Woody Allen on:

relationship between life and art | art as solace after a tragedy | "personal" film-makers and films | editing style | acting | problems of being a celebrity.

September 27, 2001

Geoff Andrew: [applause] This is Woody Allen. I'm going to ask a few questions to get the ball rolling, and then you will ask a few questions.

Thank you for coming Woody. It's a great honour and privilege. The clip that people have just seen is from Deconstructing Harry which deals with the relationship between life and art. So what I wanted to ask you, given that you have made quite a lot of films which people assume are fairly inspired by your own life, how does that relationship work for you, and do you think people equate your life and art a little bit too closely?

Woody Allen: Yes I do think that. I think that for some reason it gives people pleasure to equate the life of certain movie actors or actresses with their actual lives. Probably for many people it would have been a disappointment if they had met John Wayne for example and he did not live up to the image that people were accustomed to from his cinema life. With me, I've been telling people for my entire life in the movies that there's not a huge similarity between me and screen and me in real life, but for some reason they don't want to know that. And I think it even detracts from their enjoyment of the movie, and so they listen to me and nod benignly, but they really don't buy it. In real life I'm not the character I play in my films. I'm reasonably competent, I work very hard, I'm disciplined, I lead a very middle class life. I work in the mornings, I have lunch, I practise my clarinet, I go to the movies, I eat out in restaurants or watch ball games on television or at the ball games.

In the movies the characters that I play are hugely exaggerated, so much so that in the end they really don't bear any resemblance. They're intensely neurotic, they're, you know, manic or full of bizarre impulses and unrealistic schemes, and the actual events in the movies, which are taken to be autobiographical, are not really autobiographical. When I did Annie Hall, everyone thought that I grew up underneath a roller coaster in Coney Island, but that was not so, and I didn't meet Diane Keaton that way, and we didn't part that way, and the story in Manhattan was not true, and the story in Hannah and her sisters was not true.

These are things that are completely fabricated, and in certain instances I've written with someone else - a collaborator. And some of the material that it's wildly exaggerated from is based on experiences that he's had. So it's really not too autobiographical. I've had the theory that when you see a comedian like Charlie Chaplin for example, the split is very obvious - he gets into a costume - or Groucho Marx or WC Fields... they get into a costume and he'd have a little moustache and the hat and the coat. But what I wear in my real life I wear on screen so there's not a broad change in the physicality of it, so it's possible that accounts for some of it. But I promise you, I'm not like that at all.

GA: Moving on. This is a slightly serious question, and it perhaps seems odd to bring up a serious question with someone who's renowned for making funny films, but with Hannah and Her Sisters - the clip we've just shown is about someone who's thinking about committing suicide, and goes to see Duck Soup and rediscovers a will to live through appreciating the moment. You, of course, are a poet of NY and some unimaginably dreadful events have taken place in your home city recently. I wanted to ask you first can art offer any sort of solace for that sort of disaster, and would you ever consider making a film which dealt with such a large scale serious subject - a tragedy? You've made intimate serious dramas, but nothing dealing with anything like that.

WA: If the idea occurred to me I wouldn't hesitate. I think there will be a lot of trepidation in the commercial cinema about that subject matter. I'm sure there are people in Hollywood, whose main drive in film is to make money, who will feel that any use of the word hijacking or any reference to anything violent or remotely associated with the terrible tragedy that occurred will lose customers for them. And that will be the only criterion that will matter and so they'll force the minions that work for them to remove these things from their movies, or not make movies about that subject. But I think any of the genuine artists that are functioning in film can very likely have ideas and inspiration that revolve around this tragic event - as any tragic event - and they won't hesitate to make the films because what's important to them is not the box office but confronting the problem or trying to have some sort of insight into the problem.

As for me, I'm generally not a social dramatist or comedy writer. My interests have always been more in psychological stories or personal relations and comic ideas and so it's unlikely that I would do this. I don't mean to make a comparison here, but if you were asking this question of someone like Tennessee Williams he would say no, it's not likely that I'm going to write a play inspired by the events that happened because my obsessions are personal and in a completely other sphere. And so are mine, so it's not likely that I will do it. But I do think it's fair game for any artist that has an inspiration or has insight into that terrible event.

