Word: allens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Allen, perhaps idealistically, believes that in the end, the commitments we must make to one another come down to something that simple?if we have a little luck. "Each of us is so finely tuned that to have two people meet and then intermesh is a matter of luck. I've had friends who when they marry say, 'I know we're going to have to work at it.' I always think they're wrong. The things that are really pleasurable in life, whether it's playing Softball or working on your stamp collection, really require no effort...
...Allen is also convinced that the way to confront the spiritual emptiness that is much on his mind is by making a series of individual moral choices, based essentially on an instinctive sense of right or wrong. "We have to go at it the hard way, and come to terms with the fact that the universe seems to contain only the grimmest possibilities. We have to develop structures of our own that encourage us to believe that it genuinely pays to make the moral choice just from the pragmatic point of view...
...accounts, Allen lives by his own precepts. Says Brickman: "Woody is scrupulously honest and ethical in the dog-eat-dog business of entertainment. He is a good example, because he has a high moral sense." That includes playing the not always grateful part of the only conscious moralist in Manhattan. Onscreen, Murphy accuses him of playing God (Woody's reply: "I've got to model myself after someone.") Offscreen, Murphy, who is a close friend, says, "Woody could have made a safer picture, like Annie Hall. This film is a lot tougher, harder-edged. And it was a bold step...
...Allen is not one of those show-biz creatures who embrace highly visible causes while slyly accumulating oil leases on the side. Producer-Manager Charles Joffe despairs of ever making a businessman out of Woody, and handles most of his affairs. Allen's "deal," as they say in Hollywood, is not as lucrative as it might be, partly because he seldom sells his pictures to network television (he hates the commercials) and because he would rather sacrifice money than lose the unlimited creative control he has over his work. "All Woody wants to do is make a dollar profit," Joffe...
...largest apartment in Manhattan, but it may be the airiest. Woody Allen's penthouse duplex is high above Fifth Avenue, and its glass walls provide an illusion of floating. Outside, in foreshortened perspective, like Saul Steinberg's popular poster, stretches much of the city: the lakes and woods of Central Park, the skyscrapers of midtown, the rococo parapets of the West Side. This is literally and figuratively Woody Allen's Manhattan: the movie's opening sequence, a montage of romantic cityscapes, was largely shot from the director's own terrace...