HOLDING COURT AT CANNES
Woody Allen speaks out at film fest on the perks of fame
The Cannes Film Festival kicked off Wednesday night with a screening of Woody Allen’s 47th film, Cafe Society, a soufflé of a story that plays with a lot of themes — morality, violence, romantic fidelity and fame — but never does more than skim the surface.
Allen provides a bit of voiceover narration, while Jesse Eisenberg stars as the “Woody Allen character,” a Brooklyn Jew in the 1930s who heads to Hollywood to find employment with his uncle (Steve Carell), a big-time talent agent. But he also gets caught up in a love triangle with Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), a secretary hoping for bigger things. Back home, his brother Ben (Corey Stoll) is a gangster, running a nightclub with a side business in concrete (nudge, nudge).
The 80-year-old filmmaker has become a Cannes regular in recent years. He is the only director to have opened the festival three times, after Hollywood Ending in 2002 and Midnight in Paris in 2011 — and his news conferences are equal parts comedy and philosophy. Here’s what we learned from this one: 1. Eisenberg once wrote a script
about a young Woody Allen.
“This is not something we’ve ever discussed,” said Eisenberg when a reporter asked about the youthful project, “so I appreciate you bringing it up here in public. When I was 16, I was so inspired by discovering Woody Allen at that age that I wrote a script that was based on him, and it got sent to agents because they thought it was funny. And it got sent ultimately to his lawyers who didn’t think it was funny. And they sent me cease and desist letters, and that was the end of that. And it looks like now this might be the end of this.”
Allen wasn’t concerned, and even took the opportunity to compliment Eisenberg on his performance. “If this was years ago, I would have played this part. I would have played it much more narrowly because I’m a comedian and not an actor, and so I would have given it one dimension. Jesse’s a fine actor and gave it much more complexity.” 2. Turning 80 last December doesn’t trouble the director.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I’m so youthful, agile, nimble, spry, mentally alert that it’s astonishing. I eat well, I exercise, but what it is, is luck. My father lived to slightly over 100 and my mother
lived to almost 100. I hit the jackpot. I don’t feel old.” 3.
Allen doesn’t believe in competition within the artistic realm, which is why his films never screen in competition at Cannes.
“The jury will reward a film and call it the best film; I may find it the most boring film at Cannes,” he said. “It’s all very subjective. Is a Rembrandt better than an El Greco? Is a Matisse better than a Picasso? I’m happy to come to Cannes. I love the atmosphere, I love the enthusiasm of the crowds. The south of France is a beautiful place to be for a few days. But to be in competition would be against my common sense.”
4.
He would happily write a MayDecember romance about a young man with an older woman; he just hasn’t yet.
“I wouldn’t hesitate to do that if I had a good idea,” he said. “It’s not a commonly seen thing, and I don’t have a lot of experience to draw on for material.” Though he did allow: “When I was 30 years old I had a big crush on a 50-yearold woman. But she was married and wouldn’t go near me with a 10-foot pole.” More generally, he added: “I have always considered myself as romantic. Now, this is not necessarily shared by the women in my life.”
5. He has no problem with fame.
“The perks far outweigh the downside,” he said. “Celebrities often kvetch about the lack of privacy and being bothered by paparazzi, but these are not lifethreatening problems.” 6. And Stewart knows how to sum up an argument.
After a protracted discussion about the dog-eat-dog atmosphere of Hollywood, the actress leaned into her microphone and offered: “It’s the gnarliest popularity contest in the world.”