Club Random with Bill Maher - Woody Allen | Club Random

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Bill sits down with Woody Allen for a wide-ranging conversation on comedy, film, and everything in between. They swap stories from the comedy-club era and dig into Woody’s craft – his “do less�� rule, why he hates rehearsal, and what it’s like to direct once you’ve aged out of a role (including casting others to play the parts you once did). Woody weighs in on classic cinema (Streetcar devotion, Godfather II praise, Casablanca indifference), Bob Hope’s lasting imprint, and therapy that “helped a little,” while Bill quizzes him on newer movies (yes, even Twilight). They cover aging, AI and immortality, the Knicks, and the contrast between Manhattan gloom and sunshine, with Woody teasing his new novel What’s with Baum, out in September. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our Advertisers: Try ZipRecruiter for free at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random It’s summer, and it's time to heat up your strategy before your competitors beat you to it. Go to ⁠⁠https://www.RadioActiveMedia.com⁠⁠ or text RANDOM to 511-511. Message and Data Rates May Apply. Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it.  For advertising opportunities please email: [e-mail] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Heather McDonald from JuicySoup, and I have the juiciest of them all on Audible. Romance has always been a crowd-placing genre on their platform, and there's more to imagine when you listen to their expansive collection. They have audiobooks to satisfy every side of you. I'm talking about the Romanticie genre, which is huge on book talk right now, with authors like Sarah J. Mass and Devney Perry. Get your first great love story for free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at

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and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. Pessimistic view, that I'm going to die. It's not so pessimistic. You know, it's probably going to happen. I could do it. direct him now, if he would let me direct him now that he's president.

I have returned, like MacArthur, to find a great man. A great man is in my home. How are you? I'm okay. Everybody's been so nice to me. What did you expect? Oh, no. Let me vomit my love for you right away. get it off the table, you know, from the beginning with the stand-up through the early movies, the middle movies, the late movies, the New Yorker pieces, the book. Were you part of the New York comics, group, The Bitter End, or any of those places? Oh, no. I was five when that was happening. I mean, I started in the 80s. It was the improv, the Catcher Rising Star. Do you remember that place? In New York, though.

Yeah, yeah. Are you from New York? New Jersey. Ah, okay. So you played those same clubs in Manhattan that... Yeah, that was my era, was, you know, the improv down on 44th and 9th. That started in like 62. That was the earliest one. That was the granddaddy of the mall.

But by the 80s, it had become a thing. And by the late 80s, it was a phenomenon. mid-sized cities had five comedy clubs. Right. You know, and it just burned itself out after a while. It wasn't like, I mean, when you started, it was just the bitter. That was, there was a few clubs and only a few comics. When you started, there was like maybe one new comic every few years.

When I was doing it in the 80s, like, their dentists were doing comedy. Right, right. It was just terrible. Right. Did you play Dangerfields? I lived nearby it in someone's closet basically I lived in the maid's room

I had a rent-free situation don't even ask but yeah Dangerfields I didn't play it because that was I was too new and that was a headliner club I wasn't a headliner yet so were you came out here

did you play the troubadour no that was I don't remember comics ever playing the troubadour I remember comics getting in trouble for being in the audience at the Troubadora. I don't know. That was like, oh, you know,

maybe the Smothers Brothers did play there. Yeah, I think I played the Trubon. Okay, well, back then there were. Now it's just music, I think. I've never heard of a comic at the Trubedora. I played that other place in Hollywood. It was an upstairs and a downstairs. What year?

The year that the Kennedy was assassinated. Because I was playing there when the day that Kennedy was assassinated. You said, like, when you won your Oscar, you had the same reaction as you did when Kennedy was assassinated. I thought about it for a minute, and then I went back to work. Yes, that's exactly. I was writing the script of what's new pussycat. I was in a motel, like the Gene Autry Motel, and I was playing. Playing the place, the crescendo was upstairs, or the crescendo was downstairs, and there was the place upstairs.

But why don't these things affect you more? To most people, they're earth-shaking. I was too stupid to grasp what happened. I was there, and someone said, it was the operator on the phone, and she said, Mr. Allen, the president's been shot. and I said, oh, yeah, and I turned on the television. I looked for a minute and two, realized I couldn't do anything about it. And then, you know, and that was it. Well, that is true.

But, okay, let me challenge you on this. You say in this book, you have no lofty thoughts. I have no what? And you say, I have no lofty thoughts. No, right. But you can't really believe that. No, I don't have any love. I often said I'm mistaken.

for an intellectual... This is what I have to challenge. Because, answer me this, then. If you have no lofty thoughts, why didn't you just keep making the silly kind of movies you made at the beginning that were just gags? I grant you, there are no lofty thoughts in bananas.

There's no lofty thoughts and take the money and run. But then you did interiors and movies that were like almost all lofty thoughts. But I was riddled with ambivaly thoughts. to be a serious filmmaker, but I had nothing to contribute in terms of insights. You know why that is?

Because there are no lofty thoughts. No, no, there's one. There's one lofty thought, I think. You have it? You do, too. It's your theme, too. The quote I always think that encapsulates it. I think it's from Eugene O'Neill,

but maybe not, or maybe somebody talking about Eugene O'Neill, or could be Zootie Sales, I don't remember. But the quote is a great quote. A life with illusions is unpardonable, and a life without illusions is unbearable. Yes, I agree with that. That's a big theme of yours. It's a big theme because you do have to, you know, you've got to delude yourself to get through. Life is a terrible, painful, awful, tragic thing And you've got a

My solution to it was the coward's way out To distract yourself There are people that Embrace life And they're confronted And they have all kinds of mature You know, perspectives on it But I don't

I, to me it's, I watch baseball I watch sports. I watch movies. That's not relevant. In the movies themselves, there are lofty thoughts, or at least, again, maybe this... Then I've heard them somewhere.

You know. Right, we all have. And then we confront them in our own life. And that's really the one I see over and over again about illusions. And there's only so many ways to say that. And everything is just, to me, variation, if it's lofty, on that theme, said in an entertaining way.

You say it in an entertaining way. You're a very entertaining fellow. So how do you deal with this? I mean, are you conscious that you are deluding yourself? Or do you want to delude yourself? But isn't that the theme that, again, you and all of this to a degree are exploring? It's like it's the dichotomy. It's the paradox.

we will never figure out, you know. No, he'll never figure out. That's why the quote is good. A life with them is bad and a life without them is bad in a different way. Yeah, so all you can do is kind of push it out of your mind and, you know, distract yourself for yourself. You know, the novelist John Irving, he wrote World According. Yeah, I know of him. Yeah, I made his books.

Me neither. Okay. But I see all his Robin Williams movies. He said every great novel would have better been called Great Expectations. He said every novelist wishes that title was still available. Because life, great expectations, you know? Yes, whenever you sit down to write a novel or to make a movie or to embark on some kind of artistic thing, you always, or at least I always expect that it's going to be great.

I always, you know, when I sit down to make a movie, I think I'm going to make Citizen Kane, and when people see this, they'll be stunned. And then when I finally, I'll finish shooting it, I'm in the editing room, I'm praying that I won't be embarrassed, and I'm ready, I'll change anything, I'll put the end in the beginning, I'll put narration into it, I'll do anything,

and all your great expectations go out the window. I mean, I was talking more about the character's great expectations. Uh-huh. Yours, I mean, I get that that's what any filmmaker does. I think what you did early in your career was set down this marker that I can't be embarrassed because I'm an artist, I'm going to fail sometimes, and that's what's going to make you like me more. I think that's what you did, possibly not by choice, it's just how you followed that idea. You're not going to let anybody tell you what to do, how to do it.

