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Allen's standoffishness with the public is echoed in his relations with the other band members. Although many of them have played with him for nearly two decades, he does not socialize with them or hang around making small talk after a gig. Nor do the other musicians, most of whom come from the slick Dixieland school, share Woody's abiding passion for the rough-hewn New Orleans style or his aversion to tuning up. Despite the different approaches, says pianist Dick Miller, the band tries mightily "one night a week to create the collective sound that resembles the music he loves."
In an effort to get even closer to the music he loves, Woody has been quietly rehearsing with a group of more New Orleans-oriented musicians for the past year or so. He remains vague about his ultimate plans for the group, but banjoist Davis says there is talk of booking it in a jazz club one night a week, and there have been feelers from several European jazz festivals. The tapes are always rolling during the rehearsals, moreover, so there is a chance that the sessions could ultimately produce something Woody has long resisted: a record featuring him on clarinet.
Whether or not that ever happens, music has already left a deep mark on Woody's artistic achievement. No one who has seen his films can fail to appreciate how effectively he uses the scores to reinforce the visuals -- from the Gershwin themes of Manhattan to the Django Reinhardt and Louis Armstrong ballads of Stardust Memories to the brooding Schubert string quartet of Crimes and Misdemeanors, which premiered last week. For the sound track of Sleeper, Woody even went to New Orleans in 1973 and recorded himself playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. (The old musicians there had never heard of Woody's films, and one of them, trombonist Jim Robinson, called him Willard.) He hopes one day to devote a whole film to "the birth of jazz."
It would be a mistake to see Woody Allen's obsession with the clarinet as an eccentric hobby or psychological crutch. In ways both direct and indirect, concrete and spiritual, his musician's ear and instincts have helped make him the remarkable artist he is in other domains. "Jazz is a perfect music for him," says Eric Lax, who is writing a book on Allen. "It hates authority. It is a quirky, individual style requiring great discipline to play right. It is all the things that fit his comic character." So play it again, Woody.