GA: You do make fewer serious films than you used to. It's some time since you made a film like September or Another Woman or Interiors. Is that accidental or intentional?

WA: If I had my choice in life I would have had the gifts of Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill. Unfortunately my gifts lie in comedy and so comedy comes fairly easy to me and I occasionally have an idea for a very serious piece and I do it, but the ideas don't come that readily to me. I'm not as at home - if you take someone like Ingmar Bergman for example - very intense serious ideas just flow, and he does one film after another like that, and probably - this is my guess - probably would have trouble doing a number of comedies or doing comedies frequently. I may be wrong about that, but I don't know. For me, the problem is in reverse. I'm sorry about that - I wish it were different. I wish I was writing something much more heavy each time I did a film, and that the comedies just occasionally come out. But unfortunately you're stuck with what you're born with.

GA: As the clip in Annie Hall shows where you're going to see a Bergman film and then a Marcel Ophuls film, and as our season of ten of your favourite films shows, you do tend to go for the big name auteurs, like Renoir and Bergman, Fellini, who all make very personal films. You obviously make very personal films, but film is still very much a collaborative art, it's an industrial art to some extent. Is film as personal as you'd like it to be?

WA: You - one - can make very personal films; I've been able to. Film-making - to be a film director, you know is not a democracy it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse in this particular case, I write the film and I direct the film I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection, I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

So a movie like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is a completely prefabricated film, but it's a very personal film because it's something that I made and conceived of right down the line from start to finish for better or worse so you can make very personal films, and there are some film-makers who do do them, and my guess is that they're probably the film-makers that you like the most - Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone. They're film-makers that make these films that for better or worse are highly personal expressions. And when they work they're very, very fine films, very meaningful films. They're not factory made Hollywood middle of the road pictures whose sole aim is to entice a large audience.

GA: But at the same time although you make very personal films it seems like you're not afraid to sometimes borrow from or work variations on movies that you've loved. Like Stardust Memories is to some extent is influenced by Fellini, Midsummer Night's sex comedy by both Renoir and Bergman, Deconstructing Harry maybe Bergman again - it's quite similar in plot structure to Wild Strawberries. What is the appeal of doing that, or is it something that you almost do unconsciously?

WA: No, I steal from the best. I do it because I like to do it. I can see the similarities in the first two you mention, but in Deconstructing Harry that didn't seem - I saw really no great similarities to Wild Strawberries at all. I did Deconstructing Harry because I had a lot of ideas that didn't work out to be full length films so I thought that I would write a movie about a writer and you would learn about the movie by seeing what he wrote. You would see a little bit of a film with Robin Williams, or a little bit of a film with Billy Crystal or a little bit of a film with someone else, and the only film that remotely bore any similarity [to Wild Strawberries] and it was so minor that it was negligible, was the fact that the guy was going to be honoured at his university. But apart from that I didn't see that. With the other two films I do see it, and as I say, these are people that I have adored my whole adult life and are great influences on me to the degree that I've absorbed their work and my work can reflect their work - I find that a thrill for me. I wish I could absorb them even more because these are the great profound cinema artists of my lifetime.

GA: Talking about Deconstructing Harry, that film has a very jagged editing style. In Husbands and Wives you used a lot of very mobile, long takes. And yet other films like Curse is shot in a much more classical style. You have experimented with different visual, narrative and editing styles; how do you decide what to do for each movie?

WA: It's automatic. And you'll find this if you ever make films - the content dictates the style all the time. That's the way it is. If the content of the film - as in Husbands and Wives - is highly jagged, neurotic, fast-paced, nervous New York film, it just called for that kind of shooting, editing and performance. Whereas The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, the content of the film has nothing to do with that. It's much, much different, it's much more classical, it's much more been influenced by the films that I grew up with in the early 40s, the films of Lubitsch or Billy Wilder or something - these kind of dialogue fast-talking comedies. And it requires a totally different style of shooting. And you just sense this automatically. As the author of it you know how you want it to appear on screen and it's always the content dictating the form.

GA: Which bit of the process do you enjoy the most? The writing or the shooting, or the editing?

