Got a Woody
Posted by arkahar on June 6, 2007
The other night, I watched Jean-Luc Godard’s 1986 documentary Meetin’ WA.
As the title vaguely implies (if in faux-native idiom), it’s a half-hour sit-down with Woody Allen. French film director Godard muses about the art of film, and the creative process in general, with New York’s great cinematic auteur, Woody.
It would have been shot around the time Hannah and Her Sisters was released — some years before the Woody/Mia Farrow/Soon-Yi scandal of the early 1990s.
You might recall how the press really pounded Woody for his heart wanting what it wanted (his adopted daughter).
Anyhow, the sit-down with Godard promises more than it delivers.
But, okay, Woody has some interesting things to say about the creative process, and about how he views film, as well as his own work.
But the doco itself has a hastily-put-together feel. The film’s somewhat impressionistic style doesn’t quite work: bursts of loud jazz to weirdly-chosen montage images (Fred Asatire, Elizabeth Taylor, Orson Welles… and an ostensible Woody look-alike, going through a box of video tapes in an editing room.)
Still, worth the watch. Especially for fellow Woody Allen fans.
Early in the doco, however, I had a creepy sense of dramatic irony.
Godard asks:
“Are you afraid of the press […]?”
Woody answers:
“No, the press has always been good to me. More good to me than I have deserved. So, I never feel, um, frightened from the press. The press has always been very protective of me and supportive of me over the years. Even many times when I didn’t deserve it. They were very nice. So, I have, for the most part, very good feelings about the press.”
Two decades later, I wonder how Woody would answer that same question.
______________
