MAHER: You say... in your unconvincing defense of how you're not an intellectual... that you never read "Great Expectations," you never read "Ulysses," you never read "1984," "Catch 22, "Don Quixote"....WOODY: That's right. I've never read any of the ones you've just mentioned.
MAHER: I've read 'em all. You want to get the skinny on them. You want to, you want to get...WOODY: Yeah, you could condense 'em?
MAHER: Yeah, well...
WOODY: I hadn't the patience to read any of them. I was never a reader. I never enjoyed reading as a kid. It was not something I liked to do, and to this day, I don't enjoy it. I've done it a certain amount because you needed to do it to survive and to flourish as a writer. But it's nothing...
MAHER (interrupting): I bet you you'd like "Catch 22." The other ones...
WOODY (interrupting back and making what I thought was a hilarious joke and one that Maher doesn't even notice): I might, I read "Catcher in the Rye," and I liked that.
MAHER: Short.
WOODY: I like, I thought that was...
MAHER: It's good when they're short.
WOODY: That was, yeah. Yeah.
MAHER (interrupting and completely changing the subject): I mean, you also say — I thought this was crazy (it was on the last page) — that your big regret is you never, you say, you think you never made a great movie....
Every time Woody began to say something interesting, Maher cut him off!
I am very interested in how it can be that a person so oriented to writing would not also be oriented to reading. It's not as paradoxical as it sounds. For half a century I've kept in mind this quote attributed to Benjamin Disraeli: "When I want to read a good book, I write one." And Somerset Maugham seems to have written: "When I want to read a novel, I write one."
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83 comments:
He's right about never making a great movie. I just never understood his appeal at all. He's not that funny, although he did come up with that great line about masturbation being sex with someone you love.
It is a kind of "Those who can write, those who can't read."
Woody is a generative Anthropogenic Intelligence (AI).
Uncontrollably incessantly interrupting is an annoying externality of a stoned stoner
Woody is sounding his age
I’m with Woody. Some of my grade school chums observed I was kind of wired like Woody Allen. One more data point…reading the ‘important’ works was a chore and a bore. Having to speak or write about them doubly so. Me in Russian Lit- so many eye rolls. I begged for Dostoevsky to appear out of nowhere and Marshall McLuhan everyone in class…
La-di-da.
Yesterday I received the monthly newsletter from my old condo building. Amongst other things was September’s book club recommendation West With Giraffes and this detail: Audio Book: 10 Hours and 28 Minutes. WTF? Does that even count?
Lol... "I didn't see that one."
He didn't see PeeWee's Big Adventure. lolol
Pushkin > Dostoevsky
"Jews don't read. There's no money in it." Plus, confronting unwelcome facts... lol.
“and Marshall McLuhan everyone in class…”
Hahaha
Allen's early standup is so savagely mocking of pretentious intellectuals that the mocked instantly assume "he's one of us!" because that's what they think of one another.
You don't have to be an intellectual to find intellectuals insufferable.
But it helps.
It's maddening to see Maher bumble every interview. His cluelessness peaked when he decided to explain to Woody Allen that Frank Sinatra's great love was Ava Gardner, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Sinatra had been married to Mia Farrow, who of course later married Woody Allen, and that Sinatra is very likely to have been the father of Ronan Farrow.
I remember when Bill Maher was starting out as a stand-up comic back in the 80s. I liked his routines, the early funny ones.
Maher is an old mota monkey, hellbent on destroying his remaining brain cells.
Woody is Woody.
He had the patience but was never a reader? Makes no sense.
Ulysses, along with The Sound and the Fury, are two of the least enjoyable books I've read to completion.
I bet Woody Allen was more of a movie watcher than a reader as a kid. Probably still is.
Maher still has a show not because he's good at interviewing but because he's good at circling back to insult and mock conservatives at every opportunity, and his conversational skills are better than most leftists and every single one still hosting a late night show. Admittedly, that is a low bar to clear.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is a first rate movie, just saying.
I could never get through Don Quixote, or anything by Joyce. Not reading 1984 is unforgivable. What the hell?--it's not that long (except the tedious part at the end when O'Brien is breaking him).
Woody's early movies and writings are classics; I haven't seen enough of his work after the 70's or so to make judgements.
The question of his bookishness (or otherwise) is interesting but for all my love of books and reading I know that art doesn't require either.
Never understood the success of Bilious Maher.
