Woody Allen in all his glory in new tragedy 'Cassandra's Dream'
Woody Allen: His name conjures up wry, offbeat, sometimes silly comedies. But when Allen sets his mind on tragedy, it flows freely. Think "Crimes and Misdemeanors," or more recently, "Match Point." Such is the case with his newest, "Cassandra's Dream," a grim and gripping film that's accessible and engaging, but without a moment of humor.
It's about a working-class British family and the wealthy uncle who's always given them money to help them get by. The focus is on two brothers (Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor) who are strapped for cash and are thrilled to hear that Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) is coming to visit.
"It grew from the nucleus of two nice brothers and the uncle they relied on so heavily and who suddenly had a very immoral request to make of them," says Allen, who doesn't appear in the film. "I thought that would make an interesting story, so I started to develop it and get the subplot and the other characters. When the actors came along, they fleshed out the characters."
Allen is the first to admit that he's always relied on his actors to make his films work. He writes the scripts - in longhand - laying on his bed at home. But everything changes when filming begins.
"There are so many things that are so different than what you're conceiving when you're at home," he says. "You get these creative actors, and they have their own ways of saying things and their own observations. I always encourage the actors to improvise as much as possible because their contributions are as good as, and often even better than, mine because they come from the people that actually have to do the thing, and they feel the characters much more vividly than I do in my own mind."
But once the cameras start rolling, things generally move along at a much faster clip than is the Hollywood norm. Allen doesn't dawdle.
"You might think I'm being facetious," he says, "but I'm not a dedicated filmmaker. I'm lazy. To me, making a film is not the be-all end-all of my life. I don't have the patience to rehearse with actors, or to shoot coverage of the scenes. I want to shoot and go home and get on with my life. So I stage the scene, they come in and do it, and if they do it well, I don't see any reason to go beyond a few takes, then we move on to the next thing.
"It doesn't matter if we haven't rehearsed or talked about the characters, or about motivation," he adds. "They do it, and if there's an egregious mistake I see, I say so. I might say talk a little faster or be a little sweeter. But I rarely have to say that. There's a lot of very talented actors out there; if you hire them and don't mess them up, they make you look good."
Allen insists that this attitude goes back to when he was making his first feature film, "Take the Money and Run," in 1969.
"People were saying to me, 'Hurry up, you're wasting money, we've got to make two more shots, how many setups did you do today.' I started to think to myself, 'This is crazy. I only went into films for the most base reasons: to meet women, to not have a life of drudgery.' So after that film I thought, 'I don't want to have to work late and miss the basketball game, I don't want to have to kill myself on the weekend, I don't want to have to sit for rehearsals.' I just decided that my life is more important. My family, my children, my clarinet playing, the basketball and baseball games. That was more important to me than making a perfect film."
Yet Allen still sets some lofty goals for himself when he creates his films.
"I would hope that [there] would be communication between myself, who is trying to be thoughtful, and an audience that would respond," he says. "I don't think that I always succeed, but that's what I try for and hope for."
Allen has been lucky enough to work outside of the Hollywood system and call his own shots, filming, until a few years ago, exclusively in New York. His three most recent movies, starting with "Match Point," have been shot in England.
"I spent my whole life with complete freedom on my films," he says, sounding quite pleased. "No one read any of my scripts. I always had my own casting. And final cut. I had all the freedom anyone could want - provided I worked within my small budget. But over the past couple of years, the studios said we don't just want to be bankers. We'd like to know what your movie's about and who will be in it. But I've been spoiled by decades of not working that way, and I said I would rather not do that. So I found it hard to get financed because they wanted some input. Then London called and said we're not a studio, we don't care about any of that. We're tax shelters and other circuitous financial avenues. We'll put the money up and we don't care who's in your film.
"When I started making movies, I always idolized guys like Bergman and Fellini and De Sica, and I always wanted to be a foreign filmmaker," he adds. "I found that I could get more copasetic financing in Europe, and I had a great time in England. And it's the same situation in Spain. This past summer I found myself working there with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz [on the upcoming comedy 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'], and suddenly I was a foreign filmmaker. It was the fulfillment of my young adulthood fantasy."
"Cassandra's Dream" opens on Jan. 18.
Ed Symkus can be reached at esymkus@cnc.com.