You were either God in your universe. Right, that's true. You have to do it yourself because it doesn't work any other way, but you have to accept the fact that you're going to fail a certain amount of times. Yeah. The problem is if you're in an art film, if you're a writer at home and you fail, you throw the paper away and you start over. If you're a filmmaker, you have to constantly raise $15, $20, $30 million or something. And then if you're an architect or a filmmaker, you've got to raise a fortune to ply your trade.

And so it gets dicey. You can't afford, you know, you're resigned to the fact that you will fail. but you can't afford to fail too much because then they, you can't get any more money. Yeah. I read in the book that you were talking about going to therapy and said something like, you're waiting for the Godot that never comes.

Yes, that's when I started. That's to me is great expectations. Yeah. You know, everything is just, you wait, which I know you've never read because you say also in your unconvincing defense of how you're not an intellectual, you say, you know, that you never read great expectations,

you never read Ulysses, you never read 1984, Catch-22, Don Quixote. That's right. I've never read any of the ones you've just mentioned. I've read them all. You want to get the skinny on them? You want to get the... Yeah, can you condense them? Well, like Dickens, 1850, I mean, for the time, but it's asking a lot of 1850 to be relevant today.

And also, he was writing them on installment, you know, Dickens. They would be knocking on the door because it had to go in the paper. That's how that book was written. That's how Dostoevsky wrote, too, for the money and bit by bit. But I never had the patience to read any of them. I was never a reader. I never enjoyed reading as a kid. It was not something I liked to do, and to this day, I don't enjoy it.

I've done it a certain amount because you needed to do it to survive and to flourish as a writer. But it's nothing. I bet you'd like Catch 22. The other ones, yeah. I might. I read Catcher in the Rye, and I like that. Short. I thought that was...

It's good when they're short. That was, yeah, yeah. I mean, you also say, I thought this was crazy. It was on the last page that your big regret is you never, so you think you never made a great movie. That's right. I think I've made some good. Remember, I've made 50 movies.

I wrote and directed 50 movies. Some of them I do think are good. More than half of them are not, but I do think some of them are good. But I never made, if you think a great movie is, Rashaman or the bicycle theme for the Seventh Seal or... See, I've never seen those, just like you've never read the books. Now, why haven't you seen much? Because, like, because I'm just the young man in the 22nd row.

I, like, these arthouse movies that you like, that, I mean, you're right. I haven't tested them enough. You'd enjoy them, though, but the thing about them is they're not homework, they're entertaining. They're actually gripping and entertaining. But I've heard people say that about other things that did not grip or entertain me. Again, it's interesting. Yeah. But, like, okay, I usually prepare nothing for this show.

I think that's obvious. But I did want to ask you about movies because you're tasting movies. Like, I wouldn't want to know if you've seen any of these movies. Like, these are not the art house foreign director movies. These are like the ones that the common people love. but, you know, they're big, like Godfather. I saw the Godfather 2, I thought, was great, the period work. I thought it was absolutely great.

The period work in Godfather 2, I did think was great. On the mat, not really much. Well, no, I mean, I thought there were good pictures, definitely. But the period work in Godfather 2 was great filmmaking. Did you see Inora? No, I haven't. But my wife, Sunni, saw it and loved. it. Oh. I have not seen it.

You're no interest? I'm hooker with a heart of gold. Yeah, I do have marginal interest. And that doesn't reflect on the film. Oh, I know. It reflects on my own, you know, smallness. I mean, I, you know. It doesn't make you small.

I'm sure. I reject that theory that people are small because they don't like a certain thing. You could, you're entitled to. No, it's not that I don't like it. I know, but you're, we're all entitled to enjoy what we want and enjoy our lives the way we want. But I might enjoy it. I don't give it a chance.

I'm just saying, because I don't have to apologize for not watching you, Nora, and I don't have to apologize for not watching the bicycle thief. It's not that I didn't like it. I just haven't seen it. I might love it if I saw it. And that's okay. It's okay. Okay.

And it's okay. I don't watch the bicycle thief. I can't figure out why, though. What's it about? A bicycle is stolen, and the picture is trying to retrieve it, and it's very crucial for these. Are you sure this is not Peewey's Big Adventure? Because I think that's the same plot. I didn't see that, no.

I didn't see that one either. Okay, James Bond movies. No, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. But you wrote one that was a James Bond parody? No, I never, no. Oh, you acted in that? I had a small acting part of the...

Casino Royale, right? I was in it. Yeah, it was a moronic enterprise, and I was in it in a small way. I was just starting out, and at that point in my life, I had to do anything in film to get a foothold. And so I was advised to be in it when they offered it to me. But I saw the first James Bond film, and it was fine, but I was never moved to see another one.

I'm not a, not, it doesn't interest me. Well, if you do, I would not start with Roger Moore. Okay. Hello, the lovely gentleman. Okay. Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia, you know, again, it's impressive filmmaking, but there was a lot in it that I didn't think it was...

I don't get it. I didn't think it was... I mean, like, what is it about? It's so lauded, and yet I have watched it a couple of times, and I'm like... Well, the filmmaking is... is impressive, you know, technically impressive. I thought a lot of the acting in it was cornball. I mean, I did.

I, you know, and I went to like it because, you know, I had heard so many wonderful things about it. And look, I mean, when I criticize these things, I couldn't make a film that impressive if I tried my whole life. I'm just talking. Well, you did not work on that scale. I couldn't. Right, it's not your choice, it's just not your style.

I wouldn't be able to. I don't have the ability. So what? You had this other ability that they don't have? The graduate? The graduate I liked. I saw it years after it came out, and I liked it, you know, again, I didn't think it was a great movie, but I liked it, and the people in it were wonderful. And...

So I guess I should just forget about Twilight. Which one? Twilight. I bet you your kids have seen it about vampires in the high school. No, I don't know it. I don't know it. Sunset Boulevard. Sunset Boulevard is what my wife would call, and I would agree with her, fun junk.

Yeah. You know, it's great fun, but it's, you know, it's a junkie, silly movie. No lofty thoughts. But it's fun. Okay. But there were back to lofty thoughts. I know the one you love is Streetcar. Streetcar, I love.

Yes, I think it's just a perfect work of art, a great, great play. Every line in it is superb. Every choice in it is superb. They lucked out in every way. They had a great director at the height of his powers. They had Norland Brando at the height of his powers. I mean, it was just superb in every way. But you also said in the book, you relate to Blanche, that you, that's who you are.

Yes, and that's going with what you were saying before. You know, I really don't want realism. I want magic. And magic has appeared in many of my films. Yes. And I think there's no way out of this terrible mess that we're all in without some kind of magical solution. And so without that, nothing's going to happen. See, I would say that Purple Rosa Cairo might be a great movie

because the ending of it, you're rooting for this happy ending that would please your heart, shall we say. But it has a better ending. It's the right ending. It's the right ending. It's the right ending. And that's why it's a brave choice. which maybe makes it a great movie because, well, it's been out 30 years.

Can I tell the plot? It's one of my better movies. I wouldn't call it great, but it is one of my better movies. And they did pressure me to change the ending. I'm sure. They had gone up to Boston to screen it. Describe the plot. And I know you say you relate also to that character that Mia Farrow played in that.