WA: The two parts of the film-making process that I personally love the most - the writing is great because in the writing you never have to... First of all you never have to leave your home. And you never have to meet the test of reality when you're writing. When I write at home the film is always a masterpiece at that point. I write and it's great and I make up things and budgets don't mean anything and time doesn't mean anything, and it's great. And then you have to make the film. Reality slowly starts to encroach on your life, and what started out in your mind as Citizen Kane or Grande Illusion or the Bicycle Thieves or Wild Strawberries turns out to be a humiliating catastrophe and you just pray that you won't embarrass yourself. You give up all your grandiose plans and aggressive schemes from the beginning and you're just praying that you won't make a fool of yourself by the end. So the writing is a very, very pleasurable part of it.

Also for me personally - because I do it myself - the scoring of a picture is fun. I edit the picture and when I've finished I go into my room and I have many many records - jazz, classical and popular music. And I have this all at my disposal. I don't have to get a composer. If I get a composer, then he goes and writes music and then he brings it in and plays it on the piano next to the scene and if I don't like it it's heartbreaking to him and he feels bad and I feel guilty about not using it, and it's not good. Whereas this way I take Cole Porter or Louis Armstrong or Bach or Mozart or Duke Ellington and I put the recording on and I watch the scene and if it looks great and meshes I use it, and if it doesn't I take it off and put on another one. And I have a limitless amount of great music at my disposal and it's very, very pleasurable because when the music goes on the film it's amazing how much it livens up the film and gives it an emotional kick in the pants, sort of.

GA: Do you watch your films again once you've made them and once they've been released? Do you go back to them often?

WA: I never ever see a film of mine after I release it to the public. I see it when I shoot it in my dailies and while I'm editing it, re- editing it and reshooting it and all that. By the time it's finished I never want to see it again. It's like a chef who works on a meal all day in the kitchen - you don't want to eat the meal. You've had the food all day long and that's it. That's the way I feel about my films. If I was to see any of my films now I would feel, oh god you know it's awful I could do that so much better now. Look at all the terrible things I did and all the mistakes and all the compromises and all the blunders I made, and it would be such a terrible experience for me to see them. So it's better that I put it out and move on to the next thing and make it history as quickly as possible... walk away from the damage.

GA: We've talked a bit about writing and shooting and editing, but we haven't talked about acting. I remember speaking to you a few years ago and you once said that you had a rather limited range. I'm not sure that's true, but would you like to extend it? Do you feel you've tried to extend it?

WA: I've never tried and I don't think I could and I don't really care about it that much. Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range - Bob Hope or WC Fields or Groucho - they tend to do one thing, and those ones that I've mentioned do it very well, but it's limited. If you compare me, for example, with an actor like Dustin Hoffman - this guy's all over the place, he can do everything - he can do Chekhov, he can do all kinds of characters - I couldn't do that in a million years. I can do a limited amount of things and that's what I do and I feel comfortable doing it and I have no particular desire to do anything else as an actor.

GA: But as a film-maker you're far from doing one thing. You experiment with different genres and styles - have you ever felt that the expectations of your fans and also of the critics have been a bit of a problem in that respect? That they want you to do comedies and don't want you to do anything else?

WA: Yes, I feel that's true and I understand their point of view completely because if I'm watching a comedian like WC Fields or Bob Hope or something and he does these comedies and I enjoy these comedies. You know maybe once in a great while I could watch him doing something serious, but that's not really what I want to pay my money to see. If I'm buying a ticket I wanna see Bob Hope be funny. And I can understand that an audience, buying a ticket to see a picture of mine, wants to see something funny because they feel confident that at least I have a fighting chance to make a funny film when I make a film, whereas if I make a dramatic film there's one chance in a thousand that it's really going to come out great, so I understand how they feel about that and they're completely right. It's self- indulgent by me. I feel, when I'm home alone in the apartment, that I have limitless scope as a dramatist and I could write a film that's like a Eugene O'Neill or a Chekhov play or a Bergman film or something and once in a while I try and do it, and, you know, I can't do it so well I find out later. And the audience - they get annoyed! There's a tacit agreement between myself and the audience that I will entertain them when they buy their ticket, and I've been the one that has screwed that up. Once in while I indulge myself and try something else, and I keep my fingers crossed that it will come out good and there'll be enough people who will enjoy it, but that doesn't often happen.

