My Woody Allen Interview

A discussion from January 2022, now exclusive to Hoffstack.

In January 2022, with the release of “Rifkin’s Festival” (quite possibly Woody Allen’s worst film), I interviewed the legendary filmmaker via Zoom. The interview has never been published. It’s been sitting on my hard drive for a while, so I figured today is a good day to share it with HOFFSTACK readers.

This was during the height of the “omicron wave” of Covid, just as people were getting really sick again, and you still had to show proof of vaccination to go places.

Speaking to Woody Allen was a little surreal. I made him laugh on a few occasions and at the end he complimented me, saying “this was one of the fun ones.” In the interview we talk about “Rifkin’s Festival” (truly bad, but his most recent, “Coup de Chance” is far better) and then other topics like the New York Knicks, avant-garde jazz, his fondness for Mia Farrow as an actress (seriously!) and the statistical oddity that “A Rainy Day in New York” became number one at the box office thanks to Covid ensuring it was the only new movie in theaters for a little while (“we all had a good laugh over it,” he says.) I also try to guilt him to watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which he won’t do even though he likes Larry David.

I hate to do this, but this is a subscriber-only piece. Blame capitalism, but that’s how it is. As you continue to scroll down you’ll be prompted to subscribe. I have taken pity, however, and for a LIMITED TIME I have reduced the monthly rate for HOFFSTACK down to five bucks, the lowest allowed by this platform. You can sign up for a month, read this, and then cancel, I suppose. I feel like a loser squeezing everybody for dough, but it’s either that or take Luigi Mangione’s route and I don’t look so good in orange. (Maybe in a few weeks I’ll re-release this as a freebie, I dunno; I do feel bad.) Anyway, enjoy!

I am looking at an empty couch I can only describe as “extremely Connecticut.”

There are pillows with granny square patterns, a fireplace with wooden figurines on the mantel, two small circular clocks (ship’s clocks?) and a framed piece of folk art: a painting of a ring of trees on what looks like barn wood. I don’t really know what I expected Woody Allen’s home to look like, but I don’t think I expected this.

I’m not in the room with him on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but communicating from my apartment in Queens via Zoom, a last minute change to stay on the safe side of omicron. As such, I can’t make out the titles on the two massive bookshelves, except for one, the 1,400 page behemoth “Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898,” by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. The occasion is the release of his latest movie, “Rifkin’s Festival,” his 49th feature film to play in theaters. (That number grows substantially if you include projects for television, shorts, movies he wrote but did not direct, and other ephemera.) 

“Rifkin’s Festival” stars Wallace Shawn as Mort Rifkin, a grumpy ex-film professor and frustrated novelist, schlepping along with his publicist wife (Gina Gershon) to the San Sebastián Film Festival in the Basque region of Spain. She is representing a hotshot new French director (Louis Garrel) who, naturally, Rifkin thinks is shallow, but also worries is romancing his wife. 

“Rifkin’s Festival,” which features the great gimmick of fantasy sequences in the style of classic European films by Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, and others, is droll and breezy, and looks gorgeous, though it will not be remembered as one of Woody Allen’s masterpieces. It is, however, pleasant, and fans should seek it out.

It also marks the first film developed, shot, and released after Allen’s final transformation into a complete social pariah in the United States.

As I am sure many know, Allen was dropped by his distribution partner, Amazon, in 2017. (This new project is being released by the smaller MPI Media Group in the United States.) In 1992, during an extremely acrimonious breakup between Allen and his girlfriend Mia Farrow (due, in no small part, to Allen forming a relationship with his current wife Soon-Yi Previn, who was also Farrow’s adopted daughter), Allen was accused of molesting seven-year-old Dylan, a co-adopted daughter, which he denied. A team of child abuse investigators cleared him in early 1993, and he was never charged. The claim re-emerged, initially via Twitter in 2014 during the Golden Globe Awards, and took on new momentum in 2017 in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the fall of Harvey Weinstein which, in a rather dramatic twist, was led in part by Allen and Farrow’s biological son, Ronan. Essays, editorials, and interviews have appeared in all the major papers and glossy magazines, including one from Dylan in The Los Angeles Times, and a lengthy self-published essay from another of Farrow’s adopted children, Moses, who sides with Allen. Allen’s 2020 memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” (which changed publishers from the mainstream Hachette Group to the smaller firm Arcade, after backlash) features a section in which the author defends himself in lengthy detail. In February 2021, HBO released a four-part series, “Allen v. Farrow,” which most viewers interpreted as damning for Allen. He and Previn released a statement calling the project “a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods.”

Allen’s career continues, and he even has another project in development, but his reach is significantly diminished, as is the palette of artists willing to work with him. At age 86, he is alert on this extremely cold January afternoon, and seems surprisingly comfortable conversing over Zoom, despite his persona of a technophobe. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. 

As a film lover, naturally I enjoyed the homages in “Rifkin’s Festival” to all the European classics, when the image would turn to black and white and suddenly we’d be in “Jules and Jim” or “Exterminating Angel.” Once you knew you would be employing this device, did you have something of a checklist?

No, I was just writing the story, and the appropriate film for continuing the narration was what I selected. So it was guided by the plot. 

I was waiting for “The Seventh Seal,” since I know how much you love that one, and then it did show up at the end. 

That’s my favorite, actually, and I was very lucky to get that actor [Christoph Waltz] to do it. It’s not that easy to do that, you can certainly look very silly [in that costume].

It’s great to see Wallace Shawn as a leading man. 

Yes, I have the honor of being the only director, probably, to cast Wally Shawn as the romantic lead of a movie. 

He deserves it. He’s a wonderful guy, he’s very bright, he’s a first rate actor, and he’s a first rate playwright of these esoteric plays that are quite good.

You’ve cast him in smaller roles in five other films over the years, dating back to “Manhattan.” Do you remember first meeting him? I get the impression you were friends.

No, we were not friends, and we’re not socially close. I met him when Juliet Taylor, who did casting for all my films, said we should meet him because he would be perfect for the part of Diane Keaton’s ex-husband. [Note: in “Manhattan,” the character of Jeremiah is described as someone who is legendarily virile, brilliant, and irresistible; then we meet Wallace Shawn, whose stature and demeanor does not exactly fit that definition, conventionally speaking.] 

As soon as I met him we thought he was hilarious. When he came to the set to shoot, the crew couldn’t stop laughing, he was naturally funny, and also dependable as an actor. 

Later he sent me the script of “My Dinner with André,” and he wanted me to play it with the other person. With, uh, um—

André.

[Chuckling] Yes, exactly. But I just didn’t want to memorize all that stuff! I thought, “oh, God, it’s such a wordy part.” I thought it was a very good idea, but for me to have to memorize it all? So he did it himself, and I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job, not me, not anyone. Wally’s just a natural, realistic, comic actor. 

Some actors, when they play the lead in your films, can sometimes take on some of your mannerisms. Wally did not do this in “Rifkin’s Festival.” Was this a decision you two discussed?

No, he just has a unique quality. He’s a personality. And while you may not want him to play King Lear or Hamlet, if what you need is a character like Wally, he just shows up and isn’t acting. So he’s nothing like me in real life. 

What’s your take when, as I mentioned, some actors take on some of your mannerisms in your films? Take it as a compliment?