ALLEN, WOODY.   Term Paper ID:19785 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Films & writing. Argues Allen is no longer big box office & has lost his mass audience appeal because his work is too serious, compared to his earlier works.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Films & writing. Argues Allen is no longer big box office & has lost his mass audience appeal because his work is too serious, compared to his earlier works. Paper Introduction: A Comparison of the Writings and Films of Woody Allen In the writings of Woody Allen, as originally published in The New Yorker, and rebound in book form, one finds an explanation for Woody Allen's current precarious status. In The Complete Book of Film Awards by Richard Sean Lyon, the author notes that "While Woody Allen was piling up awards in the 1980s, he was also breaking another new, and much more ominous record--that of the director with the most box-office flops in the 1980s (ten failures out of eleven films)." In reading Woody Allen's collections of stories, Getting Even and Without Feathers, one is immediately struck by the fact that Allen mocks all forms of artistic pretentiousness and hypocritical human behavior. As Pauline Kael, noted film critic, Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. A Comparison of the Writings and Films of Woody Allen In the writings of Woody Allen, as originally published in The NewYorker, and rebound in book form, one finds an explanation for WoodyAllen's current precarious status. Therefore, where Allen once felt freein mocking Shakespeare and Strindberg, he now uses his energy to mock rockconcerts and mass popularity. But the audience can see that Woody Allen's philosophy hasn't brought him happiness or peace of mind, so the mass audience distrusts his serious side (that's how his dramas, September and Another Woman could both flop dismally with less than $1 million in U.S. Despair."[5] In the early seventies it wasAllen's mocking of the bleak, unrelenting seriousness of Bergman's "blue"films. By the late 198 s Allen no longer seemed to find the human animal ahumorous creature in its foibles and frailties, and instead of inspiringhim to humor, it frequently inspired him to anger and impotent rage. But by the late 198 s, Allen might have made the same remarkending instead with a quote about guilt and responsibility, which quitefrankly isn't nearly so amusing. But by the late 198 s, it was becomingincreasingly obvious that if anyone was becoming 'tortured and embitteredby his agonizing relationships with the opposite sex', it was Allenhimself. Of course, I thoughtthat yesterday, too, and it rained."[9] The remark is quite clearly asatirical remark meant to deflate the over-seriousness of the pessimistsamong us. WhenRichard Sean Lyon observes that, "Woody Allen thinks we could change humannature if we could just change the way things are. But Woody Allen insists upon forcing his 'serious side'--his philosophy and 'wisdom'--on the audience. The humor came out of hisbringing the everyday out in an extraordinary situation. The Complete Book of Film Awards. [1 ]Ibid., 29. But in the 198 s, as Allen strained more and more to become a wisephilosopher, his films became so filled with angst, guilt, neuroticism andbitterness that they could help no one accept the burdens of life with alighter heart, and could only appeal deeply to those whose view of life hadbecome as equally bitter and resentful as Allen himself. The sudden and swift decline in Woody Allen's popularity can beclearly seen to have begun with the box-office failures Interiors andStardust Memories, films which have been widely criticized as beingimitations of Ingmar Bergman's Nordic dramas.[4] The changeover in Woody Allen's style can be seen clearly in the"Selections from the Allen Notebooks" article as it appears in WithoutFeathers, when Allen writes in the form of a private journal that "Gettingthrough the night is becoming harder and harder. The 199 Survival Guide to Film. But by the late seventies in films like Interiors and StardustMemories, Allen was seriously repeating the kind of remarks that earlier inthe decade he mocked, and that he audience loved him for mocking. In her many writings on Woody Allen, Pauline Kael has made it clearthat it was Allen's mocking of all pretensions and pomposities that broughthome the fact that Bergman's films only showed one side of life--theanxious, the neurotic, the unhappy--and by pricking the deadly seriousballoon of Bergman's intentions with laughter, Woody Allen made himself acultural hero in the early seventies. BibliographyAllen, Woody. