oh movies

Who cares Seth Green?

Just a heads up, PBS. This is wonderful documentary. But no one needs to hear what Seth Green thinks about working with Woody (on Radio Days.)

Crimes and Misdemeanors

What life is about, why we are here, why it is so painful, relationships between a human being and his existence and human loneliness - that never gets resolved, and so it’s of constant interest to me. I’m cursed with the clown’s approach to it, so I have to approach it in a comic way. I wish I was born a gifted and great tragedian, but I wasn’t. - Woody Allen, on PBS American Masters

After I did my first scene, he said, ‘That wasn’t horrible.’ - Larry David on Woody Allen’s direction. So good!

“Why is life worth living?…”

Groucho Marx; Willie Mays; the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony; Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato-head Blues; Swedish movies; Sentimental Education by Flaubert; Marlon Brando; Frank Sinatra; those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne; the crabs at Sam Wo’s; and, of course, Tracy’s face.

Love and Art. It’s personal, it’s subjective, it’s tricky.

Manhattan. “Boy. This is really a great city. It’s really a knock out.”

Friends (aka Storm Tharp and Patrick and Jon) with great taste have this poster in their homes, that says it all.

I found myself in the odd position where I was influenced by Groucho Marx, and Bob Hope and Ingmar Bergman. There was no rationality to it. So you’d get a film like Love and Death – a film that has Bergman influence but is so clearly a comic film.

People of the earth! This is on PBS right now. Woody Allen: A Documentary on American Masters. Thank you public television gods.