GA: The last time we spoke was at the release of Celebrity and I wondered if you felt that becoming very well known yourself has also been problematic for you - even here when we came in tonight there were lots of people who wanted to touch your clothes, get your autograph, just to see you, whatever.

WA: I don't like anybody touching my clothes. For me it was a problem when it first started. I've gotten much better at it, but it depends on one's natural personality. I have colleagues - other comedians I know, that started with me, and were very graceful about it right from the start. The minute they went on television and got known they could walk down the street and they enjoyed the acclaim and they could walk into a restaurant and people would clap and they would like it. I CRINGED. I had a very tough time with it, and I've gotten much better at it over the years, but it's not something that came natural to me. I was a writer, and when one chooses to be a writer, psychologically there's a reason for that because you like the isolation and you like to be by yourself and you are by nature timid. And so I had a tough time with that and I've gotten better at it but it's not my strong suit at all.

GA: The other thing you said when we spoke about celebrity was you felt the world had in a way gone a little berserk with the obsession with fame. You were actually talking about that thing about the media but actually in some ways the world has gone rather more berserk than ever recently. And you've talked a lot in your films about the silence of God or the absence of God, and is there hope. Do you feel hopeful at the moment, given that the world is in a very tricky situation, to say the least?

WA: You know it's an interesting thing. I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic about the actual situation that you're referring to - the terrible events of September 11 in the United States, I'm optimistic and hopeful about that. I think we've got off to a good beginning on it. Whether we can continue along and hold the line as wisely as the president and government has done I don't know - I hope so. But they have certainly got off to a measured start on it and that's fine. So I am optimistic about that. But that's a small thing in the general existential sphere. I'm pessimistic about the large picture. I feel life in general - let's say there was no terrorism whatsoever and we were all very nice to one another and we were all kind, we still would be faced with an extremely cruel and hostile universe and existence and so I'm a great pessimist and I feel that it's impossible really to be happy, and that the best you can hope for is to be distracted.

And I feel you can be distracted - you get distracted by your relationships, you get distracted by the meaninglessness of a sporting event, by a movie, by the work that you're doing that you think is important at the time - I think it's so important whether my film works or not when in fact it's completely meaningless, and I think it's important whether the Giants win the Pennant. And so we distract ourselves, and good distraction is the best we can do. But the overall picture - if they sit you down in a chair and really shove reality in your face - I feel about it the way Freud, Nietzche, Eugene O'Neill felt about it, and that is very pessimistic, but optimistic about this comparatively minor problem in a much grimmer totality. Have I depressed you enough?

GA: I think we'll perhaps go on to a lighter question. I think it's true to say that you're already completed the film after The Curse of the Jade Scorpion - Hollywood Ending? Without wanting to learn too much about it, would you like to tell us a little about it?

WA: I can tell you a little bit - not too much. Hollywood Ending is a film of mine that first of all I will say, oddly enough, I kind of like. Most of them I don't like at all. I don't have a good feeling about my films I'm very very critical about them and it's very rare I finish one and get a positive feeling. But Hollywood Ending I got a positive feeling. I think it's a combination of hard work and luck. Everything seemed to fall in very well. The performers I cast were wonderful, the idea clicked, the surmises and guesses I made about things in advance seemed to come out accurate - I seemed to be on the ball when I made it. It's about a neurotic film director who lives in New York - I told you I have a small range - and he tries to make a film, and I can't tell you what happens but I can only say a very, very bizarre thing happens to him. A funny thing - at least I hope it's funny, I believe it is. And the picture stars myself and Tea Leoni, who's a wonderful young actress/comedienne and George Hamilton, who I always wanted to do a picture with and finally found the exact perfect role for, Treat Williams, and a wonderful comedienne from American television, although I used her on the movie Celebrity briefly. It was great fun to do, and I think, if you saw the picture now, you'd like it. I maybe wrong, but I do think you would like that picture.

