"Woody Allen: A Life in Film" on TCM today (1 Viewer)

[teapot2001]

Just a reminder that the documentary by Richard Shickel on Woody Allen is on TCM at 4pm today. This is the first time Allen has participated in an American documentary about himself.

This will be followed by an 18-movie tribute on Saturdays of this month.

~T

 

[teapot2001]

Oops, the documentary is actually at 5pm Pacific, for the 10 people that will be watching.
~T

 

[ShawnCoghill]

I watched It and I loved it,,Im a fan of retrospectives anyways,,and when I heard they were doing a Woody Allen interview retrospect I couldnt wait. It was great,,showed alot of classic Allen Scenes,and the interview was great.Woody wanted to make sure people watching knew he didnt think of himself as a genius,but its too late.He is.Love and Death, Annie Hall,Manhattan,Zelig,Small Time Crooks, I mean it was just great.

 

[teapot2001]

I thought it was pretty good. Just to see Woody Allen talking about his own movies makes the documentary worth seeing. I liked the insight he provided on his movies, especially Stardust Memories, and himself as a filmmaker.

~T

 

[Tim Gerdes]

Thi thanks for the reminder. I knew this was coming but had kind of forgotten about it. I saw your post about 20 minutes before it started.

I enjoyed the documentary very much, as Allen is my all time favorite director. I hope TCM finds a way to release it on DVD, as I think it's the closest we're ever likely to get to a director's commentary from Woody.

I noticed that at least for Annie Hall, the clip footage was from the DVD. It had the player generated subtitles with the unnecessary and obnoxious "Thinking" tag.

I expect that TCM will run this again and urge anyone who is a fan of Woody's work to check it out.

 

[Brook K]

I hope they do because I knew about it, but forgot to tape it.

I read that Mia Farrow refused to allow any footage of her to be used.

 

[Ike]

Oh, damn, I forgot! I was really looking foward to this. I hope it's re-aired soon. Does Woody talk about each of his films? What kinds of stuff does he say?

 

[teapot2001]

They re-aired it later that day, so I don't know if you will see it again soon.

In the 90-minutes documentary, Woody talks about 3/4 of his movies. Among some of the things he mentioned: Gordon Willis taught him a lot about film; the audience seemed to have misinterpreted Stardust Memories; he is just a normal guy who enjoys watching sports on TV, and that if he had a choice between taking one more shot to make the movie better or to go to the Knicks game, he would choose the Knicks game; and he isn't satisfied with the end result of most of his movies, except for like Husbands and Wives and Hollywood Ending.

They did show movies that Mia Farrow was in but just not any footage of her.

~T

 

[Michael Reuben]

It was an interesting documentary, but I thought it was a poor choice to give away the ending of Hollywood Ending. The last clip used in the documentary spoils what is arguably the best punchline of the movie. If you're a Woody Allen fan and plan to see his latest, I'd recommend stopping the documentary when you reach that point.

M.

 

[Tim Gerdes]

I read that Mia Farrow refused to allow any footage of her to be used.

Interesting stuff. More than ever, I'd love to hear Woody provide a commentary track on DVD.

 

[teapot2001]

The documentary will be shown again this Saturday at 9:30PM Pacific.

~T