WOODY ALLEN: EXISTENTIALIST IN NEW YORK

woody allen

I'm still in the spell of this evening's ongoing film festival event, Woody Allen: A Documentary, released in 2011, directed by Robert Weide. Woody Allen is the Bob Dylan of film in my generation. Like Dylan, his beginning was extra good, he stood out. Before he started making films, he was one of America's funniest comedians in his youth. Then he made very popular silly movies full of existential humor. Then he made Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, and a long list of others, many of them classic American films the day they were released. The silly went away overnight. As he explained in Manhattan, he was tired of writing silly television comedy when he had so much more to say. I heard a critic say of Interiors that it was deep and heavy. Yeah. Not everything in life is comedy. Tragic stories happen too. Though Interiors was a story that took the viewer through sorrow, sorrow is a legitimate human feeling. Artists go for the range of the human scope, not what appeals to corporate sponsors. It's our place to keep up with the artist as much as it is the artist's place to keep up with us. I recall something I heard or read in an interview with Bob Dylan some years ago when asked what a certain song meant. Dylan said, It's my place to write them and yours to figure them out. These are surely not the exact words, but it's the part my sorry memory retains. Woody Allen, in his mid seventies during the filming, had the same attitude. He makes the films, puts them out there, some people like them, some people don't.

meryl streep and woody allen in manhattan

The only parts about the documentary that failed to get my full appreciation were the critics. This one, FX Feeney I think was his name, I took for so limited he fell into the Pauline Kael slot for me, the Hollywood critic of late 60s, early 70s. I found I disagreed with her taste a hundred percent of the time. I don't deny Feeney some fair insights, but he didn't hold my interest much. He was too affiliated with Hollywood, Academy Awards, red carpet glitz for my taste. In my personal film watching, Hollywood only figures as films to avoid. Hollywood is corporate glorified television. I like independents. Woody Allen is the ultimate independent. It was told that he goes to the producers, tells them he has a movie to make, and it's on. He doesn't even have to give a brief of the plot unless he wants to conversationally. In a way he is the Shakespeare of America in our time. Allen writes his films, acts in them and directs them. His films are as particularly American as Shakespeare's plays are English. Shakespeare made silly comedies in his beginning years, grew weary of them and wrote serious dramas in the history plays and tragedies. Allen's history plays were stories of the contemporary upper middle class of Manhattan. In my own personal taste, Crimes and Misdemeanors is my favorite Allen film. I see it his Hamlet. In Shakespeare's time the belief was that we pay for our sins. In Allen's time, not necessarily.

woody allen

Somebody insightfully called Woody Allen the Albert Camus of comedy. When you see it, it's almost too obvious to mention, but I doubt I'd ever come up with that insight on my own. Absurd is Allen's view of the world. A line from one of the films, maybe Hannah and Her Sisters, Max von Sydow says in a kind of Shakespearean monologue, an aside to the audience, "If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he would never stop throwing up." Max von Sydow in Allen's film was a nod to Bergman. The Allen period that satisfies me the most is the time of making each film an American version of a given great director's film. My other favorite Allen film is the one critics slam and call his worst, Stardust Memories. He played with Fellini's 8 1/2, the story of a director having a difficult time with women, the result of his own infidelities, driven to introspection and self-doubt of himself as an artist. One of the many aspects of Stardust Memories that took hold of me was the way he brought forward the feminine beauty of the women in the film. Early in the film, neither one is what I'd call stunning. Nice looking women. As the film goes along, they become more and more beautiful. By the end, Charlotte Rampling became the Venus of now before my eyes. She became a vision of beauty, and by then we knew her humanity too.

charlotte rampling in stardust memories

 

 

Woody Allen appreciates the feminine like few film directors I can think of. He likes a woman's mind, how women think, how women feel, and especially explores what really is the feminine. Allen finds the truly feminine that has nothing to do with makeup and fashions. He finds and brings forward the grace in his actresses. He appreciates the feminine especially sexually, which he does not deny, but uses in the telling of his stories. The women in his films are not just roles, but complete human beings, even the incomplete ones. In a way like feminist writer Germaine Greer, Allen is always looking for the authentic feminine in a woman, and he finds it, brings it forward in full appreciation. This aspect of Allen's films was not touched in the documentary of his life in film making. Allen's appreciation of the feminine stands out for me in Allen's art form along with his humor and insight. Actually, I found it odd that the people who put the documentary together failed to bring up Allen's appreciation of and respect for the feminine as expressed in his films. Allen's women have a feminine grace seen in few films that are not French. He also looks at the nature of the people in this world with a cold and sympathetic eye. From his start in show business he was carried along by his amazing talent. He said in an interview for the film, "After all these lucky breaks, why do I feel like I got screwed somehow?" Hearing him say that, I thought it as good an illustration of Allen's world view and comedy in a one-liner as could be found. He is the master of the one-liner.

