I remember Albert Brooks, in the '90s, despairing that studio execs hit him with the "too Jewish" criticism, to which he would point out that Seinfeld was one of the biggest shows on TV at that time.
Since the Jerry character and Jerry Seinfeld are fairly inseparable, it would have been difficult not to make the character Jewish. However, George Constanza, based on a Jew (Larry David), played by a Jew (Jason Alexander), with both parents played by Jews (Estelle Harris & Jerry Stiller) somehow manages to be Italian-Catholic on his father's side and religion unknown and never mentioned on his mother's side. Reminds me of a joke Aziz Ansari made about Indians on American TV - an Indian character is now acceptable for an American TV show, but you're not allowed to have two yet.
For those interested, "Another Woman" is now available for free streaming as part of Amazon Prime (along with "Radio Days").
2000 - "Small Time Crooks" As I hinted at earlier, "Small Time Crooks", at least the first part of it, is something of an unofficial remake of "Larceny, Inc." Thoughts?
A quick note on the trailer... After actually having difficulties trying to view Sweet & Lowdown, thanks to its nearly invisible distribution, I remember having a completely different experience with Small Time Crooks. I was at the giant 21-plex movie theatre here in town, seeing some big, popular film (looking at Wikipedia, maybe it was Erin Brockovich or High Fidelity) in a packed theatre in one of their biggest auditoriums when I saw the trailer for Small Time Crooks for the first time. And the audience ROARED at the jokes. It was a (pleasant) shock for me. I'd seen Woody jokes go over well in a full theatre - of Woody fans - but we're talking about a smallish theatre with maybe 100 or so people in it. Here I was in an enormous theatre - maybe 400+ capacity? - and it seemed like everyone was cracking up. My initial thoughts on the movie weren't as positive, but I'll get to those later. I just thought it was interesting that DreamWorks apparently thought they had a viable commercial property in the form of Woody Allen, and I don't know how long it had been since a movie studio had thought like that. I think they even opened this film in a fairly "wide" release, if memory serves!
We know that Woody would never kowtow for a new distributor, but this film had to be precisely what Dreamworks was hoping for. A comedy with no artistic pretension whatsoever, no controversy, no philosophizing, no black & white, no filmmaking homage of any kind, a plot that even seemed vaguely familiar (especially if you were an Edward G. Robinson fan like me). I do remember the film being "pushed" widely, and being heralded as a "return to form" or "the old Woody". It grossed 4x what "Sweet and Lowdown" did, so the promotion seemed to pay off. I remember being personally pleased that Woody was back in front of the camera after two films more or less "off". EDIT: I'll also add that I saw the film either opening night of the night after, in a suburban New Jersey multiplex, and the theater was very crowded.
I always liked this poster. I could have done without the silly pun (based on our old friend McGruff the crime dog), but there's a certain "spy vs. spy" quality to the art work.
And despite it being a lightweight comedy, "Small Time Crooks" has one of the most visually arresting sequences in all of Woody's movies (the rooftop sequence early in the film). The "Magic Hour" (From Wikipedia) In photography, the golden hour (sometimes known as magic hour, especially in cinematography) is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky.
I really enjoyed Sweet and Lowdown. Amusing and entertaining. I didn't like Small Time Crooks at the time. I thought some of the humour yoo silly and the Woody character too simple to empathise with. Now, I quite like it, though it is a 'small' movie and one of those that might have been condensed into a shorter film along the lines of his piece in New York Stories (and maybe that could have been the case with Sweet and Lowdown too).
I think, at the time of Crooks' release, I was still wanting the "edgy" humor that worked so well in Husbands & Deconstructing (and didn't quite work in Celebrity), so this "lighter" film wasn't too impressive to me. I've probably "only" seen it a couple times in all these years and my vague recollection was that it was a "bottom-tier" film for him. After my latest viewing, I must admit that I was quite surprised at how entertaining I found it to be. After saying that I rarely ever have literal "laugh out loud" moments in his movies, I actually had a few in this one. Elaine May was simply dynamite in this flick, as the dim-witted cousin May. "Ray" (Woody) tells her to "make conversation, but don't talk" and then suggests "maybe the weather" would be ok. A couple minutes later, she's chatting with a party guest: "There'll be rain over the tri-state area and increasing fog. Temperatures will hover in the low 60s till Tuesday". She was great in virtually every scene, and it gives one hope to think she'll be in Woody's upcoming Amazon series with him and Cyrus. Also amusing to note that, for a brief period in this film, it appears Ray is interested in her - Woody and an OLDER woman - stop the presses!!! The nitwit band of Crooks is entertaining, particularly Michael Rapaport, again portraying a very dim bulb (like in Aphrodite), but he does it so well, it makes me want to see him in some more Woody roles ("It's like Pablo's theory, you know, with the dog when he feeds him")! I wish the "crew" wouldn't have completely disappeared in the second half of the film (although I do like the complete 180 the story does), following the mock-60 Minutes piece. I suspect there was more shot, but it was cut for length, though I have no proof whatsoever to back this theory up. Also interesting to note the 60 Minutes reporter who interviews the Sunset Farms executive team is the same reporter who interviewed Woody in the midst of the scandal a few years prior... I also really enjoy the "nouveau riche" jokes - particularly regarding the "taste" (or lack of) that Frenchie & Ray have. Her abundance of leopard-print designs, mixed with at least one oversized gnome (in their bedroom) is a good running visual joke, as is the sartorial splendor of our lead duo. Hugh Grant is wonderfully smarmy in his role, as he tries to figure out how to milk as much cash as possible from these people, given the impossibility of his assignment ("teaching them to have good taste"). Again, not a great film, but compared with some of his later works, it almost seems like one! Some pretty good ideas, some good jokes, nice casting and so forth. Somewhat surprisingly, I'll give it a
For whatever reason, "Another Woman" is now "unavailable", even though yesterday I could add it my watchlist as a free item. Ya got me!
