Text/Tan Feng
"One of my biggest regrets in life is that I'm not someone else." (in English, my one regret in life is that i am not someone else.)
Every word spoken by "punster" Woody Allen seems to be known as a famous aphorism. But only this sentence became his "declaration of independence" across the film and television art world.
In 1953, Allen entered New York University to study media and film. This is indeed a very fortunate thing for a literary teenager who can write "funny paragraphs" for newspaper columns at the age of six.
When Allen was still in middle school, he met the "first Bó Lè" in his life. Yes, he was taken in by his agent, David Alber, and was asked to write a talk show script for the TV show. The first time "Little Allen" created, he earned $25 a week, which is definitely the "first affluent group" among his peers. After a few more years, the number of deposits in his bank account could reach 7 figures.
Unfortunately, Allen's studies did not go well, and he was ordered to withdraw from school because he failed a subject called Animation Production. At this time, Ellen was not discouraged, and he kept exhorting himself: "Anyway, I can write a funny script that I like wholeheartedly." ”
Woody Allen in his youth
In his days with the talk show team, Allen was willing to tirelessly export nonsense scripts that entertained the nerves of the people. But he gradually realized that in an era of entertainment-selling business, a silent writer is easily forgotten, and his talent and his attitude towards life cannot be buried in the gloomy haze behind the stage.
Soon, Allen proposed to the department in charge of the transfer of talk show personnel that he wanted to try to move from behind the scenes to the front of the stage and become a real "talk show person". When recalling the turning point of his life, Alan said lightly: "I am in charge of writing, they are responsible for business management." One day, I told them I wanted to perform like a stand-up comedian. They certainly didn't want me to give up on the idea so easily. ”
Woody Allen in directing
The "they" in Allen's mouth are the two "discerning" agents, Jack Rawlings and Charles H. Joffe, and "they" are the "booster" of Allen's life. Allen first tried to perform in New York's "Blue Angel" and "Bitter End" nightclubs, and the pair of black-rimmed glasses that concealed his shy temperament witnessed his youthful innocence and became his iconic prop that was remembered by the world.
Woody Allen's latest biography, Apropos of Nothing
In 1963, Allen got his wish, dedicating his debut to a show called The Tonight Show. In just a few years, he has successfully transformed from a behind-the-scenes creator to a dazzling starter on stage.
Regarding this "painful and happy" hard work, Allen also presented it with great care in his 2003 film "Strange Tricks" and told people about it. Jerry, the actor played by Jason Biggs, seeks opportunities for his acting dreams, but is fortunate to meet a nobleman, David Dober. In this process, the clever Jerry overcame all kinds of "pride and prejudice" from the art world, frequently used "strange tricks" that could be used, and finally succeeded.
Needless to say, Allen was not only a prolific author, he was also a prodigal son with great ambition. The success of the talk show did not satisfy him, and he made another "bold decision" to devote himself to Hollywood. In 1965, at the age of 30, Allen first wrote what's new, pussycat, translated as "What's Going On With Cats Lately"), transforming himself from a TV show to a film.
After that, he began to create "Tiger Lily", "Casino Royale", "Hollywood Ending" and other film and television works, but because Hollywood's own interpretation routine and Allen's free creation were not very compatible, Allen himself decisively denied the cooperation with Hollywood, calling this aura that seemed to be infinite in ordinary people "terrible experience".
Allen and Song Yi
Taking the initiative to remove the aura of talk shows and Hollywood, Allen is relaxed, and his artistic creation has no superfluous obstacles. In 1969, he independently created "Fools in Prison", and from then on, he stepped into the era of "independent creators" who wrote, directed and acted by himself.
1977 was definitely a "lucky year" for Allen, who met his "beloved" Diane Keaton and won four Oscars in 1978 for "non-funny" film Anne Hall – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress.
When Born in the jianghu, Allen meets Diane Keaton from Sunny and Energetic California, a subtle creative inspiration arises between them. During filming, Diane Keaton was allowed by the director to freely choose the costumes to play, giving the actress the opportunity to express her own personality - white shirt, wide pants, sports fan, tie and hat. Allen found an innate freedom for film and television creators in this film, and he said publicly about this art blockbuster: "Anne Hall is undoubtedly the first really important female character I created. ”
Allen's film and television style has since revealed the prototype of creation, and he no longer wants to take the funny and commercial route when he enters the age of establishment, although this can bring him a lot of traffic and a lot of fame and fortune. Starting with Anne Hall, he changed his conceptual tone and creative attitude. He became more serious and sophisticated, and his artwork began to turn to reflection, criticism and reinvention.
