On a Zoom Call with Woody Allen

I've acted in three Woody Allen movies, and each one was a highlight of my career, and like just about everyone, I've followed his story. One part of the very private Woody Allen's story is very public. Woody and his ex wife, Mia Farrow, were in the midst of a bruising custody dispute. Mia discovered that Woody had been having an affair with

her twenty one year old daughter. While the spute was raging, Mia told a psychologist that Dylan Faraoh, her and Woody's seven year old daughter, accused her father of an incident of sexual abuse that was an investigation in New York State and Connecticut, and no charges were filed. Woody Allen has always maintained his innocence. I've formed an opinion, and I've been public about that. My inclination is to trust

those investigations. I've never claimed to be a journalist in my role as host of Here's the Thing, But now you know where I stand, regardless of where you stand. I don't want to make the mistake of cutting the accuser or the accused out of the conversation. Woody Allen has a new autobiography, out, Apropos of Nothing. It's a book that starts at the beginning. Allen was a Brooklyn High schooler who took the subway into Manhattan after school

to write jokes for forty dollars a week. His jokes were a hit, and he met his comedy writing mentors like a Burrows and Danny si And when he was still in his teens. The book shows that he hasn't lost his touch. I've turned eighty four and people for years, you know, said to me, you should write down your life. You've been a nightclub comedian, a television writer, a radio writer. I've directed on stage, I've written for the theater. I've

you know, done films. I've played jazz, and they said, you must have a lot of stories that are interesting or amusing or worthwhile or informative, and uh and so I had nothing to do for a while, I had time off, so I wrote them out in the hopes that maybe people would enjoy reading them or learn something. It's much more accurate than the things you see in

the movies. When you see Radio Days or movies that are presumably autobiographical, all those little bits that are gathered from my life are greatly exaggerated and hopefully made funny. You're seeing enormous distortion for theatrical reasons and for entertainment reasons. And in your films you don't name names. Everything is anonymous. In any hall, there's a wonderful moment when you go to the meeting with the entertainer. Johnny Hamer played the entertainment.

Great to see you all out there. It's swelled and he's singing the song and you're sitting there glazed over. And not that you disparage people in the book, but you're much more direct. You say, I loved Hope and Hopes. Movies were funnier than Jerry Lewis. Yes, in a movie, you just want to entertain. That's all you want to really do. That's all I wanted to really do. In the book, you you want to you know, tell the truth. Do I think this guy is funny? Do I think

this movie is funny? Do I love this? And I can understand they're interests because I work in the field. Just like if I speak to an athlete, I want to know, what do you think of this hit? Or what do you think of this basketball player? What you know? I want to hear it from someone who's in the field, And so to a certain degree, I've I've included my feelings about these things in the book so people might

find it interesting. The you left out, by the way, in your list of jobs you've had, you left out degenerate gambler. Yeah. I was someone who, for no fund would work hard at polka and studied it and practiced, and I got in to win. Everyone else was playing for pleasure. They were having a good time and enjoying their lives. I was sitting there, you know, like sweating like a mole. God forbid I should make a mistake or make a wrong bet or do something, and I

did win money consistently over the years. Now, when you go back, I mean the beginning of the book, because there's a volume of people who are familiar with your filmmaking, with your stand up routines and so forth, going back to the earliest days of your career, but your child hood itself for people who don't know that part of your life. You said, listen, I'm wearing the glasses, and you think I'm an intellectual, and I'm not an intellectual.

And I could throw a football, I can catch a football, I could play baseball. You know you. Yeah, I would have rather been a baseball player. And I have fantasies that we would have had much better life. It would have been more fun. But I am perceived because of what I look like as a bookworm or or a shrink, or an accountant, or an intellectual because I have the glasses.

