Nobody expects big box
office from Woody Allen. Maybe nobody really wants it. Actors simply die to be
handpicked by him to play minor roles in which they invariably don't know what
they are doing or what the movie is about. (Or even if their contributions will
make it into the final cut.) Woody is an authentic New York City treasure and
like New York itself, he may be financially unappealing, but he's got that
"certain something" only New York has.
Liz Smith, New York
Post, Feb. 20, 1991 (qtd. in Spignesi xi)
Woody Allen has been one
of America's most steadfast film directors, releasing roughly a movie a year
since 1969. New Yorkers, in particular, have long supported the Brooklyn-born
Allen, many of whose films serve as cinematic poems of their city. Given this,
it was surprising for the New York Times, on 5 June 2002, to run a disparaging
front-page story titled "Curse of the Jaded Audience: Woody Allen, in Art
and Life." It began as follows:
A grand total of eight
people showed up yesterday for the matinee of Woody Allen's latest movie
"Hollywood Ending," one month out of the box and now playing in
exactly one theater in Manhattan, a $4.95-a-ticket discount house in Times
Square.
Because of technical
problems, the screening was canceled. (Newman and Kilgannon A1)
The article, which
detailed Allen's legal problems with his long-time producer Jane Doumanian and
his difficulty pleasing modern audiences, included the domestic ticket sales
figures for all of the twelve movies Allen had directed over the previous ten
years. They ranged from a low of $2.7 million for Shadows and Fog in 1992 to a
high of $17.5 million for Small Time Crooks in 2000. Allen's most recent
release, Hollywood Ending (2002), had earned a paltry $4.7 million. Any way you
calculated the figures--the mean and median were both $8.6 million-they did not
look encouraging. In fact, the total box office take of Woody Allen's twelve
theatrical releases from 1992 to 2002 was only $103.7--the typical earnings for
a single successful film. Released the same summer as Hollywood Ending, My Big
Fat Greek Wedding (2002), another low-budget, independent filmmakers' release,
raked in over $100 million in its first few weeks, making more than a full
decade's worth of Allen's films.
The day after the
damning New York Times article appeared, the newspaper ran a letter to the
editor from Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert, who leapt to the
beleaguered director's defense. "What offended me most...," Ebert
wrote, "was the chart showing the box office performance of Mr. Allen's
recent movies. Surely you don't equate box office with quality" (A30).
Ebert pointed out that a majority of Allen's recent films won favorable ratings
at www.rottentomatoes.com, a website that chronicles North American movie
critics. In addition, as a group, the movies cited by the Times garnered
fourteen Academy Award nominations and won two Oscars. "Few directors do
as well," Ebert concluded (A30).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Rightly so, but the
damage was already done. Woody Allen, the one-time boy wonder of the movie
industry, apparently had lost his cachet. It was not always the case. Robert
Evans, in his popular autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture (1994),
describes a conversation with Warren Beatty and his roommate and friend Charlie
Feldman in the early 1960s centering on the rising young comic, Woody Allen. As
Evans writes, "Charlie was telling Warren and me how brilliant this new
kid, Woody Allen, was. 'The kid's a genius [Feldman gushed]. We went to Danny's
hideaway for a steak last night. I laughed so hard I couldn't eat" (101).
Forty years later, Allen's status as the funny, neurotic Jewish intellectual
with a quirky insight into romantic relationships was in question. No longer
dubbed "the genius" and no longer hilarious and attractive to the
youth audience that makes up the bulk of moviegoers, Allen had fallen so much
out of favor that Picking Up the Pieces (2000), a black comedy directed by
Alfonso Arau in which Allen played a kosher butcher with an unfaithful wife,
went straight to Cinemax, despite the fact that it also starred Sharon Stone
and Friends' David Schwimmer. Allen-directed Anything Else, released in
September 2003, made only $3,212,310 and Melinda and Melinda in 2005, only
slightly more, $3,826,280 ("Woody").