Woody, on the other hand, perfected nervous comedy.
@Althouse: "I am very interested in how it can be that a person so oriented to writing would not also be oriented to reading. It's not as paradoxical as it sounds."
It's not so odd. With music, there are creators and consumers. The creators spend all their energy generating content, while the (noncreative) consumers fixate on lyrics, details, and sound qualities. They routinley spend years and thousands of hours/dollars revisiting prior creations.
Woody Allen is a creator and operates in production mode. It's just how his brain functions.
Just yesterday rewatched Midnight in Paris. Im not at all a Woody Allen fan but like that one. It's about writing and the liteary world of long ago. His Hemingway character is good. I probably like it as Ifeel that same longing to write from the soul in a world that clutters my soul. I'm not that good at it but when I find that it is so freeing. Though I have always been a reader, who hated English courses.
Allen is a storyteller and draws from his own angst. He is too frenzied to read but has turned that frenzy toward an art all his own. Even if I dont like most of his stuff I respect how he has mostly harnessed the chaos rather than it destroying him or turning him toward drugs or alcohol
Two has been coasting over the horizon. For someone who married his daughter, Allen's marriage is holding up surprisingly well, but then she has particularly good insurance against divorce.
I get paid to write and I've read few books. Even fewer fiction books.
Woody Allen was always tagged as an "Intellectual" because he's much smarter than the average Comedian. And he can make fun of things like Russian philosophy and Literature (cf: Love and Death), but he only went to college for a semester.
Besides, I think writing novels (or reading them) is a different talent then writing plays or screenplays. By comparison to novels its very superficial. You dont need get that deep into your characters, Hell, you can't get that deep compared to a novel. You don't have time.
And please, I don't believe for a second that Bill Maher some great reader. And his ability to cut off an interesting thought by his interviewee rivals that of Charlie Rose.
Woody is neither reading his lines nor hitting his marks.
@doctrev: "who married his daughter"
...who married a post-pubsecent fertile young woman of an entirely different ancestry with 0% potential familial overap, and who was brought home like a lost puppy by his weird hippie wife.
This was an unsurprising outcome for hetereosexual biological strangers living in the same house, and as young females are often more than willing partners of older powerful men. See the Hollywood casting couch. See the standarized mistress industry (e.g., Japan). See half of the politicians worldwide. See royals living (Prince Andrew) and dead (King Henry VIII, plus 100,000 more).
I want to go back and watch Crimes and Misdemeanors. I remember seeing it in the theater with my wife, but it came out months before we met (!), so who knows. I remember thinking the drama was quite powerful. By far the most powerful of his films that I have seen.
In the 19th Century, guys like Woody married women like his wife all the time. Google "President Cleveland".
Annie Hall is still my favorite, but I live his first movie "Whats up Tigerlily?" I still laugh my ass off at it even at the 100th wat hing.
Bill Maher's at it again?
Coyly letting 1960s celebrities know that he masturbated over them when he was in seventh grade?
Ulysses and Don Quixote. Throw in War and Peace and Moby Dick. Has anybody read all four all the way though? Toss in Proust and the Bible and probably nobody has read all six.
Woody let us know about this in Zelig, when he told us that his character's condition began when he pretended to have read Moby Dick.
Grover Cleveland, very creepy character, but women didn't have the vote back then, so the gents could just chuckle over it in the smoking room.
Did Woody Allen and Mia Farrow live together?
"Woody Allen and Mia Farrow began a 12-year relationship in 1980, during which Farrow starred in 13 of his films. They maintained separate apartments in Manhattan throughout the relationship—Farrow on Central Park West and Allen on Fifth Avenue"
"Ulysses and Don Quixote. Throw in War and Peace and Moby Dick. Has anybody read all four all the way though? Toss in Proust and the Bible and probably nobody has read all six."
I have.
Okay, maybe not all of The Bible, not end to end, I'm not sure, but the vast majority of it at one point or another. Need to get around to finishing Robert Alter's magnificent edition of the Hebrew Bible, and David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation is also sitting on my "to read" shelf.
War and Peace - once was enough. Russians other than Nabokov are just not that compelling for me.
Proust - once, would like to read again. I've read the first 2 books a couple of times each.
Don Quixote - at least twice, would read again
Ulysses and Moby Dick - so many times I've lost count.