 

  

woody allen with hair

 

 

 

*

AMERICAN RACISM POPS TO THE SURFACE

antoni tapies

The story of Florida racism is everywhere. Can't hardly go online without seeing Zimmerman's face or Trayvon's face. The trial was evidently pathetic. I've no emotion invested in which side won. I never doubted Zimmerman would come out not guilty, took that for a given. The South most often gets blamed for racist behavior, but only north Florida is the South. Central and south Florida is Yankee. What racism takes place there is not Southern. It's Northern. Now the talk is a new federal trial on wrongful death. Federal will be very different from a Florida town's courtroom. Regarding punishment for Zimmerman, I can't help but see he's already been punished severely. He doesn't have a life anymore. Didn't have much of one before, a tube-gawker and big-dog wannabe. Steven Seagal on patrol. Now, he probably needs to be detained in the county jail to keep him alive. Put him in prison, he's dead. Let him run free, he's dead. He's a dead man any way you look at it. He knows it better than we do. In prison, they would keep him in solitary like they did Jeffrey Daumer and Charles Manson. He is now in that company, people who will not stay alive inside prison or out. Somebody who already has a life sentence would kill him for the bragging trophy. How embarrassing for Zimmerman to have Ann Coulter of the Faux news channel cheering for him. He may be proud of it.

antoni tapies

When I say I saw the decision coming, I held out about .05% suspicion something odd could happen and it would work out against Zimmerman. In a town called Rosewood, west of Ocala and Gainesville, the white people set out to massacre the black community over a false rape charge on a simple black man there in 1923. The black people of Rosewood fought back. Well made and good acting in the movie with Ving Rhames, Don Cheedle, Jon Voight. Rosewood is the part of Florida that is the South. I don't mean to excuse Southern racism, I just get tired of the South getting the blame for racism when it is everywhere in USA. The white people that hate Obama are not particular to the South. No state, no region of the country is a hundred percent anything. Most states are on the line between one and another. Each election, the best propaganda campaign tends to win. I don't mean best by "quality," but by what works. Like Sarah Palin. She's the bottom where a quality politician is concerned. She's the top at what works when your target is the uneducated voters. Her message like W Bush's was, Yeah buddy, I'm dumb as a rock, just like you. By now it looks like republicans are putting all their eggs in the basket of anti-compassion. It's a basket that works politically. It's done wonders for the party since 1980. But there is a natural phenomenon something like a natural law, bullshit doesn't have a very long lifespan. The Reagan Revolution was so popular with both republicans and democrats that it looked like it's only counter force would be the time it takes for the bullshit to run itself out to the nothing that it was at the beginning. Like "trickle-down."

 

Florida's stand-your-ground law was run through the legislature by republicans. It's other name could be the open-season-on-niggers law. Republicans have made Florida, Texas, Arizona, and now are working on North Carolina, into the most demented states in the nation in their state governments. Now we have a new law that cops can't have above a certain level of IQ. Little boys playing big men. Alas, people with IQs think too much. Police state is rule by people who don't think, who don't even recognize Bob Dylan with his driver's license photo ID. If you'd like to see how police state works, check out George Orwell's Animal Farm. It's where cops got the name pigs in the Sixties, "Some pigs are more equal than others." Right now with the McCrory administration in NC, we are a racist state. Under democratic administration, NC is a progressive state looking to the benefit of all. It makes me happy to see the crowds of people demonstrating in Raleigh. These are not college students. Some are. What I see in the photographs is white middle-aged middle-class people, black middle-aged people, the black equivalent of middle-class. Largely people educated beyond high school. They don't count with republicans either, like college students. Educated people don't figure for republicans at all. USA has enough uneducated people to keep the republicans alive as the parrot party. McCrory is going by orders from corporate headquarters, not by what works to the good of the citizens. Look it up in the dictionary, republicans do not represent the people that voted them into power. It's in the definition of the word.