However, just as Allen
seemed to have sunk to the status of box-office poison, something unexpected
happened: he had a hit. Released in December 2005, Match Point starred Scarlett
Johansson, a young, beautiful, blond starlet dubbed as the next Marilyn Monroe,
and earned $23,151, 529 domestically and $78,265,575 worldwide ("Match
Point"). While not a blockbuster by anyone's standards, it nevertheless
became one of the most commercially successful films of Allen's career and
garnered almost universally favorable reviews. Movie theaters, not accustomed
to having huge crowds for a Woody Allen film, had to turn away patrons on
opening weekend. Scoop (2006), Allen's follow-up effort, also starring
Johannson, did not measure up critically or popularly, although it did manage a
respectable, albeit limited opening, coming in thirteenth for the week and
earning $3,046, 924 on 538 screens ("Miami Vice" E2).
Like Roger Ebert, Woody
Allen does not judge a film by the size of its audience. Peter J. Bailey,
reflecting what has been characterized as the director's patronizing attitude
towards his audience, writes, "Allen's interviews proliferate with genial
disavowal of accountability to his audience, with affirmations of his greater
commitment to craft than to effect" (267). Allen himself once remarked,
"The best film I ever did, really, was Stardust Memories. It was my least
popular film. That may automatically mean it was my best film. It was the
closest that I came to achieving what I set out to achieve" (qtd. in
Shales 90). A highly personal and idiosyncratic filmmaker, Allen writes,
directs, and stars in material that he finds challenging and does not strive to
win over the moviegoing masses, asserting that "[t]he vision of the
audience is never as deep as the vision of the artist involved. They are always
willing to settle for less than you want for yourself" (qtd. in Lax 370).
Nevertheless, it is instructive to consider why the multitalented Allen,
although he prefers to please his audiences rather than not, struggles to
attract viewers in what should be the prime of his career. Simply labeling him
"unpopular" would be imprecise and unproductive. At the same time,
exploring the reasons for Allen's box-office performance over the past
twenty-five years sheds light on the strategies practiced by one of American
film's most notable auteurs and changing trends in the entertainment market.
In order to understand
Woody Allen's relationship with moviegoers, it is helpful to compare Allen to a
comic auteur of an earlier era, Charlie Chaplin, whose life and career bear
many resemblances. Like Chaplin, Woody Allen specializes in romantic comedies
that he writes, directs, and stars in. The two actors developed distinctive
on-screen personas: Chaplin's as the little tramp and Allen's as the neurotic,
fumbling, Jewish intellectual. Both were underdogs, losers audiences could
relate to, and when they won, viewers felt hope for themselves. Both Chaplin
and Allen lacked substantial formal education but achieved fame very early in their
careers and became workaholics who demanded complete control over their films.
In their personal lives, both were married multiple times, or involved in
numerous high-profile romances, and created scandals due to taboo relationships
with underage females and, in the case of Chaplin, with leftist politics.
However, here the
comparisons end, for the two filmmakers approached their work differently in
two vastly contrasting eras. Chaplin, the visual artist, relied on ad libs and
multiple takes until he achieved the direction and effect that he wanted. He
worked slowly and deliberately, producing but a handful of comic gems, each one
eagerly awaited by his audience. Allen, on the other hand, who is first and
foremost a writer, concentrates on the script and is most adept at wordplay and
ideas. He works quickly and efficiently, having established himself as one of
America's most prolific filmmakers with a movie release a year. Ironically,
Chaplin was a silent, visual comedian forced to adapt to talkies while Allen is
primarily a verbal stylist, working in a medium that has become increasingly
image-dominant and given over to action and special effects as a way of
increasing global sales. Although the British-born Chaplin was ostracized from
Hollywood (and America) in 1952 and spent the rest of his life in Switzerland
happily married to Oona O'Neill, he returned for a hero's welcome in 1972 when
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a special
Oscar for his achievements. As his life drew to a close, audiences worldwide
embraced him. However, what of Allen, now in his 70s and presumably the final
stages in his career?