I think the obsessive reader is probably a bit hard to understand for a normal person. A bit like modelling the mind of a schizophrenic. LOL
Ann, you’ve hit on my deepest nerve when it comes to trigger events in interviews. I almost go mad when the interviewer cuts off his interviewee just as they’re starting to say something interesting. Usually I attribute it to not listening or wanting to get to their next preset question but with Maher it’s simple narcissism. He lives in his own head, the most self-satisfied person I think I’ve ever seen.
I wonder if the elderly Woody is as terrified of dying as he was back in his 30's. when he said:
"I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment."
profile
Introducing Soon-Yi Previn
As controversies tumbled around her, the daughter of Mia Farrow and wife of Woody Allen stayed silent for decades. No more.
.
"M Jordan said...
Ann, you’ve hit on my deepest nerve when it comes to trigger events in interviews. I almost go mad when the interviewer cuts off his interviewee just as they’re starting to say something interesting. Usually I attribute it to not listening or wanting to get to their next preset question but with Maher it’s simple narcissism. He lives in his own head, the most self-satisfied person I think I’ve ever seen."
Maher is articulate, but so ill informed that in an interview with Megan Kelly he believed and repeated the lie that cops were killed on Jan6.
She took less than a minute to convince him it never happened and his response was basically "Oh well".
Didn't even act as if the oft repeated lying talking point was worth discussing.
Crimes and Misdemeanors is a Great Film. Allen is definitely one of the Greats.
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality by not dying."
I loved the premise of Midnight in Paris also. As I recall, I was somewhat disappointed by the ending.
I was bowled over by Annie Hall at the time, not sure it still works today.
Maher is like a pinball, bumping and striking with chaotic appearance.
Bill Maher has another awkward conversation with an over-90 celebrity he admired when he was a kid.
According to IMDb, Woody Allen is 89.
Just sayin'.
I just never understood his appeal at all.
Seconded. But maybe my bias stems from the late-70s when (as an early teen) I saw Star Wars. And was a bit taken aback when it lost to Annie Hall.
So, I thought, "Man. If it beat Star Wars, that must be some kinda movie."
Then I saw it.
And that was the end of my interest in Woody Allen.
The Goodbye Girl would've come in 2nd...
Blue Jasmine
I watched a bunch of Woody Allen movies over the last year and they hold up pretty well. The last really great movie he made was Crimes and Misdemeanors. Almost everything since then feels like a first draft screenplay. I listened to about half this interview and it was pretty painful. Kind of like watching Groucho in the 70s. Actually, Groucho was sharper.
Bill with Woody get bumped. Novel.
Charlie rose was the worst for cutting off interviewee:
Charlie rose: You knew Joe Mcarthy didn't you and wrote a book about him, didn't you:
William F. Buckley: Yes, I can remember when I first meet him at a rally for Eisenhower, we..
charlie rose: Ah, you knew Eisenhower. Was that bumbling at the press conferences all an act?
Buckley: Yes, I talked to Ike once and...
Charlie: You know he and Nixon didn't get along. why did you support Nixon during watergate?
Buckley: Well, I always thought Nixon should have done...
Charlie: And what's your new book called?
“ ...who married a post-pubsecent fertile young woman of an entirely different ancestry with 0% potential familial overap, and who was brought home like a lost puppy by his weird hippie wife.”
Actually, she was brought like a lost puppy by a weird hippie woman who was never his wife. If Soon Yi were actually a puppy, the ASPCA would have done a rescue.
I get it. There's only so much energy to go around and consumption competes with creation.
" The last really great movie he made was Crimes and Misdemeanors. Almost everything since then feels like a first draft screenplay. "
I find many (most?) of his 90s movies to be pretty solid, if not quite up to the standards of his 70s and 80s work. With the exception of Celebrity, which some people really seem to hate, his run from Manhattan Murder Mystery through Sweet and Lowdown is all quite good.
It gets more hit and miss after that.
Something weird has happened with today's posts. This Maher-Woody Allen post has jumped to the top, ahead of everything else.
I'm used to the embedded vids hopping around but this is the first time I've seen this.
Anyone else?
@Narr: Yes it moved. A software bug I'm guessing. Blogger is a dated platform and seems to receive nothing more than life support from Google. See the italics bug, the lack of threaded replies, and no "like" function too.
Based on the picture, they could be brothers
The funniest Woody was Woody Harrelson in The Edge of Seventeen, in the outtake reel ad libbing with Hailee Steinfeld, of possible twists to their on screen scene.
