I cannot unread, unhear, unknow them.
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There are two short passages inWoody Allens autobiographyApropos of Nothingthat will forever change the way I think about him.
I cannot unread, unhear, unknow them.
I wish I could.
Ill get to them shortly.
But what he thinks about the movies he has spent the last half-century directing is not.
he felt ambivalent about.
(I just cant get interested enough in a movie to shoot long days, he writes.)
I understand those moviegoers who have no desire ever to watch or rewatch another Woody Allen movie.
(What wasIrrational Man?Melinda and Melinda?Hollywood Ending?)
But there is little that you couldnt pick up from an IMDB trivia page.
But Allen is not, he makes clear, big on second thoughts.
He likesHusbands and Wives,the movie during production of which the Soon-Yi scandal exploded.
Whether Id still be as high on it as I was then, I dont know.
And I dont want to find out.
For better or worse, he writes, I sort of live in a bubble.
I can never get the actor out fast enough …
I have nothing to say to any of them.
Will it shock you to hear that the words I marched in Washington with Martin Luther King follow quickly?
And his cultural horizons are, he says bluntly, limited.
Chaplin was funnier than Keaton, he declares.
But he expresses no reasons for those aversions and concludes, Who cares what I think its taste.
Forget caring; based on those unelaborated statements, whoknowswhat he thinks?
We know this because he misses no opportunity to tell us.
I try never to look back, he says.
I dont like living in the past.
Elsewhere, he warns of self-obsession, that treacherous time-waster.
So forget the movies he certainly has.
From its first pages, what is meant to amuse is as discomforting as steel-wool underwear.
Nor a single thought his waking hours.
True, I was showing promise in my field, but …
I was an obnoxious swine.
I knew I was in trouble when, in one philosophical discussion, Harlene proved I didnt exist.
She was Louise Lasser, he writes.
The Ls in her name were formed with the tongue, which was immediately sexual.
Gross, but kindly continue.
He also calls her my blond lady of the sonnets, which is a lot.
Its here that the first of the two passages that froze me arrives.
But that phrasing, for the rest ofApropos of Nothing, felt like a splinter in my skull.
For me, it goes straight under the headingWhen someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Okay, youve been patient, and Ive been avoidant.
In other words, lah-dee-dah, lah-dee-dah, la, la.
Perhaps thats worth lingering on?
No, because he still has to get to the molestation accusation.
He does; I dont.
I have little to add to that except how deeply I wish I had read less.
It is no wonder that two adopted children would be suicides.
(There are conflicting accounts.)
But what I can comment on, because its sitting right there, is the prose.
When I mention Rachel McAdams, what comes to mind?
Tell me your impression of Joaquin Phoenix.
That, and the wayApropos of Nothingis dotted with Anyway, where was I?
and To get back to the point and Sidebar suggests dictation more than writing.
Not my fault, people.
Who knew she was so vindictive?
He also quotes Francine du Plessix Gray as having said, There are no great Woody Allen stories.
On this, henceforth, I will take him at his word.