At the onset, it is
important to note that Woody Allen's films, even those most critically
successful and featuring bankable box-office stars such as Diane Keaton, Julia
Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, John Malkovich, Jodie Foster, Hugh
Grant, Charlize Theron, and Will Ferrell have never been big blockbusters.
Although Annie Hail won an Academy Award for best picture, for example, it
earned only $38,251,425 upon its release in 1977, the same year that Star Wars
broke box office records. Allen's biggest moneymakers, Manhattan (1979) and
Hannah and her Sisters (1986) earned $39,946,780 and $40,048,041 respectively,
respectable but not staggering. Nevertheless, early in his career, even if
Allen was not churning out blockbusters, he seemed, according to Sam B. Girgus,
particularly suited to his times.... In
a time
of democratic upheaval that
touched
all aspects of life from the
sexual
and social to the cultural and
political, Allen's looks and offbeat
style
seemed to speak for and represent
the
involvement of "everyman" in
the
transformations of life-styles and
values.
His persona as a "loser," the
classic
underdog, "schlemiel" figure,
was
perfect for a period of participatory
democracy and confusing change, but
also
allowed for a process of distancing
from
developments and events that
contained frightening potential within
them.
One could look at and listen to
Woody
Allen and identify with him,
while
also feeling somewhat estranged
with
him. (3)
Girgus also alludes to
Allen's timely ability to treat racial and cultural differences in a
nonthreatening way during a period of ethnic turmoil and controversy in America
(3). Today, Allen no longer holds the distinction of spokesperson for the
changing values of nation. Although Eric Lax says that an Allen film
"reflects the dilemmas of its maker's age group" (370), not even baby
boomers, now in their fifties and sixties, attend his movies with regularity,
in part because they attend fewer movies in general. Thus, at a point in
Allen's career when he should be poised to take the American Film Institute's
Lifetime Achievement Award or a special Oscar for his contributions to the
industry, the American movie audience, especially young people, who make up its
majority, are not embracing him.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
On the surface it would
seem that Woody Allen's difficulties attracting an audience were triggered by
his personal life, namely his sexual relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the
adopted Korean daughter of his longtime lover and former leading lady, Mia
Farrow. Following his 1992 breakup with Farrow, her accusations of his
molesting their younger children Dylan and Satchel, and a high-profile court
case, Allen appeared in both the tabloids and legitimate journalism as a
scoundrel who wronged and deeply wounded the beatific Farrow and her family.
However, the public respects survivors and those who persevere are generally
forgiven. Just as Chaplin recovered from scandal and dalliances with underage
women, so too, perhaps, has Allen: he was acquitted of the child molestation
charges, and he and Soon-Yi, who were married in Venice in 1997, now have two
young daughters. Their pictures appear regularly in People magazine and other
popular publications as the typical domestic couple, a view reinforced by
Barbara Kopple's 1998 documentary Wild Man Blues. In essence, Allen, like Chaplin,
seems publicly rehabilitated.
Given this, one must
direct attention away from Allen's personal life to concentrate more squarely
on his approach to moviemaking and his creative output. In the 1960s and 1970s,
when Allen attracted the most media attention and a favorable press, he
appeared in sync with a generation that was seeking relevance and spearheading
a sexual revolution. His movies addressed, with unusual frankness, how life and
relationships work and what goes through people's heads. His themes of sex,
death, crime, family history, fame, and psychoanalysis were indicative of a
time when people were publicly searching for understanding and meaning. Allen's
moviemaking techniques also were cutting edge for the time: actors addressing
the audience directly or stepping into flashbacks, elimination of the fourth
wall, melding live-action with animation, and telling a story out of sequence,
from memory. At the core of his best known films was Woody Allen himself, never
handsome but possibly cute, somehow likable and vulnerable even when he was
being despicable. However, Allen's style of moviemaking is not clicking in the
same way with audiences today, for reasons that reflect the volatile state of
the movie industry and Allen's role in it. Note, for example, several
explanations.