But I was the opposite of an intellectual. I was strictly hung up on sports and comic books and movies and never read a book till I was much older, you know. Uh, And and I was very athletic when I was younger. Um, so I would have I would have preferred. I don't think I would have been good enough to be a major league baseball player, but it was quite good. I was always, you know, one of the for if not the first one shows, and I was quite good. When you get into the big leagues,

it's a different story. But it would have made my father happy to spend his afternoons at the ballpark and me playing. And you know, that's a fantasy I've always had, but it's a fantasy. Well, I want to talk about musicians. I mean I spent an hour last night trying to get any CD recordings, not vinyl recordings. I surrendered to the fact that I have to go get some vinyl. Now. Of Jean Cedric h you talk about him coming to teach you. He was the clarinet player with Fat Swaller.

I used to go and see him play jazz at the Child's Paramount, and Manhattan would be a jazz concert every week, and he played and I'd sit under. I never exchanged the word with him. I just watched him. And one day I called him up and asked him if he said I'm that guy that it's it's in front of you every Sunday afternoon, and he recognized me, and I asked if could he help me, and he said, well,

I would have to get two dollars. Now, even then, that was a bargain, you know, because this guy was a great musician, and he'd come in on the train from Harlem and come over the house and sit in my living room and try as hard as he could. There was a low ceiling that I had of capability, and he brought me a little closer to that low ceiling, and you know, I just it's it's not one of my my real talents. I think I don't really have any real talents except as a comedy writer. That's really

the only talent I've had, you know. To be amusing has been my only gift. Uh. We were together in Italy for the premier of to Rome with Love and we were sitting on a dais. I remember this vividly, and everyone would say up and say, Woody, I have a question for a Woody, you know, and they and they wanted to direct all their questions to you, obviously, And when they did ask me a question, I talked about how your greatest gift is as a writer, and

I saw you nod your head. There was a slight nod of your head, as if the recognition of your writing is more important to you than anything. Yeah. I only make the films because I write them. I've never filmed anybody else's script or had any inclination to adapt something. I make the film because I write the film, and I just feel I'm the only one who's really going to know how to mount it, so it's congruent with what I wrote. I see myself fundamentally as a writer.

I direct out of necessity, and I try and do the best job that I can. Um. I think I've improved over the years if you look at Take the Money and Run or Bananas when I first started, forgetting about whether you enjoyed the films or not, the technique has improved. I think I'm much better filmmaker now. But you know that's just technical, uh, you know, development that comes with years of working. I'm doing it only to get my story mounted in such a way that the

audience can appreciate what I've written. You tell the story about gene Cedric and the lessons than him coming to you. There's a parallel there with a burrows and you camping out briefly in front of the barras Ford to see a Burrows. Is that a component you think of your success is that you're ready to just show up and say hey. I wasn't ready. My mother was a pushy lady. I didn't know him from a hole in the wall, and she said just go over to his house and

ring his bell. And I was such a naive kid. I thought, gee, I guess that's what I should do. And and it turned out that he was a lovely guy. He had no connection with me, what sort of except some vague tenuous connection with some relative by marriage. I mean there was really like ten degrees of separation. But he could not have been warmer or nicer. And it was just one of many good breaks which I've had

all my life. Relating to my career, I've had nothing but luck and good breaks and people helping me and people kind to me. And when I referred to my career as tremendous amount of luck, people said, oh, yeah, I can't just be luck. A huge amount of it is luck. But one thing that was revealed in this book is this engine of a memory. I mean, you remember everything everybody. If I wanted to or the reader of the book, I could pour out many more details

about all that stuff, but that's no achievement. You you either remember you don't. I mean I didn't research the book. I just sat down and started writing it from scratch and wrote it. You just remember things or you don't

remember them, and and I do. But what I don't remember is when guys come up to me now and and they'll bark a line at me, and I don't know what they're talking about, and they'll say it's it's from your movie, or referring to some film I did thirty forty years ago that I haven't seen since I made. I guess when you're a kid, your brain is so soft and absorbent, and and you know you remember those things. Tiger Lily is the first film you direct, correct, And

that was an odd little Labyrinth project. Some guy called me and said he bought a Japanese film that I dubbed it with comic American. I don't. I don't count that as anything. I I was even gonna sue to keep that from coming out because I was I thought it was such junk, and uh, you know, it was successful. So my manager at the time said, shut up and go with the flow. And don't make a fuss, and I didn't take the money and run is the first

one you direct? Yeah, that's the first time I really wrote the picture and then directed it and got the picture that I was capable of doing to the best of my ability at that point in my life. And who made the suggestion at that point that you direct? Whose idea was it that you direct? That was my idea. I came up with the idea. I thought, if I could direct this, then uh, then I'm going to get what I want. I don't have to and if I'm in it, I don't even have to deal with an actor.

