Proposal: Woody Allen should go down the James Patterson route of getting other people to collaborate with him on his films.
Take Midnight in Paris, where sock puppet Owen Wilson, travels back in time to an idealised 1930's and hangs out with Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Dali, Picasso etc for writerly inspiration.
It's Woody on autopilot: a nostalgic, rose-tinted view of Europe, a bundle of first world problems, and a first-rate cast all bound up in self-referential autocritique (what, it's not enough to live in the past, you say? well strike a light!), an indifferent script with a few good gags and lazy direction.
Lazy direction? Let's just say I was nearly violently ill during the opening credits sequence of tourist-board Parisian scenes and leave it at that.
But it's not a bad idea for a film, if someone was genuinely interested in the artists of the 30's instead of using them to massage his proxy's ego. Oh, and interested in writing some decent jokes.
So why doesn't Woody, as he slips in to his twilight (Woodydammerung?) come up with the idea, keep directing, if he wants, but let other writers, who probably love his work up to the mid 90's, do the heavy labour he doesn't want to do?
Would we out-woody Woody, would we? Only one way to find out.
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