Hello, you guys. It's Heather McDonald, and I have a Jewish. see scoop for you on Audible. I've been loving their romance collection. They are a leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling and they've got this down. Romance fans are among their most engaged and voracious listeners. So there is nothing guilty about this pleasure. There's more to imagine when you listen and they have audiobooks to satisfy every side of you. Audible has modern rom-coms by Lily Chew and Ali Hazelwood and titles from the romanticcy genre that is going crazy right now, like the ones taking over book talk. We're talking about authors like Devney Perry and Sarah J. Mass.

Plus, you can get into classic regency favorites like Pride and Prejudice or all the really steamy stuff. I mean, imagine a dalliance with a Duke or a sexy billionaire. You can find a book boyfriend in the city on a hockey rink or find love in another realm with drive. When it comes to what romance you're into, you can't be pinned down. So here's your invitation to have it all. Get your first great love story for free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers.

Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. Yeah. That's you. because the plot is that she's in a desperate, horrible, depression, life, bad husband, the poverty, the whole thing. And so she goes to the movies and gets lost in the wonderful world. As most of America did in those years. Right, right.

So the character, Jeff Daniels, handsome, leading man, he comes off the screen. Now, of course, this is under the category of buy the premise, buy the bit. You've got to buy the premise. and then you run with the bit. So the character comes off the screen. Right. Okay. So, and then romance is her.

I mean, legitimately, they fall in love. And then the actor, right. The real actor, the real guy, is pissed off because this guy came off the screen and now he's like stealing his thunder. They can't be two of them running around. Right, he's hurting him.

Right. So he comes to town to try to get that guy, the one who came off the screen, came off the screen to go back up on the screen. Yes. So then he romances Mia Farrow. And she falls for him. And now she has to make a choice between the guy who came off the screen, Jeff Daniels, and the real actor.

And the guy who came off the screen, you know, he's a little more true and honest. But the other guy, he's real. So she, you know, as an audience member, you're like, okay, this is great. She's going to get everything she wants. She's going to get this great guy, and now he's human, so they have a future together. But it means the other guy has to go back up on the screen. So she does that. She picks the real guy.

The other guy goes back up on the screen. And then she's like, he said, the real one's going to take her back to Hollywood. And she's at the train station or whatever. And of course he didn't show up. Of course he was just using her. Your heart wanted them to like have this fairy tale ending. but no. That's what ambitious actors do.

Yes, but you remember this. The capsule meaning of the film is that we are all, in my opinion, forced to choose between reality and fantasy. And it's very pleasurable to choose fantasy, but in the end, that way lies me. madness so you have to choose reality and reality always kills you it always hurts you but you have no choice you can't choose fantasy because you go nuts so you have to choose real and the real is

always heartbreaking because life is heartbreaking is that the ending to the ones you love that these you know seventh seal and these types it's always the realistic ending uh yes The bicycle thief has an ending that will have you in tears, and the Seventh Seal won't have you in tears, but it's very powerful film. In the, I mean, the movies that you talked about and that took people away, they were so anti-realistic. I mean, in the 30s and 40s and 50s,

the audience had zero expectation of realism. They're actually offended. by it. Like, if you got shot, you didn't, like, bleed out. That's right. And a kiss was very chaste. Things were just indicated. You were not allowed to open your mouth. They were rules. They had to sleep in double beds when they were married on the screen. You never saw any of those married couples in the same bed. They always had to have double bed. They were very, very prudish

and very strict about that. You know, but those were escapist films. One could make the case that since there's nothing you can really do about the tragic side of life, that maybe in the end the better thing to do is to make the films that are escapist and give people an hour and a half of respite from the terrible anxieties of life. Let them enjoy themselves in an unrealistic manner for an hour and a half and go back. refreshing like a cold drink of water on a hot day and they go back and all the confrontational films the heavy films don't do anything except you know reiterate your the tragedy of life which you already know about i have to tell you like when when i was a 14 year old with other

wise ass new jersey boys and we were your early movies were out and we loved him and what you thought about when you watched movies back then and the people were, you know, in the apartment where the elevator opened right into the apartment and every phone was white and you said people were always drinking but no one never vomited. That's right. Okay, what that was to you, your shit was to us as 14-year-old boys because like we read about your life, you know, eating dinner at Alainz every night and like, all these women. I mean, you were such a ladies' man.

Incredible. That I was, that I was able to have a life and to have been involved with a number of women that were quite beautiful and formidable, gifted and intelligent. You had dated Diane Keaton and both her sisters. I was, yes, I was a, I was an unusually lucky guy when it came to... I've had some wonderful women in my life very, very influential on me.

Oh, I know. You said that, like, at some point, you kind of were under the wing of Mel Brooks. Not under the wing. I got on the Cesar show. I was very... I'm about 10 years younger than Mel, and he was very, very friendly with me

when I was very nice. to me on the show. But you said, the book at least says you looked up to him in the sense that you were just amazed at this small Jew could be... Because he would walk, we'd walk home together

from the show. We lived in the same neighborhood and we'd walk home together after the show and he would regale me with stories about his love life and it was remarkable to me that, you know, these very beautiful women, he captivated them all and he did it

all with his personality, with his brains, with his personality. That's what we were saying about you. Okay, that's what my 14-year-old self was like, this small Jew is getting a lot of tail. So there's got to be something to this comedy thing, you know? Yes. Well, it's interesting that you say that because when they interview women, and I guess men too, actually, but when they interview, I noticed more with women that they, when they ask them what's important to them, that sense of humor comes up almost more than anything else all the time. They're lying.

It's just that when the good-looking guy says anything, they laugh. That could be, you know. No, it's not. They really do like a, you know why they like a sense of humor? Because what women crave more than anything is intimacy. they never feel like you're quite intimate enough. And like there's nothing sexier, nothing wetten the panties more

than like a private joke that you have with a girl because it says, oh, we're just, it's just us. We're the only two that understand this. And humor hits that note for them. Yes, because I can see it with Mel and I can see with myself that I was able to go out with women that I could have only dreamt of

when I was younger and what they saw in me I couldn't figure out. The stuff about your first two marriages is so many funny lines. I mean there's so many L.O.L. lines in here but like when you said when you were Louise Lasser who's like we've all had the Louise Lasser

the one who's toxic in many ways but you're too sexy you can't resist. Right? I mean that's her for you. Yeah. That's a good I mean, Sinatra had Ava Gardner. Yes. That was, you know, his version. We all have that girl where we shoot up Palm Springs and then we make up.

We all did it. But, you know, the line that I loved was, I think, one of your first dates and you said, I was so exhausted when I got home from being charming. I felt like I'd run a marathon. Yes, I was working. Oh, I remember that age when you're just, you are just working hard. Yeah, yeah, you're saying, because you have to sell yourself. The lovely girl, the beautiful girl, the charming girl, the brilliant girl, says, this is what I bring to the table.

Now, what do you have? And you look at him, what do I have? Gee, I'm not, I'm not, you know, Montgomery Cliff and I'm not brilliant and I'm not, you know, so you've got to work and sell yourself and you try very hard to impress the girl. Well, people would think you're brilliant, but we won't have that argument again. I would not want to give you the impression in this conversation that I was some kind of romantic ladies man who scored all the time and was. successful. That was not the situation. Most of the time I struck out. It was the few times that I succeeded. I happened to be lucky. I succeeded with some very lovely women. They were brilliant. They were creative. They were beautiful. And as I say, very influential on my life. I

learned a lot from all of them. Yeah. And this is the kind of thing you talk about in therapy? Are you still in therapy? No, no. I haven't been for a long time. Thank God. You said, I still have the same issues and problems and neuroses I had when I was 17. Yeah, this is true. Then why, I never understand this about therapy. Doesn't that say it's not working? Why keep doing it? Of course, for me, I can only speak for myself because other people have told me that it worked remarkably with them. For me, it worked a little bit. It was a little

helpful, not as much as I hoped. I thought I was going to go in and come out a new man and just in control of everything. But that didn't happen. But I made a tiny bit of progress. And so there was the best I could do.