I'm thankful that I saw this film for the first time without seeing a trailer and without reading a review. I had no idea what the second half of the film held, which I think made it a lot more interesting for me. I do think, to some degree, the film loses a little steam directly after the "60 Minutes" sequence. I almost feel like I should enjoy this film LESS, with a chunk of it's plot lifted from an old movie, and with no less than five characters who are dumber than the Three Stooges. But it works - it's consistently funny (particularly in its first half), and the casting and performances are terrific. I'm with Mr. J.on Elaine May - she's funny throughout, and my then-girlfriend who saw the movie with me and I were quoting her lines from the film for weeks after. For years we would "complain" at parties how appetizers on toothpicks are tasty, but the toothpicks tend to get caught in your throat - a joke which, of course, got us confused stares. Tracy Ullman, who went underutilized in "Bullets" is excellent here, and she and Woody have nice comic chemistry (and either her makeup or her acting obscure the typical 24 year age gap). The entire gang of dimwits are entertaining, and funny lines abound. This is a film I'd recommend, and one I feel has aged fairly well. And I'm usually not much a cinematography guy, but I love the look of the sunset roof sequence (no YouTube clip to be found, unfortunately).
I like Small Time Crooks a lot. It's a real funny movie - not very "deep" for sure, but that's ok. The dvd I've got has an interview with Woody in which he explains that he wanted to do some straight comedies for a change (the following "Jade Scorpion" and maybe "Hollywood Ending" as well fall in that category) and he succeeded on all accounts IMO. When I first saw it, I remember that I was not so excited about the second part of the film, but a recent rewatch changed that. The scenes with Hugh Grant are quite funny as well and I completely forgot that hilarious scenes with the jewelry theft. I also like that Woody's character in the movie is quite different from his usual roles. And yes - Elaine May and also Tracy Ullman were great and very funny in this movie. Regarding Sweet and Lowdown - I watched it yesterday for the second time after many years. What a great movie and certainly one of Allen's most underrated.
I'd been saving this one for awhile and tonight was the night. What a charming little film. If anyone can tell me where the single female Woody Allen fans who look like the lead in this movie exist, I'll start stocking up on little plastic skunks. I'd never heard of this one before the above post, but I'd certainly recommend any other Allen admirers consider plunking $4 on a stream for it. It was a pleasure and a sincere sensation - thanks, @RayS!
Apologies for always being a few days late on all of these Woodys, but I can't let this one pass as it may be the most mystifying flop of all time. How can you put Sean Penn and Uma Thurman (post-Pulp Fiction) in the same movie and have it basically disappear without a trace? Maybe I'm biased: Django Reinhardt is a personal hero of mine, as is Nat Hentoff; to include the latter as mock-doc commentator was a stroke of genius imo. Penn's performance is as compelling as any I've seen of his. Thurman is a fantastic foil, part predator, part enabler, part groupie. And you knew this was a personal project for Woody. He wasn't just telling the story of a great jazz player, but of jazz itself. Maybe that was the problem. The public just doesn't care much about jazz. But they sure seem fascinated by doomed geniuses with substance abuse problems. Bad timing I guess...
Glad you liked it. While perusing Rotten Tomatoes the other day I was surprised at how the critics absolutely raked this film over the coals. To each his own I guess.
As we've discussed, I think this film was very poorly promoted, as it was critically well received, got two Oscar nominations for its acting, and yet died at the box office.