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1973.Lyon, Richard Sean. Los Angeles: LyonHeart Publishers, 199 .Weekly Variety, 7 January 1991, n.p.----------------------- [1]Richard Sean Lyon, The Complete Book of Film Awards (Los Angeles:LyonHeart Publishers, 199 ), 13. [15]Lyon, 199 Survival Guide, 67. The 1989 Survival Guide to Film. [2]Pauline Kael, Deeper Into Movies (Boston: Little, Brown & Company,1973), 325. [5]Woody Allen, Without Feathers (New York: Warner Books, 1975), 7. He doesn't understandthat things are the way they are because of human nature,"[15] he issumming up the dilemma that Woody Allen has found himself in--that thehuman animal just tends to fill Woody Allen with anger and bitterness.There's no reason for audiences to pay $7 to view someone else's anger andbitterness, they could just as easily experienced these by staying home.Therefore, Woody Allen's box-office continues to decline. [11]Ibid., 196. This is why hisfilms have continued to decline throughout the 198 s. New York: Random House, 1971.Kael, Pauline. Thus this emphasizes againthe almost 18 degree change of direction and attitudes between Allen'swritings of the early seventies and his films of the 198 s. . It was this pricking the illusions of theartistically pretentious that is most noticeable about Allen's writings,and yet in Allen's films, it has reached the point where it is rarely theartistically pretentious who are mocked, but those who lack the'acceptable' artistic pretensions. Los Angeles: LyonHeart Publishers, 1989. Time has repeatedly shown that no philosopher's work can be widely accepted unless it helps mankind accept the burdens of life with a lighter heart.[8] Re-reading Woody Allen's early writings, one is struck by how light-hearted and 'up' his writings are in contrast to his films of the 198 s,and these early writings have enough humor and mocking of pomposity andpretensions to help mankind accept the burdens of life with a lighterheart. [13]Lyon, 199 Survival Guide, 67. Getting Even. This is why Woody Allen's comedies have become so increasinglyunpopular at the eighties box-office, as shown by the box-office returns inThe 199 Survival Guide to Film,[13] because it's hard for the audience tolaugh or find humor in such big serious topics. His latest film,Alice, is like his 1987 and 1988 films, September and Another Woman, inbeing a box-office disaster with less than $1 in U.S. But as this journal was written when Allen still had a sense ofhumor about such things, he continues with "He kills not only for food:frequently there must be a beverage,"[7] underlining the mock pomposity ofthe sort of solemn seriousness that Allen became a culture hero bylampooning. Examining Woody Allen's box-office returns as published in The 199 Survival Guide to Film, one can see quite clearly the point at which WoodyAllen turned from a mass popularity artist into an elitist and franklyunpopular filmmaker.[3] For as was noted in the 1989 edition of TheSurvival Guide to Film, Allen's films of the eighties have averaged lessthan $5 million in rentals on a cost averaging more than $17 million afilm. This humor can be seen as Allen's scaling down of big topics--just asin Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, he mocked ourpretensions about sex and in Play It Again, Sam, he pierced the legend ofHumphrey Bogart, bring him down to earth for the everyday viewer. In the story, "A Look At Organized Crime" in Getting Even, one canfind some of the seeds for the first Woody Allen feature, Take The Moneyand Run, and the parallels again offer insight into why Allen has lost hisfollowing among the mass audience. Meetings are held at his house, and he is responsible forsupplying cold cuts and ice cubes."[12] And like this joke, Take The Moneyand Run finds its humor in connecting the everyday ordinary activity to theexciting and 'glamorous' world of crime. In the story Allen describes the CosaNostra and observes that "At the top is the Capo di Tutti Capi, or boss ofall bosses. rentals earned.