Since the last thread got going on Woody Allen, I thought it a great time to bring a fun weekend convo over here. How do I count the scenes that I love best from his movies? Not to mention his books. We watched the documentary on Allen recently on PBS. Jew Max? Loved having his childhood and life fleshed out a bit by his sister and Louise Lasser. Though I do recall learning some of that, and more, much more as you'll recall, from Mia Farrow's memoir. In our house, we can cite, verbatim, so many scenes from his movies. Perhaps Love and Death being our all time favorite. So, give us your best lines. One, two, one two ("three comes next if you're wondering.")
Ottoline
12/3/2011 07:08:31 am
I've loved lots of Woody Allen movies and lines, but I'm troubled by the pedophile issue, esp after we have been thinking so much about it re Penn State. I haven't read much about the Allen-Farrow issues, until today. Laura, I wonder if this 9-yr-old VF article
Tom
12/3/2011 09:22:48 am
For chrissakes is everyman a pedophile now. I don't tgrust one fucking word that comes out of anyone's mouth anymore. Who said he was a pedophile? Mia? Fuck her.
Tom
12/3/2011 09:29:18 am
Posters already unjustly crucified Joe Paterno. Now, my girl Ottoline is turning on my favorite, Woody Allen. I hate this fuckin' world.
Sherryn
12/3/2011 11:59:54 am
I think Ottoline brings up some valid points, the vanity fair article DOES show some very strange behavior on Woody Allen's side, but it is biased toward Mia Farrow's side. Mia was Soon Yi's age when she married Frank Sinatra, Mia not only defended Roman Polanski after he raped a 13 year old, but offered to act in one of his movies as a sign of solidarity.
Tom
12/3/2011 12:07:00 pm
"Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable." Woody
Ottoline
12/3/2011 12:21:26 pm
Tom, Tom -- I'm betting you are a fan of Woody's manufactured persona, as I am. The real man is different. We've always known that, no? But we don't know the real man, most of us.
Tom
12/4/2011 12:26:40 am
I know who Allen Konigsberg is. Mia is a 'woman scorned'. This is the same woman that married Sinatra when she was 21. Frank was 50. That's a 29 yr. dufference in age. Oh, I know, b ut he was Sinatra. B.S. Maybe she's aout of whack.
FrostyAK
12/4/2011 04:29:08 am
To lighten things up a bit. The macro universe is expanding. If that is so, then the micro universe must be expanding as well - with the spaces between electrons, neutrons and other small particles getting ever larger.
Ottoline
12/4/2011 04:41:39 am
Tom! Stop!! I did not call W a pedophile, I said he had a pedophile issue. He does. Of his own making. Not mine. Per court documents. Not just the Soon Yi marriage but his behavior with Dylan. Which you are in clear denial about. ***Per court documents.*** An all-too-common reaction to such issues.
Ottoline
12/4/2011 04:51:26 am
Frost AK: You are right about the universe expanding. I just realized: that explains my wrinkles and droops as I age. Do you think the the fancy anti-wrinkle creams can stop the universe from expanding? I have put all my hopes on that, so pls advise ASAP.
Laura Novak
12/4/2011 05:30:50 am
What was intended as a fun "let's recollect our favorite Woody quotes" has turned in to an F Bomb delight. Tom, take it down a few notches or take a hike.
Ottoline
12/4/2011 07:24:46 am
Homework: yes! Hahaha. That idea completely escaped me when I first saw this. Also, I now see more clearly that "Brooklyn is NOT expanding." Dr. Flicker's disgusting laugh still gets me. The mothers, incl Grammy Hall, are way more sympathetic characters to me now.
Laura Novak
12/4/2011 08:42:17 am
Thanks, Jo! I appreciate that.
FrostyAK
12/4/2011 09:19:52 am
Want something to really get knickers in a twist about?
