<p>Did anyone else hear Terry Gross’ interview with Woody Allen on Fresh Air?</p>
<p>Allen’s latest movie, Whatever Works, tells “the story of a “genius” professor in New York who ditches his upper-class life for something simpler winning, along the way, the devotion of a beautiful young girl from Mississippi who is almost 40 years his junior.”</p>
<p>Apparently the professor reluctantly takes in a teen-age homeless girl and ends up marrying her.</p>
<p>Gross’ interview reminded listeners that a middle-age man romancing a teen-age girl is not only the storyline of this movie but also the 1979 Manhattan. She wondered if there were any connection between Allen’s interest in this plot and his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn. (Per Allen, the movies were just interesting stories that he co-wrote with someone else.)</p>
<p>Comments on the NPR web site thought Gross was pursuing a tabloid line of questioning by bringing up Allen’s marriage to Previn. As the mother of two teenage girls, I find it rather disingenuous of Allen to assert his repeated portrayal of an innocent relationship of a middle-age man with a teenage girl is merely an interesting story line.</p>
<p>Should Gross used this rare interview to focus more on Allen’s movie making? Or was this line of questioning legitimate in attempting to reveal Allen’s true character?</p>
<p>I listened to the interview. I’m a huge Woody Allen fan (of his films, not his personal life), but I thought he was very disingenuous when he said that his movies don’t really reflect his own life (not just his relationship with Previn, but all his earlier romances/marriages as well). Just to take an innocuous example, in Hannah and her Sisters the Thanksgiving scenes were filmed in Mia Farrow’s apartment, and those were her adopted children. It’s pretty clear that whatever is going on in Allen’s emotional life at the time usually makes its way into his films in one form or another.</p>
<p>I thought Terry Gross did a good job of trying to elicit more information from him - she asked, but didn’t make a big deal about it. That’s her job as an interviewer, and certainly something the audience is curious about. He deflected the questions, and then she moved on.</p>
<p>I’m sorry the movie has gotten such poor reviews. I’m also a big Larry David fan, but apparently he can’t act when he’s not playing Larry David. I’ll probably see it anyway, just because.</p>
<p>Booklady, it was also funny when he said his movies were no reflection and then they played a clip from the end of Manhattan which included musings very much like those he had made in the interview.</p>
<p>I didn’t hear the interview, so I can’t comment on it, but I haven’t seen any of his movies since the Soon-Yi scandal broke many years ago. My belief is that he’s a pedophile and I refuse to support him in any way.</p>
<p>Woody Allen married his lovers adopted daughter, he may be happily married, but I can’t get past the yuck factor. And it sure doesn’t make me want to see a movie of his with a similar story line. I haven’t seen any of his movies since the Soon-Yi Previn affair.</p>
<p>“My belief is that he’s a pedophile and I refuse to support him in any way.”</p>
<p>I stopped seeing his movies after his Soon-Yi Previn affair became public. I’m not surprised that they are still married. His career depends on his appearing to be truly in love with her, not on his appearing to be a pedophile.</p>
<p>Somehow I feel that, between his movies and his life, he advocates a type of relationship between men and girls that, in real life, generally is not okay (and certainly not probable).</p>
<p>But yet, because he is a genius or whatever, people seem fine with it.</p>
<p>He says he did NOT ever play, in any of his movies, a version of himself. He said that he was actually a very athletic kid, not that smart, and flunked out of NYU because he couldn’t do the work. He said he never lived in the Village or under a roller coaster and is not intellectual at all. He stated that the version of himself in Annie Hall and so on are fictional.</p>
<p>In one of his movies (I think it was Stardust Memories?), aliens appear to the Woody Allen character, and he asks them for advice. “Tell funnier jokes,” they say. I really wish he had taken their advice.</p>
<p>I thought Annie Hall was great- and while I did see Manhattan- that movie had enough of the yuck factor and there are enough other movies that I don’t have time to see as it is.
I think he was talented, but eeww.</p>
<p>*He says he did NOT ever play, in any of his movies, a version of himself. He said that he was actually a very athletic kid, not that smart, and flunked out of NYU because he couldn’t do the work. *
I think he overestimates his own intelligence and underestimates that of the audience.</p>
<p>"…he overestimates his own intelligence and underestimates that of the audience. "</p>
<p>That is a brilliant analysis, EK. I too lopped Woody off the dance card after Soon-Yi. If you read Mia Farrow’s memoir (What Falls Away) you will be even more horrified.</p>
<p>I loved Annie Hall and liked Manhattan a lot. I thought (in my early 20s) that it was kind of weird and cool (but sad) that the Woody character had an affair with the Mariel Hemingway character. Now as the mother of a D in her early 20s, I think that sort of relationship is not OK.</p>
<p>Playing devil’s advocate here (because I am creeped out by Allen’s marriage to what amounted to his daughter), but if we all avoided enjoying the art of people who behaved in a less-than-exemplary way in their personal lives, we would have to avoid the works of many major artists, past and present.</p>
<p>After Woody Allen dies, I’ll be glad to support his work again. However, I’m not going to help add to his popularity and finances while he – a man who I think is a pedophile – is still alive to reap the benefits.</p>
<p>A segment of young smart women have always been attracted to older accomplished men. JD Salinger attracted Joyce Maynard-and many others. The list is a very long one.</p>
and is not intellectual at all. He stated that the version of himself in Annie Hall and so on are fictional.</p>