How could a stranger know you better than you? Aren't you always to some degree like telling another human being things that you know even deeper, but you're not saying... No, but if you just go in, if you go in and talk about your deepest feelings and

you keep talking about them uninhibitedly over and over and over, you yourself start to realize certain things. I never had, you know, a Perry Mason moment, a eureka moment. I mean, I never... I just... But... Or Della would rush into the courtroom with new evidence about your psyche? No, I did that.

And, you know, I never wept. I never broke down. Right. You know, but gradually, I mean, even as phlegmatic a person as me. Were you funny in therapy? I bet you the therapist you had, what a lucky job to get entertained by you twice a week. One of them said to me, I only had a few. One of them said to me, I thought it was going to be so interesting doing therapy with you.

But it's like, you know, with an accountant or a businessman. Because we're, yeah. You know, yeah, I was, I'm not exciting in person. I'm not, you know, I'm not scintillating or, you know, I'm okay, pleasant. I think, you know. Okay. I think you have, I always thought you had what I call New York syndrome, which is like people who just can't be happy unless they're a little unhappy. Like your thing with, you're obsessed with the universe ending, that you must know that's so crazy.

Like what is, is the universe expanding or is it, why is it going to end? Something with the universe. It's going to end. It's coming apart. It's coming apart. Flying apart. But not like by Friday. Very, very fast speed, increasing speed.

I know, okay, so it's coming apart. But not for millions of years. You do see how crazy it is to worry about something. It's not going to happen for millions. Well, but the overall theme is, I mean, I will be, I will come apart long before the universe. I mean, you know, I'm, at the end of this year, in December, I'd be 90. I know. And I plan on dying in the next few years.

AI could stop that. Would you live forever if AI let you? You mean, what would they do? insert a little mechanism in my head, and I would never be experiencing me. I don't have the blueprints, but AI is doing amazing things. And, no, I mean, keep you, just reverse the deterioration of cell damage, which is what kills us. I mean, it's not unreasonable that they could come up with something where you could literally be immortal.

Yeah, yes, but right now they have nothing, and I'm 90. But I must tell you that, like, there are some people who are, like, unrecognizable from 29 to 89. Like, you look at a picture, like, sometimes they capture, like, a guy who was a prison guard at a concentration camp, you know, and they show a picture of you when he was, like, 25 as the guard at Treblinka. Right. And then now he's been an auto worker for 50 years in Ohio, and he's, you know, what he's, and he's like, you know, and he's like, I wasn't this guy. and you kind of know he was but you look at the pictures like

he just looks so different you look exactly like Woody Allen I mean obviously older but like completely recognizable well yeah I look recognizable but that can change overnight you know yes it can suddenly

you hit that number and then I come in here you know with osteoporosis and shaking I feel like you're a hypochondriac who actually is never sick I've been very lucky I've been lucky

my parents had longevity right you know and so and I've been blessed so far so far without but you know I've spoken to people who I'm saying you know it's remarkable you're 95 years old and you look so great

you're so vigorous and everything is great and you know next year they're dead yeah look I'm in I'm about to be 70, which I'm sure to you was like, oh, if I was only 70. 70 is a plet? Would be a plet?

Exactly. And I know, I feel the hot breath of, you know, who with the scythe, you know, you can't not. You feel, even though we feel fine right now, we know the thing is chasing us in a way it wasn't chasing us when we were third. It's closer to us. Yeah, it's coming up. But again, we don't know with AI and things like that. And, I mean, does... Yeah, I don't put no trace in it for...

I still think that I'm 90. Yes. I'm going to be dead soon. And the AI, you know, what can they do? They can only, you know, put metal, you know, mechanical things in your head or your heart. And we don't know what AI can do. That's the whole point is that they're smarter than us by now. We don't know what.

First of all, they're plotting against this. You know this, right? I mean, the robots are going to take over. But they also might keep us alive. Or they might kill all of us because we misgendered somebody. I don't think they're going to keep us alive. I mean, I don't think necessarily you're going to kill us, but I don't think you're ever going to get to that.

I mean, they can increase longevity with advanced medical, you know, knowledge. But it doesn't look good. There's no way out of this. Now that you're in California, Can't thank you enough for coming here. Get some sun. I know you hate the sun. You know we're solar creatures.

We need sun. I hate the sun. But I'm telling you, this is science. We already know. We don't even need AI to know this. We need sun. We're solar people. We need it to convert vitamin D.

A little of it, yeah. But basically, it's carcinogenic. It's not basically. It's carcinogenic when there's Too much of it, yes, it can be. And it's unpleasant. How can sunlight be unpleasant? It's like the ultimate...

It's hot and ugly. I know, but it's like the ultimate metaphor in song and poetry for happy and good. Like the sun came out. It's a metaphor for... I don't see it that way. When I get up in the morning and get in the blinds, if it's a gray misty day in Manhattan, it's beautiful. And if it's sunny and glaring, it's not so nice.

I can't get used to it. Well, I mean, we see those things kind of differently. Can I say that I wrote a novel? Yeah. Can I, because I wrote a book that will come out in September. This is a memoir, and it's nonfiction. It's your life. It's my life.

It's fantastic. Such as it is. You're such a great prose stylist. I mean, besides being L-O-L-L. throughout the book and like just being so honest it's you're just a great writer as far as like well you're very nice to say that writing is just a series of sentences and and sentences can be good and they can be bad i know they say if they put a monkey in front of a typewriter for long enough he'd come out with shakespeare that's bullshit he never would but the rest of us are choosing from

the 400,000 or so words in the english language and you choose great ones well Well, thank you. It's true. I decided finally to write a work of fiction, and I wrote a novel. The title is, It's at a moment, called What's With Baum? Like What's with Woody? What's With Bowdo? And it comes out in September of this year, and I have no idea how people will respond to it.

I'm hoping it will entertain them but I don't know I had fun writing it does not mean for a second anyone will have fun reading it No I find your writing always I mean you've written a lot of stuff I mean I remember the Without Feathers

book that I had when I was a kid Without Feathers Yeah New Yorker accumulation Yes I mean and I feel like you In your writing You are completely precise a perfectionist in a way that by your own admission you are not in filmmaking. I mean, you're the first one to say

like when it's 5 o'clock if I could make the movie better with another take of that shot but the nick game is starting. You go to the nick game. Yes, I'm not a perfectionist. I don't have the dedication that my peers and colleagues have. If you look at these other filmmakers that I came along with, Coppola and Scorsesey and Spielberg and they're perfectionists and they're great. I am not a perfectionist.

I'm careless. But when you write a book, it's much easier to be a perfectionist because, you know, you're home and it's not that much... But that's your style. Like, yes, there is something to be said, a lot to be said for the way those filmmakers do what they do, and their perfectionism is noted and appreciated. But you just have a different style, which people have come to expect in a Woody Allen movie. You say it yourself.

I don't do coverage. You did that movie where you lent yourself out as an actor to Paul Mazzarski? Yes. What's the, is it the... Scenes from the Moll. Oh, the Moll movie with Bet Midler. Now, I didn't see it, but I did it strictly because...

