Mia Farrow's son -- Ronan Seamus Farrow -- really creeps me out!

this article keeps reminding me how often the laughed when my college film professor showed Interiors and when the lights came on he looked genuinely pained and saddened.

That's how I've often felt reading his writing -- there are so many "jokes" that rely on nothing more than "ha ha I know who that is" or "ha ha I am familiar with a notable biographical detail about that person." It's disappointing because he is capable of more than that, as I think C&M shows.

And you thought Family Guy was bad *rimshot*

To the Editors:

Joan Didion on Woody Allen (NYR, August 16) spared neither erudition nor energy to annotate Mr. Allen’s alleged references. Does this show Ms. Didion is still part or blissfully beyond the people whose lives she finds annoying? Surely Ms. Didion must know the appearance of a “smart set”—over-educated, non-productive, narcissistic and in perpetual cafard—is a phenomenon that cannot be isolated from its social context. The objective decadence cum subjective meaninglessness is partly a consequence of the political powerlessness of those concerned to shape and change their society. Unfortunately, the concern for the simple things that Ms. Didion implicitly advocates is just another retreat for confronting this issue of powerlessness.

Ms. Didion therefore would do better to be alarmed by than morally superior to the attitudes, concerns and mores Mr. Allen’s characters reflect.

Roger Hurwitz

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts

oh god i love joan didion

i'm half glad i was offline all weekend, just reading back over various reactions has been depressing

Isn't Didion's criticism similar to the ones lobbed at Lena Dunham today?

Personally I think neurosis and narcissism can be great material for comedy. And Manhattan, as the title suggests, is as much about the place as the people.

I think you could make the criticism of Joan Didion that her need to seem above-it-all sometimes trumps everything else, that she's kind of one-upping Allen there. It's still a great piece.

I think I may have long misread Manhattan, as I always saw the film as being, implicitly, thoroughly critical of the Allen character, and also intimating that, while the Mariel Hemingway character is clearly the 'nicest' in the film, the Allen character didn't deserve to be with her, that their relationship was creepy, and that she was unlikely to actually see him again after she goes to London. In light of Allen's having had a 17 year old girlfriend of his own, I'm guessing I misread it, though I've no real inclination now to watch the film again to make sure.

they made me really anxious and angry to always be chasing down the joke and perpetually reminded who was "in" and who was "out."

but L, surely part of that is that the film is 35+ years old. Why would you know all the references?

All those Didion quotes fit ILM to a perfect fucking T, only those goons are usually not self-satirizing.

Didion's a phenomenal writer but she's perhaps not the first person I'd ask to assess comedy. Filing that under exquisitely written and persuasive articles that I fundamentally disagree with.

but L, surely part of that is that the film is 35+ years old. Why would you know all the references?

yeah, the same criticism could be hurled at any episode of 30 Rock tbh, which requires an exhaustive and native knowledge of american TV to make many of its jokes hilarious.

if by comedy you mean Interiors, then yes she is

The whole point of that list is that it's a reasons to live for, not a list to feel superior about. Love JD to death but she's misreading the movie

if by comedy you mean Interiors, then yes she is

I'm struggling to parse this, what do you mean exactly? That Interiors is such poor drama that its comedic? How does this make Didion a good critic of comedy?

I think she's making the point that it's an awfully well-curated list of reasons to live.

Didion's a fantastic writer, a peerless prose stylist, a masterful memoirist, and a snob to her very core whose screenwriting career seemed lucrative if also frustrating.

That Interiors is such poor drama that its comedic?

laugh out loud funny

I love NYC intellectuals.

I don't know what Alfred meant either but anyway no, I was referring to the jokes she quotes from Manhattan.

The message that large numbers of people are getting from Manhattan and Interiors and Annie Hall is that this kind of emotional shopping around is the proper business of life’s better students, that adolescence can now extend to middle age.

Didion on Allen = most of ILX on Frances Ha/Girls

Fun to see Didion's emotional hauteur bump up against Allen's Jewish New York psychiatrist's-couch POV.

