresses.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: We've had we've had we've had a reversal in the last few years.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, maybe starting with Emma Thompson in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: We had uh the film May December, um, which brought us uh sort of helped uh reinforce the career of Charles Melton.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we had Nick Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um Did I Say Anne Hathaway, the idea of you?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: And most recently, we have an uh Olivia Wilde starring opposite Cooper Hoffman in a film called I Want Your Sex, which not by coincidence, have a has a very strong reference to a similar type of film of an older woman um partnering with a younger man.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: The and that's a film called Sunset Boulevard.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: There's a scene where uh the main character is floating lifeless in a pool.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're giving away too much of these films.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, I'm not all right.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, good on good on these films for reversing that uh that conceit.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was um you know a conceit that needed to there's no reason why it should have been uh um you know uh reversed.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: I have to give credit where credit is due.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: Carol helped me with that list, so um that's why it's so robust.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm sure listeners, if you can think of others, please let us know.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, those are all I haven't seen any of those films, uh, and I'd like to.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm a big I'd become a big um Olivia Will.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're you're part of the patriarchy, is why.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um say it, yeah, say it.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're guilty.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: I did see the um I saw the uh the uh Emma Thompson film.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that one.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um Love You Grande, whatever it's called.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, Woody Allen uh rather stuck in his in his ways.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um having made 50 films, they're gonna be a bunch of uh clunkers in them, and also if you're lucky, some real absolute gold.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there have there's some lovely films of that list.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hannah and her sisters, the purple rose of Cairo, Zaleg, whichever he watched last year.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_02: Purple Rose, also very innovative for its very innovative.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Someone comes off the screen, you know, from then and it's set in the 1930s.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: Husbands and Wives, which got all this um uh jump cutting.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the disillusion of a of a relationship, which the last film he made with with Mia Farrow.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: They were both terrific, and it's Sidney Pollock is in it, he's terrific.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: I really like that film.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: The the last film of his that I really like is um is the one uh Midnight in Paris.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I really like Midnight in Paris is that it is about someone who wants to live in the past, and that is Woody Allen through and through.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: It it has the most emotional resonance, it feels more emotionally true than any film he's made in the last 20 years, I think.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that film, I thought that film really worked.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh Owen Wilson plays sort of the Woody Allen stand-in, right?
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: And he and he does such a good job at being Woody Allen.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: He does a good job.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's in Paris, and he uh he sets the lines so well.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: He uh I forget which which epic of Paris he arrives in one night, and he he says, It's such a beautiful city.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: I have to write us I have to write a letter to the Chamber of Commerce.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he delivers the lines so well, and it's Owen Wilson.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's very good in it, and he goes, he goes back to the 19 uh 20s, I think.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it was you meet Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean he he he you know it's his fantasy.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: So many God, when I go to Paris, I have a sort of a similar fantasy.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: I go to the same cafes where I know um, you know, Scott Fitzgerald's uh like to frequent and and and you know Hemingway and Beckett and Joyce and those people.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's because Paris is so preserved, they're all still there.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you can you can imagine that that kind of fantasy.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel um, you know, I think it's presumptuous for someone in their 70s or 80s to know what someone in their 20s talks like and is like, you know.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's why I think a lot of his more recent films just sound wrong.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: They sound off because they are stuck in Woody Allen's sort of 1970s milieu.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he knew what people how people talked in the 70s.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: He helped create some of that dialogue, the lines that you and I are still quoting from Annie Hall.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but now he doesn't know.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's not like he couldn't, um, but I don't think he has much cultural curiosity uh uh really anymore with the culture.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: You're probably right.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: And and when you mentioned Annie Hall, I don't think you can overstate how influential that film was in the in the year it came out, not only because of the great filmmaking, which included, as you pointed out, some animation, um sort of surreal moments when you know a public intellectual shows up in line for a movie and uh rebukes someone on on a point they've made, which it's Marshall McLuhan, famous.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: He breaks the forest wall, he addresses the audience wall.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: And but not only that, I mean, um, you know, the Annie Hall character dressed a certain way, she wore skinny ties and jackets, and women all over the US were were mimicking those fashion choices that year.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, who's had that kind of instant fashion influence from a film.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Can you them up?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Might be one, but I can't.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a big cultural artifact um in 1977, I guess when it came out, 76, 77.