I saw it. It was okay. I had respect for Miserski, so I did it. But again, I remember you saying like, This guy works not like I do. He rehearses, and this is how most directors work. They rehearse, they have a storyboard, they plan things. They care if the actors say the words on the page, you don't do any of that. And that's your style, and it's fine because, like, a lot of show business is people wasting time and money doing shit that nobody would notice.

I think what you're saying is true. a lot of, there's a lot of waste and a lot of time waste. You know, I'm careless about that. I don't care about it. Mizzerski, a very fine director, was meticulous, and he plotted things out and put tape on the floor, and we went to the locations first, and that made him comfortable,

and he was able to do very nice movies when he worked. But I don't have the patience. I don't have the concentration. to do it. I'm not, I was not a good student. I can't concentrate. I didn't like homework. I didn't like homework from when I, in all the years I made films, I never took a sheet home with me. What do you call it? A what? Call sheet. I never took a call sheet home with me. I never got one. I never knew what I was shooting. Well, you are always on the call sheet. You're the director. I'm the director and I don't care what I'm shooting the night before. It's whether you were on the sheet as an actor.

See, to me, there's two kinds of Woody Allen movies, and they're both can be great. I mean, but the ones you're in are just different, you know? Like, you're just a charismatic person. It's impossible to explain. Like, your appeal is so universal all over the world, and yet what you're doing often is so idiosyncratic, you know, like so, you know, you once, I think, did an Albert Shanker joke in one of your...

I did, yes. It didn't matter to me that people won't know who Albert Chanka was. They get some things by osmosis. They get up, yes. Yeah. And so, like, yeah, when you're in the movie, I mean, you know, do I like a lot, Vicky Christina, yes, and Match Point, and I love Midnight in Paris. But, like, I like deconstructing Harry more because you're Harry, you know,

because it's just a different kind of movie. Hey, what's up? This is Joe from Pass Gas Podcast. by Donut Media. We're an automotive history podcast, but you don't have to be a car person to enjoy our show. We tell the craziest stories like the first race across America. It was basically 45 days of hell, or how the humble caravan saved Dodge and allowed them to make the viper. We've been doing this podcast for over five years now, and there are still so many crazy stories, it amazes me. It's basically like hanging out in the garage, chopping it up with your friends, hanging out,

good vibes. So check out pass gas wherever you get your podcasts. You know, it's interesting. The, you know, one thing that I remember that you would not agree with me on for sure was I know you took issue with my adoration of Bob Hope. No, no, not as a, not in the way, no, I don't know who told you that. I saw you. I mean, I saw you on television and I don't remember the quotes. But you seem to feel that it was hard for you to understand the level of adoration I had for him. But you know what that is?

That's because I saw my parents who are World War II veterans, both of them. My father was in Patton's Army, my mother was an Army nurse. They met up over there. In the era when Bob Hope was every GI's hero. And I watched them become so disillusioned when he became a right-wing. cheap, phoned-in-in, whore-mongering douchebag. Okay. So I'm not that far off that you have criticism about them, right?

No, but he was great when you loved him, and I can totally separate the artist from the schmuck. I mean, I will listen to an R. Kelly record tonight if I want to. I don't care. And yes, he was great in those early movies, but he did become this. this asshole who would never do a second take. I remember when his specials would come on and my mother used to be, you know, Bill, his monologue is starting.

You know, they would gather around the TV. This is the World War II guy. And that at some point he was just stumbling through the cue cards. And I remember working with him once on something. And I heard this among the people would never do a second take. Even when you stumble over a line or something.

And he'd be, I mean, more runway jokes. He just became something different, and I saw that hurt my parents. So I did have a little bit of venom for him. That's interesting. Because I agree with you that his later work was not comparable to some of those movies. But if you see the great lover, some of those pictures, he's amazing. I love the road movies. I love Bob Hope as a coward, and I know you were doing Bob Hope as a.

I did them all the time. Yeah, and that's good. You steal from the best. You know, I used to do, when I, before I go out on the date with a girl, I wasn't thinking, gee, I'm going to be Alan Laird or Gary Cooper. I'm going to be Bob Hope. Right. And I, that's who I was. That was my idol.

And you can see him, me doing them in movies sometimes shamelessly. It's really, I mean, I'm really putting on his suit. as Jack Rawlins would say. When you're being arrested for backing out badly in any hall and you're saying to the cop, this is not necessary. I don't mean to be facetious or did it. That's Bob Hope through Woody Allen. And of course, it's unrecognizable to most people.

That's the great thing about being a bad impressionist. When you steal, nobody even knows. Nobody knows that you're stealing, yeah. But I stole from him. I did a little documentary film honoring him for Lincoln Center ones, Dick Cabot and I put together a thing. And I did, I put in a scene next to his deliberately to show the audience how I was stealing from him. And it was a scene from my movie Love and Death, and I put it next to one of his scenes. And you could see it there because I highlighted it and you could see the, you know, the same.

You know, he was just a great, great influence on me, both in life, before I go out for an evening with a young woman, I would put on, and of course I was never myself, you know, what they must have been thinking, who this idiot is that I'm out with tonight, who's cracking these one-liner jokes constantly. But it's better when someone gets to, I mean, he'd lived to 97, as I recall. You did, yeah. It's better when someone in their later years doesn't become something that makes you go, you didn't, despite what the idiots who witch hunted, you want to make people believe, you didn't. You're the same guy. You didn't become Bob Holm.

I'm hoping in the second half of my life, I live up to that. You know, Groucho was a guy who aged and didn't lose his touch. Okay, Groucho. Let me ask you this. If you think you've never made a great movie, how come all your idols, the people you idolized, were your fans? I'm talking about Groucho Marx, S.J. Perlman, Tennessee Williams, Phelini, Bergman, all these people who are your idols, they all were your fans.

It's in the book. Yes. How could you not make a great movie if they all liked you that much? They were fans, but I think if we got down to specifics with them, they would say, yes, I liked them. very good. He did this and this. But no, I wouldn't say any movie he made equaled

City Lights or Corasawa's movies or Bergman's movies or It has to be right at the tippy, tippy top of the movies that I may never see. I'm going to watch them. I'm going to watch them. That's the big surprise with this conversation to me that you

because you would enjoy them. you would be meaningful to you in terms of content and intellect and you would love the actual let's just say i saved it for my 70s i saved something in my life isn't it good because all yes you can look yeah you'll look forward to them yes you can look forward to those movies i will definitely look for i mean i wish i could see i know i know you probably will never going to appear in a number movie. You're certainly too old to play the ingenue. Yeah, that was the

director. When I stopped being young enough to put the love interest. Well, men get a bigger break on that than women. I mean, how old were you when you made Deconstructing Harry? I don't know. I don't know how old I was.

Okay, but it was not something that made people go, oh, that's ridiculous. You didn't throw up. You didn't throw up. And what more greater benchmark can we have than that for filmmaking? You didn't throw up. Yeah, that's the quote we use for the picture to sell it. But I love that one because it's dirty. Like you say fuck and cunt.

And I never saw you do that before so much. Did I? Was I dirty? I loved it. It was very, not very, but like, no, but yeah, that character said some dirty things. Yeah, I'm surprised because I was always very, very. about that. That's why I loved it, because you weren't. I also had those jump cuts.

Remember that? Deconstructing Harry? I don't remember the picture, no. I mean, I remember some things in it, but I don't remember. You don't remember doing those jump cuts, where it's like... I don't, because I've done jump cuts in some movies. Oh. No, I don't, I don't remember.

