Woody Allen Press Conference
Can you talk about women and what they bring out in you in terms of making films?
Woody Allen: "The interesting thing is, and I’ve said this before, when I first started I could never write for women. When I wrote my first couple of films and did them, and when I used to write my cabaret act, and I would write sketches for television, I could never write for women. I always wrote the male point of view. This went on and on for quite a while. People even commented about it at the time. Then I got into Play it Again, Sam with Diane Keaton on stage. Keaton and I started dating, we started living together, and became very close. Through some kind of Socratic osmosis or something I started writing for women. I started writing for Diane, and I found I could write for women. Then I sort of only wrote for women. I wrote more and more for women, and I wrote for them all the time."
"I like women, I enjoy their company. The person I edit with is a woman. My editing assistants are all women and my press people are all women. My producer is a woman. I just enjoy their company very much. I get a big kick out of them. For some reason I find them interesting to write about too, men occasionally, but really my heart is in it more when I’m writing for women. I don’t know why, but I remember when that transformation took place from an inability to write a credible woman. I couldn’t write anything but a one-dimensional woman. Then I was writing for women all the time."
"Over the years I’ve written many women’s roles that turned out to be some of my most interesting roles. A bonus is that there are so many wonderful actresses out there, it’s much easier to get a woman for a role than it is a man. If you write a role there are always a couple of women you can get for it. Whereas with a guy, if you don’t get the one or two guys you want, it's not so easy. There is a scarcity of guys, really, on that level. There are so many gifted women out there that are just waiting for an opportunity to work."
Such as Scarlett Johansson?
Woody Allen: "Yeah, Scarlett was an accident. I had Kate Winslet for Match Point to the last week in pre-production, when she said she couldn’t do the picture because she had worked continually and had spent no time with her child. She asked would I forgive her, and of course I understood that completely, and I didn’t know Scarlett from a hole in the wall. I thought she was too young to play the part. She was only 19 years old at the time. I was in a hole, I had to get somebody fairly quickly, and I knew that Scarlett was a great actress and a beauty. I didn’t know if she was really what I had written."
"I hired her and became totally captivated by her. I thought she could simply do anything. She was not only beautiful but also bright, amusing, charming, and gifted. I’m very happy to work with her. Whenever there is a part that fits anything she could do I would always call her and hope that she would be available for it, as I did with Keaton for years. I did that with Mia [Farrow]. I did many roles with her, thought she was a wonderful actress, and she never let me down. I think that the same with be true with Scarlett."
As a writer, what are the challenges for you to write about three different culturally distinctive characters, in terms of creating the characters? Was it particularly challenging for you?
Woody Allen: "It was not. I had the idea about two women going away on a summer thing some place. Someone called from Barcelona and said, 'Would you like to make a picture here? We’ll finance it.' That’s always the hardest part of making any picture, is getting the financing. Writing it, directing it, or anything else is easier than getting the financing for it, so I said, 'Sure, I would do it.'"
"I had no idea for anything for it and then about a week or two later I got a call from Penelope Cruz. I didn’t know her; she wanted to meet and she was in New York. I had only seen her in Volver and nothing else ever. I thought she was great in it, and she said that she knew I was doing a film in Barcelona and she would like to participate. I started out with Barcelona, with Penelope, and in the back of mind I was going to go to Scarlett. Then I heard Javier [Bardem] was interested, so gradually it took shape. I was writing for these people. I was deliberately writing for these people. I didn’t know Rebecca Hall at all. Juliet Taylor, my casting director, discovered her. She said that she was great, I should read her, and look at some film on her. I did and she was right. I put the thing together for the people almost, as I did it, and did the best I could."