GA: You say you find it surprising that other people aren't so prolific, but why are you so prolific?

WA: Well, first of all, a film a year is not as prolific as you think. It seems prolific in comparison with other directors, who face problems that I don't face as readily. For example, I make pictures that don't cost, really, a lot of money, and so I always, in the past, raised the money for my films in advance. For several films I make what they call 'Three Picture Deals' or 'Five Picture Deals', so I have the money. Therefore, when I pull the script out of the typewriter - say it takes me two months to write, you know, I'm a fast writer, I'm not a perfectionist, I'm careless - and then I go right into production.

Now, another film director will finish the script, or have to buy a script from someone, then after he's got his script he's faced with the chore of raising a lot of money - maybe $40-60m. So he's got to go to lunch with a movie star and cajole the movie star into doing the film, and the movie star says, "I'll let you know in six weeks." Six weeks comes and he doesn't want to do it, so he goes to lunch again and tries the same thing with a director and he flies to California and the director says, "If you can get this actress, I'll do it," so he flies to meet this actress. This goes on for two years.

If he's lucky, at the end of two years, he raises the money. I don't have that problem, so it seems like I'm prolific, but he could be just as prolific as I am if he had the money. So that's really what it is. It's not a big deal to make a film - first of all, I don't make these monumental films with 10,000 people in or fly to a foreign country and set up a city there and live there for six months.

I make pictures about New York City, with the same crew I've been working with for many years, for the most part, and I have the money right away. So it takes a few months doing, a few months to shoot it, and now with television editing it goes like [click] that. It used to take me six weeks to edit a picture, now it takes me six days to edit the whole picture. So it seems like a lot, but it's not. I have plenty of time off to play with my band, to write other things - I'll write for the theatre or the New Yorker magazine, to play with my kids, to go to basket ball games. I'm not a workaholic. It seems that way, but it's not really so.

GA: Do you have one great, unrealised ambition?

WA: I'm 65 years old now and I've made over thirty films, I've been working for thirty years... I would like to, but I don't think it's going to happen, but I would like to make one great film. That would be a wonderful thing. I would like to, in the course of my lifetime and the course of my work, make a film that I could put on the same bill as Rashomon or Grand Illusion or Rules of the Game with impunity. I could just say, "They're showing, you know, Throne of Blood and my film," and feel completely at ease and not feel completely humiliated.

That is something I would like. I thought it was going to happen at one time in my life, I thought that, if I kept making films, sooner or later, through sheer quantity, I was bound to make a great film...

I'm starting to feel now that it isn't going to happen and I will have a body of work that ranges from, you know, so-so to decent. But never great.

GA: Well, for my money, you've made a lot of great films and I think that a lot of people here would agree.

[Applause]

WA: Er... but they would be wrong.

They would be being kind. I think if I got them alone, and I showed them what I thought were great films, which is the list I gave you of films to play here - they ask for suggestions of some favourite films of mine to play here, and I gave a list of films that included Grand Illusion and The Bicycle Thief and Citizen Kane and 2001 and I don't think I have a film that can be included in that list. I don't say this with false modesty, it's my objective opinion.

GA: Hands up for questions. Yes.

Question one: I'm interested in where you get your ideas from?

WA: Well, you know, it's a funny thing. It's good luck in my life, it's the one thing I can do. I was thrown out of school, I'm not a good student, I have no competence in any particular area. For some reason, since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. To this day, when I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw. People ask me whether I think that one day I might wake up one morning and run dry, but I've had the opposite feeling - that I would die before I had time to write all the ideas in my drawer.

When I used to write for television, many years ago, we used to go in on Monday morning, and on Saturday night there was a live television show, and we had to come up with ideas. There was no way out of it. I could sit in a room by myself and come up with ideas. It's the one thing in life that I can do. I can't question it, it's like looking a gift horse in the mouth. I can just do it. They're not titanic ideas - they're not Shakespeare or Chekhov, but they're enough to let me life a very nice living all my life.

Question two: There are about thirty or forty books written about you. Have you ever read any of them, did you like any of them and do you plan to write your autobiography?