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's just an interesting evolution coming from you know, what's up, tiger lily, take the money and run, bananas, uh, sleeper, and then getting to Annie Hall.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, it's it's a very strange period on and off for Woody Allen.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of experimentation, as you pointed out, some gems.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't even mention Bullets Over Broadway, um, Radio Days, um, crimes and misdemeanors, kind of flawed, but interesting, serious film with without without Woody Allen, if I recall.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, he's in, he is in that.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's in, I think he's in that.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I might be wrong.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's not in that.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, his recent films, I think my in, yeah.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: I this is consistent with what I was saying before.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think making movies for him is part of his lifestyle.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Remember that.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, remember those those um those breakfast cereal ads in the 70s, and they were they were these sugar cereals, which were incredibly bad for you.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd always say at the end, part of this complete breakfast.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they show a table full of these healthy foods, which is nothing to do with that.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's like nothing to do with this sugar cereal, corticopia of fruit, vegetables.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: They feel that way about Woody Allen.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Woody Allen makes films.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of his complete breakfast.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not our breakfast.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's making it's part of his lifestyle.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: He makes he said this, said it on one of the podcasts.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's not a perfectionist, he doesn't do a second or third take.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: He just wants to get to that Knicks game.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's not gonna miss the Knicks game.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and he has the the the Woody Allen fall project, Woody Allen, the Woody Allen Spring Project.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: But remember, we we read about it in the papers in New York, the Wasp, the WASB, the Woody Allen Spring Project, even before it had a name.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: Woody Allen is filming his Wasp, you know, he was seen in Central Park uh with such and such an actor, and it's like a reflex, you know.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, it's no skin off my nose.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't pay for the I didn't finance his films.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't lost 20 million dollars like somebody did on this film Um Wonder Wheel, which was a big flop.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's lost the producers a lot of money.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't lose any money off his films, but I don't think I I used to think, I used to say to people, I wish he would make a film every other year and make it twice as good instead of making a film every year, kind of half as good.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: I You know, you hit on something when you said it's his lifestyle.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost like he's making films or taking on projects as if his life depends on it.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: And after listening, after watching him my whole life, and after listening to him over three hours with various guests, various hosts, um, asking him questions in different ways, I hear a preoccupation with misery, the misery of life and the eventuality of death.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's obsessed with with death and how inhospitable the world is.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that maybe that explains multiple partners in his life.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: He's a misanthrope.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then and he talks about how how hard he is on himself, how how his movies kind of suck.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: He said something like, You go into the editing room and you're ready, you're saying it's it's Citizen Kane, it's gonna be Citizen Kane.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: Then he says, but then it's not even the three stooges.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how I honestly speak, but yes, I don't know.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I it's hard to make, it's hard to um figure out how much of that is um is false modesty.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think he is a misanthrope and everything disappoints him to some degree.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: He admitted he wasn't a reader, which I thought was interesting.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: That was interesting to me.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I always thought, because he has all these literary references and Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald and stuff, and it turns out he hasn't, he hasn't.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, um uh Bill Mark questioned him on all these uh famous books.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't read any of them.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's a film watcher and a sports enthusiast, he's not a reader.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he admitted he's a pseudo-intellectual.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we're good on him for well, you know what?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I was I I also felt he was just a man of the past because he he his obsession to this day is with European directors of decades past and Akira Kurosawa.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: So Godard, uh Bergman, Fellini.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe it's time to move on.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: There are a lot of very interesting directors out there.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why, you know, why isn't he watching and why and why doesn't he why doesn't he talk about them?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'd love to hear his perspective on he's not watching them.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Bill Maher asked, gave a list of films, asked him if he's seen these films.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: He hadn't seen any of them.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: He hasn't seen any of them.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's incurious, he's incurious.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you think about someone like you know, someone like Robert Reichberg, you know, my favorite, my favorite artist of the 20th century, I think, always liked working with younger, younger artists.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: He liked to to collaborate with younger artists, he liked to see what younger artists were doing.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: He was connected to the culture.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a good artist, you know, does this.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: Picasso, I think, did Picasso was aware of what was going on.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: What else?
