One of the great things about being “canceled” and exiled out into the Land of the Proles is that you don’t have to be afraid of saying something that might offend someone. We live in a time when a tiny but screeching minority of voices has the majority by the balls. No one will speak up for fear of their careers being destroyed overnight.
But once the worst that can happen to you has happens to you, you’re like Truman escaping the Truman Show. You’re free. As I am, as Woody Allen is. He sat down for a long conversation about his life and work. I so enjoyed listening to him. He isn’t going to be around forever, but long-form conversations will preserve the mind of one of the true greats – in writing, in comedy, and in directing.
Both the Left and the Right have shunned Woody Allen and mostly for the same reasons. I can’t ever do that because his films have meant so much to me. They’ve shaped so much of how I see the world. I think one of the best films about the time we’re living through right now is Sleeper. While he depicts the isolated ruling class bereft of creativity (and even a leader), he paints the resistance as “Marxists.” In 2024, the reverse is true. It’s a hard thing to wrap one’s mind around but essentially, Hollywood has mostly been overtaken by ideology that is very Communist-like (though thankfully not Communist actually).
What Joseph McCarthy fretted about is a reality today. Films are infused with dogma that pushes an agenda and many of them are pure propaganda. Sleeper, despite its many slapstick scenes, has some profound things to say about our future.
It’s so relevant to today because it shows not just a two-tiered society, but it shows how our perception of reality is shaped to the point where the other side seems crazy and dangerous to us. For this reason, I think of Sleeper a lot these days. But other films of his are never far from my thoughts because they tackle not just our common human problems – heartbreak, affairs, dead marriages, betrayal — but big human ideas. I think a lot about Crimes and Misdemeanors. In that movie, Woody Allen is ruminating on guilt. Is it bad to commit a crime if you feel no guilt or remorse? Who is capable of doing something terrible versus who need someone to do the dirty work instead?
And then, in the same movie, we get the great Alan Alda character:
His films are so layered with stories about interesting relationships. Hannah and Her Sisters have never been topped:
He was one of the greatest American filmmakers and nothing is going to change that. All we get by blanking him from our culture now is less of everything great art can do. We spend so much of our time now deconstructing every character in every film to make sure that a “correct” version of human behavior is the ultimate message. But writing about human frailty, our contradictions, our hypocrisy – as Woody Allen did so often — is the stuff of great writing and great filmmaking.
So I’ll never be that person who isn’t a Woody Allen fan. I’m a lifer.
