Word: manhattans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week not much writing was being done. His home phonewhere his movie will play and found some of them wanting: new screens and projectors had to be ordered to "keep Manhattan from looking like The Day the Earth Blew Up." Equally unsatisfactory was the typeface in a full-page Sunday New York Times ad for the film: a new mock-up awaited his inspection. The most annoying problem was the Motion Picture Association's decision to slap Manhattan with an R rating because of a few four-letter words. Allen was not pleased: "People say that the industry...
...these days. Or at least as content as he can be. Rather uncharacteristically, he even seems tentatively pleased with his own work. "I wanted to make a film that was more serious than Annie Hall, a serious picture that had laughs in it," he says. "I felt decent about Manhattan at the time I did it; it does go farther than Annie Hall. But 1 think now I could do better. Of course, if my film makes one more person feel miserable, I'll feel I've done my job." He is only half joking. It is no wonder that...
...never "on" in private, he not only talks about death in his films but spends a great deal of time thinking about it. "My real obsessions are religious," he says. "They have to do with the meaning of life and with the futility of obtaining immortality through art. In Manhattan, the characters create problems for themselves to escape. In real life, everyone gives himself a distraction-whether it's by turning on the TV set or by playing sophisticated games like the characters of Manhattan. You have to deny the reality of death to go on every...
...jackets is the same he wears in his movies. "Mariel Hemingway just saw Annie Hall again and called me up, amazed that I wore the same clothes she sees me in all the time," Allen recalls. "Actually I wear some of the same clothes in both Annie Hall and Manhattan. I'm still wearing a shirt I wore in Play It Again, Sam on Broadway in 1969." The only true indulgences he allows himself are a cook and driver, as well as a compulsion to pick up dinner checks. His isolation from financial affairs is so complete that he gave...
...characters in Interiors. Certainly talent can give sensual, aesthetic pleasure; it's like looking at a beautiful woman. But people who are huge talents are frequently miserable human beings. In terms of human attributes, what really counts is courage. There's a speech I had to cut out of Manhattan and plan to get into the next film, where my character says that the metaphor for life is a concentration camp. I do believe that. The real question in life is how one copes in that crisis. I just hope I'm never tested, because I'm very pessimistic about...