antoni tapies

I'd guess about 75% of this county is racist. In primary and general, Obama lost 75 to 25. It seems like a fair representation of the ratio. It was in Alleghany that I learned not to concern myself with other people's racism, only my own. People I respected way up high, like farmer Tom Pruitt and his factory-worker, farmer, preacher brother, Elder Millard Pruitt, were racist, Millard especially. One evening Millard and I were watching the news and talking. He mentioned to me he'd given money to what he called the Ku Kluxers. His wife walking through the room said, "You aint never." He said, "Talk to me!" A light-hearted way of saying I aint a-lyin. One evening that I was there watching the news with him, about once a week, I went with intent to make an appeal to him about racism, to convince him black people are people too, compassion, even love your neighbor kind of thing.

antoni tapies

During the news a bunch of beer bellied white working men in Mississippi or Alabama were taunting a 5 year old black girl walking on a sidewalk by herself through the gauntlet of those "creepy ass crackers," each one waving a beer bottle and wearing white tshirts, Invisible Empire printed on the front in black. News cameras and vans everywhere. Millard said in excitement like watching tv wrestling, "Now, there's a bunch of boys I'd like to be with." All my mental construct that I walked in the door with fell to the floor around my chair. Gone. In that thousandth of a second, I thought, What am I doing wanting to make him think like me? I said, "Would you be drinking the beer?" "No, I wouldn't be drinking no beer." I laughed at myself on the inside for days, weeks. It plumb got me over concerning myself with other people's racism, politics, religion, opinions or anything else. I saw in that tiny split-second, it aint none of my damn business. He wasn't telling me to be like him.

antoni tapies

If I've got a problem with racism, take care of it in myself. Earlier in the day I watched a video clip of some black guy I'd never seen before with ball cap on sideways, talking hip-hop hip, expressing with hands and fingers rapper style, explaining to his black brothers and sisters, especially the gang-bangers, the need to cut out the gangsta and prison recycle program, come into awareness, because they need to come together as a people. They are being defeated by white racism every day in legislation, in court cases, by police state. I paid attention to everything he said. We've had these kinds of speeches all the way back to Stokely Carmichael, every time some racist indignity comes to the surface. Obama's only apparent attention given the black people of America is telling them in speeches to get up off their asses and get with it. No matter what will be Obama's legacy, my feeling is that having a black president, especially a well educated one, has brought American racism to the surface. Some people seem surprised, like it's a new surge. It's only a surge in that it's come out from the background. It hasn't been popular on tv to be a racist. Television's attempt to be racially sensitive with black people in commercials, black tv shows, black characters in white tv shows, hasn't converted anybody. Television gives the appearance of little to no racism, convincing its devotees, like judge Roberts of the Supremes, the issue of racism is over and solved. LOL. Tell me another good one. He's a republican. He didn't believe that. He knew what he was doing, keeping the African Americans down. A toast with drinks before dinner at the club.

antoni tapies in person

 

 

 

*

ADVANTAGES OF WHITE HAIR

robert ryman

For several weeks I've been wanting to get on the highway and drive, just an urge to go someplace nearby, like visit Cumberland Gap, visiting the Bristol country music museum, maybe even go on a Saturday and stop at the Carter Fold on the way home. It both appeals to me and does not appeal to me. Today it happened. Appointment at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem to have heart read by computer, an annual trip. I've used Alleghany In Motion before, but too often end up listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, which makes me gag. I don't care that his politics are different from mine, but he's such a liar, an alarmist and general bullshitter. He looks like a German banker in Berlin between the wars depicted in George Grosz paintings: pigs in suits. Thought I'd bypass Limbaugh and leave the driving to myself. It had been awhile since I have driven at a steady run on interstate. Wanted to give the engine some exercise, clean out whatever carbon might be in the cylinder heads. Mainly wanted to give it a good run, like taking a horse out for a run. The car is my friend, same as a horse would be my friend. It takes me to town and back, and to Woodlawn and back. Woodlawn is an hour drive, but it's different from an hour on the interstate. On mountain highways speed varies constantly. On interstate I can put it on seventy and go. It was an hour and a half each way with a break at the turn-around point of about a half hour. Driving around looking for a way to get on the interstate helped ease the engine into the long run.

robert ryman

 

 

