Woody Allen, the filmmaker, the god of
frustration,and psychoanalysis sadly reminds me of my old english teacher at school, and when I say sadly I do not mean it in the horrible “I don’t want to remember that man, that
teacher of death” (
or something), I mean:
Jesus god I miss that glorious teacher. He was, and continues to be, an exceptionally fair and meticulous essay marker (which is more than I can say for most ‘teachers’ these days), he is inspired and brilliant and makes damn sure he chooses a text he thinks we will adore. A few months into Year 12, our class developed a more intimate relationship with the man, and we often spent whole periods asking him about his
lovelife.. he was sad, he really was, he was single and in his early 40’s, a man involved in
theater,
deathly intelligent,
witty, and.. my best friend and I assumed that women his age would most
certainly find him physically attractive so
what was the deal?
I haven’t seen him in a while.. I hear he successfully pursued the new, young (blonde!!) librarian. Alright old English teacher! Anyway, one time he got us to watch Woody Allen’s
Crimes & Misdemeanors.. he was utterly crushed when we didn’t respond as enthusiastically as he obviously had upon first watching. He went to all the trouble to painstakingly select some
candy for our young and
cynical minds.. and we didn’t receive it with
vigor..
poor thing. We felt so bad, we made an effort to ‘grow to like it’.
His films are made to remember our everyday life, trapped between nightmares and fear. Between Central Park and Soho there is this man moving and silently screaming between skyscrapers and loneliness. Never being an existentialist, his solutions are similar to the Sartrian sensation of overcoming nausea: They last for a moment, a man born from its ashes that finally liberates from the weight of the world, yet still inside of the self in the empty world of his limits. But a brand new man.
Well that's all wonderful and obscure, but what's the point? I have never understood the fascination with Woody Allen. He’s just another hideous little snivelly man who got famous and uses it to spread his self pity out to the other snivelly little men. I mean, Marilyn Manson is a hideous tall man but at least he isn’t snivelly! Why, he’s positively glamorous and hyper at times!
Nevertheless, he was “kinda” in Seinfeld, which saves him in my eyes, and Woody Allen does come up with some pretty nifty quotes. I have compiled a list. A list of quotes from a man I do not particularly admire.
“The last time I was inside a woman was when I went to the Statue of Liberty”.
“I don't know enough to be incompetent”. (Shadows and Fog)
“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Which means that all men are homosexuals. (Love and Death)
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down...” (Love and Death)
“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible be like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable”.