I can. I know what I want. I set the shot up and then I walk around in front of the camera and do it. I do it the way I hear it, the way I wanted to express to the audience. And people used to say, isn't it hard to write and direct? But it wasn't. Doubly hard. It

was half as hard. Take the money. Everyone who was the cinematographer do you recall on that film, Leicester Shure Lester Shaw In the one experience I had directing, what was revealed very quickly was something I knew from the other films I made, which I wasn't that fascinated with cinematics. It wasn't that keen on lenses and which side of the line and where do we put the camera? And I almost fantasized, I fantasized almost that I would have

a job I'd create. Roberts, the director of Just the Acting, did you find you had an affinity for the camera. It wasn't an affinity. There was a common sense way my joke would look good, and I did it. Comedy doesn't require a lot of fancy angles and a lot of lamboyant cinematography. You want it nice and simple. You want the owners to see it. You want it lit so they can see it and clear. So it was

easy for me. I mean, there was no Some guy said to me at the time, one of the studio heads, you know, how do you feel being responsible from million dollars that was the budget to take the money and run? And and I thought to myself, what do you mean, how do I feel? I feel fine? This is a piece of cake. You have to see the person put the gun down on the table if you want the joke to work. It does not rocket science. Later on I became more and more interested in cinematography and making

the film work for you as well. But but always, if you don't have a story to tell, a good story, you're dead. And if you have a good story, you're way ahead of the game. Even if you don't know what you're doing when you're writing, do you show anybody? Are there people that you trust who you want to even if it's one person? Is there anybody that you bounce your material off of and you want their opinion? No?

Not really. I finished the script and I would always give it to Juliet Taylor to uh, give me some suggestions for casting, and go No, I did it all. I found that to be not a good thing to do, because you get a million opinions and some of them are good and you should probably take them, but you don't know which ones the good ones are, and you

get some that are meaningless and people don't understand. So you wouldn't bounce it off of Rollins, who would tell you whether the thing could get made and base the money. Would you ever bounce the script off of Rollins? I wouldn't bounce the script of him, but I would ask him, you know, you think it's worth it for me? To do this project. Never do you think this is funny or do you think what times? I remember, Jack Rollins didn't think it was a worthwhile project. Where did you

first come in contact with him? Well, he was a manager around town that was a legend. He had discovered Harry Belafante when no one thought a black calypso singer would be anything. And Jack was already saying he's going to be a movie star, not just the calypso singer, He's gonna be everything. And then suddenly two years after that, he went and brought Nichols and Made to New York and people said, oh, these two kids are intellectual, they're

improvisational people from Chicago. They'll never make it. And one of them was Mike Nichols, the other was Elaine May and Jack just had a was a legend for having foresight into major talent. And people were saying, you should really be handled by Jack and and and so I gave him my writing and said I'd be interested. He'd never handle a writer before, and he said he would

handle me. And then I made the accidental mistake of saying, you know, sometimes I think of being a stand up comic myself and for that moment on he wouldn't let go. He said, absolutely, I think it's a great idea. We should pursue that, and just wouldn't let me. I couldn't disabuse him of that notion. I was nervous, I was scared. I was only half serious when I said it. But he wouldn't let it go, and so I listened to him, and he pushed me, and I became a stand up

comedian and kept succeeding in spite of myself. I thought I was no good. I was nervous, I hated doing it. I wouldn't enjoy it. There was nothing about it that was positive for me, except when I get out on stage. I scored all the time from the first night on. And I said, why do I have any contribution to make us a comic? There's a million comics around. Why me? And he said, I think you have a unique country usual to make And I listened to him because he

