'I've been selfish and lazy'

(14/05/2002)

Tomorrow Woody Allen's new film opens at the Cannes Film Festival. Not bad for a director who says he doesn't work too hard and will happily break off from filming to watch sport. He talks to John Hiscock.

It would be easy to get the impression that Woody Allen hates Hollywood. He has always been outspokenly scornful of the major film studios' way of working and some of his best lines have poked ridicule at the suntan-and-celebrity lifestyle of Los Angeles.

Woody Allen: 'I will make films as long as I have ideas'
He views it as a place whose only contribution to civilisation, as one of his characters memorably commented in Annie Hall, is that you can turn right on a red light.

His latest film, Hollywood Ending, which opens the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow, delivers a direct hit on Hollywood's film industry. Allen portrays a neurotic, washed-up film director who is given one last chance to direct a hit movie, but his anxieties bring on temporary blindness, and he has to struggle on while hiding his condition from the rest of the cast, the crew and his studio bosses.

The film has had some dismissive reviews in the US, but, to me, it seems one of his funniest films for a long time, and it contains some sharp anti- Hollywood jabs.

But hate the place? On the contrary. Despite the evidence on view, Woody Allen insists he really likes it. He recently ventured there to appear at the Academy Awards, hosting a segment about his beloved New York, and he has signed a three- picture deal with Los Angeles-based DreamWorks to distribute his films. He even credits it with providing the material for his lifelong love affair with New York.

"The funny part is, I've always felt affectionate towards Hollywood," he insists. "I wouldn't want to live there, but I like going there for a couple of days every now and then. My great affection for New York City and my great comprehension of it as a romantic place are really predicated on Hollywood movies."

This week, Allen is making his first visit to Cannes. "Everyone says it's going to be a madhouse and very crowded and frantic, but I'll go through all that craziness with my family for the few days I'm there because I feel the French have been really nice to me," he says. "They were the first ones in Europe to really embrace my films and they've always invited me to Cannes, but I've never been. I felt this picture was the perfect picture to go with because I thought the French would really get a kick out of it."

Woody Allen is 66, charming, self-mocking and, unlike most of his screen characters, appears to be relatively anxiety-free. He becomes irritated when people persist in the belief that he bases his angst- ridden characters on himself. "It's been the bane of my existence ever since I started to make films," he says with exasperation. "People thought Annie Hall was an autobiographical film, but it was not remotely like my life or how I met Diane Keaton or how we broke up.

"The same with Deconstructing Harry. I played a character with writer's block and people thought it was me. If anything, I have the opposite of writer's block. I have so many ideas scribbled on pieces of paper, on matchbooks and on napkins that I could do 10 more movies."

His Hollywood Ending character of the paranoia- ridden film director Val Waxman surely begs comparisons, but Allen will not have it. "I'm a very stable person when I make films," he says. "If he was like me, it wouldn't be too amusing because it's pretty dull when I make a film."

Despite collecting 20 Oscar nominations over his 50- year career and achieving cult status as a film- maker, Woody Allen remains seemingly still slightly surprised at his success as an auteur.

"I can't complain. I've been very, very lucky. I've really had a charmed life," he says, and proceeds to list his film-related good fortunes. "Nobody tells me how to make my films, nobody sees my script or approves my casting. I've been completely selfish and lazy. I don't work too hard. I'm not a perfectionist. Films are not my top priority. If I'm working on a film and there's a basketball or baseball game on television, I stop the film and watch the game.

"I've hardly ever missed a day of shooting; I've never had to work in Hollywood or had to deal with any of the Hollywood people. My films don't cost a tremendous amount of money, so, between the United States and Europe, it's fairly easy for me to raise sufficient money."

Other film-makers envy his complete control and marvel at his methods. Although he seldom pays anybody more than $50,000 for a film, he has attracted some of the world's biggest stars. Leonardo DiCaprio, Drew Barrymore, Goldie Hawn, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Kenneth Branagh, Sean Penn, Hugh Grant, Tracey Ullman and Winona Ryder are among those who have featured in his recent movies.

"When he asks you to work for him, it's like going off on a magical mystery tour," says Tea Leoni, who plays his ex-wife in Hollywood Ending. "You're going to join a very elite club."

It can be also be a somewhat strange club. He eschews rehearsals and seldom shows any of his actors the full script. He is disconcertingly stingy with his directions, and actors have said they have found his silences unnerving.

Debra Messing, who has appeared in both Celebrity and Hollywood Ending, describes Allen's methods thus: "What will happen is the first four days of shooting you will descend into the lowest depths of hell. You won't eat. You won't sleep. Your bowels will give way. He won't speak to you for four days. Then all of a sudden, on day five, he'll give you a little nugget of direction that will open everything up and clarify exactly what he wants and then you will have the time of your life."

Home for Allen is a Central Park apartment where he lives with his wife, Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, and their two adopted daughters, Bechet, three, and two-year-old Manzi Tio, both named after jazz musicians.

The scandal that erupted in 1992 - when Farrow, with whom Allen had a son and adopted two children, accused him of molesting one of them - has long faded. He says he has not had any contact with her for years and the incident is "history".

He would far rather talk about his life since then because, he says, "I've been very, very happy over the past nine years" - although, being Woody Allen, he is constantly expecting something to go wrong. "I'm happily married and it's a good time for me," he says. "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I always feel guilty when things go too well."

While he admits and probably exaggerates his faults, he wants to set the record straight on some false impressions people have of him. He is not, he says firmly, a hypochondriac, although he agrees that the silver pill box he always carries contains an assortment of pharmaceuticals that would rival a drugstore. "I'm not a hypochondriac, I'm an alarmist," he says. "If I have chapped lips, I think I might have a brain tumour."

Neither is he a recluse. "I go to the movies, I go to baseball games, I go to Madison Square Garden and sit among 17,000 people," he says. "I go to every restaurant in town."

Although he maintains a busy schedule, he says he would welcome the opportunity to appear as an actor in other directors' films. "The one or two times I've been asked, I've agreed, but I never get asked now," he says. "Certainly no responsible or major film-makers ever ask."

It's not as if he needs the work. When he returns from Cannes he will begin filming his next project, a comedy known as "The Woody Allen Spring Project", which might eventually, he says, be called "Anything Else". Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci have already signed on and the finance is in place. After that he will probably write and direct another. And another.

"I will make films as long as I have ideas, I can raise the money and people come to see them," he says. "I finish a film and then what do I do? I wake up in the morning full of energy, I'm with the babies, I go to the movies, and a couple of weeks have gone by and I'm thinking, you know, it would be a funny idea if I did a film about and I start to write again because I don't know what else to do."