It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. It was the time that Woody Allen fell from grace.
His metamorphosis from American icon to tabloid target was as stunning as it was swift. With the revelation last August of his romance with Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, the then-21-year-old adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, his longtime companion and star of his films, the previously impregnable walls of Allen’s privacy came tumbling down.
Then Farrow brought her shocking allegations: that Allen had molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan. The tabloids went on red alert. The custody hearing that followed was agonizing in its detail. It was the worst of times, indeed.
Allen’s loyal following felt betrayed. After all, his films-from “Love and Death,” “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan” through “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”-explored the nature of love and today’s relationships, and raised the larger moral and ethical questions everyone faces. At 56, Allen had suddenly and publicly found himself face to face with a few large questions of his own.
Inquiring minds wanted to know: Just who is Woody Allen? With the release this week of “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” his 23rd movie, inquiring minds are still asking.
The centerpiece of Allen’s New York offices is a military green screening room. It is here that Allen holds his meetings, watches dailies, and screens his finished pictures for his friends. And it is here that, moments after Soon-Yi exits into a rainy Manhattan afternoon last week, he settled into the couch below the projection booth to crack open a window onto his world.
Leaning over the arm of the couch, Woody Allen seems very Woody Allen, only smaller and far more focused. Twice he is interrupted by phone calls and each time, he picks up his thoughts precisely where he had left them.
Unlike his screen persona, he doesn’t fidget, he doesn’t stammer. He is self-assured and in control; this is his territory. If he has to talk about himself and his work, it is clear he will do so with only the words he chooses.
The conversation begins with Allen’s newest movie, a comedy with a murder mystery at its core. Co-starring Allen and Diane Keaton as a married couple in-where else?-Manhattan, it looks and feels more like “Annie Hall” than any movie he’s made since his 1977 Academy Award-winning classic. And, it turns out, with good reason.
“Manhattan Murder Mystery” has the feel of an earlier Woody Allen movie.
I had the idea to do this many years ago, but I scrapped it and used the characters and did “Annie Hall.”
So this preceded “Annie Hall” in conception . . .
Yes. Then I did a number of movies over the years, and this past year was such a difficult year for me personally, I figured, I’m going to indulge myself and do this.
When did you actually write it?
I finished it just before I made it.
It’s hard to imagine anybody other than Diane Keaton in that role …
But I wrote it for Mia.
Did you then have to reconceive the role?
No. She superimposed herself. Diane’s so strong. I wrote it for Mia so that Mia would be the sensible one in the story and she would be the articulate one and I would always be making the jokes and that would be the relationship.
Then when Keaton took it over, I didn’t make any changes at all. I asked her if she could do it and she said sure and she came in and she has such a strong comic personality and she’s such a strong movie star that she turned the whole thing around so that I became the straight man and she became the comedian.
This is the first time since “Annie Hall” that you’ve had a writing partner. What got you back to collaborating?
There were two reasons, because I collaborated with another person in the film I’m going to shoot in September. In Marshall Brickman’s case, it was because he and I had both worked on this. (Brickman won an Oscar with Allen for the screenplay of “Annie Hall.”) This would have been a joint venture if I had done this 20 years ago when it was “Annie Hall.” So he was involved in this in a certain sense all along.
But I liked the idea of collaborating with him just as I liked the idea of collaborating with this other fella because in this past year, I’ve had such a hard time personally that instead of sitting in a room by myself day after day, month after month agonizingly thinking of the plot but getting distracted with lawyer’s phone calls and things like that, it was better for me to have someone else there with me to keep me from suddenly going off on a tangent and ruminating about my legal strategies.
Has your work been your only escape this past year?
It’s a major therapeutic help, definitely. When I was having all these problems, it was very important to me not to let the entire focus of my life become that. Because it can easily happen. It’s very time-consuming. And there are all kinds of problems you have to deal with and I didn’t want to look back and say, gee, the last two years I dropped out of life to be involved in this kind of nonsense. So I was very, very careful to make sure I worked and worked hard. I increased my physical exercise. I used to exercise twice a week. I increased it to every day.
How can you make a movie that funny with all the other things going on around you?
Someone who saw it said, is he schizophrenic? No. I’m not schizophrenic. But the alternative is to let all the other stuff take over your life. It takes over plenty, anyhow. But I just didn’t want that to happen.
But you have to admit this movie seems like a regression. It doesn’t feel like a move forward, unless I’ve missed something.
You didn’t miss anything. It’s not. It’s strictly a self-indulgence. A reward to myself. A piece of cake. Fun for me to do. But it’s certainly not…. That’s why I had reluctance to do it year after year after year. I had the idea all those years ago and never did it because my own feeling is I don’t want to get into trouble with the writers of mysteries.