had a very compelling personality, not a dominating personality. He was one of the only men I've ever met in my life that had true wisdom. He could make the hard decisions where there was no clear cut right answer. He vibrated common sense and good thinking in a business that's short on both of those things. Yeah, you know, it's hustling and backbiting, and ninety of the people are fighting for their lives and scamming and trying hard to survive. He was not like that. He always advised me, don't

ever think about the money. Think only about the project. So I never give a moment's thought to money. There was a combination of my own innate feelings that money was not important and Jack's confirmation of that, which really solidified it. Um, when you stay scored, I think that's kind of funny, because of course I'm from that general issue where everybody knows word for word. Uh, you know, the moose mingled, he's scored. Some guy was trying to

sell him insurance for an hour and a half. They give out prizes for the best customer of the night. First prize goes to the Burkowitz Is, a married couple dressed as a moose. The moose is furious. He and the Burkowitz is lock antlers in the living room can knock each other unconscious. Now, I figure it has my chance. I grabbed the moose, strap him on my fender, and shoot back to the world. But I got the Burgerwitzes. That's something that's seared in my memory, like Jonathan Winter's albums,

Nichols and May albums, Bob and Ray. And interesting how you mentioned Jack Rollins for people who don't know he was a big part of your career. You mentioned him in the same kind of language I applied to Lauren Michael's. Lauren is someone who There are very few people who are really smart in a way that applies to the

business itself. You can be around I've been around men and women running the studio, they're running the company, they're the head of the agency, and some of them are very area tyed people, but not in any way that's going to translate into making movies or so forth. I mean, they know how to put people together who make movies. You know, Jack Warner, Harry Cone, these guys, some of

them xanic. They didn't know shit about movie making, but what they knew was how to get ahold of people and close the deal with people who did know about movie making and assemble them and put them together. Um. Now, when you make films, I mean it's uh, they're not all created equal in terms of the kind of experience you have. I've made films where we had a lot of fun that it was a joy. I always separate out how well the film performed. I don't never think

about how successful was. I think, oh, I had a good time. That was a good expenditure of my time. I want to start with actors and actresses who are in your career of filmmaking, just to pick a couple, because there's so many people to choose from. Who are actors or actresses that you really enjoyed working with them? You thought, wow, this has really been a pleasure to

work with them. Well, Keaton, who certainly you know, I have a lot of fun working with her, and I've had fun working over the years with many of the actors and actresses I worked with that good times for them as Stone, I had good times with Scarlett Johansson. I had very nice times with Naomi Watts. I've had generally good experiences over the years. Maureen Stapleton was a lot of fun to work with. You know, I've been

very lucky. I've made fifty movies and I've never had any real conflicts or problems that we've always had laughs. Elaine Stritch was a lot of laughs. You know, I keep mentioning women here because so many of my films did feature women, and and the ones that didn't, I was the guy so frequently. I didn't work with a lot of famous men. I worked with some, but not a lot. I remember when we worked together and you

would call me Mr Allen. I thought that was the funniest thing in the world that anybody would refer to me so politely. No one ever called me mister Allen before or since. Mr Woody Allen, even during the pandemic. Allan is the quintessential Manhattanite and has been ever since. He formed an instant passion for the borough while visiting Times Square with his dad as a young child. I'm quarantineing in Manhattan. I go out with my wife for

a walk in Central Park. New Yorkers have responded gallantly and sensibly. Once in a while you get a boom that doesn't, but for the most part they do, and because of it, the city's made tremendous progress, and we'll start to open up, you know, in the near future. I'm not one who wants it to open up prematurely, because it's pointless. I mean, I'd love it to open up today fully, but you know, just to have it open up and then take a big step backward with

deaths and hospitalizations is pointless. But I never thought of moving out of it, or or going to the country, or hey, wait a second, take it easy, thal. I had to take my chances. Uh, in the streets. It's Manhattan. It will always be Manhattan, and I'll always love it. It's it's is a ghost down of course now, but uh,

you know, but it will come back lit. When nine eleven happened, I went over to Europe like the next day, or I was scheduled too, and I was on all the European news shows because I was in New Yorker, and they were saying, Mr Allen, will New York ever be the same again? Or does this mean the death of humor in New Yorker. I'm thinking, my god, you know, you look up after a period of time, and New York will go on and everyone will be at Madison