First, Woody Allen
directed his first film, Take the Money and Run, in 1969, when he was just
twenty-four years old and his name was already synonymous with hip
intellectualism due to his stories, articles, plays, and witty television
interviews. By achieving success this early in life, he has been in the
limelight for decades; thus, while the young audience today recognizes him,
especially because his classic and current films show up regularly on
television cable channels, on DVD, and in university film classes, it
associates him an older generation that is less innovative and cutting-edge.
Second, while Woody
Allen has proven his willingness to take risks and try new
things--philosophically, psychologically, and technically moving far beyond his
early farces that youth audiences found funny and entertaining--he nevertheless
has found a formula that he is comfortable with and is best known for his
systematic output of romantic comedies. By his own admission, he is an actor
with limited range. He can play only one character--a neurotic, bumbling misfit
with big black-rimmed glasses--who is either a criminal or an intellectual and
goes by names such as Virgil Starkwell, Alvy Singer, Isaac Davis, Mickey Sachs,
Ray, or Val Waxman. Allen reprises this same character with slight permutations
in film after film, and even typecasts his supporting characters in supporting
characters in subsequent films. Thus, audiences feel they have seen the same
thing before. This sense of deja vu is reinforced by the musical scores that
Allen chooses. Rejecting rock or other contemporary sounds, he prefers jazz and
the big band music of the 1930s and '40s, which give his films an old-time,
nostalgic quality. Stephen J. Spignesi cites 1950, when Allen was fifteen, as
"the musical cutoff year" for [his] taste in popular music,"
reiterating biographer Eric Lax's assertion that Allen "has no use for
almost any popular music after 1950" (Spignesi 5).
Third, the classic Woody
Allen character, originated in films like Annie Hall and Manhattan, is a
throwback to an earlier era. In on-screen romantic relationships, the Allen
character lacks confidence but yet always has to have the upper hand: he is
often older, smarter, or more worldly, and plays the role of mentor. In Annie
Hall, for example, Annie's identity is based on the fact that she is not very
smart or very talented; when her perception of herself begins to change, the
relationship is doomed. Similarly, in Manhattan, Ike knows that when Tracy
returns from study abroad in England that she'll be less naive and more worldly
and that he won't have a chance of winning her back. Even in his later fare,
including his more recent release Scoop, Allen is associated with this
paternalistic sort of role, whether played by him or other male characters that
he has created, and thus does not appear progressive.
Fourth, Woody Allen's
movies reflect sensibilities of another time. Recent comedies--such as Small
Time Crooks, in which ex-cons rent a store as a front while they try to tunnel
underground to rob a bank; The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, which contains gags
based on the repeated triggering of a hypnotic trance; Hollywood Ending, in
which a movie director suffering from psychosomatic blindness tries to direct a
movie without anyone catching on; and Scoop, in which a prominent newspaper
writer appears from the dead to help a young journalism student uncover a mass
murderer--reflect plots that seem contrived and old-hat. Today's media-savvy
audiences have already heard the stories and can guess the endings. Allen's
themes, too, seem out of sync, as "psychoanalysis" and
"therapy" are not the buzzwords that they once were. Further, Allen's
films, which always presupposed an intelligent, college-educated audience
familiar with literature, history, politics, and current events, have trouble
finding an audience in a career-driven, image-obsessed time when
intellectualism, ideas, and verbal wit are less valued. If Mike Myers and Kevin
Smith are the Woody Allens of subsequent eras, one sees that fast-paced dumb
jokes, raunchy humor, and sight gags designed to shock take precedence over
word play, literary and historical allusions, and parody. As twenty-four year
old Abel Feldhamer, quoted in the previously mentioned New York Times article,
observed of Allen, "His sense of humor is sort of frozen in the '70's. He
appeals to an older crowd" (qtd. in Newman and Kilgannon A22).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fifth, as Woody Allen
entered his late 50s and 60s and physically aged, he became less credible as
the male lead in a romantic comedy. For a romantic comedy to work the audience
has to understand the characters' attractions for one another, and contemporary
audiences have difficulty seeing a Helen Hunt, Tracey Ullman, or Tea Leoni
forgoing other attractive lovers to be with what they perceive as a skinny,
whiny, bespectacled older man. Hence, Woody Allen may have lost his ability to
be believable as a romantic male lead.
