Allen to Baldwin: `The thrill is gone'
Alec Baldwin and Woody Allen steered clear of their respective controversies on Tuesday when Baldwin interviewed the famed director on Instagram Live.
The “30 Rock” star, who appeared in Allen's 2012 picture “To Rome With Love,” invited the filmmaker to discuss his new essay collection, “Zero Gravity,” and his take on the current movie landscape. What he learned? The “thrill” of moviemaking is gone for the once-venerated director.
At the start, Allen, 86, declared that he “still doesn't know what Instagram is.” Not surprisingly, the two had technical difficulties typical of virtual interviews and digital immigrants. Allen's audio frequently dropped and Baldwin had to shout for help at home in Spanish and trouble-shoot tech issues in the middle of the Live chat. Baldwin, 64, joked that Instagram is now the “Radio City Music Hall of the millennial generation.”
Allen, a four-time Oscar winner whose dozens of films include “Midnight in Paris,” “Manhattan,” “Annie Hall” and “Deconstructing Harry,” said he doesn't expect to keep making movies because he's grown tired of the lifestyle and because of the catalytic effects of streaming and the COVID-19 pandemic. Allen said he doesn't know how he feels about making movies now, lamenting that films either go directly to streaming or land there after a short run in theaters.
“It's one of the things that I feel discourages me. I've done 49 movies and I'm about to do maybe my 50th movie and when the pandemic came, I was in the house like everybody else, petrified, hiding under the bed and I didn't go out for months. And I couldn't make a movie that I had planned to make,” Allen said.
“And then after a few months went by, I started to think, `Gee, I like it under the bed.' ... I don't have to go out. I don't have to make a film. I don't have to be cold in the winter or hot in the summer. Up at five o'clock in the morning, making decisions all day long. I'm home, and there's nothing I can do but my exercise, practice the clarinet and writing a lot,” he said.