Frances Ha is a better movie about adolescent adults than Manhattan.

And Manhattan, as the title suggests, is as much about the place as the people.

As Jonathan Rosenbaum points out, yes, it's as much about the place, at least as Allen sees it:

It’s been noted more than once that part of what makes the Manhattan in MANHATTAN so “attractive” — apart from strains of Gershwin and black-and-white CinemaScope views of favorite spots and haunts — is the nearly total absence of blacks and Hispanics. Insofar as this is the Manhattan that a certain class of whites already “see,” or want to see, MANHATTAN both validates and romanticizes this highly selective view of the city.

the Paul Simon character who namedrops "Jack and Anjelica" is sposed to be Evil Incarnate btw

I can't take all this expertise, and the nitwittery of Joan Didion

you should stab her

imagine if she'd seen midnight in paris

stevie i interpret manhattan the same way. the movie holds his char up to be uniquely perceptive and ethical (the "externalized conscience" discussed upthread) but as w so many WA movies this conscience/the WA persona ends up looking hypocritical and deluded, "wants what he wants" just like the people around him, etc.. whether irl-WA thinks that tracy "should" come back to movie-WA i'm not sure, but i think he knows she won't.

alt, or maybe creepily parallel, interpretation: women yr own age are neurotic selfish bitches who'll dump you for the existentially unenlightened and you were stupid to stop fucking the adoring teenager, not that she'll come back to you now cuz fuck the world. think like a lot of WA movies this narcissistic self-justifying misanthropy is coextant w something a little larger and confused, not that the latter absolves the former.

Yeah, again, it seems really tone deaf to assume that the Jack and Anjelica reference is anything other than an example of the Simon character's interminable name-droppiness. It's as if Didion was going out of her way to misunderstand certain scenes to beef up her larger theme.

xps

I always saw the film as being, implicitly, thoroughly critical of the Allen character, and also intimating that, while the Mariel Hemingway character is clearly the 'nicest' in the film, the Allen character didn't deserve to be with her, that their relationship was creepy, and that she was unlikely to actually see him again after she goes to London. In light of Allen's having had a 17 year old girlfriend of his own, I'm guessing I misread it,

I don't think Allen's personal life invalidates this reading.

many xposts

A lot of the sideswipes in JD's piece (eg the compensation for dying bit) rely on assuming that Allen doesn't know that his characters are comically self-absorbed. (Maybe this whole digression belongs in an Allen thread? It feels weird and off the point here)

Didion's a fantastic writer, a peerless prose stylist, a masterful memoirist, and a snob to her very core whose screenwriting career seemed lucrative if also frustrating.

this is otm

Morbs if you can't take JD but can take Allen idk man you're wrong, she's the artist Woody Allen will go to his grave wishing he had the discipline to be

Allen sets up Paul Simon to be a self-centered jerk, yeah; the powdery voice, determined to avoid offense, is the key.

Manhattan is all Tony Laceys though, Tracy excepted.

agreed DL, she doesn't seem v perceptive in these instances (perhaps a hangover from being a cultural critic writing in the pre-VHS era) (or perhaps she was just writing an out and out hit piece)

in 2014 she'd have a tumblr and get hyperlinked by Andrew Sullivan.

Didion on Allen = most of ILX on Frances Ha/Girls

yes and quite right too!

I am rarely convinced by the "you're not meant to like this character" argument; maybe not, but when a character is afforded so much attention and screen time you're sure meant to identify with them on some level. and don't forget, a kind of arch self-loathing is also fundamental to the mindset Didion identifies, a smug acknowledgement of what terrible human beings we are that pre-empts actually changing that

I prefer the early funny ones, aero, roughly ending with Zelig

and "The Moose Story" of course

contemporary essays bore me, and post-EM Forster novels gen the same

lex, have you seen manhattan?

fuck, lex otm too. I feel like everyone itt is otm. I don't know what to think anymore.