Well, anyway... I was always very clean in my movies. my movies, and not because of any prudish impulses, but I always felt it was, you know, unless you needed to do something what they called dirty, it wasn't dirty, but that's how they refer to it, that you didn't need it. I never showed too much violence in my movies. I love violence. I mean, in Bonnie and Clyde, I think it's brilliant, but it's all those things are used so to substitute

for good drama. People think it's very dramatic or it's very funny or outrageous because it's dirty or it's... Yeah, no, you're not, I mean, you are the farthest thing from dirty. When I read that Ed Sullivan and Jack

Parr both accused you of being dirty, I thought Yes, yes, they did. For what? What? What, it was... Well, in those days, you know, What was it? What was it that got their panties in a bunch? The slightest kind of sexual reference, mild, so mild it would be ridiculous. You wouldn't consider it dirty at all.

But they were, you know, they were prudish about their shows and their audiences. But you could still be in a movie, just not the love interest, unless the woman's 80. Yeah, it's hard to be in. You know, I don't want to do a geyser movie, a geyser movie. No, but like, no, but what you could do is just not be the lead character. That's almost better. You know, just be an older, a 90-year-old person who's in the story. Because we like it when you're in the movie.

Yeah. And you look the same. But I like to get the girl. I like to sit opposite the girl over candlelight. Well, you can't. No, I can't. I know. I can't. I can't. I know. You can't. You have to come to terms with, I mean, mortality. I mean, does it, you ever like, I mean, you seem to have this pessimistic view that I'm going to die and blah, blah, blah, which I guess. It's not so pessimistic. You know, it's probably going to happen. Okay. It's probably going to happen. But, I mean, does that give you any second thoughts? Do you ever head your bets about, no, I don't know if you call yourself an atheist. I think we're both very much on this.

same page with that. I proudly say the word, but I don't know if you do, but we based, mostly, I mean, you've said in the book, religion's a hustle, you think God is a crass bungler. This sounds exactly like what I think. But does it make you ever go, whoa, maybe I should like start believing just in last minute, you know. No, I think you either have that gift or you don't. I don't. Right. So I couldn't. But, you know, I always envy people who actually believe in God. It's a great, great thing, the gift. People who put their head on the pillow at night and say,

I know that if I die in my sleep, I'll go to a better place. And believe it, not because they're not doing it for any other reason. I was not blessed with that, no. I mean, when you think about the changes just from one generation, I mean, what year was your father born? 1900. My father was born in 1921. We're 20 years apart, about the same thing.

I mean, that's just one generation. We have, I mean, just the smart phone, forget about AI. If they rip and winkle their way back to life, your father or my father, coming from a time, your father before radio. Radio. Well, I mean, it's just mind-boggling how much change takes place in a single generation. Really does. Yeah, you know, if you think back, if I think back to my grandfather, I mean, I think back to Lincoln, you know. Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln. Same guy, right? This is a, there was a Phil Lincoln gay. No, I'm thinking of Abraham. Yeah, no, I know. And, yeah. But your father, interesting the way you write about him, you know, one of the funniest things, the gag and radio days that killed me was,

you know, your father was kind of a wily, odysseous kind of character, right? Yeah, he was shifting, shifty. And shifty, right. And so the kid, you know, is racking up at the table, and the mother's always like, stop it, your father worked so hard. And the kid keeps saying, at what? That's right. You never knew in my family. Okay, I accept he worked on doing what?

Well, you knew your father's job, right? I did, yes. You did. You had a stable home. I did. I was very lucky. Well, you did too. It was stable. It was very loving. I have no excuses. I had loving parents and friends and it was nice to me. And I grew up misanthropic and... But they were married depressed. 70 years.

My parents. Yeah. I mean, that's as long as I've been alive. Out of spite. What? Out of spite. You know. That's the one.

That's a great line. Out of spite. Yeah. They stayed together. But I had a, you know, a very nice childhood. Oh, my relatives loved me. Yeah. Everything was great.

I should have been a very happy, sweet, nice, good-natured person. But I turned out to be misanthropic, neurotic, hypochondriacal, depressed. I don't know why. But not bad to other humans. No, no one. Okay. I mean, a misanthrope. It doesn't trust them, doesn't like them.

But I'm not bad to them. I'm not cruel or anything. I'm nice to people. people. But I, you know, I don't like them. I don't. Right. You say in the book, you don't like meeting new people. No, I don't. And you don't like to be wherever you are. Right. I'm so welcome. Chronically unhappy. Chronically dissatisfied. You must be miserable right now. Chronically unhappy. You know. Yeah. New Yorker syndrome. I wonder. Maybe it is. Maybe, you know, someone's standing outside looking at New York would say, you know, there's millions of people that live here

and a good portion of them have that syndrome. But you also have wondrous things in your life. I mean, okay, your parents had a marriage that was out of spite. But the way you describe your marriage, completely idyllic. It is. It's great. I looked out completely. Okay.

I mean, you say, you know, you eat every meal together. Yeah. I mean, and this has been going on for 30 years. We've been married for about 30 years, yeah. I mean, that's, it's just, it's a crazy world. It is amazing, though, the way the media gets stuff very often not just wrong, but like diametrically wrong. Like, and I know from things they've written about me, when you read about yourself, it's, what you say to yourself is, wait, this is the one subject I know really well, me. I know what I said

I know what I do So like if I'm reading about me And it has no relation to reality How can I trust what you're saying about Anything Iran Plastics fucking I've asked that question at times In show business

That I would see things That his movie is based on this Or he's done He's doing a book about This and it's completely untrue, and I think to myself, okay, these are trivial things. I'm not doing a movie about that. I didn't get the idea for this movie from that.

So what must be going on in a, you know, when they talk about wars and taxes and the government? And I asked the journalist that once, and he said, well, it's different. They're not as scrupulous on the show business stories. He said, when it comes to the serious things, they are more accurate than they do try harder. When it comes to the show business stories, they don't have the same level of...

I'm not sure I have your confidence in that part of it either. I mean, you're a lot calmer than I would be if I had been in your situation with... I mean, you say you're disillusioned with liberals. I'll bet, but... You know, like the last 10 pages, you kind of finally ride. It's awesome.

You kind of, but even then, you know, it's done in such a particular and professional way. It never gets nasty. It just sticks to what you can prove, basically. Yeah, I'm not nasty by nature. No, but you, but I could, but the disillusion, I mean, look, you did a movie. You, again, lent yourself out as an actor, which you don't do a lot, for the black, I mean, the front? Yeah.

Okay. Well, you must have, I know you did, notice the sort of recapitulation of the witch hunt. I mean, obviously that was about the witch hunting communist to then what happened to you? And, I mean, I'm hardly been the first one to notice that, you know, the kind of moralizing that we used to hate from the right, you know, the Jerry Falwells of the world. And then it came from the left. I mean, I've had it happen to me on a much lesser scale than you. but it is, I find it a bitter pill from... It comes from both sides.

It does. It comes from the right and the left. Mostly what happened, you came from the left. You were a victim of overexcesses of the Me Too movement and wokeness and a lot of inconsistencies there, but yeah, I mean... But I was lucky because, you know, that could be ruinous depending. I was, when everything happened, I was much older. I had done 45 movies already. I was, I had made enough money so I could retire for life comfortably.

