Woody Allen

I said yesterday that I would write about Woody Allen tomorrow and as tomorrow is today I'll write it today instead of tomorrow.

I always loved Woody Allen films for as long as I remember but I remember seeing Manhattan in Northampton for the first time. 

We moved there in the 70s and I was in 13 plays (I think) at the local theatre – the Royal.

We stayed on after I had finished the season and reared our three children there.

I did an 'A' level in Film Studies at the college there which, I think, is now a university – I hate the term 'uni' – the same as the drama school I went to in Birmingham is now a university. So I have two university alma martas!!

Northampton a small town maybe of 100,000 and is one hour up the M1 from London which is why we moved there. 

One hour by car or one hour by train but everyone knows what that really means: twenty minutes walk in to the station and then maybe half an hour or so to the destination where you are working. Nine times out of ten it would be the BBC which is around half an hour away by tube. So the travelling puts four hours on the work day.

So I was surprised to see Manhattan playing at the town centre cinema. When I got there I could see a queue stretching around the block; it was a duplex cinema and the other film was Scum which was about a borstal – a prison for the young. 

I guessed that that was what the queue was for but I was wrong; it was for the Woody Allen film.

I'll always remember the first time I saw it as it not only blew my mind it kind of blew me out of my seat. It was a Saturday screening and if it hadn't have been the final time the movie was playing I would have come again the following evening.

I kind of remember some of the lines; it opens with a shot of Manhattan with the opening bars on the clarinet of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue!

There is a narration by Woody and he is playing a writer writing a book so the first line is 'Chapter One.'

He starts a few times then goes back to chapter one and one of the lines is New York was always a city, no matter what the season, in black and white.

And that says it all.

That film is about, apart from the city, a romance between a character played by Woody and a young nubile school girl – I don't know what age she is supposed to be but it can be seen straight away that he is too old for her but, more to the point, she is too young for him. The actress who played her was 18 at the time.

When I say she was too young for him I mean – well what are you going to talk about?

That part of the action I found hard to believe but Woody wanted to make a film about the city that he loved. At the time, in real life, to use a silly phrase, Woody was dating some of the most beautiful women in the world.

These women were not after his power, or his money as they were rich movie stars. Diane Keaton for one was one of them and when we grow up we realise that women don't only go for people like Robert Redford they also go for angst intellectuals like Woody Allen, Albert Einstein etc.

Back to real life again – about twenty years ago Woody Allen married a Korean girl who was Andre Previn's daughter; his adoptive daughter when he was married to Mia Farrow. Woody was 64 and his new wife was 27 at the time.

When Woody was Mia Farrow's lover he met her adoptive daugher and they fell in love. This was something that upset Mia and Andre Previn the adoptive parents as it was like Déjà vu because when Mia was married to Frank Sinatra he was 25 years older than she was at the time and her step children were older than her – Frank Sinatra Jr etc.

So she didn't see any good in Woody and her step daughter, and accused Woody of a sexual offence against one of her daughters.

It was investigated at the time and nothing was proved and in fact another of Mia's children, a boy, said he was in the house at the time of the alleged incident and didn't believe it - and so on . . . .

But:

He has not been convicted of anything and a couple of actors have sent the fees they received from the Woody Allen films they was in to charity because of the alleged offence. 

An alleged offence that happened many years before Colin Firth worked for Woody.

I sometimes get fed up with the writings of Hadley Freeman who seems to have gone to town writing about bad men since the flood of accusations against powerful men, recently, but she, at least, kind of pointed out that Woody Allen hasn't been convicted of anything. 

And not only that but the fact that Manhattan was about an older man and a young girl shouldn't have anything to do with that old phrase – real life!

I mean look at the photo above - it's still a movie.

When I saw Manhattan that time in Northampton I kind of wished it had been someone like Robert Redford in the Woody Allen role – or even me, in my dreams, because it's a great love story.

Here is the opening – love it and be prepared to have your mind blown on two minutes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mwZYGcbQCo

Acting

If someone was to ask me what my favourite film was I would probably give a different answer each time. Sometimes it might be Annie Hall and other times The Godfather – any of them. I loved Coppola's other films too as well as the Godfather trilogy particularly The Conversation with one of the best actors who ever uttered a word; Gene Hackman.