Sixth, as a filmmaker,
Woody Allen has produced like clockwork: a film a year. His reliability is
evidenced in the working titles of his films: Fall 2004 project, Fall 2005
project, Fall 2006 project. Even during his most turbulent personal times,
Allen never let his work schedule be compromised, saying that he compartmentalizes
the various aspects of his life. Perhaps this reliability has worked against
him in an event-driven media era. The openings of Woody Allen's films are
predictable, not special. In the same way that he begins each film with simple
white credits on a black background (preferring to spend his small budget on
other features of the film), he rejects flashy, high-concept, high-budget
projects that require lengthy negotiation for funding and long planning and
shooting schedules. One who produces films at Allen's prodigious rate and
break-neck speed is bound to incur a certain amount of sameness with regard to
storylines, characters, actors, and settings. For example, the second
Allen-directed Scarlett Johansson vehicle in a year created less audience
excitement.
Seventh, Woody Allen has
not concerned himself with promotion and marketing at a time when perhaps he
needs to do so. Unlike other directors, he rarely grants interviews, goes on
talk shows, or does publicity tours, in part because he is too busy churning out
his next move. He prefers not to leave New York, although he did venture to the
UK to make Match Point, Scoop, and Cassandra's Dream (2007), and Spain for
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Hollywood Ending opened the same weekend as
Spiderman, perhaps a nod to counter-programming but also a virtual guarantee
that the movie would not get much opening-weekend publicity. Scoop appeared in
the midst of Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
hoopla. In an event-driven movie industry, Woody Allen's releases in recent
years have been systematic and business-as-usual rather than special and
attention-getting, even when he casts A-list stars.
Despite these
observations, Allen remains a viable force in American moviemaking in the
twenty-first century by virtue of his longevity and calculated filmmaking
strategies and routines, and he continues to surprise, keeping him on the
audience's cinematic radar. At the March 2002 Academy Award presentations,
Allen--the quintessential New York director who had never before attended the
Los Angeles ceremony-introduced the Academy's post-September 11 tribute to New
York a stunning montage of clips of the city in film, commencing with Allen's
own opening of Manhattan with George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"
wailing in the background. In addition to heading to Hollywood for the Oscars,
the reclusive Allen was a presenter in France at the Cannes Film Festival, both
high-profile events that generate media attention and bolster professional
stature. Allen also agreed to an extensive television interview that aired
repeatedly in May 2002 in conjunction with a retrospective of eighteen of his
films on Turner Classic Movies. In Woody Allen: A Life in Film, a ninety-minute
documentary on his career, Allen talked at length of his approach to filmmaking
and reinforced his status as one of the great auteurs of the American cinema.
However, this event most likely attracted the baby-boomer-and-older demographic
who have long comprised Allen's core audience and are more likely to subscribe
to Turner Classic Movies than the Millennial Generation that filmmakers need to
attract in order to bolster their box-office receipts.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
More important than
Allen's efforts to connect with his audience through public relations gestures
is his overall management of his career, which goes against the grain of modern
Hollywood. Stig Bjork man, who conducted extensive interviews with Allen,
reports that Allen's
position in the film world is unique.