[16] One can find the roots and foundations for much of Allen's film workin his writings--"Death Knocks", which presages parts of his film Love andDeath; "The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers" in which he mocks the ineffectualintellectuals he lampooned in films like Annie Hall; "A Twenties Memory"which became Zelig; and "Viva Vargas!" which led to his film Bananas. [7]Ibid. Butmost of all Woody Allen's writings help us to understand why a man of suchtalent and ability has become increasingly distant from the mass audienceculture hero status he had attained in the mid-seventies. . Deeper Into Movies. By the late 198 s, audience were no longer sure of which of Allen'sinsights were intended as mockery of pretentious seriousness, and whichwere the expression of his own feelings. Again, in the story "But Soft...Real Soft", Allen mocked theabsurdities surrounding the question of who Shakespeare really was, when hewrote of Marlowe doing Shakespeare that, "It was at this point thatMarlowe's young wife took up the pen and continued to write the plays andsonnets we all know and avoid today."[11] Audiences and readers at thetime understood that Allen was mocking the hypocrisy of those of us who,while acknowledging him a great writer, also found much of his work deadlydull or impenetrable. [3]Lyon, The 199 Survival Guide to Film (Los Angeles: LyonHeartPublishers, 199 ), 67. [8]Lyon, 199 Survival Guide, 67. [14]Allen, Getting Even, 14. In The Complete Book of Film Awards byRichard Sean Lyon, the author notes that "While Woody Allen was piling upawards in the 198 s, he was also breaking another new, and much moreominous record--that of the director with the most box-office flops in the198 s (ten failures out of eleven films)."[1] In reading Woody Allen's collections of stories, Getting Even andWithout Feathers, one is immediately struck by the fact that Allen mocksall forms of artistic pretentiousness and hypocritical human behavior. In The 199 Survival Guide toFilm, Richard Sean Lyon analyzes the reasons for Woody Allen's dismal box-office record in the 198 s. He kills for food,"[6] the remark is similar to the strained seriousinsights that have made Allen's films unpalatable in the 198 s for the massaudience. [6]Ibid., 8. New York: Warner Books, 1975. AsPauline Kael, noted film critic, frequently observed, it was the fact thatWoody Allen was never serious for a moment, no matter how serious thetopic, that made him a cultural hero in the early seventies and gave himthe box-office successes to allow him to continue making films in the198 s[2]--despite failing at the box-office on ten out of eleven films. rentals). [9]Allen, 9. Therefore,when Allen writes, "While many young Americans are lured into a career ofcrime by its promise of an easy life, most criminals actually must worklong hours, frequently in buildings without air-conditioning,"[14] we seethe humor in crime being brought down to the work-a-day reality of air-conditioning. He no longer could laugh at the vagaries and uncertainties ofpersonal relationships as he did in Annie Hall and Play It Again, Sam, butis continually coming closer to the point where he will eventually be asembittered and agonized as Strindberg himself. Without Feathers. It is this shift in what he chooses to mockthat has transformed Woody Allen from a cultural mass popularity figureinto a relatively minor film figure, whose films have virtually no impacton the mainstream film audiences. Likewise, in the story, "Lovborg's Women Considered", Allen mocks theStrindberg and Ibsen school and describes Lovborg as "tortured andembittered by his agonizing relationships with the opposite sex,"[1 ]readers of the early seventies understood mocking the kind of writer whosees all women as 'trouble'. . [4]Lyon, The 1989 Survival Guide to Film (Los Angeles: LyonHeartPublishers, 1989), 83. But inhis increasingly serious films of the 198 s, Allen seems to have given upsearching for the small, humorous, ordinary truth among the myths, but hasscaled his remarks upward into bigger, enlarging topics so that hefrequently now refers to death, life and The Big Questions. When Allen writes in Without Feathers that "Today I saw a red andyellow sunset and thought, how insignificant I am! [12]Allen, Getting Even (New York: Random House, 1971), 14. When I finally did fallasleep, I had that same hideous nightmare in which a woodchuck is trying toclaim my prize at a raffle. Thus when Allen, in the mock journal, writes, "Thought: why does mankill? [16]Weekly Variety, 7 January 1991, 88.----------------------- 1 But by the late 198 s, remarks virtually indistinguishable fromthis began proliferating in Allen's films to the point where the audienceno longer knows whether Allen intends the remark as a joke or seriousinsight. He notes that: About the time of Manhattan, audiences began to realize that Woody Allen wasn't just cleverly portraying a pain-in-the-ass neurotic--he was a pain-in-the-ass neurotic. Los Angeles: LyonHeart Publishers, 199 . 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