Of all the people I've covered in this blog over the last fifteen years, no one has fallen farther in my esteem than Woody Allen. Not, mind you, because of the accusations against him (which may very well be true, I couldn't tell you), nor because the undisputed facts that have emerged lead one to conclude that he's, at best, creepy. Here at the Monkey — where I will happily praise the art while beating the artist with a hammer — the fact that Woody Allen might perhaps deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail doesn't mean he didn't make great movies.
No, the problem for me are the movies themselves.
The older I get, the more the "Woody Allen" character — not the screwball nincompoop of the early comedies, but the neurotic, cultured, "wise" Woody of the middle years, Manhattan especially — seems more like the kvetching of an immature, half-smart misanthrope than the epitome of New York sophistication the adolescent me (who knew nothing about nothing) seemed to think he was.
In that sense, the perfect actor to play the "Woody" character isn't Woody Allen but a young Timothée Chalamet in 2019's A Rainy Day in New York because if there's anything more annoying than listening to a teenage kid explaining the meaning of life to you ... well, it's probably reading an old man's blog complaining about teenage kids explaining the meaning of life to you.
And that's what "Woody Allen" sounds like to my ears now — snotty, self-absorbed, brimming with unearned self-confidence yet insecure as only a kid can be, and name-checking the classics without any real sense of what they're about, which can be amusing, even endearing, out of the mouth of a nineteen year old kid, but is ridiculous and sadly pathetic from a man in his forties, fifties and beyond.
Maybe that's why I've come to prefer the Woody Allen movies Woody Allen isn't in. Midnight in Paris, for example.
Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is an American writer traveling in Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her rich, pompous parents (Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy). Gil has romanticized notions about Paris, specifically Paris of the 1920s when Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein drank absinthe in the bars and argued about art and literature. His ever practical bride-to-be has romanticized notions only about the handsome know-it-all (Michael Sheen) lecturing at Versailles.
After an argument, Gil finds himself wandering the cobblestone streets of the Latin Quarter when, at the stroke of midnight, a time-traveling Peugeot pulls to the curb and the half-drunk couple inside invite Gil to join them at a fun little party their friends are hosting.
Friends like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein — and a beautiful French brunette (Marion Cotillard) who sparks something in Gil that his rich, stuffy fiancee never has.
Owen Wilson is the rare lead in a Woody Allen movie who doesn't play like he's doing a bad Woody Allen imitation — reportedly, Allen rewrote the part to fit Wilson when the actor came aboard, and you can tell: Wilson seems comfortable in his own skin in a way the likes of Colin Firth, Jason Biggs and Kenneth Branagh never did.
Equally good is Corey Stoll who is hilarious as Hemingway, macho and pretentious at the same time, and grumbling perfectly ludicrous Bad Hemingway to Gil's awestruck delight.
"And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave. It is because they make love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds until it returns, as it does to all men, and then you must make really good love again."
As a lifelong Hemingway fan, I laughed so hard every time Corey Stoll was on the screen, I thought I'd have a stroke — because let's face it, while nobody was better at conveying action through words, when he started pontificating about life, nobody was more full of shit than Ernest Hemingway.
Pitch perfect takedowns of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dalí, Zelda Fitzgerald, Luis Buñuel, among others, played perfectly by, respectively, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Alison Pill and Adrien de Van.
And if that's all there was to Midnight in Paris, I'd still say it's the funniest movie Woody Allen has made since he saw his first Ingmar Bergman film.
But he also has some insightful things to say about the false promise of nostalgia and the trap of always living a life of "if only (fill in the blank), then I'd be happy."
First, be happy. Life will fill in the blanks.
Midnight in Paris is my favorite Woody Allen movie, and proof that no matter how false the artist, the art in this case is true.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
If you don't mind, I'm going to jump ahead for a minute to let you know I have three more years of alternate Oscar polls up and running — 2017, 2018 and 2019. The first is a final vote to pick the winners, the other two are to pick the nominees.
(Kudos to anybody who knows whose picture that is at the top of the page and why I've posted it.)
2017
2018
2019
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Some attribute the quote to Preacher Roe, a major league pitcher from 1938 to 1954. Ian Matthews released an album by that title in 1974. Sam Elliott quotes it to great effect in 1998's The Big Lebowski.
Personally, I think it was William Faulkner in an early draft of his short story "The Bear." If it wasn't, it should have been.
Which reminds me of an article Ken Ringle wrote for the Washington Post many years ago, recalling his days as a graduate student in Faulkner's class:
We would sit there gaping, wracking our under-booked brains for some question that wouldn’t make us look stupid.
“Mr. Faulkner, in your short story ‘The Bear,’ do you consider the bear a positive nature symbol or a negative nature symbol or a symbol both positive and negative like the white whale in Moby-Dick?”
“Oh,” he’d eventually say in his thin, reedy voice, after puffing on his pipe long enough to raise the suspense: “That’s just a story about a bear.”
I guess some of you don't remember Bo Jackson—I do. The greatest athlete I ever saw, and I was in the arena that night Michael Jordan scored 51 for the Washington Wizards.
Bo was an electrifying combination of speed and power, an all-star in two professional sports. He'd do things you'd never see anybody do before or since, like run along the outfield wall or break a bat over his head or outrun the entire Seattle defense on a Monday night in 1987, even though they had the angle on him.
Not to mention that in his first at bat against the New York Yankees after his hip replacement surgery, he hit an opposite field home run. Tell that to your grandmother the next time she whines about slipping on the ice.
Legendary sportswriter Dick Schaap voted him the greatest athlete of the 20th century.
My little brother knew Bo personally back when they were both students at Auburn and said he was a wonderful guy. I never met him myself, so my Bo story comes second hand through my law school roommate, who was pals with the kid who was the starting pitcher for Samford the day Bo and the Auburn Tigers baseball team came to Birmingham to play. In Bo's first at bat, the kid threw him a slider low and away that Bo lined off the rightfield fence for a double. "No way he hits that pitch for a double again," the kid said. So the next time up, he threw the same slider, low and away. This time Bo lined it over the fence for a home run.
The kid was out of the game by the time Bo came up again. I think the final score was 15-1. Good times.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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