Woody Allen

Diane Keaton: New York Doll

May 17, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keaton by Paul Kisselev

This interview originally appeared in the New York Observer on May 6, 2015:
We’re in the catacombs of the Crosby Hotel, off in a corner, and Diane Keaton has just watched, for the first time in decades, one of the greatest romances on film. “I was visiting my brother and for some reason Gone with the Wind was on,” she explained. “It’s been 30 years since I’d seen it but, oh my God, Vivien Leigh is so great in that movie.” She rises. “You should have seen her float down the stairs, she wears this huge sweeping gown, and her dress went out that far,” Ms. Keaton gestures. Animated and enthusiastic, she recreates Scarlett O’Hara’s hoop-skirted sweep down Twelve Oaks’ circular stairway—despite her own slim-hipped, impeccable Thom Browne herringbone suit.

“It’s like you’re watching a dance because every time she would move it would flow,” Ms. Keaton continued with a swirl. “I didn’t expect the movie to be so strangely beautiful to look at and almost modern. She was completely a modern actress…”

And so, of course, is Diane Keaton. This tall, slim woman—pretty not beautiful if one believes her own estimation in her book of essays, Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty—has ridden to $1 billion in box office grosses playing winsome yet strong-minded dreamers. In person, the Oscar-winner (for Annie Hall, 1977) seems that same character, but life-sized and approachable. One has the false feeling that one knows her, having seen her mature with so much vulnerability and neurosis and passion from Sleeper through The Godfather and so many other classic comedies and dramas and romances to her latest movie opposite Morgan Freeman, 5 Flights Up.

Sitting in the chic Crosby, where the upholstered furniture wears nearly as much tweed as she does, Ms. Keaton, 69, sports a black leather belt wide enough to gird a WWE wrestler around her slender waist, a black handkerchief with white polka dots peaking out from her breast pocket and short square nails painted a matching black and white herringbone. With her slightly tussled hair and black-rimmed specs, there’s a little Charlie Chaplin to her. If Chaplin was very, very feminine.

The subject of our talk in Soho is love. As the longtime muse of Woody Allen, partners on-screen and off with Al Pacino and Warren Beatty, and great good friends with Jack Nicholson, that interplay of intimacy, fictional and real, is always a question with Ms. Keaton. In her charming latest film, her paramour and husband, (lucky girl) is Morgan Freeman.

The movie’s characters of Ruth (Ms. Keaton’s New York school teacher) and Alex (Mr. Freeman’s mid-level artist) find themselves in the enviable position of being able to make a killing on an apartment bought for convenience and affordability when they moved to Brooklyn years ago, when it was considered akin to moving to Pittsburgh. But nothing, of course, is easy.

Ms. Keaton finds the depiction of the strong bond between Ruth and Alex (the original title of the Richard Loncraine romance from Jill Ciment’s novel) comforting. “When you see it you just feel reassured that a great marriage can happen because it’s him, Morgan Freeman, because he’s playing the husband, because he’s the everyday.”

But, whether she means to or not, Ms. Keaton clanks her large, modern silver rings on the table noisily when asked whether she could have ever had the kind of bond with longtime companion Al Pacino. “I think that it never could have worked. Ever. Not in a million years unless I were a different woman. And that’s true with all the great loves of my life, or the men that I was intoxicated by for a while, or they with me, or whatever. It wasn’t reasonable. I didn’t know how to run it. No.”

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Outtakes: Diane Keaton on Marriage and the Enduring Romance of Scarlett and Rhett

May 7, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Keaton in white

I loved talking to Diane Keaton at the Crosby Hotel last Thursday. Since her film, 5 Flights Up, a portrait of a successful marriage, we spent a lot of time discussing the institution that my own father described as “flawed.” It turns out, my canny editors weren’t interested in that topic because Keaton had discussed it elsewhere. Her thoughts on the subject were new to me — and maybe they will be new to you. I found them fascinating. I also enjoyed her essays on beauty, Let’s Just Say it Wasn’t Pretty, which are as associative and deceptively light in prose as the actress is in person. So, here are my outtakes from our interview, which appears with a greater focus on her famous affairs at the New York Observer:

The subject was marriage because in her charming latest film opposite Morgan Freeman, 5 Flights Up, she plays a retired New York school teacher married to a painter. The pair contemplates the sale of the Brooklyn apartment where he carried her over the threshold as newlyweds decades before, a potential move both physical and emotional. While the Annie Hall star, 69, has crossed many thresholds in her life, she has never married – not Allen, not Pacino, not Beatty, although she had long-term relationships with all three.