Tom
12/4/2011 09:35:21 am
http://www.gamesareforchildren.com/index.php?/archives/409-Joe-Paterno-and-why-I-will-never-be-a-teacher.html#extended
Ottoline
12/4/2011 10:50:34 am
Jo--You are too kind. Thank you. But I didn't think things got that wacky. In fact, our conversation seemed to me to have amazing connections to the earlier conversations here.
Ivyfree
12/4/2011 11:54:38 pm
Can we consider the fact that pedophiles are in charge of their own behavior and typically do what they can to ensure that they are not caught? Honestly, I do not blindly accept a statement from a wife. There are too many adults who say, "She knew, and she did nothing." Typically because the wives are trained into helplessness by the abusive spouse, and knowing their children are molested and doing something about it are two different things. The effort to gather up one's kids and get away from the abuser, particularly when public opinion is typically "lying b****," is just too much for them.
V-A
12/5/2011 01:05:31 am
I believe it is in the dna of many men to lust after very young girls. After all, we're programmed to procreate, for the survival of the species, and who better to pick for the act than a young girl? But an honorable, healthy man accepts the rules of his society, and abides by them. Most soccer dads don't have sex with their team players. (Although I know two h.s. football coaches who married 17 yr old students. But,hey, that's TX.)
V-A
12/5/2011 01:19:50 am
I loved MANHATTAN. I saw it when I was 27 and living in NYC. It was the perfect homage to the city I loved. The opening scenes are absolute genius.
Ottoline
12/5/2011 01:39:32 am
Last night I watched "mighty Aphrodite," a WA film I didn't know existed,
B
12/5/2011 01:42:13 am
I stopped watching his movies when he married his daughter. I don't think I heard about the nude pictures before. Ugh. Frankly, as a Southerner, it took me a long time to understand his NYC/Jewish humor anyway. I had to ask my companion at Annie Hall why the pastrami with mayo on white bread was funny. I'm most likely to quote lines from Airplane: "I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue;" or June Cleaver's "Excuse me stewardess, I speak jive."
Ottoline
12/5/2011 02:01:10 am
Yes we are programmed to procreate, just as we are programmed to eat. But that does not mean we can eat inappropriately. I have always laughed at the "I have needs!" argument. We ALL have needs (let's not even discuss "needs vs wants"!). But that doesn't mean that as complex a being as a human can act like s/he is an amoeba. Well, ok, they CAN (and do), but we have to say NO when we see that happening. Like with WA. Again, it's not so much about the abuser (because there will always be bad people) as about what we do to stop evil behavior that routinely appears in a society. (More routinely than I formerly thought.)
Laura Novak
12/5/2011 02:32:35 am
Now there you go, I've been sitting here for 15 minutes watching Mighty Aphrodite clips.
Tom
12/5/2011 02:59:40 am
You figure it out. Allen, Farrow, Sinatra, Previn, Soon-Yi.
Ottoline
12/5/2011 04:45:06 am
Tom: I agree, many things are **more** vulgar. That does not contradict my saying any ad hominem attack is vulgar. It's not even the use of any specific term -- one could just as well say "Damn Mia" (or even "darn"!) and convey the same amount of zero info as to why one is angry with her, or should be. Although the less polite (more vulgar) the verb, the more we are supposed to think you mean it, but we still have no info re why. That's why it's a waste of time.
Tom
12/5/2011 10:10:25 am
@Ottoline--What seems ad himinem is reall y a dismissal of Mia. The crap I made up about her mother was a way of conveying, in a ridiculous way I admit, how crap is sometimes crap. You and Mia take exception to Woody's photos. Woody views (see above)it differently ("fortuitous"). Mia accused him of sexual abuse. Woody denies it. You choose to believe her. I choose to enjoy Woody with tyhe knowledge that sometimes good people do bad things but that what he did or did not do is beyond my ken. Farrow has a history of much older men as lovers. Pursue that. Electra complex? I don't know. Maybe. Eugene O'Neill took it up in his play (see above). Was he wasting his time?
Tom
12/5/2011 11:18:02 am
Laura's Red Flops now in the news-- sexual abuse in the locker room. Has to be true. Get ESPN on this stat. Oh, that's right. ESPN is the enabling network.
