It’s the telephone call that every actor seems to be waiting for — the one summoning them to New York to meet Woody Allen for a role in his latest film. Over the years, Allen’s Park Avenue offices have seen an astonishing array of acting talent pass through, and it’s a traffic that shows no sign of abating. Which is remarkable, given the run of bad form he has shown of late. Over the past ten years, the success of
Mighty Aphrodite and
Sweet and Lowdown has been eclipsed by the mounting pile of turkey carcasses, films such as
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, S
mall Time Crooks and, Allen’s nadir,
Hollywood Ending.
There is a palpable sense of relief in the air on the morning after the world premiere of his latest picture, Melinda and Melinda, at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Chloë Sevigny is the only one of the cast members present candid enough to admit that Woody’s recent track record had been a concern.
“People seem to like the movie. I’m excited,” she says. “You never know . . . Lately, he’s been a little hit and miss. I’m very glad that people like this one.” So is she saying that she had reservations about taking her role? “No! Because it’s Woody Allen and to be a part of his filmography is amazing.”
Melinda and Melinda is definitely a return to form for Allen. While it’s not of the Annie Hall or Manhattan vintage, it’s the first film for years that feels worthy of his name on the credits. It’s sharper, smarter and altogether darker than the silly capers he has been turning out of late.
The film is structured as a pair of mirror-image stories created by a couple of bickering writers arguing about whether life is a tragedy or a comedy. They start from same premise – a Manhattan dinner party is disrupted by the unexpected arrival of a distressed young woman called Melinda, played in both incarnations by the Australian actress Radha Mitchell. In other hands it might seem like an arch device, but this screenplay sees some kind of Allen alchemy at work again after a long dormancy.
Four of the cast, which also includes Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller and Wallace Shawn, are in San Sebastian: Sevigny is joined by Mitchell, Amanda Peet and Chiwetel Ejiofor. All agree that working with Allen has been one of the more unusual and fulfilling experiences of their careers so far.
Take the casting process. Sevigny, looking minxy in an ultra-short miniskirt, punctuates her answers with a disarmingly inelegant bray of laughter. “So you go to his office, and you sit in this chair and he comes out and shakes your hand. And then you leave. It’s very brief.” The British actor Ejiofor wasn’t even asked to demonstrate that he could do a convincing American accent. “He asked me if I could. And I said yeah. And he said great. We met incredibly briefly in New York; I didn’t feel that he had had enough time to assess whether I could play the role or not. The down side, I suppose, is that you get incredibly nervous because, in a conventional sense, you haven’t proven that you can do the part.”
Mitchell (tiny, with the frame of a dancer) didn’t even meet the director before she was cast. “We talked a little on the phone, but I was in a canyon hiking and the line kept cutting out.”
Once an actor actually gets on the set, the experience doesn’t get any easier. Lack of feedback is a common refrain, as is the imminent possibility of being sacked. Mitchell recalls: “He is always surprising. One time we would shoot a scene in one take and we’d be ready to do the next and he’d just go home. So we thought, maybe we just do it all in one take and that’s how the movie goes. Then other times we’d shoot 30 takes of one scene and then come back next week and do it again, without a lot of explanation as to why. I think he’s a perfectionist on one level, but he’s very confident in his choices on another.”
Peet says: “I was terrified that I was going to get fired. He’s quiet and I’m needy, so it’s difficult. And I’m in love with his films and have been obsessed with him for ages. So you have the euphoria for a moment when you get the role, followed by panic.”
Out of all the actresses, Peet seems the closest to the archetypal brittle, high-maintenance Allen woman — the film industry for her is “random acts of kindness interspersed with relentless rejection”. Having just worked with Diane Keaton on Something’s Gotta Give, Peet rang her up for advice. “She said: ‘Don’t be difficult. Don’t ask a lot of questions. Be like Spencer Tracy, just step on your mark and say your line’ .”
Sevigny puts the lack of interaction and feedback down to Allen’s shyness. “He’s comfortable in front of an audience, but when you’re one to one, he’s kind of like . . .” she mimes Allen flinching from human contact. “In between takes, he’d stick his nose in a book and start writing notes. One of the actresses found some that he’d written: ‘Idea for a movie — it’s 2060 and there’s no one else on the planet but Pauly Shore’.” She hoots with laughter.
It’s not surprising, then, that the actors keen to work with Allen tend to be lifelong fans. “I’ve seen all his films. I was a fan since high school,” says Sevigny. “But right before shooting, I went to the video store and rented ten films and re-watched them. Then I thought that was the worst thing I could have done, because I was so much more intimidated.”
Ejiofor, meanwhile, appreciates Allen’s talents in front of the camera. “People often don’t realise that he is probably one of the most talented actors of his generation. That’s what makes many of his films so gripping and hilarious.”
But it is Peet who is probably the cast’s most dedicated Woody fan. “I just have some kind of weird relationship to the material. Probably,” she says wryly, “because I’m a neurotic Jew from New York.” She describes Hannah and her Sisters as “like salve, soothing on my brain” during times of existential angst. “When I feel really isolated, if I just think about that film it makes me feel better.” Was Woody aware that he had such a rabid fan on the set? “Yesterday was probably when he found out that I am a crazy fan, because I try to be quiet about it. I didn’t want to embarrass him. Diane told me to stay away from him, so I tried to. She knows that I’m a fan because sometimes I would break into Woody Allen dialogue when I was talking to her, like a jackass.”
Melinda and Melinda goes on general release on Mar 25