i don't know which WA film i've half seen, it was ages and ages ago and I left the room halfway through because it was aggravating me

i mean I am rarely convinced by the "you're not meant to like this character" argument; maybe not, but when a character is afforded so much attention and screen time you're sure meant to identify with them on some level. seems like a crazily reductive and un-nuanced approach to cinema.

xp aha right, gotcha. will take that as a "no" then.

dunham doesn't really do reference comedy at all. that point about art/life as passive consumption feels almost prescient w/ tumblr, etc, now. i doubt it's a new phenomenon at all though manhattan might be the first time i can think of it being documented somewhere. i know there's alot of derision towards that kind of culture consumption but it seems perfectly healthy and normal in an adolescent, where you're both defining yrself and encountering (and possibly understanding) 'adult' art for the first time. god knows that this is probably a large part of why manhattan was my fave woody allen as a kid. it's when ppl are still in this mode as 25 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds, etc that it becomes repulsive. interesting to contrast this adolescent mode of consumer culture w/ a standard adult mode where music is something that's on while you drive or wash dishes etc, comparable to scented candles, and movies are macguffins that enable socializing and conversation. the 'adult' mode is much less attached and personally invested in whatever piece of culture has been consumed but not really any more passive than the juvenile mode. obv it's common to go from the juvenile mode to the adult mode (and arguably the juvenile mode isn't even the most common mode for adolescents, i would argue that most teenagers generally consume culture in that adult mode), and it's common for ppl to stay stuck in that juvenile mode where they're grown men or women (but generally men right?) and still obsessed w/ sci-fi, baseball, movies, whatever (collecting toys even), sort of walter benjamin meets peter pan, but i wonder how common it is for ppl to go from that detached adult mode as a teen to attached juvenile mode as an adult.

my pt was a more general one about that kind of argument, not really about the merits of his films, which I have no interest in contemplating, especially now, though descriptions of WA's style even from his fans make them sound incredibly awful

seems like a crazily reductive and un-nuanced approach to cinema.

I...understand that sometimes this is an appropriate critique, but in this context it reads as, "You're just not sophisticated enough to get it."

I do respond to Didion's complaint about therapyspeak infecting language, a trend which started as Freud got chic in the fifties but accelerated in the seventies. The characters don't talk so much as hurl psychobabble at each other. It's like when students say "I have jealousy issues" instead of "I'm a jealous person" or say "issues" when they mean problems.

xps balls probably not that common - the older you get, the more you generally have obligations and life generally crushing you into dust. the idea that maintaining "juvenile passions" being actually acceptable/approved as an adult does seem like a relatively new phenomenon

I...understand that sometimes this is an appropriate critique, but in this context it reads as, "You're just not sophisticated enough to get it."

Right, well, that wasn't my intention, and lex is a dear friend of mine IRL, but i'm a bit flabbergasted by the suggestion that movies never expect you to look askance at their central characters (hello, Downfall?), and wonder if his take might be different if he'd actually seen the movie we're all talking about?

Not that he has to, not that people aren't entirely justified in never wanting to see a Woody Allen movie after or even before the events of the last couple of weeks, but if someone's suggesting there's a certain nuance to a way a character's being portrayed, just disregarding this even as a possibility seems reductive.

I'd like him to explain that point too if he can. I rarely relate to characters on screen or in novels.

the unsmug way to pre-empt changing what terrible human beings we are is millennia of history.

dunham doesn't really do reference comedy at all

Off the top of my head: "when you were dating that guy who still has a Hotmail account"

There's all kinds of ways to write jokes that not everyone is going to get. Some people do it w/ contemporary pop music or Game of Thrones refs that are lost on me, some do it with "I love him like a brother-in-law... David Greenglass."

Back on topic: I hear Ronan Farrow looked totally clueless on Bill Maher's show last week.

UNICEF = Underground National Investigation of Crimes Enacted by Farrow

I rarely relate to characters on screen or in novels.

We had this conversation really productively and at length on another thread iirc! :)

Back on topic: I hear Ronan Farrow looked totally clueless on Bill Maher's show last week.

How is this on topic

yes!

xpost