Reflecting on viewing 5 Flights Up for a second time since its Toronto premiere, Keaton says: “I saw a great marriage. That’s what I saw. I saw a movie with a great marriage and a wonderful lesson for me, Diane, which is that about chasing a dream, chasing a dream.” In the movie’s case, it’s a New Yorker’s monopoly dream, selling a beautiful but flawed apartment – they are not getting younger and those five flights of stairs aren’t getting any shorter – for a place in a Manhattan elevator building. And, Ms. Keaton, a serial renovator who has moved her two adopted children, Dexter and Duke, from house project to house project with the regularity of army brats, can relate to the love of the leap.

And then, like a cliff diver, the native Southern Californian who knows a thing or two about that sport, goes deeper into the subject of marriage: “I felt like that was so applicable to my own life and what was not applicable to my own life was the reality of a great marriage. And that it’s something that now when I think about it [she pauses to consider] I wish that I had been able to understand and be interested in a long-term, reasonably happy, connected relationship with a man. I didn’t get it; because I couldn’t do it.”
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Q&A: Cate Blanchett Sniffs ‘Blue Jasmine’ – and Oscar

February 19, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

In honor of the Oscars on March 2, I’m pulling up some of my Awards Season interviews, like this one of Oscar frontrunner Cate Blanchett: Between performing in "The Maids," and dining with her three sons, Cate Blanchett, 44, could be mistaken for another multi-tasking mother, struggling to juggle career and family. But in Blanchett’s case, the load also includes the burdens of being an early Oscar frontrunner – again – this time for playing the title character of Woody Allen’s latest, "Blue Jasmine." In this film, Blanchett plays a New York socialite forced to move in with sister in San Francisco after her shyster husband’s financial empire collapses. Blanchett’s character is a tragicomic cross between Blanche Dubois from "A Streetcar Named Desire," a character she played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2009; the wife of Bernie Madoff; and yet another fluttery, neurotic chip off the Allen mold.
How much of Jasmine really is Blanche? I sat there waiting for Bobby Cannavale’s character to rip off this T-Shirt and ravage her. (He never does.) "Streetcar" was a while ago, there was never any discussion with Woody about that at all. Obviously, there are parallels in the set-up. Jasmine is a grand character and she’s deluded. Also, the fact that Jasmine has difficulty navigating the fine line between reality and fantasy, the world is too horrifying and her social shame, that’s something that she and Blanche share. But the way this story unfolds is very contemporary. It has the rhythm and tone of a Woody film. To try to overlay one character over the other would be futile.
Jasmine is so thin-skinned and emotionally porous; did you take the character home with you? My children were in town with me and they weren’t interested in meeting Jasmine at the dinner table. You have to shed one thing and move on. When the character is so well-drawn and her set of experiences is so entirely different form your own, the leap is easier. Still, there is a certain feeling and texture that overhangs. I love San Francisco as a city, but I was psychologically ready to go to New York for happier days.

RELATED: ‘Blue Jasmine’ Premiere

There’s already Oscar buzz for your performance: do you take that in stride? Oscar? That’s nice but there are a lot of movies coming out. My focus has been the production of "The Maids" in Australia. Not long after I talk to you I’m going to get in my pajamas and see my children.
You have three sons with your husband, the playwright and director Andrew Upton. Do you try to shelter your children from your career, or immerse them in your world? We don’t quarantine them from what we do. Andrew and I run a theater company. They’re backstage. It’s a fun place, full of play and adventure. They also see the hard work that goes into the production department and see the commitment. They watch the set being bumped in. They see the hard work behind the outward glitz of it all. They don’t see just the product, they see the process. I think that’s interesting and they enjoy it.

Did that carry over to the set of "Blue Jasmine?"

You look at all of Woody’s films: there’s a chemistry about the ensemble. The kids see it’s never just one person. Everybody has to be on, including the cinematographer and the focus puller. It’s a communal focus.

Even though it’s an ensemble, this is a movie, like "Annie Hall," with a woman’s name in the title. It revolves around your character and her complexities. Jasmine’s like so many women who’ve fallen from grace. Hopefully I’ve presented her warts and all. Hopefully, in the end, her naiveté and how deluded she is humanizes her. There’s no malice, there’s just an incredible amount of pain, damage and delusion. Still, it’s not all heavy. Just look at the sister’s names: Ginger and Jasmine sound like a Thai restaurant.