Square Garden will be in the theaters. New York is much bigger than these um terrible things, and it's bigger than the pandemic. The rest of my conversation with Woody Allen coming up. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. For someone who didn't get into making movies for a love of the craft, Allen makes some beautifully crap the movies. He credits as cinematographers for much of that. My camera, guys is like the N seven Yankees.

I mean, I worked ten years with Gordon Willis and thirteen years with Carlo de Parma. I worked with Film of Siegmund, I worked Spendquist, Darius Kanji amazing cameraman, I mean, one after the other. Now Vittorio Stararo, I've done a number of pictures with. I mean, these are these are the finest cameraman in the world. And and there you know, they make life easy on the set because they know what they're doing, and of course they have different, very

different methods. Someone like Gordon was very specific and very thought out, whereas Carlo Deparma was more like me. You know, come in the morning and neither one of us would have any idea what's seen we were even doing, and we you know, learned what the scene was and we look around the set. Now it's already ten o'clock in the morning, and we finally figured out what we want to do was very less, a fair and very loose, but we got it done. You know. It was just

his way of working. In mind. Gordon was much stricter. He needed real structure and had to impose that structure on everyone. And I felt Gordon was a great artist and and I would always defer to him. Did Gordon watch shot sheets? No, we never. We never drew any pictures of anything or listed anything. I was very spontaneous

that way, and Gordon agreed with that. But he wanted to sit with me for an afternoon always before we filmed and go over every scene in the picture and every shot in the picture, but every scene and generally decide how we were going to do it, whereas with Carlo, we didn't even know what the scene was even that they were going to shoot it. We uh and I generally don't plan very much. Victorio Stararo likes the planting. She's very organized and likes to put and that's who

he gets that beautiful look. Other cameraman i've worked with are more, you know, relaxed, as Nikast who did a number of films for Bergman. You know, it was used to working with no lights practically, and quickly and no rehearsals. I never rehearsed, so it worked out very well with him. I've never rehearsed. I've heard one film in my life, Interiors, and I regretted rehearsing it. I never hearsed anything before that,

and certainly never anything after. When you make that leap, what's the voice in your head that says, I'm ready to do this super serious film, I'm gonna do a Bergman asked drama. I never wanted to be a comic filmmaker. I always wanted to be a serious filmmaker. I always wanted to make the films Bergman was making, the plays it Off, the Miller and Tennessee Williams were doing. But my gift was in comedy, and I couldn't get into

things without getting in through comedy. So at the first possible opportunity to do something that was not comic, I did it. And I didn't pull any punches. I was not making what passed for drama in commercial films, you know. I was doing a real European style film, you know,

with all the incompetence at my command. If it was up to me, if someone would have financed me, I probably would have made Interiors as the first movie I ever made, and continued making these serious films that nobody would come to see, or that I was not so good at making. So when you decided to do interiors on the heels of Annie Hall, is that one of the junctures where Rolins as to you, are you out

of your mind? No? Rollins would have said, I don't remember having this conversation, but he would have said, you know, you have to go where you want to go artistically, you know. And over the years I've had many, you know, offers to do any Hall two. And even now at this late stage, I'm, as I say, eighty four and Keaton's ten years younger than me. We people have said, why don't you do the two characters from any who are in the later part of their life and see

what's happened to dinner? But I never have any interest. Not that long ago, Turn the Classic Movies had a discussion of any Hall and they wanted me to be on the panel to come back, I think with Marshall Brickman or maybe Keaton or I can't remember who, but I didn't go. And I love Turn the Classic Movies enormously but I I don't like to sit there and talk about the past. And so after any hall, you know, I didn't give a moment's thought except I wanted to