I, you know, I was thinking even, I only want to make a few more movies than I would like to start to write books and plays. And so it happened to me at a time when it was no problem. is that it happened when I was 25 or 30. The first wave of it happened in 1993, when you were first with Sunyi. That was a giant scandal. But, you know, what people forget maybe

is that for years after that, you were golden. Yeah, yeah, I didn't have any real practical problems from it. Any A-list star, if they got a call, Woody Allen wants you in his movie they would all do it for very little money you know it was just a super prestigious thing

that then went to the I mean you have a great line about like it became the thing to do not to work with me the way you know suddenly people wanted kale yes but it amused me because it didn't

it didn't you know it didn't have any practice as a practical thing, it didn't, it was not hurtful to me. Oh, come on. Yes, it was. I mean, it should. No, no, it wasn't. As I'm talking about as a practical matter, you know, I was, as I say, it was in my 80s

and I had made so many movies and I, you know, it didn't matter. It didn't hurt me. If I was 30 or 40, it would have been. career ending. But disillusionment, my career was, you know. Disillusionment is disillusionment at any age. I mean, you must, I know you said in the book, you were disillusioned at the justice system. I thought that was fascinating. You said like, that's different. I was so naive. I thought there was a penalty for perjury. Yeah, you're shocked because most people don't find themselves in a situation in a courtroom. And you're in a courtroom and people are, are perjuring themselves,

one after the other, and you think, well, isn't this against the law? But you find out that it isn't exactly what you think. Yes, it's against the law technically, but nobody does anything about it. It was a very interesting. I found the whole thing an interesting and amusing experience in many ways, and only because I had already, as I said, done so many movies and had accumulated enough personal financial resources so that, you know, I wasn't hurt by it.

But if I was 40 or 50 or 30 or something, it would have been very, very painful. But at the point that it happened, it just wasn't. And I'm not nasty. I mean, I remember once I got a DUI, which is not nearly what you went through. But, you know, they make it go through a 14-week program and go to AA meetings and, like, you are entrapped into the criminal justice system,

again, at a very low level. But even at that level, I was like, whoa, this is awful. I mean, first of all, there's a lot of people who love it that they just have complete power over you and whatever you do because now you're in the system, this system. It gives you a great insight. into what it must be like, you know, for black Americans who were at the shitty end of the justice system for their whole existence? Yes, but I was lucky because I'm saying it, but it gives you an insight.

When you see the justice system up close, it's sobering. Right, but fortunately, I was never really in the system because I was the charge. Of course you were. There were two police investigations. Yes, but I was. never charged with anything. I was found... I know, but that would make me... I was found and nothing ever happened in both investigations.

So I never really suffered as much as you might think. But I will say it was fortunate, it came at a fortunate time in my life because I didn't have to worry about money and I didn't have to worry about making films. I made them and I, you know...

Well, you were a much young, when those two police investigations were going on, I would be shitting in my pants if the police were investigating me. Not if you're, you don't, if you're innocent. Yeah, except innocent people sometimes don't get, I mean, humans are making these judgment calls, and we know what we think of humans.

I don't think much of humans, but I do have great, great faith in evidence. So I never, I never, for a second, had a bad moment because I felt it was kind of amusing to turn on the television set and see people talking about it when I knew what the situation was. So you have no bitterness toward the people who renounced you. I mean, there are some people who defended you like Scarlett Johansson and, well, me, but I'm not in movies, Alec Baldwin, all your ex-lovers,

Diane Keenan. These are people that just made a mistake. Who? I'm not criticizing them. The renouncers? They think or thought, whatever the occasion was, that they were doing the right thing, but they were not. No, they didn't.

They're cowards. Are you kidding? Timothy Shalemite, look, he's a great actor. I'm not trying to pick a fight with him, not that he would care. But, you know, I saw him on his campaign for the Dylan movie, which he was incredible in, but this

boy wants an Oscar more than his next breath. He'd throw his mother under the bus, okay? So, I can't, like, quite sit back as well as you can with this equanimity and say, oh, that, or Greta Gerwig who renounced you and, oh, I'm so sorry, I work with him.

Okay, you know, she's a big movie director. They, they are making a mistake. They're, you know, they're not, First of all, I had a good time working with both of them, and they think that they're doing something honorable or helpful, but they're not. They're just, they guessed wrong. They made a wrong decision on that. Someday, maybe they'll realize it.

Maybe it will be clear to them for whatever reason. Maybe it never will be. But that's all that they've done is made a mistake. I mean, but it's just, it's so, they're such sheep. You know, it's like, look, the press loves to anoint people. You were anointed for a long time. You were the most anointed person. I mean, the New York Times was always, I mean, you were the greatest thing ever,

and you were making great movies. The issue was it never resonated with me. I just worked and did my movies, and the marriage was great. And, you know, I mean, it hasn't had a practical, I mean, like, you've made a movie recently. You know. Can we, is that? Well, I've written a novel recently.

People see television more. When you do a movie and it goes right to streaming, who cares? Who cares if you make them go to the movie theater? If they see it in their home, isn't it more important than more? I don't know. I grew up in making movies and they went into movie theaters, and it was a different phenomenon. I'm not happy with them going to screenings. And I just don't, streaming, I'm sorry, it just doesn't interest me that much.

So I don't care, you know, I... But people see it. More people will see it. Yeah, more people see it, but that's not how I wanted to present it. I want to present it in a movie theater on a screen the way I grew up watching movies. And if I can't, I don't think I want to make movies. I want to write novels or plays. Because you think the communal experience of a theater is important?

Yeah, the whole gestalt of the thing, the whole, you know, waiting online and going in with a lot of people and sitting down with 500 people or 400 people and watching it together. And then, yeah, they're not isolated. Everybody isolated watching a movie at home. But you know this is a civilization gone with the wind. Right. I mean, that civilization. Yeah, yeah. And so I'm happy to, you know, I mean, make a movie maybe,

but not thrilled with it. The excitement is gone. So that's why I wrote this novel. It was fun for me to write a novel, and it would be fun for me to write a couple of plays. I have a play that's in Europe that's going to come to the United States. You know, it's more interesting to me to stand in the back of a theater and watched.

Do your kids ever argue with you about stuff like this? Your kids are, like, grown now, right? Yeah, but they're young adults. They're 26. I have two daughters who are 26. Okay. Do they argue with you about stuff like this? Do they, you know, do they, is it the typical dad?

No, no, no. They don't. They don't. I didn't raise them as, you know, show business kids or movie kids. I didn't show them my movies. You know, eventually they caught up with a couple of them. No, they're, you know, no, they don't argue with me.

They argue with me about a lot of things, but not that. Not that. What movies of yours do they like? Don't say it again? What movies of yours do they like? Yeah, I don't know. Really? That didn't come up with your own?

kids? No, because I don't know which ones. They've seen some of my movies, but I don't know which ones they've seen. I've never, you know, I never visited that on them. They had two New York kids. They've gone to school in New York and they've, and they, one works in the art world, the art gallery, and another one works, uh, uh, Emily and Paris. And, you know, but I never, I never pushed them in any way. I have a very, you know, nice, warm, loving relationship with them. And they, they, I never wanted inflict, oh, you got to watch your father's movies. Actually, the only movie I really ever inflicted on them, and it's not an infliction, it's a treat, was the treasure of the Sierra Madre. I want them to see it because I find that to be a great. American movie and I showed that to them and they liked it. Well, I will put that on my list with the bicycle thief.

You never saw that? I may have seen that. Is that Humphrey Bogart? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And Casablanca, do we like that one? You know, I'm not nuts about Casablanca. I mean...