Yeah, I noticed the film didn't have particularly great reviews. It certainly wasn't without its flaws, but overall I thought it worked pretty well. Of course I was a sucker for the Woody-themed music etc. And, like I said, the lead actress was . Backtracking rather significantly here, I found an interesting comment (while unsuccessfully searching for something else) in a 2011 interview with Woody about Hannah. I always knew Woody rather disliked that film, and assumed it was because he opted for such a happy ending, with Dianne getting pregnant. Well, not quite. It turns out that was always the plan, but he felt he copped out elsewhere: In the original writing of Hannah and Her Sisters, Michael Caine continues to love Hannah’s sister, and he longs for her at those family get-togethers just as much as ever, but he’s grimly attached to Hannah. And my character never gets a really hopeful moment. But I found in the editing that my character’s unhappy moments were unearned, because of my lack of skill, and those endings just fell off the table. They were unhappy in a way that, say, a Chekhov ending is not. In Chekhov, the endings are unhappy but exhilarating. You feel something positive through the unhappiness. I wasn’t a good enough actor to earn that. And so in order to save the movie from utter destruction, I reversed course a little, and it worked, and the picture was very commercially successful. But I always regretted it. I tell myself, “But if I didn’t change it, it would’ve been very unsatisfying to people.” Not simply because it was a sad ending, because sad endings are often not unsatisfying at all, but because I wasn’t skillful enough in the movie to move toward that ending, so that it became the inevitable, the correct ending. When Oedipus puts his eyes out, everything is moving in that direction, and it’s just fine. You don’t need him to say, “Well, I realized that life is unpredictable, and I now have learned two things.” But I felt I needed to do that, and I’ve always regretted it. I’ve always counted that as one of my failures—not commercial, but artistic. Were you going to end the film with Dianne Wiest telling your character that she’s pregnant? Yes. Which is not sad. No, it wasn’t sad, but it didn’t have the Marx Brothers positive moment in it: “Heck, life is pretty awful but there are some oases.” It didn’t have that ******** in it. Throughout the entire film, he was unable to have a child, and it looked like he couldn’t, but with the right woman, he could. And that was fine. That was, I felt, something that I deserved to be able to say. I didn’t deserve to be able to do the Marx Brothers scene because it was tacked on, and so was Michael Caine adjusting back to Mia. I played around with it a little and . . . sold out. (snip) ...Hannah was a big success, but I wasn’t getting the kick out if it that I wanted. If a movie of mine is a success, I like to feel proud and say, “Yes, I worked hard and it came off, and I appreciate that you appreciate it.” But I wasn’t able to have a clear conscience on Hannah.
Certainly an interesting set of comments, but a little hard to figure given some other things. In standard Hollywood films, most characters do "earn" their unhappy moments, or their comeuppance. Even if they "earn" it through being boring (think Bill Pullman in "Sleepless in Seattle"). But let's consider the number of Woody characters who don't appear to earn their fate at all. In "Crimes" ... Does Cliff Stern earn his broken heart? Well, maybe for having a flirtation while still married, and being to blind to see Haley's true colors. Does Dolores Paley earn her death? Maybe a small bit for getting involved with a married man, and not being grown up enough to take "no" for answer. Does the rabbi earn his blindness? I know, it's a metaphor for having blind faith, and being blind to the true realities of life, but does this kind, sensitive, helpful man earn blindness? Does Cecilia in "Purple Rose of Cairo" earn her physical and psychological abuse by her husband and does she earn being led on by Gil Shepherd? Now I'm biased here, as The Marx Brothers epiphany is one of my favorite parts of "Hannah". Hell, the film could have ended there for me. The ending we do get is actually unsatisfying to me - the Woody/Dianne ending is way too pat and too cliched ... and does Elliot escape all consequence for having an affair with his wife's sister? Does that secret get buried like Dolores Paley's death, and Elliot reconciles with Hannah and somehow manages a clear enough conscience to continue their marriage? (And from the comments above, Woody seems to agree with my point on this one.) As endings go, I'm pretty certain that we are about to come up on the single worst ending of any Woody Allen film, at least in humble opinion. If he think he twisted things around a bit to make the ending of "Hannah" work, he must have a hard time sleeping nights with the ending he tried to put over for "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion".
Since we're on the verge of discussing the merits (?) of The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, I'll lead with a news story that just preceded the film's release: HOLLYWOOD, California (Reuters) -- Woody Allen is casting against type. Legendarily averse to promoting his films, Allen has agreed to bring his New York-based clarinet westward in August for the first time ever -- all to promote his new picture, "Curse of the Jade Scorpion," Variety reports. Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles will host Eddy Davis & His New Orleans Jazz Band, featuring Woody Allen. The performances will benefit local music charities. DreamWorks is releasing "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion" nationwide on Aug. 10. Allen will be on hand to introduce the screenings in each city. Every Monday night for years, New Yorkers have come to hear Davis' band -- with Allen on clarinet -- at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. While Allen embarked on a 1996 European tour (showcased in the documentary "Wild Man Blues"), next month marks the first time that he will perform live on the West Coast. The tour begins Aug. 1 in Seattle with a screening of "Scorpion." The following evening, Allen will take the stage with Eddy Davis & His New Orleans Jazz Band at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley. On Aug. 3, Allen & Co. head to San Francisco, where the helmer will introduce a screening of "Scorpion." A jazz concert at Yoshi's at Oakland's Jack London Square follows. The tour closes in Los Angeles, where "Scorpion" will unspool Aug. 6. The next night, Allen and his Eddy Davis compatriots will perform a benefit at the Jazz Bakery. Tickets for the concerts in each city go on sale locally July 23 at 10 a.m. Allen wrote, directed and stars in "Scorpion," which also stars Dan Aykroyd, Helen Hunt, Brian Markinson, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers and Charlize Theron. Further details tomorrow...