He has
a contract with his producers
which
guarantees him complete
freedom
to write and direct one film
a
year--at least. The contract means
unlimited control on Woody's side
over
choice of subject, script, actors and
team
members, final cut and so on. The
only
condition is that he keep within
the
economic boundaries fixed for the
project. (xii)
By 2005, when the Motion
Picture Association of America reported that the average Hollywood movie cost
$96.2 million to produce ("World Box"), Allen's movies average a
modest $15 million (Westbrook). Spending what most directors spent twenty years
ago, Allen makes his films cheaply and efficiently, rarely going over time or
budget or investing large sums in special effects. His actors, anxious to work
with one of film's prestige filmmakers, who has a good track record for
directing Academy-Award nominated performances, do so in between more lucrative
projects and for a fraction of their usual salaries, thus keeping Allen's costs
down even for movies with A-list ensemble casts. If one does the math, it
becomes apparent that Allen's strategy is to keep his production (and
promotion) costs low and his productivity high, aiming for at least a small
profit on each annual release. An occasional hit, such as Match Point, more
than compensates for the films that do poorly at the box office. For example,
Match Point, made in 2005 for $15 million, earned $78 million worldwide
("Match Point"). This compensates for losses for Anything Else, which
cost $18 and earned $13 million worldwide ("Anything"), and the more
expensive Curse of the Jade Scorpion, which cost $33 million and earned $18
million worldwide ("Curse"). Other recent releases, such as Small
Time Crooks, made modest profits ("Small Time"). Over the long haul,
Allen's movies collectively turn a profit, albeit a small one, indicative of a
director who is not led by audience expectations but is afforded total freedom
to create. Another reason for Allen's small profits is that his movies,
generally more verbal than visual, are not as easily transformed into
moneymakers in a foreign market more geared to action.
Both Charlie Chaplin and
Woody Allen withstood the effects of scandals and diminished appreciation of
their films in their later years, but Chaplin, in the end, won
multigenerational praise and was heralded as a cinematic ground-breaker, and a
comic genius. Will Woody Allen, who is now in his 70s and has directed nearly
forty films, be as lucky? Although his individual films fail to attract
blockbuster audiences, the body of his work has taken on iconic stature, making
his influence on American mass media unmistakable. His early romantic
comedies--such as Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Zelig (1983), The Purple
Rose of Cairo (1985), and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)--explore classic Allen
themes, the difficulty of relationships, sexual taboos, the plasticity of
Hollywood, and the cult of celebrity, and reveal the nuances of daily life
under a microscope, expressing the precarious nature of human attraction and
the rare possibility that a relationship will ever work out. Their influence
can be seen on a myriad of television shows, especially Seinfeld, and movies, When
Harry Met Sally (1989) being the ultimate homage (Spignesi 343-349). Even the
previously mentioned My Big Fat Greek Wedding depends on the juxtaposition of a
large, boisterous ethnic family and a small, staid WASP one for laughs, the
same thing Woody Allen did effectively in Annie Hall twenty-five years earlier.
As Woody Allen's biographer Eric Lax observes of his influence, "[Allen]
has clearly increased the vocabulary of romantic comedy. He has made the nerdy,
off-beat antihero into a leading man. He has perfected the use of long master
shots in which a whole scene is filmed without cutting from one take to
another. He has turned narration and voice-over into character, and speaking to
the audience natural. And he has had a tremendous influence on his audience, to
the point that they identify with him and his sensibilities" (414).
However, in order for
the modern audience to embrace Woody Allen in the twenty-first century, perhaps
he needs to step out of the limelight as a leading man, write characters that
are not more variations of the classic Woody Allen persona, take the time to
develop projects that are not simply reliable and routine but well worth the
wait, and adopt the Hollywood practice of vigorous promotion. Allen did not
appear in Match Point, his most financially successful venture in twenty years,
a feature that was advertised primarily as a Scarlett Johansson vehicle, not a
Woody Allen production. Although he did act in Scoop, he has not appeared in
another film since. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, starring Scarlett Johansson,
Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz, earned a tidy profit, and
Midnight in Paris (2011), nominated for an Academy Award for best picture,
became his most moneymaking film of late.
One could argue that
there is really no reason for Woody Allen, who has turned a career profit and
produced an interesting body of work, to do anything to increase his audience.
However, there is hope yet for his popularity. Stephen Hunter of the Washington
Post wrote in a film review of a "Woody Allen figure, a New York nebbish,
the loner who wasn't in the cool set and had an uncertain way about him"
(C1). Of whom was he speaking? It was Peter Parker-Spiderman--the biggest
box-office draw of the summer of 2002, who just happened to be like Woody
Allen.
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