I love mysteries. I love reading them, love seeing them in films. But I do feel that they’re strictly entertainments. I feel all that Alfred Hitchcock stuff, no matter what Truffaut says about it, is strictly entertainment. And this film is not meant to be, nor is it, any kind of a deep cinematic thing. It’s not a progression for me. It’s strictly a little entertainment, and nothing more than that.
Is there more pressure to succeed with this film than with most of your movies?
No. Not at all. Only stuff that you may read. For me, not in the slightest. I’m already in preproduction on a film I’m going to shoot in September. I’m already starting to plan the movie after that.
You’ve lost part of your audience, though, through their perceptions of your experience of the last year.
Meaning?
A portion of your audience is angry with you and may not come. That’s what I mean about the pressure.
It doesn’t matter to me. It never has mattered to me whether people came or didn’t come. I preferred them to come. Absolutely. But there are people that didn’t see “Husbands and Wives,” and my own feeling was that’s their loss. I made the film. It will be around for years. It’s an entertaining hour and a half or so, just as “Manhattan Murder Mystery” is, and if they don’t want to see it, there’s nothing I can do about that.
Is there something to say to people who don’t want to see your work anymore?
The first thing I would say is just explain to me why. What connection are they making?
People feel a betrayal …
In what way. Just elaborate.
In the sense that …
You can speak frankly …
Your movies meant something to people on an ethical level, and the kindest word I’ve heard to describe your relationship with Soon-Yi is “inappropriate.”
One thing I would say is that these people know nothing of any of the details. They know only what they read in the tabloid press. They have no idea what went on. If one would think I would be interested in what a million or 10 million strangers feel about my private life, even if they knew the details, but much less coming from only what they know of the tabloid press, I wouldn’t be so sure that these people, if they knew the details of my life, wouldn’t be out there cheering for me.
They just turn on some tabloid TV show or pick up the newspaper and read things and come to a conclusion. Even if all of what they read was accurate, which it’s not, even remotely, but if it was, they don’t have any right to any judgment of my private life in any form whatsoever.
My movies are offered up as completely separate entities. What I do in my private life, even if it was opprobrious to them, I’m still going to live exactly as I want, and if they don’t want to come to my movies, they don’t have to come.
Why is there so much glee in the tabloid press?
Look, it’s an incredibly juicy story for exploitation. It’s famous people. It’s an older guy and a younger woman, and she’s the adopted daughter of a famous person that I was going with. It’s superbly juicy for tabloid journalism. I can see that. It couldn’t be better. So, fine. I understand that.
I’m sure you’ve read some of the stories.
I didn’t really, to tell you the truth. One decision I made right from the start is I would not participate in it so I can say to you I never at any time-I knew from other people the gist of things, but I never at any time read or saw a single word about myself in relation to this in the press or on television.
How could you miss it?
It wasn’t that hard. One had to avoid a certain amount. I didn’t watch the news, I watched sports. I could do it. I had to run a certain avoidance pattern. But I did not want to get myself entangled in it. I did not want to get myself involved in it because it was all so silly and so stupid and so immoral and dishonest to the children involved that I didn’t want to be in a position of saying, hey, this is not my fault, this is other people’s fault. But it was other people’s fault, and a number of them. This was not just a conflict between Mia and myself. This could not have happened without a huge amount of complicity.
From whom?
There was complicity from the authorities that investigated this. Journalists. The legal system. I don’t mean there was a conspiracy. I don’t mean that. But this situation was enabled and encouraged to happen by all these sources. It was just so foolish and so stupid. So I just thought to myself at the time, you know, all I cared about was my children and no matter what happens, regardless of what happens to any publicity to me, any damage that could be done to my career, anything at all, I’m only going to fight for those kids no matter what I have to do.
And I fought it as best I could, and I’m continuing to fight it now. As best I could. I’ve spent tons of my personal fortune on it, money that ironically was in my will to the children has now been sucked up by lawyers. I fought it as best as I could day and night. I hired private detectives. I worked as hard as I could. All I cared about was that. I did things that I never would have done before. I went on television. I spoke to press people. I tried my best to fight it. Not in any way to fight it for me, but the only thing I wanted was to save the kids, and I’m still fighting that as we go on. I have to go to court in the fall. And I will continue to fight it. The rest is immaterial. It would’nt mean a thing to me if I never made another film.
I’m sure the turmoil of the last year will wind up in some way in a movie. Can you tell this story?