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: Woody Allen isn't curious, he doesn't care what else is going on.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's why he the some of those the films he makes just don't ring true anymore.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: They are stuck in the past, he is stuck in the past.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like in the 70s he was much more aware of the culture around him.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as you get older, it's more difficult, it's more of a challenge because um it's geared to maybe a younger audience.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much more of it.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: We both have children.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Our children um are a window into the culture of where it is now.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the one of the great things about having having kids is you can stay a bit more connected to the culture.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Woody Allen's got two daughters, they're in their 20s now, I think.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why isn't he more connected um you know to what's going on?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he isn't.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: He's incurious, he is wrapped up in his own world.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's sad to say it's sad.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's very, it's very sad.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the the Sunday Times did a uh an expose.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: One of the reporters visited him in his in his home, and they revealed some sort of scurrilous, careless things he said.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: He and Soon Yi were uh guests of Epstein.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they were Epstein's guests, uh, repeatedly visited him at his home.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, in I think kind of clumsily, he kept referring to Epstein as being very charming.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, most psychopaths can be very charming.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: Serial killers could be very charming people, but he he he doesn't qualify it much.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like a very careless thing to say.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_02: And yet at the same time, Bill Maher was goading him about his legal problems and how um the overreach of the Me Too movement canceled him.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I I thought I was proud of Woody Allen to reach into his liberal roots and to say, you know, there we have to make a distinction between Me Too and cancel culture.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: Cancel culture is not good for anyone, but Me Too is good for a lot of women.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, coming, I mean it's coming from a very flawed source here, but I yeah, sort of appreciate the the liberal roots.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: But then he said something very funny about Epstein too, because it uh someone investigator at federal level or someplace um produced a list of guests and statements um that Epstein's guests had made about him, and one of them was uh Woody Allen, who said that um he compared Epstein to Bella Legosi, who played Dracula in the 1931 film, uh, and he quoted uh three young female vampires who service his palace, and said one can picture him sleeping in damp earth.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great, a great old, old Hollywood reference.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: And a great Woody Allen-ish kind of comment to make.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that yeah, that's very visual.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: When when um Bill Maher asked him about uh Trump, and he kept him going on about he had directed Trump in the film Celebrity, and Trump always hit his mark, and he was uh very charismatic and he was a good actor.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, you know, and he he was at Bill Maher kind of pressed him on this and he kept saying, Well, I directed him, I like to direct him again.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he made the distinct, he said, Well, I I probably disagree with 99% of what of what he's done, but he's a great actor.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, who cares?
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Who gives a shit?
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Trump, you know, uh uh again, another careless sociopathic response.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: Another care, yeah, another careless comment.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he basically he basically um praised Trump the way he praised Epstein.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: These and these are people who don't deserve praise.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: They no, it's it's but that's his lack of perspective.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_02: Not without context and lack of perspective.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you're you are absolutely right.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's but I think that's consistent with his the whole sort of the whole sort of approach to the culture where it's just sort of about him and and you know Trump to him is the actor that he directed in one of his films, not this contemptible figure who's fucking everything up, you know.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh that's it's a weird, you know, sort of Sun King approach to to uh yeah to life in a way.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean it's uh you can almost see it because he's coasted on this and he's he hasn't been canceled.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he really has.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's still making films at the age of 90, almost 91.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he published uh his novel um uh this year.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: He published his autobiography last year.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's written a play that's been making the rhymes in Europe.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: He is uh, you know, firing on all cylinders.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how good any of this work is.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it is that good, but he's still working.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, maybe we should give him credit, you know, for that.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do we give him credit for that?
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: I I was actually surprised at how how um gr gregarious he was in the media in the last couple of years.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, I did a search on in the podcast channel of Woody Allen, and I I was surprised to find so many live interviews with him, live reporting.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's promoting, he's promoting his work, he's promoting his work, but uh you know he came.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: I I just thought he had disappeared.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: I thought he he had gone into the wilderness never to reappear.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: But he he's at 89, pretty sharp, pretty much himself, too much himself, and all over the place.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I I lost track of the I was about to make a really important point.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: I lost track of it.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you'll think of it.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh huh.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I mean, it'd be just the credit, I guess some credit where credit is.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I maybe I wish Fellini had been making more movies at the towards the end of his life, and maybe it's maybe we're blessed that he didn't, because maybe they would have been lousy movies and maybe hurt his reputation, and people would have said uh, you know, his uh his artistic vision has been has been you know diminished.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: Polanski made a film a couple of years ago.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: He's older than Woody Allen, he's in his like mid-90s, maybe.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounded terrible, this film.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see it, but I sounded like not something I'd wanna I'd want to see.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a it's a a bit much to ask for as some somebody in their 90s.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Clint Eastwood has made some pretty good films in his early 90s.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: He I have to say, he's I don't know if he's retired, officially retired now, but he has been working into his 90s, and um he's not a screenwriter the way Woody Allen uh is.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: But um I wouldn't even call him sort of a I wouldn't call him an au tour, but he's a he's a he's a good filmmaker.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: He knows he knows the rules, he knows how to make a good director, dude.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: He knows his projects.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he I mean it is some people would call him uh uh uh you know another because he he's he instigates the projects.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so I don't know.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um oh I remember what I was gonna say.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, good.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: He's surprisingly gregarious and um in the podcast world.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe we could send him this podcast, but we could take out all the the critical stuff we've said and invite him on the show.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have him on the show, sure.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was jealous of um uh Bill Maher having this long conversation with him, big all paly, palsy rousey.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I I think we get our numbers up.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Viewers, it's up to you.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh help improve our numbers so we can have access to Woody Allen and bring you our Woody Allen interview.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a very good point.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if we could make a plea towards the end of this podcast.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_02: When you when you comment, like, and follow, it it helps us re bring the podcast to other to other other people.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_02: We love your comments.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't been hearing you about this.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: Other podcasts hector you.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_01: We've restrained ourselves, but now it is time that you follow and leave comments and uh and pass the word on.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so do you have a headquarters?