‘To Rome With Love’ star Greta Gerwig is wild about Woody Allen — just read her high school yearbook

July 21, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Photo by Sony Pictures Classics
Recently, “To Rome With Love” star Greta Gerwig returned home from Manhattan to Sacramento, California, where she picked up her high school yearbook and got a big surprise. When asked where she wanted to be in 10 years, she answered, “Living in New York and making a Woody Allen movie.” A decade later, the downtown darling with the off-kilter smile is doing just that. Gerwig (who was in “Arthur” and “Greenberg”) plays sweet-natured Sally opposite Jesse Eisenberg’s Jack, in Allen’s latest ensemble comedy about fame, fidelity, and amore. In one storyline, Sally’s starlet best friend, Monica (Ellen Page), visits the couple for her Roman holiday, and their comfy romance hits turbulence. Gerwig sat down with me last Tuesday and shared her thoughts about playing a supporting character in her own romantic subplot.

Thelma Adams: What did you make of your storyline about an American love triangle in the Eternal City?

Greta Gerwig: Woody Allen has characters that interest him. One is like my character: the person the romantic hero doesn’t end up with.. She’s the side girl. Woody Allen has these people that he comes back to again and again.

TA: So what is your side girl like in “To Rome With Love”?

GG: She’s a little like the inverse of Ellen Page’s character. It doesn’t break down exactly. Often, there are two women in Woody’s movies. In “Manhattan,” they balance each other out. As much as Ellen’s character is shifty and seductive and complicated and shiny, mine is grounded and bland and trusting and not dazzling. My performance came from what Ellen was doing, because what I was doing was playing in contrast. You can feed off of what they’re doing.

TA: How would you describe your character, Sally?

GG: This character is definitely more muted. She’s a bit of a bystander. She’s not the leading role in her own romance. Somebody else comes in and takes the leading role. Her emotions aren’t demonstrative. She’s much less sparkly.

TA: Does that make Page’s Monica the manic pixie dream girl?

GG: I hate that phrase; that idea, that it gets applied to people, that you have to avoid or deny it. It’s reductive. It’s a way of trying to find a connection where often one doesn’t exist. I was reading something about the screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby,” and it called Katharine Hepburn the original manic pixie dream girl. Aren’t we reaching? I’m probably just annoyed by it, but it’s around. I’m no pixie. I’m 5 foot 9 and 140. When I go on set, they’re always surprised the first day. I’m a giant, and everybody is a mini person.

TA: I know that for me, growing up a Jewish girl in the San Diego suburbs, watching Woody Allen was like getting thrown a cinematic life preserver. I knew that “somewhere, there’s a place for me.”

GG: I’m not Jewish. I’m the original shiksa. I went to a Catholic girls’ school in Sacramento. I wanted to be Annie Hall, to find a nice Jewish boy and bring him back to my goyish family. I adored Woody Allen movies. I felt less alone. I could project myself into a time where I would be less lonely and would be surrounded by people like me. Woody Allen also led me to other movies. He led me to “Cries and Whispers” by Ingmar Bergman. I didn’t grow up with arthouse movie theaters.. Allen was the first person that gave me a window into what was possible. I read all his stories. I loved “A Guide to Some of the Lesser Ballets.”

TA: Now that you live in New York, do you feel that you still see the city through Woody Allen’s eyes, even though he’s moved on to London, Paris, Barcelona — and Rome?

GG: New York is so full of places he’s photographed. When he was working with cinematographer Gordon Willis, my entire idea of New York was based on that lens — and I don’t know if I’ve ever taken that lens off!

Yahoo! Exclusive: ‘The Dictator’ director Larry Charles discusses the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, and, yes, Bob Dylan

May 21, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen,The Dictator, Jewish Humor

Rebbe Charles (by Paramount Pictures)

Director Larry Charles, 56, may not be as immediately recognizable as his star Sacha Baron Cohen, but the pair have worked together on “The Dictator,” “Borat,” and “Bruno.” Charles has collaborated with legendary comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David on “Seinfeld,” David again on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and Paul Reiser in “Mad About You.” And then there’s his work with just plain legend Bob Dylan in the movie the two co-wrote and Charles directed, “Masked and Anonymous.”

Charles chatted with Yahoo! Movies about going to the darker side of comedy with Cohen, humor as an ethnic survival tool and the Jewish comic holy trinity: Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks.

Thelma Adams: You’ve always wanted to go to the more absurd side of comedy. With “Seinfeld,” you wrote some of the darkest material like the second season show “The Bet,” where Elaine gets a handgun, which was never filmed. Now, working with Cohen, are you satisfying your darker side?

Larry Charles: I’ve only gotten to the shady side. I haven’t gotten to the dark side yet. [Read more…]