I don’t think I would be telling this story because what’s interesting about this story is not the part that would interest the audience. And it’s too social. The story, believe it or not, is not as psychologically interesting. It is psychologically interesting, but I’m not equipped to do that part. I don’t have the good insights. But it’s social. It’s the sudden awareness of what happens allegedly in the best interests of the children and what the legal system is like in this country and what it’s like to be falsely accused and the presumption of innocence that you hear all the time. It’s an astonishing thing. I don’t want to be one of those people that stops people on the street and says, “I was blacklisted once” or “I was in a concentration camp once.” This is not the outstanding event of my life.
What was in your mind as you wrote “Husbands and Wives”?
People think that movie had resonance in my real life. It did not. It was a complete work of fiction. I made that up before any of this occurred, and was writing it-wrote it. I was making up the story. People think Mia was playing Mia and her relationship. But before I did that movie, as I did with all my scripts, I gave it to Mia and I said `Which of the two women would you like to play?’ And at first she thought she might want to play the Judy Davis part, and she said, no, I think I’ll play this because the shooting schedule is better. But you could have seen that movie with Mia playing Judy’s role and Judy Davis, or whoever else I had cast, would have theoretically played my wife.
But people thought because it came out at that time and it was a thing about marital strife and all that, they thought it had more resonance than it did. But it didn’t. It was just a-people tend to think these things reflect my life in some way. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be an element-that is, I did once lose some hearing in my ear and I got nervous about it and put that little anecdote into “Hannah and Her Sisters.” But basically, they don’t reflect my life. I make up the stories. Sometimes I make up the stories with Marshall Brickman. There were things in “Manhattan”-everyone thought “Manhattan” was my life, but there were a number of things in “Manhattan” that were right out of Marshall Brickman’s experiences or that he made up.
In “Manhattan” and “Husbands and Wives” your character is infatuated with a young girl. That was real.
It turned out to be something. But it was certainly not any real interest or pattern of mine. I’ve been married twice, both to women three years younger than me. And I’ve gone out with millions of women-Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow-and 99.9 percent were women that were not particularly younger than me. There may have, in the course of whatever, since I was 22 years old, there may have been, if I’ve gone out with 50 women, 90 women, I don’t know what the number is, it may be that every once in a while there was a young one, one or two over the years, but no more than a normal proportion of a guy going out.
This is a good staple of drama. I’ve had murder in several of my movies as well, but I don’t know anyone who’s ever been murdered. I’ve never murdered anyone or thought of it.
I bet you’ve thought of it.
Only recently. But an older man and a younger woman is a funny staple of drama. Marshall and I thought that when we did “Manhattan.”
However, given what was happening when “Husbands and Wives” was released, were you worried about people’s reactions to it?
No, I thought it was going to be a smash. It never occurred-it never occurred to me-that people would think it had anything to do with my private life. At least not in any deep way. Not more than they would about any other film of mine. I made the Sydney Pollack character up. I made Judy Davis up. I made up the story between Mia and myself, the student and myself. It was all a made-up thing. It never occurred to me for a second that anyone would think otherwise. I thought they would go and enjoy the film and have some laughs.
“Husbands and Wives” gave audiences a lot of unintentional laugh lines.
Oh, I’m sure. That I can envision.
When Mia says to you, “Is there anything you haven’t told me,” there’s a nervous silence, then titters.
(He laughs.) Well, I can see that. I was being plastered in the newspapers and on television every single night. It’s funny that that gets perceived as something that I wrought on Mia. It’s amazing to me that the perception is that.
What do you think people think of you today?
I don’t know. I think they think what they have gleaned from the tabloid press. They should think that I’m really a wonderful father who has been falsely and viciously accused of child molestation and has been cleared of it but has been deprived of seeing his children. It’s been over a year now since I’ve had any contact at all with my daughter. And I was in a courtroom where witness after witness-the nanny in the household, the kids’ schoolteachers, the kids doctors, the court-appointed psychiatrist, everybody-said this guy did not molest his daughter, he’s a wonderful father, they should be reunited right away.
The public doesn’t see that, though. They see it as me having precipitated some kind of calamity. Yes, it’s true that I did precipitate some trouble. Definitely. But nothing justified what’s occurred. There’s nothing in the world to justify the yanking away suddenly and preemptorily and exclusively from a 7-year-old girl her father. That she wakes up one morning and sees him one day and kisses him goodbye and then never sees him again. Never hears from him or sees him again. There’s no way that that can be justified.
People who commit murders get to see their kids in jail. It’s just astonishing what’s gone on. The real story is just astonishing. People may know it eventually. Eventually I may write about it. But I’ve been reluctant to do that because the perception would be it’s my point of view.
