Woody Allen in Eilat?
By Daniel Treiman
Israeli news site Y-Net reports that Woody Allen is expected to go to to the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat for its film festival. The thought of the consummate New York nebbish in Eilat brings to mind that scene in “”Annie Hall” of a very uncomfortable Woody Allen in sunny Southern California.
I wonder if Woody will go scuba diving? Maybe Israel’s uber-aggressive paparazzi will manage to get some pictures of him in the scuba gear. I only hope that American Apparel has learned its lesson and doesn’t even think of plastering any such pictures on billboards.
April 3, 2008, 1:27pm
American Apparel to Woody: We’re Sorry (and We’re Parodists)
By Daniel Treiman
American Apparel is apologizing to Woody Allen after he filed a $10 million lawsuit against the trendy T-shirt monger for its unauthorized use of an image of him dressed in Hasidic garb on a pair of billboards.
“We deeply admire Woody Allen as a filmmaker and an inspiring social and political satirist,” the company said in a press release. “We sincerely regret offending him in any way.”
But, given that words are cheap and lawsuits are expensive, American Apparel also tried to cover its tuchus from legal standpoint, claiming that the billboards featuring the image of Allen (filched from his film “Annie Hall”) were not, in fact, intended to sell underwear, but were rather “meant strictly as a social parody.”
The question, of course, is what aspect of society, exactly, were the underwear-purveying parodists parodying?
Could it be, given that an American Apparel rep had originally told the Forward, “Woody Allen is our spiritual leader,” the billboards were an ever-so-ironic commentary on the company’s own social and spiritual shortcomings? But that would be more satire than parody.
April 1, 2008, 3:33pm
Woody Allen v. American Apparel
By Daniel Treiman
The holy rebbe is pissed.
Last spring, trendy underwear maker American Apparel, known for its sexually charged advertising, put up a pair of billboard ads that were unusually tame.
The billboards, in Los Angeles and New York, featured an image of Woody Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew from his masterpiece Annie Hall, alongside Yiddish script that read “der heyliker rebe” (“the holy rebbe”). At the time, an American Apparel spokeswoman explained to the Forward, “Woody Allen is our spiritual leader.”
Only one problem: It seems American Apparel didn’t get Woody Allen’s permission first — and so the ads came down as quickly as they went up.
Now, the Associated Press reports, the nebbish-y movie-maker is getting even: He’s filed a $10 million lawsuit in federal court against the edgy shmatte maker.
We’ll have to see how the folks at American Apparel feel about their spiritual leader now.
Hat tip: Brad Greenberg’s God Blog.
February 7, 2008, 5:06pm
Neurotics of the World Unite!: Larry David To Star in Woody Allen’s Next Film
By Daniel Treiman
Entertainment Weekly reports:
Larry David, the mind behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is set to be the lead in Woody Allen’s next, as-yet-untitled feature, which is scheduled to shoot in New York City in the spring. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but David will act alongside Evan Rachel Wood.
E.W. notes that the film will be a sort of homecoming for Allen, who shot his previous three movies in England and an upcoming one in Spain. But will Woody and Larry find that the New York that nurtured their neuroses no longer exists?
UPDATE: Evan Rachel Wood is also one of us.
January 15, 2008, 3:05pm
Woody Allen’s New York, RIP
By Daniel Treiman
For the past half-decade, New York City has been consumed by a frenzy of greed. A whirlwind of out-of-context development, anarchic “architecture” and a virus-like proliferation of chain stores that has ravaged the cityscape. Property owners, not satisfied with rents and property values that have already soared into the stratosphere, instead are all too often determined to squeeze every last dollar out of their land that they legally (and in some cases illegally) can — aesthetics be damned. Historic and under-protected neighborhoods from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side to low-rise Brooklyn have been devastated, historic buildings ripped down and replaced by “luxury condo” towers, which are, as often as not, either thoroughly banal or outright hideous to look at. The city government, for its part, has largely failed to leverage the manifold opportunities provided by New York’s newfound prosperity to protect the idea of the city beautiful. The result is that walking the streets of New York has become more than a little heartbreaking, a sense of loss accompanying every vista.So it’s not surprising that a quintessential New Yorker like Woody Allen would be a little sad nowadays; the city he lovingly immortalized in his films is being despoiled. In an interview with the Daily News, Woody Allen succinctly sums up the trouble with the new New York:
There are certain areas that have not been encroached upon too much — Carnegie Hill, the West Village, Tudor City, places that are still lovely to look at. But once they put up those big new buildings, it looks the same as Houston.
I’ve been in fights and gone to City Hall and Landmark Commission and neighborhood planning [events]. There are always lovely things being torn down and huge, profitable things put up. I’m not against development, but I am against it when it’s not a plus for the city, and the plus can’t always be equated with financial profit.
August 27, 2007, 2:12pm
Scarlett on Woody: ‘We Have a Lot in Common’
By Daniel Treiman
She’s a sultry starlet. He’s a neurotic nebbish. But really Scarlett Johansson and Woody Allen are just two peas in a pod, the actress tells USA Today:“I just adore Woody,” she says. “We have a lot in common. We’re New Yorkers, Jewish. We have a very easygoing relationship.
“I’ve seen things like, ‘Are you his new muse?’ Yeah, I go over at 2 a.m. and make him grilled cheese sandwiches, and he writes. Ha. It’s just a very easy friendship.
“Any girl my age has a fondness in the most innocent way for older men their fathers’ age. It’s like your father, and I’m close with my dad.”
Johansson also drops the following bombshell revelation:
She doesn’t deny she appeals to many men.
Other tidbits: Scarlett loves her mom, she and Natalie Portman enjoyed working with each other, and she plans to go to Iraq to entertain the troops.
Read the full article.
June 22, 2007, 3:03pm
Woody Returns to L.A., Culture in Tow
By Sarah Kricheff
Woody Allen will make his operatic debut in September 2008, directing Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi” at the Los Angeles Opera. It’s hard to imagine Allen feeling at home in the City of Angels (in “Annie Hall” he perfected the role of fish-out-of-water New Yorker in L.A., famously saying, “I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light”), or, for that matter, in the world of Italian opera, but “Gianni Schicchi” is the only comedic opera ever written by Puccini, so perhaps that will bring the first-time opera director some sense of comfort.
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