Woody Allen's last twenty years

I read a couple of the generic screenplay books that you are told to read when you want to write a screenplay, but I did it kicking and screaming. I thought I was far too brilliant to read a hackneyed critic's interpretation of what made a movie good, and thought art was too complex to break down so easily, with great exceptions to the rules, and I was the exception! Unfortunately, I was having a hard time writing a screenplay. I succumbed to one about three act structure and I'm not sure I'd ever broken down a script so succinctly. The first act was the set-up introducing the characters, along with the setting, and the conceit. The second act, or the central act, was the meat of a story and where a movie usually took off and really became about something far greater than a conceit. The third act picked up where the central story left off and tied everything up. The books made it clear that lots of writers could write a great opening, but more often than not a script fell flat on its face in the second act, leaving almost nothing for the third act except a smash 'em-up, crash 'em-up, barn burner but without any substance. I was told the second act usually introduced a new memorable character, who kind of gave a movie a second life, or an unexpected turn, and that it was largely carried by a subplot that came to define the movie, making it far greater than a mere conceit, since art required more than an idea.

I watched "Magic in the Moonlight" tonight and my relationship to Woody Allen is so complicated that it would take years of psychotherapy to understand, or at least a good essay or two. It's safe to say that Woody Allen's career is divided into two big categories, and then a couple of major/minor ones. He was pretty much on fire from the late Sixties until the late Eighties, or early Nineties, and that is more than enough to preserve his legacy, so understand that anything negative I say about his art from here on in takes that into account. I'd actually say Woody's career has its own three act structure: he had the early funny movies that were screwballs in the tradition of the Marx Brothers, but timeless: his second act started with "Annie Hall," and had Woody blending his comedy with serious drama and this worked to greater or lesser effect for a few years, but most critics of the day saw it as a huge breakthrough, and an unexpected turn, like went Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Many of his old fans wanted him to be funny, and he directly addressed this issue in "Stardust Memories," one of my favorites, but Woody made so many good movies in this period, there are a handful, that could be anyone's favorite. The promise of his first act, the early comedies, came to complete fruition in the second act of his career, that started with Diane Keaton as his leading lady, and ended with Mia Farrow. We're still in the 3rd act of his career, and it has been an awfully long third act that shows no signs of ending. In some ways, Woody has gone back to the 1st act in the 3rd act, like movies will often do, and seems to be answering his own conceit. The movies are funny for the most part, or almost void of any of the tension that defined his middle period, and made for some of his most serious art. At the same time, the last twenty years aren't always light, and there have been some heavy handed dramas that hearken to the middle period, but in a much less dramatic or forceful form. "Match Point" comes to mind, or "Blue Jasmine," but even those movies feel like exercises compared to "Crimes or Misdemeanors," and don't have the same uuuuumph.

"Magic in the Moonlight," started off good like many of Woody's later movies, but they are short and fall apart awful fast. The credits are the same and so is the music, not to mention he's a great talent, and still capable of writing some good dialogue, so I get suckered into these films thinking I'm about to watch something important, or that Woody will redefine his twilight years with a masterpiece or two, before he kisses us all goodbye, and that happened to me tonight. I'm a big fan of astrology and I liked the way he had a rationalist attacking the spiritualist, and that this might be the later period Woody I'd been looking for, a man willing to make a weird penetrating insight into an odd subject, and I'm sure that's how it struck him when he decided to have two top notch magicians inquire into the veracity of a psychic. I was fooled by Woody like I feel everyone still is, even though I knew that I'd seen a handful of movies of his in the last decade that started well only to completely fall apart, and "Magic" was no exception. I started to realize that the later Woody had given up on a second act, and just like the tantalizing possibilities of an opening, with an ending that asked a hard to answer question or two about life, and summed it up. Woody didn't used to be this way when he was in the second act of his career, or even the first act, and seemed genuinely interested in losing himself in his characters lives, but that part of him is gone. He barely cares about his characters anymore, other then as mouthpieces for his own wayward philosophical ideas, and this doesn't make for a refined study. Woody is like those guys in the screenwriting books who had drawer's full of screenplay's that stopped at about page thirty, a 1/3 of the way into it, because they had nothing more to say, and had no story to tell. The second act is the story, and nine times out of ten the only reason we remember a movie is for the story, not the set up or the ending. The best movies surprise us with either their intensity or direction, but Woody doesn't write second acts. He writes coming attractions, and has plenty of witty brilliant dialogue to dazzle us for a minute or two, but eventually we want more as a viewer, or I want more, and there's nothing there.

In screenplay time there are no hard set rules on how much time elapses in an act, but there are on how long the acts are, and the first and third are the shortest. Granted, a third act can span twenty years, and a second act can span two days, but the second act will be longer than the first act. Woody Allen's life would seem to be going this way since his third and final act is going on forever, much longer than his glorious second act, that saw him rise to the upper echelons of critical and popular success, without his reputation being tarnished. In real time, I'd say his second act ended right around the time he broke up with Mia Farrow, his last relatable serial monogamist love affair to his fans, and he wed one of Mia Farrow's adopted children who he helped raise, Sun Yi. It was the darkest moment of his life and Woody ended his second act on a down note, but he has completely rehabilitated his reputation with a slew of mediocre movies that only hearken to his past, but have made his fans forget about his personal foibles that would bring many others down. Even the accusations of child abuse in the Dylan Farrow affair, have been overshadowed by his movies, that just keep coming, and that his fans eat up like ice cream since he became a brand long ago. If anything, I'd say the third act of Woody Allen's life has been the solidification of his brand, with the creativity dying long ago. At the moment, he's the grand old man of filmmaking, the boomer who outlasted even Martin Scorsese, whose biography is nowhere near as entangled as Allen's. Somewhere in the second act of Woody's life, between the late Seventies and the late Eighties, he became more than a funny filmmaker, or even a brilliant one, but an archetype who taught a generation the art of living, blending his autobiographical movies with his real life, and creating a fictional character outside of the movies, that seemed less real than the one he played. Woody Allen became a lifestyle and his fans all saw themselves as little Woody's wanting a sophisticated New York City existence, with interesting friends writing books, or starring in plays. He was a generation's go to guy, but he's not that anymore. Woody has disappeared in his third act, because his personal life has become problematic, and I'm not sure anyone looks to him as a real life replica of a poetic personae they'd like to emulate. He's a trained professional behind the camera who has become an auteur, albeit a limp one with nothing to say, but an auteur nevertheless, and that's all part of the branding. In the words of the Coen Brothers, he gives you that "Woody Allen feeling." (A producer called it that 'Barton Fink' feeling, in "Barton Fink," even though Barton had yet to write a screenplay!) I know that all of his ex-fans, and maybe even the literati of today, see those credits roll, hear the ragtime music, and know that they are in for a Woody Allen movie, one like no other. I'm suckered into this feeling too, and thought "Magic" might be the grand exception I was waiting for, a screenplay where Woody really worked out his ideas on the metaphysical. Unfortunately, it was another excuse for him to film in Europe, where they love him like a second son.

6/1/2015 I heard on the radio tonight a new (Ha!) Woody Allen movie was coming out this summer, and they had an audio snippet talking about the despair of life. It sounded like nihilism for idiots, and made me wish Woody would just stop, and enjoy his golden years going to Knicks games, and taking a break from deep philosophy.