In Western film and television circles, Woody Allen is a controversial term. On the one hand, people will lament the talent and passion of this prolific creator, and on the other hand, they will continue to criticize his "unbearable" marriage history. From his first wife, Harlan Rosen, to "little buddy" Mia Farrow, from his girlfriend Diane Keaton to his adopted daughter Song Yi, who is 35 years younger than himself, the director's "emotional drama" is simply more exciting than his films, and his creative inspiration may come from his rich emotional life.
Young Woody Allen and Diane Keaton
As Woody Allen reveals, "When I first started writing, I could only write from a male perspective. After that, with the female figure, my writing style gradually changed. The mothers and sisters in Deep Down, Hannah Sisters and September Day of Affection, and the characters I created for Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow, these women are always at the center."
In the mind of this "strange old man", of course, looking for feelings is not for artistic creation, but artistic creation can not be without a female perspective, and there can be no lack of ripples with emotions. Allen may have regarded feelings as art, so he tried "new joy" wave after wave and experienced a new life.
At a time when many artists are celebrating sweet love and happy marriage, this creative wizard has subverted his own theme of male and female love. Such an idea can be seen in his two "Midnight Theatres" in Midnight barcelona (2008) and Midnight in Paris (2011).
The chaotic and exciting delicate relationship between Viggie, Christina, Antonio and Maria in Midnight in Barcelona is an artistic attempt by Allen to convey "other feelings" to the world. Such an outrageous "emotional drama during travel" makes people see the alternative "four-corner love" in life, and also inspires people to reflect on the limitations of the lust of men and women in contemporary cities.
Stills from Midnight in Paris
When Gill and his fiancée Inez come to Paris for a vacation, the picture of Midnight in Paris unfolds. The film, which won the 84th Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, does not deliberately promote the romance of Paris and the like-mindedness of lovers, but instead bitterly mocks a fragile and hypocritical love of "same bed and different dreams". Jill is happy with the 19th-century Paris he travels to, while Inez laughs at his daydreaming obsession. In the end, the lovers broke up in the most romantic city in the world.
Allen directed the scene of Midnight in Paris
In the eyes of Woody Allen, the "beautiful love" that remains in the traditional concept seems to be vulnerable, and it needs to use artistic exaggeration and film and television processing to do something else. This is also the interesting place of Allen, who in real life is clearly the most admirable man in the whole world who can appreciate women and praise love, but he has to be paranoid in his film and television works to instill in people the pessimistic complex of "marriage is the disillusionment of hope".
Allen and the crowd watch the movie "To Rome with Love"
Wantonly and absurdly "tampering" with common ideas in human nature is Allen's creative "bad habits", but it also makes the creative inspiration of this film and television wizard. Perhaps, the people see Allen and other films are ridiculous, but no one denies that the creation will make Allen free and make him feel happy. In this regard, he proudly expressed some emotion: "The reason why I like movies is because I can do what I want to do." ”
The night in Allen's eyes was Paris
Allen seems to have a strange clockwork in his head, constantly driving him to travel freely between feelings, cities, human nature, and society, and then rebelliously jumping out of the barriers of artistic creation, forming the artistic creator's spicy questioning, or black ironic temperament.
The United States in the 1960s was in a magical period when everything was still in turmoil. The collision of different ideologies, the frequent occurrence of local wars, and the huge momentum of the civil rights movement have made the future of this country that has just experienced the storms of World War II seem confusing.
However, social unrest has become a breeding ground for artists to erupt in inspiration. Some of the increasingly affluent middle classes understand that this "flawed" society will neither collapse overnight nor emerge as a petty-bourgeois vision. For the intellectual elite, who are "drunk and awake", it seems that they can only mock the "evil" in the depths of human nature with their own subtle, playful and critical thinking creative methods.
Allen's superb "paragraph"
The American critic Nick Burke published an article in 1965 titled "The Humor of a Fatal Sting." In the article, he named this absurd, grotesque, but also thought-provoking and intolerable way of artistic expression "black humor". Since then, the term "black humor" has for the first time been seen as a new modernist genre, taking root in the United States and around the world.
Woody Allen is first and foremost a man of his time and an artist second. In the depths of a soul that "irony without a word", it is often inscribed with the lingering historical imprint of this era. Allen found the mark of "black humor" in his "unsatisfactory" past events from adolescence to middle age, from work to feelings, stripped it away, and applied it to his works in a number of rare ways, and finally formed a personal style with "Ellen Fan".