But you wrote the movie that's a parody. I know, but see, people always associate these things with my life. I wrote because I thought I'd get jokes for it. The same way in Manhattan, I thought I'd get jokes with the older guy and the young woman. And I thought and play it against Sam, I would get laughs doing stuff bouncing off Casablanca. But, you know, the lady who used to write for the New York Times wrote a book about Casablanca. She was a critic for the New York Times or a feature writer. And she wrote a book about Casablanca, and she called me.

And I said, you know, I've never really sat through the whole picture. I don't know, and she couldn't believe it. And I, you know, I, what part made you drop off? I know, I lost interest. I've lost interest in it. And I'm a great Humphrey Bogart fan. I mean, I really crazy. Except for his movies?

Except for his movies? No, no, no, no. So, okay, what other bogey movie do you like? Oh, I loved High Sierra and I loved, T. Largo and I loved Tane Mutiny and I just I just and you know there's something really New Yorkie about him

I mean he's really got from New York theater I mean he was that first generation of actors who had come from the theater but most of them failed because they were theater actors and Bogie understood the medium you know yeah he just had it you can see you know you see him in as in scenes i saw him in a scene i can't remember who it was just last week in some movie on turner classic movies and uh the guy with him oh oh it was it was the harder they fall and rod stiger was acting with them

they were nose-to-nose acting and stagher was acting up a storm And Bogot wasn't doing anything, and he was just great. He was just, you know, there was no acting at all. He was just coasting on his personality and talking. And it was just magnetic. I'm just wonderful. The other guy's doing stuff, stuff that nobody in life ever does. Nobody talks like that.

Nobody carries on like that. So your advice to kids getting into the business is, host on your personality? It's do less if I've given one direction more than any other in my whole life to actors, it's do less. So when you did decide to have a surrogate, shall we call that, play you? Because there are parts you could have played. Oh, yeah, sure.

And you chose John Cusack or you chose Kenneth Branow or you chose Mia. why? Why? Why did you some of the times say, I'm going to do it, and then some of the time say I'm going to have a surrogate deliver this baby? I don't think I ever had a surrogate when I could have done it. I mean, I don't think I could have I don't think I could have played, you know,

these are great actors you're talking about. Cusack's wonderful, and Kenneth Browner's wonderful. and they were much younger than me. I couldn't have... If I could have done it, I would have done it. I always would do the part that I could do. But I aged out of it. You know, I just...

When I started to realize that I was not going to be the love interest anymore, and I started to think... You're the love interest in your life. with all the craziness and the Kafka-esque nonsense you went through. And I don't defend you because I'm a fan, although I plainly am. Although you've also made some turkeys, that's true. But you could be the worst filmmaker.

I defend you because I don't like witch hunts. They're bad for society. They're bad for people. They're wrong. They're immoral. That's why I do it. Not because I'm a fan. I'm sure.

You know, you're... Your persona is much more socially engaged, much more politically engaged, so an issue, you would engage the issue on the merits of the issue. Yes, and I see a connection between a lot of where the left went that I did not like in recent years and this kind of case, this kind of moralizing, this kind of bullshit, standing apart from the facts, just wanting to look like, where are the good people? and we shun this person and this person is canceled and that kind of stuff. I don't like it in any of its dimensions. Look, I always say about these cases, if you're not in the room, just don't say to me, I know. You don't know. I don't know about you.

Nobody knows except you. I would just say that of all those kind of cases, the preponderance of evidence on the one side makes it just very unlikely that you were guilty of this. It just none of it makes sense. So I want to make one other point on what you were saying a moment ago. There's a difference between the Me Too movement and cancel culture. I mean, the Me Too movement, for whatever value it had in terms of advancing women's rights is a valuable thing.

Cancel culture is a totally different phenomenon. It may be related to it and may have been utilized by it or by various. It's been utilized by various. Cancell culture is a pernicious thing. And, you know, it's quite a bad thing. But in terms of, I always feel, if you're going to be canceled by a culture, this is the culture to be canceled by. Yes. You know, I mean, you, this is not a culture that.

to be proud of. Right. But there is a big difference. The Me Too movement may have helped women in many ways, and that's to the good. To the good. But the concept of canceling people is not a good. But, I mean, it went too far.

It's not a good thing in any area. Forget about women or, you know, in terms of politics, in terms of, you know, the McCarthy, cancellation is a, it's just not a way to deal with issues. It doesn't serve any purpose. But all of this has not turned you into a Trumper. Into a problem? Trumper.

A Trump? No, I'm not a Trump. I'm one of the few people who can say he directed Trump. I directed Trump in a movie. No. Celebrity? In celebrity. And he was, you know, he was a pleasure to work with and a very good act.

He was very polite. How dare you? And hit his mark and did everything correctly and had a real flair for show business. If you think you were canceled before. I could direct him now. Oh. If he would let me direct him now that he's president, I think I could do wonders. but he was very easy to work with

and he's different in person and when you say that people who are just purely emotional get very upset even though it's just the truth we're just saying the truth I am a Democrat I voted for Kamala Harris

and I and I you know take issue with him you know on 90 55% of the things, maybe 99%, but as an actor, as a, as, you know, he was, he was very good. He was very convincing and very, you know, he has a charismatic quality as an actor, and I'm surprised he wanted to go into politics is nothing but headaches and critical decisions. and agony and this was a guy I used to see at the Nick games and he liked to play golf and he liked to judge beauty contests and he liked to do things that were enjoyable and relaxing and why anyone would want to suddenly have to deal with the issues of politics is beyond me but apparently he doesn't mind but you don't think that going into politics is the ultimate acting job I mean that's the whole point about him being so different off stage. They got mad at me for saying this, is that it's an acting

job, and they all do it to a degree. He just took it to a, like with everything with him, to the nth degree. But it is the ultimate acting job being the press. But that doesn't bother me. They all have to put on a certain patina for the public and all that. I disagree with many I would say almost almost all, not all, but almost all of his politics, of his policies. But in terms, I can only judge, you know, what I know from directing him in the film. And he was, you know, and he was pleasant to work with and very professional, very polite everyone and very, you know, but as I say, I would like to erect him now, that he's president and have him, let me make the decisions. But that's not going to happen.

I'll make a call. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming here to California, even though we have son, horrible, terrible, wicked son. Yeah, the son doesn't, well, it does kill me, actually, sooner or later. It won't. It will actually help you if you just get a little sun. I don't need that much vitamin. you do. You absolutely do need vitamin D.

Then I take it in a supplement, a little pill. I'll pop it in my orange juice. Yeah, I don't think that can make up for all of what the sun itself has to do. The sun converts the vitamin D. So it matter how much you take, it has to be converted. I mean, this is the way it was designed by Jesus, Woody. And this is the world we live in. I didn't make it. I'm just trying to tell you, a little son. let's do a little tanning tomorrow stay a day later we'll go out we'll do a little tanning and then we'll go to palm springs and pick up some girls like bob holt put on the lotion and lay back in the chair all right well thank you you're a treasure for a reason like i say and the book

is out in paperback right uh propelle of nothing isn't that why we're here because it must be No, we were here because I have a novel coming out. A novel? A novel coming out in September called Wattsworth Bowne. And I was really here to promote the novel, but we never got to it. Let's get to it. No, no, no, no. I forced it in clumsily, but that's okay because it's not going to sell anyhow.

So why waste your time? I'm going to read it. No, it'll sell. You're Woody Allen. You can sell it. A book. You've been very, very, very... He rose, his muscles playing.