WA: I don't read about myself. That's one of my disciplines. When I first started as a film-maker, I used to read the reviews. Now, the United States is a big country, so there used to be a pile like this. I would start to read them and this person would love it, this person didn't like it, this person thought this was my strong point and this person thought it was my weak point. By the time this was over, it cost me aggravation, and I couldn't think straight because there was so much conflicting assessment. So I stopped reading them and I stopped reading about myself. I don't read my interviews, I don't read the books on me. Eric Lax stayed with me for years and did a biography and I found him very nice, and I spoke to him and allowed him to do interviews with friends and relatives and he watched me make films. But I didn't want to read the book because I don't want to waste any time thinking about myself.

I have thought, at times, of writing an autobiography, but I don't think I'll ever get around to it. Sometimes, at night, I'm falling asleep and I think about my biography, and I write little things - they're very dramatic and anecdotally wonderful, but I don't think I'll ever get round do doing it because it's probably a waste of time. Maybe if I live as long as my parents - my father lived to 100 and my mother is 95 - if I live a very long life and I can't make films or can't write for the theatre or can't do anything else, then I might do it. But otherwise, I don't think I will.

Question three: How have the events of the 11 of September changed New York?

WA: I don't think that they've really changed New York. Every country, every city, has its tragic events - there are floods and fires and murders - and of course you grieve and its traumatising, but, you know, time passes and you rebuild and you move on with your life. Even before I left New York last week, people were starting to very slowly get back on track, and that's what will happen. The same thing happened in Oklahoma City after the terrible terrorism there. It's traumatic for a while but they'll either rebuild the twin towers as a symbolic gesture, or build something comparable in its place.

They'll be a cosmetic change - airport security will be much more severe and the government will get into the business of protecting the country in a more dedicated fashion - but I don't think anything will really change. The Yankees are playing their baseball games, the Mets are playing their baseball games, people are going to the movies, the theatre will build itself up and the nightclubs, and it will just take a little while to rev up after an unusually traumatic event. I believe that the people who perpetrated it never believed that it was going to succeed as fortuitously for them as it did.

Question four: Did you enjoy the stand-up you used to do, and do you ever miss it?

WA: I did enjoy it, yes. I was very nervous at first, and for the first year or so the tension was terrible, and that militated against full enjoyment of it. But I did enjoy it finally. The only thing I didn't enjoy about it was that if you're a stand-up comedian, your schedule is too rigorous. I would play two shows a night and three on weekends. This would be seven nights a week that I was working. Then I would fly out the next morning after three weeks in New York and play three weeks in St Louis, and then three weeks in Washington and three weeks in San Francisco, and I could go six months without having a night off. I found that debilitating and too strenuous.

But the actual contact with a live audience, especially after you've achieved a little confidence is a pleasurable interaction, one that you don't have in film. In film you have the advantage of being able to do it once and get it right and then not having to be there anymore - going home and it plays all over the world. That has its own compensation, but there's something about having contact with a live audience that's very exhilarating.

Question five: How do you reconcile the contradiction of the meaningless of existence and the great value and meaning of art?

WA: I'm ashamed to answer this question because I stick it on to keep the audience happy.

The truth of the matter is that a film like Hannah and Her Sisters, that was not the original ending of the picture - where I go into a movie and see this Groucho Marx movie and suddenly life is affirmed for me - because I don't really feel that so much, I feel that the best a Marx brothers movie could do for me is to distract me and give me an enjoyable hour-and-a-half, but that's all. The movie ended grimly in my first cut, and the audience was enjoying themselves through the whole movie and then it just fell off the table, the end was so bleak.

It was Chekhovian and very bleak. I never went back to Hannah, and Hannah's sister left me and was married to another person and I never found any solace in anything. People were enjoying the movie... by lack of skill, they were enjoying the movie on a different level, so when I had this profound ending it seemed forced and very disappointing to everybody. So I had to change it, because the film built to an affirmation. So I stuck in this affirmation at the end. I've done that before, but I must say that if I was to make my real feelings known all the time, my films would fail all the time - I go along at an entertaining pace and then, in the end, say, "But I must say, finally, that life is meaningless, it's cruel."

And then the audience, you know... You can't do it! So it's a phoney thing that I do, and I apologise.