Another time the favourite film might be Manhattan – the pattern you can see here are films either by Francis Ford Coppola or Woody Allen but there is another director I really like and he is Martin Scorsese – oh don't forget David Lynch and . . . well you know what I mean!

Martin Scorsese wanted to be a priest when he was growing up but he was fascinated by film and as he was raised in Little Italy he was very heavily influenced in his art by the mafia, gangsters, the wise guys, the mob.

When you're an artist you are influenced by your surroundings and that's how you express yourself.

When I lived in America actors would always talk about the work, the craft! 

You see work to me is digging a ditch and craft is something you do the same all the time. 

Making a box; making a pair of trousers; pottery (although they may call that art).

My point is that art is something you either create, not knowing how it will turn out, or intemperate – like acting.

A great deal of the acting in America, where they call it a craft, is an art, and the acting in Britain, where they call it an art, is a craft.

When I first had an audition in America I learned the lines, worked really hard, and when I entered the room there was the director sitting by himself with a film camera. I was with him for about 20-30 minutes. I knew the lines, knew how I wanted to do it, and got on with it.

He said I needed to get away from the script – I had learned it too much.

I know what he meant now.

Spontaneity!

It didn't look as if I was saying the words for the first time.

I remember asking him about my accent and he was the one who said the magic line to me put 2 English actors together and the first thing they talk about is an accent.

And he was right!

In my time there I saw many other American actors in their auditions saying their lines as if for the first time even when reading. Over here we decide what voice we need to use; what accent.

Over there it is their own voice and however they speak.

If you put the radio on here and listen to Front Row, for instance, and they are interviewing a well known British star, you can tell straight away whether you are listening to them being interviewed or whether they are playing a clip from their movie. 

In other words you can tell when they are acting.

So to all the people who have worked with me over the years!

That's why I don't learn my lines.

I'm kidding, of course, but it's something we have to think about all the time – even at this lofty age.

There's more to the difference between Americans and the British than the way schedule is pronounced or whether it's sled of sledge.

I was going to talk about Woody Allen but I'll do that tomorrow.

The Busby Babes; Big Duncan is gone.

You may have noticed, whilst perusing these random thoughts from time to time, that the football team I follow – or support – is Aston Villa. Other Villa fans include King Billy and Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks gave someone his autograph once and the guy shouted after Tom 'what are you thanking me for?'

Think about it!

King Billy, of course, is Prince William who can be seen sitting in the stands, when he is around, by himself.

I would see them every time they played at home, when I was a lad, and, in fact, I nearly played there – I was the solo drummer in the army cadets band.

I can't really remember too much about any of the football matches or incidents, apart from Stan Lynn missing a penalty (but he scored from the rebound) and the visit of the Busby Babes – Manchester United.

Yesterday was the 60^th anniversary of the Munich air disaster when half of the football team, together with others, were killed on their way back from a cup match in Munich. The aircraft tried three times to take off in the snow and crashed on the third attempt.

One of their most famous players, and a genius if you can call a footballer a genius, was Duncan Edwards; he died a few days after the crash at the age of 21.

On the day United played Villa, I remember one of the United players skied a ball and I was standing next to the great man on the pitch; the ball seemed a long way from him and for a short time I thought it was going to hit me – but he stretched out his muscular leg and trapped it dead.

I wasn't playing, of course; I was just a little lad who had invaded the football field when the players came on; we would do this at every match and we were usually ushered off.

Eventually because of the reaction of the authorities – and most stadiums – this turned in to football hooliganism.

I don't remember what happened in that game but I can still see Duncan Edwards standing near me as they warmed up and I can remember his very muscular legs and thinking I wouldn't like to get a kick from one of those!!

There are still 2 survivors of that crash: Bobby Charlton, a real hero to football fans the world over and, I think, Harry Gregg. The Irish goalkeeper, apparently, was a hero at the crash. I saw him play in the 1970s in a little charity game in Shropshire – still fit.

Over the weekend, the crowd stopped and gave silence to remember the event and the players with lots of people there who had helped line the streets of Manchester when the coffins were returned to the city late one rainy February night.

A little lonely man of about 85 stood in the crowd and that was Bobby Charlton who came out of the crash unscathed – physically. You could see on the TV the torture in his face – the shave cuts prominent. 

He is reported to have said that he heard the news of Duncan Edwards death from Duncan's mother: 'Big Duncan is gone' she said.