Allen gave an exclusive interview to the media with "Blue Jasmine"
Kate Blanchett, who won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Actress for "Blue Jasmine" (directed by Woody Allen and released in July 2013), played a character who was ridiculed by "black humor" - Jasmine. Jasmine is a business lady who has been in the New York workplace and divorced because of her husband's life and career entanglements.
She flew alone to San Francisco to try to start a new life. But to her surprise, her sister Jin Jie, who settled in San Francisco, her beloved wealthy businessman Westlet, and her stepson Danny, each "harbored a ghost fetus" and made some disappointing moves that made her grand ambition to revive her glory in vain.
The multi-time international award-winning film reflects allen's exposure to a society where material and profit are "gods", reflecting the ghost director's consistent "black element". In addition to addressing the unreasonable order arrangements in society, the film does not forget to leave black humor to the heroine of the film, Jasmine, a "city prisoner" who is bent on pursuing freedom but is ultimately trapped by freedom.
In fact, in many films, Allen also keeps a mockery to himself with great sobriety, which is an anatomy and a metaphor for his maverick life.
Woody Allen and Michael Jackson in the early years
There is nothing wrong with following one's heart to pursue one's dreams, but excessive and unrealistic pursuit inevitably leads to a kind of "freedom trap." Throughout the ages, when a person loses the will to be restrained in the desperate pursuit of freedom, he can easily become arrogant and uninhibited, and does not eat human fireworks. In the end, a person's tragic fate often stems from the limitations of others, but precisely because of his own "isolated from the world" mind.
Allen thinks he should be the "poster boy" of #metoo campaigns.
Woody Allen, who advocates freedom, although he can choose his partner arbitrarily, he cannot escape the difficulties of life derived from "absolute freedom". His adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexual assault in 1992 and 2014, but was dismissed due to insufficient evidence. In 2017, Farrow cleverly used the public opinion atmosphere of the "me too" movement in Hollywood to push her hated "old lover" to the cusp of the storm.
Feminists demanded the removal of the Woody Allen statue in Spain
Woody Allen was therefore stripped of the adaptation of the film "Bullets On Broadway," and the actors he worked with—such as Timothy Chalame, Greta Gerweger, and others—expressed their position of denying Allen's character in various ways. Wave after wave, wave after wave. A new film produced by Allen at the end of 2017, "A Rainy Day in New York", was unilaterally terminated by Amazon. A pair of "excellent cps" who joined forces with strong forces unfortunately fell into a "lawsuit" that everyone lamented.
Movie poster for A Rainy Day in New York
Scarlett Johansson (first from right) "willing to believe" about the sexual assault scandal that Allen is innocent
"I act basically without analyzing the content and the reasons. Only after the fact do I reasoning and thinking. Allen, who left this "paragraph", left a lonely and powerless back to the world. Although in the impression of many people, Allen can always bring a film and television spectacle to the world, but his real appearance in real life is often "impatient".
In an age of materialistic desires of eating men and women, Ellen just wants to act as a mundane person after shedding his aura, innocently experiencing something and feeling something. This "old man" is not an "evil old man", but he, like all men, has the impulse of the bold, and has the vanity of great joy. It is only after all the hasty "actions" that there is time to dissolve the disposition released by nature a second before that Alan "reasons and thinks" about the cosmological relationship between the action and the consequences. On the one hand, the temptation of the times, on the other hand, human nature, what is the difference between the "darkness of human nature" hidden in the depths of Alan's heart and all sentient beings.
Although Allen's creative road is full of "small luck" that ordinary people can't touch, at the same time, he also encounters the "small loss" of "the tree wants to be quiet and the wind is not stopping". The intricate mood of envy, jealousy, admiration, and hatred that pervaded every corner of Allen's life could not tolerate his "privilege" of an ordinary passerby's mediocre life.
One may only find some "authoritative" answers to Woody Allen's bizarre past, a propos of nothing (April 7, 2020, Publishing House).
From his biography, we can perceive that this talented man who is looked up to by everyone is extremely insecure at heart, and this insecurity has evolved into restlessness. In his restless creations, Woody Allen gradually learned to cover up his restless state of life with the creative style of "not going the usual way", and interpreted Anzhiruosu's life obsession with the way of "insisting on being yourself".
All of this ends up succinctly radiating into two words: freedom.
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