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Allen first began to grapple with these issues on film in Interiors, and he plans to make more serious films in the future. "I have always felt tragedy was the highest form, even as a child, before I could articulate it. There was something about the moodiness, the austerity, the apparent profundity of Elia Kazan's films then that sucked me in. With comedy you can buy yourself out of the problems of life and diffuse them. In tragedy, you must confront them and it is painful, but I'm a real sucker for it." Allen did not have a role in Interiors and will not act in his serious movies. "I can act within a certain limited range," he says, but notes that while making Manhattan, he had to resist a "real temptation" to play a sad drunk scene for laughs. "I could never see myself sitting in an analyst's chair in a film, talking about my mother and shock treatments and gradually crying-not if my life depended on it."
If Allen has a favorite actor, it seems to be Keaton. Talking about her always cheers him up: "She has no compunction about playing a lovable and gangly hick in Annie Hall and then very neurotic and disturbed women in Interiors and Manhattan. That's the mark of an actress and not a movie star. Keaton also has the eye of a genius, as you can see in her photos, collages, silk screens and wardrobe. She can dress in a thousand more creative ways than she did in Annie Hall. When I first met her, she'd combine unbelievable stuffat boots, some chic thing from Ralph Lauren." Though Allen and Keaton have not been romantically involved since 1971, they remain close, and he hopes some day to create a musical for her.
Another actress Allen admires is his Manhattan costar, Mariel Hemingway, who is 17. "I wrote the part for her after seeing her in Lipstick and stumbling across her photo in Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. She met with me, and after two minutes I knew she was right. When we were making the film, she always stayed in character when we improvised. Even when I went off in an unexpected direction, she could always go with the scene."
Allen will be in his new film, which begins shooting in September. He hopes the movie will go "deeper in both comic and serious directions" than Manhattan. "I want to make a film that is stylized and very offbeat. I want to try being funny without jokes, to rely less on dialogue and try to tell the story in images more." Once again, audiences will see some emulation of Ingmar Bergman, his favorite director. "Bergman amazes me in part because he tells intellectual stories, and they move forward for endless amounts of time with no dialogue."