News bits! Our twice monthly round up of Woody Allen bits from around the web.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Joan Rivers has passed away. She was a fantastic comedienne and we will miss her.
Rivers was a contemporary of the 60s stand up scene where Woody Allen also got her start. She wrote about those days in the Hollywood Reporter.
I had no idea what I was doing. The white men were doing “mother-in-law” and “my wife’s so fat …” jokes. It was all interchangeable. Bob Hope would walk into a town and say, “The traffic lights in this town are so slow that …” and it could be any town. When I went onstage, that just didn’t feel right. So I just said, “Let me talk about my life.” It was at the moment when Woody Allen was saying, “Let me talk about my life,” and George Carlin was saying, “Maybe I’ll talk about my life.” So I came in at the right moment.
My group was Woody and George and Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. Rodney Dangerfield. Dick Cavett. All the ones who were coming up at the same time. But I never was one of the guys. I was never asked to go hang out; I never thought about it until later. They would all go to the Stage Delicatessen afterward and talk. I never got to go uptown and have a sandwich with them. So, even though I was with them, I wasn’t with them.
In a 2012 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, she talked about bringing Allen home to meet her parents. They never really worked together on screen, but have decades of common ground, not least of which their association with Johnny Carson and ‘The Tonight Show‘.
River in fact tweeted about catching up with Allen just a couple of months ago.
At a party for Barbara Walters. Saw my dear old friend Woody Allen. We go back to our days in Greenwich Village. pic.twitter.com/KJeiGl1Toj
— Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers) May 15, 2014
Time Magazine has an extensive feature on her legacy. She will be missed.
Lucy Punch is starring in ‘Great Britain‘, the new acclaimed play from Richard Bean. In a new interview with The Guardian, she talked about working with Allen on You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, and how it kicked off her on screen career.
Punch seriously considered moving to Barcelona to teach English. “I was totally broke.” Thank goodness for Woody Allen. Or rather, for Nicole Kidman, who dropped out of ‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger‘, leaving Punch to fill the character’s clip-clopping heels and circulation-endangering costumes. “Getting that was a huge endorsement. I still had to audition for things, but the feeling was ,‘If she’s good enough for Woody…’” The run of work that followed – ‘Bad Teacher‘ opposite Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake, ‘Dinner for Schmucks‘ with Steve Carell, ‘Stand Up Guys‘ with Al Pacino – is still ongoing.
Movie Talk spoke to Emily Mortimer, in particular her work on Match Point, and her worries about working with Allen.
Actor Jeff Goldblum has been spending his nights playing jazz. In fact, he’s playing at Allen’s Monday night stomping ground, the Carlyle Hotel. In a new interview with the New York Times, he talks about how Allen in a way made it happen.
Q. Can you explain how your band owes its creation to both Woody Allen, your director on Annie Hall, and Peter Weller, your co-star in “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”?
A. Here’s what happened. Peter plays trumpet. So he would come over to my house, and the two of us would play a little bit. And then he did a Woody Allen movie [Mighty Aphrodite] and got to talking to Woody about us playing. Woody says: “You should do what I do, have a weekly gig, and you’ll get better. And it’ll be fun.” When Peter came back to L.A., we started to play out and about. And we got other musicians. In the years since, Peter’s living all over the world, but I’ve maintained this group. It’s Woody Allen’s fault, in a way.
We love director Lynn Shelton. She’s been in at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting her new film ‘Laggies‘. Asked by National Post about their first movie memories, she recalled Allen.
The first one that comes to mind and had a huge effect on me was Woody Allen’s Sleeper. I thought it was hysterically funny, and I loved the little pod cars, and how everybody had a robot, these very simplistic futuristic visions that I found charming as a child.
Partick Bruel is a superstar in France, and he’s just starting to gain an international profile. In a brief interview with The JC.com, he talked about working with Allen on Paris Manhattan.
He came as an actor, did his scene, didn’t talk about directing. He was very shy but very interesting.
There’s a new production of Woody Allen’s play ‘Riverside Drive‘, in Mexico. The stars of the production have been doing press, in particular Kuno Becker. Rotativo has an interview where he talked about the play (translated from Spanish…)
A play by Woody Allen is always ideal for the theater, for any time in the life of an actor, simply because he is a genius.
Here’s the poster.
The production opens 19th September.
The New Daily looked back at some of the amazing actresses that have graced Allen’s films. They start with Scarlett Johansson‘s performance in ‘Match Point‘ and end with Judy Davis in ‘Hannah And Her Sisters‘.
A Woody Allen t-shirt you can buy.
Fan art
Woody Allen: un capo, un romántico y el director. pic.twitter.com/ZvOMpARNQO
— Nómada (@PlanetasAzules) September 3, 2014
A great little cartoon.
Woody Allen (att @WoodyAllenPages ) pic.twitter.com/IyBgnVEcaL
— EdsonARAN (@EdsonAran) September 5, 2014
Quite an amazing Manhattan tattoo.