GA: Do you actually do previews with audiences before you release the films?

WA: No, I don't. I don't give any previews. I play the film in my cutting room and I let one or two friends see it. I'm dead set against that. I think any director who is serious about his work is dead set against that. The Hollywood notion of people who screen films and then hand out pieces of paper and you write what you think about it and the audience tells you what to do. So when I've changed an ending to a film to make it more upbeat because the film is so disappointing, I always feel ashamed of myself, I always feel like I'm copping out at the end.

But it would be the worst thing in the world to screen it to audiences and they say they want a bit more of this character, less of that character, a longer scene here... These poor directors who are slaves to the studio run home and change the film to accommodate the audiences. The audience is making the film and not the film-maker. I don't really preview them. I can sense that a film is going a certain way and if I stick to my original concept, then it's going to die - maybe I wasn't skilful enough to prepare the audience for this pessimistic ending, so I have to do a re-evaluation, but it's still based on my own evaluation of my film.

Question six: Why did you force Kenneth Branagh to adopt the same limited range as yourself in celebrity?

WA: Well, Kenneth is a brilliant actor, and I was lucky to get him for the film. The film requires a forty-year-old, and I was sixty when I made it. The problems of a forty-year-old are profoundly different from the problems of a sixty-year-old, so I was looking around for someone who was a wonderful actor and could be convincing serious and convincing amusing. Kenneth's name came up and I thought, yes, if he can do an American accent, he'd be ideal for it. And he was great, and I was thrilled and lucky to get him.

Now, there were people that felt that I should have played the part, and they criticised the film on that basis. Why have Kenneth in the film doing what I would do? The truth of the matter is that I feel they were giving me an unfair criticism, they didn't like the film - which is fine - and they couldn't quite focus on why they didn't like it, so they were saying, "I didn't like this film because Woody Allen should have played this part, and Kenneth Branagh played it and he was a surrogate character for him." And they were groping to find out why they didn't like it.

I think 100 years from now someone will see that film and either like it or not like it, but it will have nothing to do with Kenneth playing the part in terms of reflecting me. I just feel that there were people who saw it and liked the film and had no problem with Kenneth playing that part. There were people who didn't like the film, and they groped for a way to express what they didn't like, and it centred on that criticism. But that wasn't really what they didn't like - it was the story or the writing or somewhere that I failed for them, and they couldn't put their finger on it.

Question seven: What was it like being Godard's King Lear, and what is it like acting for other directors?

WA: It's been fine acting for most directors... I mean, I've had very little experience of it because I never get asked to be in people's films. When they do ask me, I generally jump at the opportunity because it's an interesting thing for me, and I give myself over to the director completely. I do exactly what they want. I think I'm a pleasure to work with...

No, really, because I know what a tribulation it can be if you get stuck with an actor who gives you a hard time. I do anything that they want me to do and I'm very nice: I'm on time, I learn my lines, I hit my mark, I try anything they want me to try, I do as many takes as they want. With Godard, the experience was bizarre because he's a genius and he asked me to do this film, King Lear, and I would never have said no to him because he's one of the great luminaries of cinema. He said it would only take a couple of hours and I turned up one morning and it did only take a couple of hours, and he was on the set in a bath robe, smoking a cigarette and asked me to do a few things, and I thought to myself, "Gee, this is going to either be a work of genius or a complete catastrophe."

I never saw the film, but I've heard from people that it's really godawful... and it doesn't surprise me for a second. But I'm proud to be associated with him, because he's a genius, you know, when he misses, he really misses.

Question eight: We had Liv Ullman on here on stage, and she described the meeting between you and Ingmar Bergman at dinner, and her version was that neither of you spoke all evening. What is your version of the story?

WA: I wish she was here now because it's completely wrong. She got us together in New York, years ago, for dinner and I was nervous beyond belief because this great, great genius had deigned to speak to me, let alone have me for dinner. So we went to his hotel room and I found him to be completely down- to-earth, totally conversational, spoke to me about things which I'll tell you about, not at all the dark, foreboding genius that you might think. He was as sweet and friendly and down-to-earth as you can imagine.