"rhhardin said...
The funniest Woody was Woody Harrelson"
Not even close to Woody, with a Wood pecker
"the lack of threaded replies,"
Althouse worked quite hard to disable threaded replies when they suddenly appeared.
“ Something weird has happened with today's posts. This Maher-Woody Allen post has jumped to the top, ahead of everything else.”
I was making a small correction in the text of the post and before I published I hit a button that caused it to update the time of the post to the time of that correction. It was purely my mistake and I know what I did and I’ve now fixed it so it’s actually not weird at all. Blogger is working just fine. Don’t worry about it.
As for threaded comments, I loathe them. They cause unimportant comments to jump up to the top of the line where they don’t deserve to be and to get ahead of people who write more substantive things and keep getting bumped downward.
Thanks, Prof et. al. I'm not worried, just curious to see if it was just me and/or meant something in particular.
"and to get ahead of people who write more substantive things and keep getting bumped downward."
With threaded comments, replies to those "more substantive things" are all together in one place, not scattered throughout the comment section- sort of a thread within a thread.
As it is, any comment now is goes to the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) and bumps everything down (or up) anyway. It's not like "substantiveness" keeps a post in a more prominent position, is it?
I’m very happy without threaded comments, but as poor a proofreader as I am, I surely wish we still had the Preview function.
To be clear, I don't care all that much one way or the other. There are good reasons for whatever method one chooses.
@Althouse: As for threaded comments, I loathe them. They cause unimportant comments to jump up to the top of the line where they don’t deserve to be and to get ahead of people who write more substantive things and keep getting bumped downward."
No, that's not threading. You are describing auto ranking (popularity) coupled with threading rather than simple threading (keeping like with like). One can preserve the temporal sequence of each direct reply to the original post yet hide the digressions under each initial reply. If a person feels the need to break off from the thread for greater visibility, they might still quote and start a new entry.
As it stands now, creaky old Blogger forces us to filter through at least two dozen back-and-forth trolling messages, flames, and personal attacks among the regular partisan combatants. With. every. single. post.
We also have to manually quote prior messages to maintain the context or see random floating thoughts with uncertain intent. This causes endless quoting mistakes and unintended italics.
Ann, I don’t see it as paradoxical at all. Some minds are wired to create rather than consume. I often wonder why it’s so hard for people to get this.
"One can preserve the temporal sequence of each direct reply to the original post yet hide the digressions under each initial reply."
This would be useful when the discussion between two posters veers off the initial subject into Russia/Ukraine territory, and you're not interested in that topic.
@Madon G (2:29), Allen’s 90th birthday will be this coming November 30th. Seems close enough for me.
The silent majority is obviously against threaded replies.
“ As it is, any comment now is goes to the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at it) and bumps everything down (or up) anyway. It's not like "substantiveness" keeps a post in a more prominent position, is it?”
No, but the priority of chronology is orderly. No jumping the line. It’s easy to show what your comment is referring to, as I’m doing here by quoting what I’m responding to.
Chronology is also the order of the blog itself… and of life itself.
From the interview;
Woody Allen says he had sexual relationships with Diane Keaton and both her sisters.
No mention of any involvement with her mother though, so there’s that.
I’m sure it was just fine with all of them but I just find him unpleasant.
@Eva Marie - if a man finds a woman attractive and vice versa, sinning the sister is often a viable attraction. Nine sets of sisters for me. Nine (9). Some people are consumers
“Sinning” is the judgmental choice of Apple autocorrect. Fuck Apple and fuck the sister! If she’s hot.
All right. I’ve been corrected. There’s always 2 sides to every issue. Or 9 X 2 as the case may be.
I've read GREAT EXPECTATIONS and CATCH-22. EXPECTATIONS was good, but not as good as Dickens' less known (and shortest) novel, HARD TIMES. A critique of the type of thinking that animates the Deranged Right today.
CATCH-22 is great, the classic it has been hailed!
"...my bias stems from the late-70s when (as an early teen) I saw Star Wars. And was a bit taken aback when it lost to Annie Hall.
'So, I thought, 'Man. If it beat Star Wars, that must be some kinda movie.'
'Then I saw it.
'And that was the end of my interest in Woody Allen."
ANNIE HALL is vastly better than STAR WARS.
Let's match like to like: Star Wars vs Sleeper. Sleeper is much better.
But given that Star Wars is one of the dumbest movies ever made, that's a low bar.
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