Tom
12/5/2011 11:50:20 am
This is an article by a man who was close to Joe Paterno. It's surprisingly objective and worth reading if you care to better understand the culture in State College, PA and University Park.
Sherryn
12/5/2011 11:54:23 am
I was surfing youtube and can't believe how much of Woody's work I had forgotten.
Ottoline
12/5/2011 12:17:03 pm
Sherryn--the part I've always loved in this clip is him pushing "Death in Venice" upon Annie instead of a book of cat pictures. I guess we have all missed whopper clues like that in our beginning relationships, only to remember them later, when it's too late.
mistah charley, ph.d.
12/5/2011 08:47:37 pm
Sherryn - I have never seen Annie Hall, and the clip you posted makes me want to see it. I have read one of the books he's pushing - "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker - a very good book. As for Woody's dichotomy, "the horrible and the miserable", it reminds me that Freud once said the goal of psychoanalysis was to transform great suffering into ordinary unhappiness.
Tom
12/6/2011 12:09:54 am
I try to focus more on the work and less on the worker. Kosinski may have been a fraud and a plagiarizer. I like the work, read about a half dozen of his novels. I especially liked 'Being There'. Does 'Painted Bird' have no value just because it may not have been written by Kosinski? Likewise Shakespeare?
Ottoline
12/6/2011 01:08:26 am
I gave my WWII survivor father "The Painted Bird" to read a few yrs ago. As we know, it is the story of a teenage boy's survival among adverse WWII circumstances and cruel people. I didn't know the details when we started the book.
Ottoline
12/6/2011 02:04:59 am
Thanks for the Paint Cats treat, mistah charley! If you look halfway down this link, there is a sweet piece by one of my fave SFComical columnists, Jon Carroll, who writes often and well about his cats, with many keen and witty observations:
Laura Novak
12/6/2011 02:14:00 am
I recall being riveted by JK's "memoir." And of course the movie Julia. And then we learn that all is not as it has been told to us. Same with Woody. How could all of that have happened with this brilliant man? And what do we do with that knowledge? I respect everyone's decision to view his art and work differently after all of this came to light.
Tom
12/6/2011 03:15:38 am
Laura, viewing someone's work differently because they've rightly/wrongly been accused of something despicable doesn't change the value of the art.
Laura Novak
12/6/2011 03:51:08 am
Thanks, Tom, for further links. I too have avoided that documentary and feel I should watch it one day. I'll let you know if and when I do!
Laura Novak
12/6/2011 04:18:04 am
A doctor friend just sent me this. Glad to read it:
V-A
12/6/2011 06:51:46 am
Ottoline: thank you for the tribute to your father. It takes courage to live with truth, when people around you choose not to. All children deserve a father like him.
eclecticsandra
12/6/2011 07:53:01 am
I think it is important to separate the art from the artist. I'm thinking of how much music the Germans lost when Jewish composers couldn't be used. Also there was the black-listing in Hollywood in the 50's because of political leanings. Ingmar Bergen was boycotted because of a child out of marriage. There has been the practice of hiding homosexuality with studio publicity (think Rock Hudson). I'm sure there are many more examples.
Conscious at last!
12/6/2011 08:13:12 am
@ V-A
Tom
12/6/2011 08:19:39 am
How many of you women own or have owned a diamond? How many of you still wear diamonds?
Laura Novak
12/7/2011 01:38:52 am
Electricsandra, great examples of people who did not wrong and those who "did" by societies standards at the time. As with WA, time moved on and people began to overlook or forget the scandal. When the hotness of the story evaporated, for many it was as if the original allegations did too. What do we know of his life today? And the relationship he has with his current children? We cannot know. Does boycotting his work impact their lives? I don't know. But I do believe everyone must vote with their pocketbook when it comes to furthering an artist's career. Comments are closed.
|
Laura NovakReporter, Author, Blogger, and Mother...
|