We spoke about... he said he had the same problems with films as I had - that he'd open a film and the producers would call him and predict how much money it was going to make and then 24 hours later reality sets in and we both realise that our films aren't going to make $20m, or $20 even. And he spoke to me about his insecurities as a director - about having these dreams where he comes on to the set and can't speak. We spoke about things that were bread-and-butter and totally down-to-earth and not at all like a great, mystical genius like I had built him up to be.

I thought that he'd be wearing black and would appear in a puff of smoke... But it was not like that at all, and Liv Ullman joined the conversation, and Bergman and I talked about authors we liked, and wine, and work habits. It was very nice and warm and familiar. And many years later I went to Sweden and he called me and we had a two-hour conversation on the phone and again it was the same kind of thing. We talked about our fears - I talked about my fears and he talked about his, but I'm me and he's Bergman, so it was very funny to me.

I hear that on his set he's very touchy and warm and holds you, and I found that to be the case at dinner. So it's not at all how Liv Ullman described it.

GA: So Bergman can touch your clothes, but other people can't.

WA: Bergman, yeah, Bergman can have my clothes.

Question nine: Have you ever had to persuade an actor to be in one of your films?

WA: There have been times when I've not been able to persuade them. Usually if I send them the material and they're available they either want to do it or don't want to do it. There's this myth that I just call up people and everybody wants to be in my films and they just never say no. It's not true. Many people who get a lot of money are willing to work with me for no money. This is true. But there have been any number of people I've called up over the years and given scripts to, who've said they want to be in a film of mine and they say, "I like the script. And you know I normally get $20m." The whole picture doesn't cost $20m, so it's not possible.

So I have been turned down by some very famous actors that I wanted to be in my films. I've never had to persuade anybody, either they want to do it or they don't.

Question ten: Do you rehearse a lot, is the rehearsal process important.

WA: I don't do any rehearsal at all. It's part of a method of working that I've evolved that works for me. Other people rehearse. I've acted in pictures for Paul Mazursky, who rehearses everything meticulously, he puts tape marks on the floor and walks to your mark. After a couple of weeks in the rehearsal hall we rehearsed on location. I never do that. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm going to shoot that day. I like it to be fresh. The assistant director gives me the list of stuff I'm supposed to do and I set up the shot then we call the actors to the set and then I say: you walk here and do this, you walk there and do that, you come over here. Ninety per cent of the time they say fine, once in a while they say that seems funny to them and unnatural and ask if they can walk somewhere else. I say yes. Walk over there. I shoot a lot of long masters. I don't shoot a lot of close-ups over the shoulder. I try to get the whole scene in one shot if I can.

Question eleven: Where does the motivation come from to keep making films if you're a pessimist?

WA: For me, it's really like therapy. If you take an inmate in a mental institution they give them basket weaving and finger painting... You know, it's good for their health, it's good for their stability. With me, it's movies. If I didn't make movies, if I didn't work then I'd sit at home and brood and think and my mind would drift to unsolvable issues that are very depressing. If I work I become obsessed with characters and what joke to use, and these are problems that are solvable. They're annoying, but they're solvable. If I didn't work I would be facing problems that I didn't want to think about.

Question twelve: Which of your films so far have you had positive feelings about in the same way that you're positive about Hollywood Ending?

WA: I had positive feelings for Purple Rose of Cairo, Zelig, Husbands and Wives and Bullets Over Broadway. And I'll tell you why. They weren't exhilarating feelings, but they weren't positive. For me, the success of a film is when I get an idea in the bedroom and write it, ninety-nine per cent of the time the film I end up with bears little relation to the brilliant idea I had in the bedroom. The film may be a success with the public, but I feel that if only they knew what I had conceived in the bedroom they could really see something great. If only I could've given them that.

Those films that I mentioned were fairly close to what I wanted to do. So I count those films among the films that I feel more sanguine about.

GA: I'm afraid that's all we have time for.

WA: Thank you all for coming, I'm flattered and astounded that you showed up, and if you see my movie, don't be too harsh on it. I gave it my best shot and I hope at least some of you like it. But I can't guarantee it. I'll make it up to you on the next one.

GA: Thank you, Woody Allen.