Iconoclastic courage is a nebbish named Woody.
Odd-looking bloke for an icon, but Woody Allen's creative integrity surfaces anew after fleeing even farther from Hollywood than Central Park West. His dark, London-based thriller, Match Point, a Christmas release starring Scarlett Johannsen, is his first film shot outside the bosom of Manhattan that has nursed the Woodster like a borough-sized breast.
"It's increasingly difficult to get financing in the United States," Woody said in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where Match Point played to upbeat buzz. "It's become more prevalent for studios to participate in the project. They don't want to be thought of as just a bank. They want to have a say in casting and read the script, and occasionally come to the set. I can never work like that. I want the money in a brown paper bag and to give them the film a few months later. In London, there's no rigmarole from people who want to participate."
So veddy impressed, Allen will return to shoot a comedy.
I love this aging sad sack of neuroses—not simply because he's a New Yorker (I'm an expat) or neurotic (I can relate) or a rare talent (I only wish). But because—try this image—he's our Billy Jack (better, granted, at riding subways than horses), an enigmatic nonconformist amid our oppressive conformity. (Or picture Woody as Coop in High Noon, facing down baddies with his famous Woodyism, "I have a gub.")
Hollywood loves making movies about system-buckers—from Norma Rae, Silkwood and the upcoming North Country to every maverick-cop movie ever made—while lashing those who'd question how business is conducted within their palm tree-shaded power suites. But Woody would. Scrawny, bespectacled and whiny-voiced he may be, but he speaks truth to power, and acts on what he speaks. His self-imposed isolation from the Hollywood System is legendary, and for all the puffed-out egos who parade through that tacky town, the face of honor, in absentia, is that geeky puss.
Cinematically, results of his leap-across-the-pond experiment are still indeterminate. Woody's so inextricably linked to New York that his London efforts may feel as foreign as a ham-and-cheese on pumpernickel bagel at Carnegie Deli. Or they could reflect a refreshed auteur with much more still to say than he or we imagined.
But he's reminded me of what acting on principle means.
Beyond the storms of his personal life (lived, I'll concede, in some alternate moral universe), his professional comportment is hypocrisy-free. Can we all say as much, negotiating swirling political rapids at our jobs, overeager to impress others rather than ourselves, talking trash in gossipy whispers, elbowing our way into "the know" that grants access to the power perch—and some token stroking—then congratulating ourselves when winning at our jobs becomes more fulfilling than doing our jobs? But God bless the child who couldn't care less.
Woody won't trade up. Won't hang in Hollywood, where the game's afoot. Won't prowl industry functions giving symbolic handjobs to deal-sealers. Won't pray to market trends, kiss the talisman of demographics or worship at the Altar of the Wallet. So he plays to fewer moviegoers by the box-office high bar. Actions, or lack thereof, have consequences. The trick is being at peace with the trade-off.
Woody just makes his art—boutique filmmaking, almost—much of it remarkably humane, some passably entertaining, a few regrettable misfires, but all genuine, expressions of his mind and heart.
Few of us mortals enjoy the monetary independence to pull a Woody and just disappear into a life of our own rules. Still, in an industry where success requires excess and excess is never enough, I envy the man his purity of purpose, clarity of priorities, and acceptance of repercussions as the price paid.
I admire his equanimity, too.
Or as much as the Crown Prince of Existential Angst could possibly muster.
Steve Bornfeld switched to pastrami on white with mayo after watching Annie Hall. Scold him at
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