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, please take note, listeners, we don't.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: We don't ask for money.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_02: We don't ask you to subscribe or pay.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: We don't ask in email.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: We don't ask in social media.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's no link that goes to your Apple Pay or whatever format you use to make a transaction online.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_02: We don't do that.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, not yet.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows where this will go in the future?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so do you have a headquake, Mr.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: Gilames?
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh my headquake is um in doing my homework, um I'm in Westport, Connecticut, with a future guest of the pod, friend of the pod, Fop.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we decided to watch Stardust Memories.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: We both woke up in the middle of the show of the movie.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but my headquake is um a cup a joke, a joke from the the movie, the one joke I liked.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_02: If I was an Apache Indian, I'd be out of luck.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: If I were born in Poland, I'd be a lampshade.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember that joke.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hardy Har Hardy.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's from that's from Stardust Memories.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: From Stardust Memories.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: That is a that is a wonderful film, and I can I can recommend that.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: My headquake.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I would you remember what our very first podcast was about?
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: It was about it was about national treasures.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: National treasures who could forget, who could forget national treasures, and I think there was one a key uh person we left off our US National Treasures list, and unless you brought her up, and that is Dolly Parton, uh who passed away last week.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: God bless.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: God bless the reason I bring her up is that she, and this was pointed out in all a lot of the coverage uh about her after she she she she died, that she was a figure that more Americans could agree on than anyone else.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone else, both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and and liberals, you know, in a way you could um see what you wanted to see from her.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: I saw a left-of-center uh person who was very pro-gay rights and um and uh a humanitarian.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: A humanitarian, um, but conservative.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't alienate conservatives.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: She turned, she was offered the uh national medal of freedom by Trump, and she said she was too busy to accept it.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_01: She was later offered it by Biden, and she turned it down because she said, Well, I didn't accept it under Trump.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I should accept it under Biden.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: Good for her.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, equanimity.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she's an SAT word.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she is a lot, she could teach a lot of um, I think, political figures how to walk that tough line.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, if you're a political figure, you have to take positions.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh, but she managed to not alienate anyone, and everyone loved her.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she was, do you know about her her reading uh program?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: She get she had a charity, she gave millions to this charity, which provides free books to um to people starting out, to uh young, uh young people who don't have enough money to buy buy books.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: So she got a lot of people, you know, reading.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh her family, her parents couldn't read.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she was born, you know, into in dirt poor circumstances.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't didn't know that much about her, to be honest.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really follow her career.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was sort of catching up with her life when um I was reading her obituaries, but I was really interested to see that she really was the national treasure that everyone could agree on, I think more than any other American figure.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_02: I I wish we could go back and do the national treasures episode.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's what headquakes are for, is to bring bring people like Dolly Parton to the fore.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_02: She my my my most my sweetest memory of her was that she provided just some heartwarming relief during that botched pandemic uh response um in 2020.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: The world was in a state of confusion.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_02: There were people dying mysteriously.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't know what the effect of this virus was, and then there were news items all over the world of different reactions, responses, people trapped on ships.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I had read that she had been named in a scientific paper that she helped to fund for COVID research.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: She the scientists gave her a credit there and I looked at it.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: They had a PDF.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I I I directed my browser to the PDF, and there was her name on the science.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And she also she took, she took the um when finally the the vaccine came out, she took it very, very publicly.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because remember, there was all this vaccine uh hesitancy about the COVID vaccine, and um, you know, a lot of her followers would have been skeptical of it, and she was very public about uh about taking it.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she was a good person, and she had a great sense of humor about herself.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: She was so funny.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she was just really um really charming, really.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, because I'm not a country music fan and I I'm a little bit averse to the um the genre.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_02: There's you know, there's just a sound that sometimes I can't get past.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's to my you know, to my discredit, because I um um Taylor Swift, you know, she was an early performer out of Nashville and her her her early songs with that feature a banjo and a violin or fiddle, sorry, they're beautiful.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're great, and and so were Dolly Parton.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_02: So um quite an artist as well.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Dolly Parton, rest in peace, a true national treasure uh in the US, where they don't have guys don't have a lot of those.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it'll be easier to decide on them here in the UK, I think, but in America, there it is, Dolly Parton.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: She's the one.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Anything else you want to add?
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's it for today.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm Jim Jelamis here in South Bendport, Westport.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is JV Miller, as always in London.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And this is Boomer Has It.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.