Cinema: Woody Allen Comes of Age

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By all accounts, Allen lives by his own precepts. Says Brickman: "Woody is scrupulously honest and ethical in the dog-eat-dog business of entertainment. He is a good example, because he has a high moral sense." That includes playing the not always grateful part of the only conscious moralist in Manhattan. Onscreen, Murphy accuses him of playing God (Woody's reply: "I've got to model myself after someone.") Offscreen, Murphy, who is a close friend, says, "Woody could have made a safer picture, like Annie Hall. This film is a lot tougher, harder-edged. And it was a bold step for Woody not to be a hero." This, according to another frequent co-star and pal, Tony Roberts, is part of his character. "He seems to strive for some kind of excellence for himself in what he does that keeps him from anything that might smell of smugness."

Allen is not one of those show-biz creatures who embrace highly visible causes while slyly accumulating oil leases on the side. Producer-Manager Charles Joffe despairs of ever making a businessman out of Woody, and handles most of his affairs. Allen's "deal," as they say in Hollywood, is not as lucrative as it might be, partly because he seldom sells his pictures to network television (he hates the commercials) and because he would rather sacrifice money than lose the unlimited creative control he has over his work. "All Woody wants to do is make a dollar profit," Joffe reports. "He's always saying to me, 'If I make a dollar profit, then I can go on to the next picture.' "

Everything is submerged into his work, at which he labors compulsively, since it is the vehicle through which he exercises his self-determined imperative to keep growing intellectually and spiritually. His actors unfailingly speak of his kindness and patience, his refusal to let anyone but himself take the blame for a snafu. Yet, says Joffe, he can be "extremely arrogant and extremely hostile. He has to be goddam comfortable with you before he'll show it, and it's not really related to his ego. It's related to the demands he makes on himself."

Joffe considers Manhattan the culmination "of a 20-year ongoing discussion, a serious film that's a drama with comedy rather than a comedy with drama." So, it seems, the beloved loser was misleading everyone (well, almost everyone) all along, that the fierce, dogged spirit of a deeply committed artist lurked in side that scrawny frame. It is hard to say where he will go in the years to come, but perhaps Brickman offers the best clue when he talks about his disagreement with Woody about pizza. When they dine together, Brickman says, "I like the combination pizza. I think the true, important pie is the one with mushrooms, garlic and sausage. He likes the plain cheese pie, which seems to be unimaginative but he would claim is classic. I think now he's tending toward the plain cheese type of writing." Brickman pauses. "The other possibility is that he just likes the taste of plain pie, which I will never understand."

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