Well, so is this …
But all the testimony is not my point of view. The police in Connecticut hired Yale-New Haven to investigate this case. They investigated it for six months. They met with the kids. They met with me. They met with their mother. They met with the doctors. They went over this thing scrupulously. They’ve done 1,700 investigations prior to this and are the best in the world by consent of the people who hired them and have used them before and Mia’s attorneys and all that, and when they came back with the printed verdict-I mean unequivocal-it was that no molestation had taken place. The mother needs psychiatric help. The father and the daughter should be reunited immediately.
If you were to write about this, what form would it take?
A better writer than me could write a non-fiction account of it. I’m sure there will be some. I don’t know how accurate they would be. I would probably write about it just straight out, what the experience was like. It was really quite astonishing. Mia said to me years ago-she was always down on doctors-that you defend doctors because you’ve never really been sick. But if you get something really wrong with you, you just see how incompetent and how impotent they really are. And I filed that away. And she may be right, I don’t know. I hope I never find that out. But the legal profession, the court system, you think it’s screwed up. You see everyday in the newspapers what happens to adopted kids and various other crimes. You can’t believe the levels of incompetence and corruption. It’s astonishing.
How have you counseled Soon-Yi through all of this?
She’s fine. She’s absolutely fine. She’s stronger than I am. She’s absolutely fine. She’s a young woman. She’s 22. In October she’ll be 23. She’s going to school.
But you’ve been in the public eye. The public believes it can impose itself on you …
Oh, nobody bothers her. She’s fine. She walks the streets with impunity and nobody bothers her. Occasionally some paparazzi will take a picture, but not very frequently. She’s off now shopping at Saks and Bloomingdale’s and goes to college. She has no problem at all with this. She’s been great throughout the whole thing. Great. I’m the one who’s had the flak because I’m the older one, and the known one, and the father of the children. She could not be better.
When you switched from a Hollywood studio to a small New York production company last month, some speculated in print that Hollywood had turned its back on you.
I never cared, and don’t care to this day, if I ever made another film in my life. It would not mean anything to me at all. I will make films because here there’s Sweetland (the new production company).
But I’d be very happy to write plays for the theater, and if no one wanted to produce those plays-which they do because people call me all the time wanting me to write plays for them-I would be very happy to write books.
To me it doesn’t matter. I have enough money to retire. I mean I would be very happy getting up in the morning and just writing. I used to write for The New Yorker. Writing novels. That would be fine for me. I have no compulsion to make films. I’m doing it because I don’t have the nerve not to do it. As long as I’m healthy enough and people want to pay me to make the films, I’ll do it.
When do you begin the next one?
The 24th of September.
What can you say about it?
It’s a comedy film. I’m not in it, only because the lead character is much younger than me. It doesn’t work with someone as old as me. It takes place in New York City in the roaring 20s. There’re a lot of gangsters in it. It’s a funny movie. But with a point.
Which is …
It’s an exploration of the artistic temperament.
That’s something you’ve often explored, just as you’ve often examined aspects of yourself. Is there anything positive you’ve learned about yourself in the past year?
The positives are greatly outweighed by the negatives of not seeing my children. Greatly outweighed. But there were some positives, or some things that one learns. You learn that the image of yourself is not yourself. Another thing that I learned is that when you do come face-to-face with your worst fears, they are not as bad as you think they are. When you’re a private person and you’re suddenly plastered all over the place where I’ve had to actually go on television myself and talk about my private life and really the sexual part of my private life, something that I thought I would have rather died than do, I did it, and was able to do it, and I wasn’t struck dumb or blind or anything. You can do it. Your worst fears are worse in anticipation than they are in reality.
What else did you learn about yourself?
That I’m tougher than I thought. I had to come to that conclusion through this. As I said to my sister once, “God, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for somebody.” And she said, “Once in a lifetime? This is a none in a lifetime.” This was a very, very brutal experience. And people are always saying to me, “I don’t know how you got through this. How are you making a movie?” But I did get through it. And I’m fighting for my kids. And ultimately I’m going to win something.
It’s a very tough battle. But at the very, very minimum-and I hope it will be better than this-when the kids get older and they realize what’s been done to them, they will come to me with open arms instantly and with full commitment. Someday they’ll realize what’s been done to them and what I’ve tried to spare them from and save them from.
You know, if you took out the children element of it, then it would have been an interesting experience, and one that I’m physically and emotionally strong enough to have gone through. I care very little about the publicity. I don’t care whether people come to my movies or don’t come. None of that bothers me. Only the kids. If tomorrow the situation rectifies itself, then it’s fine.