do interiors, and I did it. But I'd like to make that picture over now. I think if I could do it now, I bring Maureen Stapleton in earlier and I can make that picture better now. But the boat sailed. Um. I've got a couple more questions about movies and about music and so forth. But as I mentioned to you, the people that I work with have required me, that is the word. I am required by them to open up this can of worms here. And I've got just some quick questions. I want to ask you about these

other difficulties in your life. And one question that was submitted to me was that you wrote that the accusations about Dylan were so ludicrous that when it was leveled, you didn't give it a second thought. Uh why was it so ludicrous? To you? You said ludicrous? I mean you're a man of very specific words. Why was it ludicrous? Well, the thought that anyone could take it seriously? Why? Uh?

Fifty seven year old man and good standing has never had any problem in his life at all would suddenly pick an odd day once in his life to do something in the midst of a hustile breakup. You know, I mean, the whole thing was so preposterous. I I thought any common sense personal looking at it would I would see it for what it was, the clich accusation that one party makes against the other, so common in custody cases. How you say you understand me as rage

about your dating Sunni. Do you think that your dating Sunni makes the charges or accusations any more credible. I think at the time absolutely, But it doesn't make the charges more credible. But it certainly was. I was coming from position people were thinking, my god, this older person has seduced this young girl and he's taking advantage of her. You know, it looked awful. I understood that. I mean,

I can understand that. But you know, we've now been married for over twenty years and we have two girls in college, and you know, it was tabloid fodder at the time, and I understand why it would be. I mean, I'm not naive, but but it had no bearing. The charges was something else. The charges were something that were investigated. They were not swept under the rug like many women's charges,

legitimate charges that are swept under the rug. They were given meticulous investigation in Connecticut and also for over a year in New York. It was given investigation by Yale, the top investigators of this kind of thing, and they said, there was no thought that this child was ever bothered in any way. And I feel better that they investigated, and I don't have to feel ever that though this thing was side pocketed, I was a celebrity and they

didn't follow up on it or anything. They really followed up on it, and they those were the conclusions they came to. And then then lastly, uh, this woman, uh Casey Pascal who talked about your face down in the lap of your daughter, and she comes into a room. Look, I was never alone with my daughter. Then my son Moses will testify to this. I was always in a room with a lot of people, and they were all

on the sofa and watching television. I may have sat on the floor and laid my head down on our lap for a second, but to infer anything sinister from

that is crazy. But the only question that I wanted to ask before all this uh other stuff was thrown into the mix, was I mean, here you are on this perch, how did you feel, how did you feel like like where ever moments where you thought I'm gonna leave the country and moved to Paris and just get the hell away from everybody and everything, and just no, I've never felt that way. All I always felt, you know, don't give any of that stuff, it's all rubbish. Don't

waste a moment on it. Just work. And from the day that the false accusation was made, I worked. I did a million films, I wrote for the theater, I toured my jazz band, I played every week at the Carlisle Hotel. I I you know, if you just keep your nose to the grindstone and work. I hear the voice of Jack Rowlins somewhere. Just work. And I've just finished a film in Spain, this somehow called Rifkin's Festival of Course in that while he's sean Spanish actor's called

Elena Anya Gina Gershawn. It's a romantic comedy and it came out better than I expected. When I saw the picture Funny, it was one of the pictures that I had affection for. So just three quick answers here on one of the Allen's filmmaking. These are my compilation. So number one was you don't pay people competitive salaries. You don't pay people money. We don't have the money. I've

work on a comparatively low budget. These guys make films two hundred million, hundred fifty million, you know, and I'll be making my films over the years for seventeen million. So we can't afford to pay what the actors deserve to make. You know, it has to do with the unions. If the union said you can't have an actor and pay them less than twenty thousand dollars um, then we would have to do it. But we pay the union minimum,