The drive was a good one with the window open and no radio. Followed mind wherever it went. I wore my everyday hillbilly garb that kinda sticks out in a city, like the ball cap I've worn for ten years, the bill frayed across the front. On the highway I took the cap off, wanted white hair visible. White hair has great advantages. First, white hair is the sign of diminished memory. So I don't have that backpack of too many memories to carry. Second, white hair acts as something of a white flag that says I come in peace. Third, people tend to make allowances for white haired people. Like you fart in the grocery store while talking with somebody you haven't seen in awhile, and you get away with it. "Oh, that happens to everybody," somebody will say. "Don't worry about it." Or nobody will say anything, it accepted among white haired people that farts happen. It's something old people tend to have in common, the occasional fart that takes a life of its own. It makes me slightly regret I didn't always feel the freedom to let farts happen instead of suppressing them. Fourth, no one suspects somebody with white hair of juvenile delinquency. Excellent camouflage. With white hair, people think whatever you're doing has authority behind it, perceived maturity. Fifth, a freedom comes with white hair if you care to exercise it. White haired people tend to get grumpy, and they're not afraid. "What you gonna do? Kill me?" It's an attitude. You know they're not going to kill you, but if it were to happen, it would be received a favor. That's not generally true, however. It's just a part of the tapestry.

robert ryman

I confess to loving the freedom that goes with white hair. Especially in my own behavior. Something inside, like old age, has me feeling free enough to say what I mean, unable to in the past. I may turn out to be a cranky old turd. I don't care if I do. Something I discovered that I did not anticipate, though saw in retrospect it was obvious, other men my age tend to have calcified minds locked down in right wing politics. I see it along the way in men as they leave school and go into the work world. The only explanation that makes any sense to me why men tend to lock down in right wing belief systems where they tell you what to believe and you profess to believe it, is military. Obey. Until the end of the draft, next step after school was military for the men. Still is in most countries, as well as here. The military belief system is the most common among men. It's the one most looked up to in men. I'm recalling a couple times somebody said, "You been in the military?" Of course. I said, "Yes." The other said, "I thought so." It's good they didn't ask what I thought of it.

robert ryman

Men get it drilled into their heads to be obedient, do what you're told, until it becomes the nature of male culture. What would we do without rebels? And rebels are made to feel so guilty for breaking from the obedience mold. Another freedom with white hair, white haired rebels can do whatever they want. Nobody takes them seriously, so we're free to do whatever. In the world of music, Willard Gayheart in Woodlawn, Virginia, 81, picks bluegrass guitar with the best. Other musicians don't play down to him. He holds them up with his rhythm, allows fiddle and banjo to play and not concern themselves with keeping rhythm; Willard has the rhythm under control. He likes to sing old songs from the 1920s, I Get The Blues When It Rains, and Bob Wills Texas Swing songs like Take Me Back To Tulsa. In Willard's world of regional musicians, white hair is a sign he's been pickin a long time and knows a lot of songs.

robert ryman

I feel like I've seen white hair express differently in different people. Some wear it with a kind of authoritarian I'm-in-charge-here attitude, some with a kind of piety. In the time my hair was turning white, I decided to change haircut. Didn't know what I wanted to do with it. In that time, I was in London for a few days seeing thousands of people everywhere I went. I saw white hair about every way it could be done. It appeared like no matter what a man did with white hair that needed combing it had an aura of vanity about it, somehow. The ones that I saw with a crew cut looked best to me. Simple, easy to manage, easy to wash. They didn't look primped over. All I need is mirror sunglasses to be taken for retired highway patrol. Some people take me for retired military. My car doesn't show that. It's the classic old man car, comfortable interior, good motor that will scoot. I kicked it into passing gear a couple times today and let it wind the rpms way up. The motor loved it. I was happy with the car's round-trip performance from departure to arrival. A good three hour run. It's been wanting to do that. And so have I. Good to get on the road with no radio and mind surf.  

robert ryman

 

 

*

A POEM BY CHINESE POET CH'I-WU CH'IEN

james a m whistler

           A BOAT IN SPRING ON JO-YA LAKE


Thoughtful elation has no end:

Onward I bear it to whatever come.

And my boat and I, before the evening breeze

Passing flowers, entering the lake,

Turn at nightfall toward the western valley,

Where I watch the south star over the mountain

And a mist that rises, hovering soft,

And the low moon slanting through the trees;

And I choose to put away from me every worldly matter

And only to be an old man with a fishing-pole.


                  ---- Ch'i-wu Ch'ien   (early 8th century)
                         tr by Witter Bynner





*