Woody Allen Muses About Emma Stone, Death, and His “Catastrophic Mistake”

BY Julie Miller
Vanity Fair
15 May 2015

Warning: there are mild spoilers about the film plot ahead.

Woody Allen may have had a difficult time understanding the questions from international reporters at Friday’s Cannes press conference for Irrational Man, but there was one query he jumped to answer.

In the spirit of Allen’s latest picture, which involves a murder plot, a foreign journalist wondered why the filmmaker killed off so many of his comedy characters (or had characters considering the act) over the years. And, while on that subject, had Allen himself ever “considered murdering someone?”

“Even as you speak,” Allen quipped, to laughter from adoring press. Flanked by his Irrational Man actresses Emma Stone and Parker Posey—star Joaquin Phoenix was M.I.A. from the Mediterranean—Allen was making a rare public appearance begrudgingly, or at least so says Page Six. Last decade, the famously press-shy actor made a point of flying out for the Cannes Film Festival whenever he had a project because, as he told The Guardian, “The French people have been so supportive of my films for so many years. . . . I thought I ought to make a gesture of reciprocity.” Of course, Allen never said that he would be demonstratively happy about promoting his films in the South of France.

In an interview immediately before the press conference began that was streamed live throughout the Palais des Festivals, Allen answered questions as succinctly as possible. When asked why he cast Stone again, after their first collaboration in Magic in the Moonlight, Allen said, “She was at the door. . . . And she looked hungry, so we gave her a part.” Asked about the making of this film, he offered the unfortunate reporter these words, “It’s just the idea of a story and you tell the story as the narrative unfolds.”

Several minutes later, after being tossed into a room full of journalists, Allen was able to crank up the charm a few notches.

Asked about working with Stone—essentially the same question he had been asked moments before—the filmmaker delivered a monologue about the joys of the Internet sweetheart.

“I saw her in a movie by accident. I was walking on the treadmill and looking for something to distract me and then I saw Emma. And she looked beautiful. And then she was very funny in the movie and I thought to myself, This is someone who would be very interesting to work with. And I worked with her in the first movie. She was great, absolutely great. Lived up to all of the hype. . . . So I had no problem thinking of her for Irrational Man. . . she amazed me.”

(Seeming to notice that it would be rude to leave Posey out of the praise-fest, as she was the only other person on the panel, Allen also volunteered his reasoning for why he wanted to work with the fabulous, if under-appreciated, indie actress. “I had always wanted to work with Parker Posey because I liked the name Parker Posey. I had seen her in all of these offbeat movies. She was always great, and I always thought, Will I ever get to be on set and say, ‘Where is Parker Posey?’”)

Stone was asked whether, as the latest Woody Allen muse, there were plans to collaborate again. The actress revealed, “There are no plans as it stands to do a third [film].” Looking in Allen’s direction, Stone added, “But wouldn’t that be nice?”

A reporter wondered whether Allen had been in touch with another of his brightest stars, Cate Blanchett, since her Oscar win for his 2013 drama, Blue Jasmine. The filmmaker surprised reporters by saying that he had actually not been in touch with Blanchett since way before the Academy Award.

“I have not seen or spoken to Cate since that movie [wrapped],” Allen explained. “It's all very professional . . . people go their separate ways after a film. You come in and you shoot. The last day everyone is very teary because you are not going to see the people anymore. But then you go off, and get on with your life. So I have not seen or spoken to Cate since that picture was over.”

The actors aren’t the only ones Allen disconnects with the second a project ends—he also leaves each of his films in the rear-view mirror. When the moderator brought up Allen’s 1989 release, Crimes and Misdemeanors, the filmmaker asked, quite genuinely, “Crimes and Misdemeanors—yeah, what happened in it? I can’t remember.”

“When I make a film, I never ever look at it again once I put it out because, if you look at it again, you can always see what you did wrong and how you could improve it.” Allen explained that if humanly possible, he would absolutely remake every single one of his films. “Charlie Chaplin had the luxury of shooting a whole film all at one time. He could look at it and study it and then shoot it again and again if he wanted to. Films were not that costly at that time . . . I would very happily take every movie that I have and improve it if I could get the cast back and the circumstances exact, roll back time, get the money.”

Recently, it was announced that the filmmaker will create a television series for Amazon, a project that Allen really regrets signing onto. “It was a catastrophic mistake for me,” he grumbled about the endeavor. “I'm struggling with it at home. . . . I never should have gotten into it. I thought it would be easy. You know, you do a movie . . . it’s a big, long thing. But to do six half hours, I thought it would be a cinch. . . . It is very, very hard. And I just hope I don’t disappoint Amazon. . . . I don't watch any of those television series, really, so I don’t know what I am doing. . . . I expect this to be a cosmic embarrassment when it comes out.”

If there was one subject that Allen seemed even more comfortable discussing than his own professional shortcomings, it was his looming death, and how filmmaking has distracted him from it.

“Making films, you know there is no positive answer to the grim reality of life. No matter how much the philosophers or the priests or the psychiatrists talk to you, the bottom line after all the talk is that life has its own agenda and it runs right over you while you are prattling. . .And the only way out of it, as an artist, is to try and come up with something where we can explain to people why life is worth living. And is a positive thing. And does have some meaning. Now, you can’t really do that without conning [moviegoers]. You can't be honest because in the end, it has no meaning.

“You are living in a random universe,” he continued. “You are living a meaningless life. And everything you create or you do is going to vanish with the sun burning out and the universe will be gone and it’s over. My conclusion is that the only possible way you can beat [this conclusion] even a little bit is through distraction. . . .Making movies is a wonderful distraction.”

While no journalist dared to ask Allen about any of his personal distractions—such as his purported controversies over the years, and decades’ worth of unsettling allegations that resurfaced last year—the filmmaker did, at one point, go on a curious tangent about morality.

When asked whether any of his Irrational Man characters were truly moral, Allen suggests that Stone’s character—who finds herself excited by the possibility of a criminal behavior—would evolve morally as she ages.

“Her perspectives will change from what they were at the end of the movie,” he told press. “When she is in her 40s or 50s or 70s, the perspective will change and she won’t be as hard on herself on certain issues. And she will be much harder on herself on other issues.”

Stone appeared surprised by this information, and a reporter asked whether this was more character description than Allen had provided Stone during the entire course of filming. “Yeah, it's interesting!” To Allen, she turned and pleaded, “Keep going! What about in her 80s?”

Allen, who enters that very decade in December, deadpanned, “In her 80s, she packs it in.” After journalists laughed, he added, “Her 80s is just all face work.”

When the press conference wrapped, about a dozen reporters immediately dropped what was left of their professional guard and flooded the podium with glossy photos and other film memorabilia for the director to autograph. At the Cannes Film Festival, for better or worse, the focus apparently really is the filmmaking.