and and they do it when they're off. You know, if someone else offers them twenty million dollars to do a film, they say goodbye to me and they do the film. And I understand that completely. But if they're not doing anything and they see the part and they love the part, they do it. Sometimes it even costs them money because they have to bring their family in from California because we can only pay a certain amount

of luxury. Now, the other myth is that you even if the character is a bit up to you, cast actors in roles because you believe the actor is like that in real life. The actor gives off that vibe. I don't know. I don't know the actors. I'm not friendly with actors because the actor get without acting, just showing up and they present represent themselves in that way. Yes. For instance, if you're doing a gangster film and you hire Tony Serrico, it's all this present himself like the

president of Harvard. You know, he presents himself like a street guy and he doesn't have to act. Isn't come in and do a mug's voice. He just comes in and talks as he is. And it's magical in a world now where you're sitting home and you want that diversion, you want entertainment. I've learned through the pandemic that what we do, some more than others, obviously, is so significant

in people's lives. They need to take their mind off, they need a break, they need a break, and there are streaming services now which are very popular work and they have the liberty. Everything is sex and violence. I mean, when they write themselves into a corner, somebody steps in with a with an automatic weapon and just mows everybody down in the room and the Sir Galahad character takes his armor off and gets on top of a stone slab with a woman and has at it with her.

Ex and violence have become uh, like like assault in cooking has passes for drama when it's right, you know, if you're talking like Bunny and Clyde or something, then it's fabulous. But when it's just the the the unskilled right or unskilled director putting it in because you thinks it's intense, then it's embarrassing. Now my last question for you is, um, you're writing a typewriter, You've never mastered computers? No, you're There was some degree of shame in that response.

I must say, I'm glad to see that does nostalge your rule your life? I mean, everything in your films is beautiful old music, and uh does nostalgia just live inside you and determine most of the are creative nostalgic. But that has nothing to do with the gadget. The gadgets has to do with my A D H D. I don't have the patients, the master the things. I just can't get them, and I I'm not interested in

in tape recorders. And you know cell phones. I have one, and I can answer the phone and and get it, you know, dial a number. But I can't do all the things. I don't do apps and zooms and or I don't even know what they are in some sense. Uh. But the nostalgic part of me is a different question completely, and I do have a great reverence for the past. It I get sucked up. A Camu said it was a trapp and I fall into that trap very frequently, get sucked up into old music and old films. And

I don't know why. It's not that my childhood was so idyllic that I want to relive it. I don't. But the music is very beautiful in are films. I'm assuming that you are the one that chooses the particular songs themselves. You don't have a music supervisor. That's making And it's a very simple thing. We edit the film.

I work with the editor, we edit. It's finished, and I simply go into the other room and take some vinyl and bring it into this room and I put the record down and look at it, and I know that's not when I put the next record down, and then voila. It's sensational, then the only issue is clearances. Yeah, yeah, but but you know, we do have a music budget. Sometimes Helen are the line producer will say to me, can you pick a different song because they want, you know,

twenty tho dollars. But I want to say to you that what I really wanted to say to you was you get back out there and you keep making movies because you are really just such an important part of people live. You have made life worth living. Well you. I think this is just you being very gracious wrapping up your show, and very nice of you to say that. But I can't imagine that I've had any impact except to provide some Saturday nights in the movie house where

you could take your day. Global box office returns are much reduced in the age of coronavirus, but Woody Allen's newest release, A Rainy Day in New York dominated them for a time last month. That's true even though Amazon dropped plans for domestic distribution after Dylan's claims started getting more attention. Woody did give me some hope that Americans won't have to cross an ocean to see it. People have been talking to me about streaming it and I've

never done that before. But because of the pandemic and people are indoors and not going to be going to the movie houses for god knows how long, maybe we will make a deal and you'll be able to see it on on one of the streaming channels. The word is platforms wet, and I do hope you make that deal. Alan's revealing memoir is called Apropos of Nothing, and it covers everything from the accusations of Dylan Farrow to his movies, his mentors, and his marriages. The book is out now

from Arcade. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to hear is the thing if n