Carla Bruni, steamy chanteuse and — marginally more recently — wife of French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, has promised Woody Allen first refusal if she starts a film career. Despite admitting that she can’t really act, she said she’d be excited at the idea of working with Allen on his next movie after he visited the first couple on a June trip to Paris.
Bruni said that she didn’t know what the film was about or what she’d do in it, but as the AFP puts it, with some bite:
“I go into everything blindly, or I’d never do anything at all,” she added, apparently referring to her showbiz career rather than to her sudden marriage last year to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
This announcement comes on the heels of the astounding news that a nude photograph of her, taken in 1993, failed to reach the reserve price of 6,000 to 9,000 Euros (about $9000) at auction and remains unsold.
It is unclear what effect appearing in a Woody Allen movie will have on the price of the photo. Naked pictures of Scarlett Johansson, also a New York Jew, have remained highly sought after even after starring in several of Allen’s pictures.
At time of writing Michelle Obama has expressed neither interest in modeling for Vanity Fair nor acting in a Woody Allen film.
Watch the video below for Carla Bruni (fully clothed) singing “Quelgu’un m’a dit” (Somebody Told Me).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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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