The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Woody Allen

Episode Date: January 1, 2021

Lawrence joins Academy Award-winning filmmaker Woody Allen at his screening room in New York City where Allen shares insights on his career, philosophy, education, politics and the struggle to find meaning in the universe.  Allen’s latest memoir, Apropos of Nothing, is available now. See the commercial-free, full HD videos of all episodes at www.patreon.com/originspodcast immediately upon their release.  The Origins Podcast is now a part of The Origins Project Foundation.  For more information, visit originsprojectfoundation.org . Twitter: @TheOriginsPod Instagram: @TheOriginsPod Facebook: @TheOriginsPod Website: https://theoriginspodcast.com Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

The Origins Podcast is now a part of the Origins Project Foundation. Please consider supporting the podcast and the foundation by going to www.orgensprojectfoundation.org. Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. This week's episode is incredibly exciting for me because we had the chance to spend two hours with one of the world's most interesting artists, film directors, writers, and of course humorous in the last century. Woody Allen. We were extremely fortunate that Woody Allen agreed to sit with us for a long time to discuss his views on the world, his films, and his thoughts about things from philosophy to science. I realize that for some people, this conversation itself will be controversial, the very fact that we're airing a conversation with Woody Allen.

For those people, I would say, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Ricky Gervais earlier at the beginning of our podcast, where he said that people that get angry, that conversations happen that they don't want to hear, are like people who go downtown and see a sign saying guitar lessons for sale outside a door and say, I don't need any damn guitar lessons. Well, if you don't want a guitar lesson, don't go in. If this podcast, for any reason, upsets you, don't listen to it. But if you do listen to it, I think you'll be fascinated.

And I am particularly thankful that Willie Allen trusted me and our crew to come in earlier this year before the pandemic and have a long conversation in his studio in New York City. And I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did when we had the conversation. With no further ado, Woody Allen. Well, Woody, thanks so much for agreeing to do this. It's a great pleasure to be able to talk to you as well. I'm happy to. Yeah, well, we'll see how you feel about that after this is over.

There's so many things to want to talk to you about. But what I want to be, since this is kind of an origins podcast, I wanted to start with your origins. You didn't like school. Did not, no. Yeah. And I read that you were ejected early. Is that really true? Were you kicked out? Yes. And now, I want to be fair. School didn't like me equals enthusiasm. Sure. You know, it's not that I was a wonderful student and I had to stay in for school. We didn't like each other. Okay. I went to a public school and then high school. Didn't like public school, didn't like high school. And then to keep my parents from jumping off the roof, I went to college for a very short time.

In my freshman year, I took just a drop-dead easy course. It was a motion picture production major. Oh, really? And I only took it. Not that I was interested in making movies at that point in my life. I only took it because I figured the curriculum, you go to the movies. That's what you do. And you talk about them.

So I like going to the movies. And I figured it was a goof-off course. And I'd be able to, you know, I wasn't serious. I had no thoughts in those days of being a movie director at all. Wow. I just wanted to avoid schoolwork. Now, I was, let me tell you how terrible a student I was. Okay.

In high school, midwit high school, I had two years. years of Spanish. Two years of Spanish. When I went to NYU, I conned them into letting me take Spanish freshmen as though I had never had any Spanish at all. And I failed it. Now, I was sitting in a classroom with, you know, 20 other kids, whatever, and they had no Spanish at all. I had two years of Spanish, but I was the one that failed. But you made it through those. I was. I was. I was, I was not a good student. Also, at that stage of my life, I was trying to learn to play the drums, because I was very interested in jazz music. And there would be certain exercises with the foot pedal that you had to practice. So I would sit in class, and the teacher would be lecturing about Beowulf or something. And I'd be doing paradigils and things with my feet. And I was, one, one, two, one, one, two, one, two, one, so I wasn't paying attention. I learned nothing.

In addition to that, I lived in Brooklyn, and NYU, where I went, was on 8th Street. You know, he got off at 8th Street on the train. I'd take the train to 8th Street. The doors would open, and I'd sit there for a minute, and I'd think, do I want to go? Do I not want to go? Should I go to the Shun? And I'd tergivisate for just enough time. for the doors to close.

And then I'd go up to Broadway on 42nd Street and hang out in the automata, the paramount. And so between playing hooky and my poor scholastic aptitude and their hostility toward me

and my indifference toward them, the atmosphere was not conducive towards being educated. They came to that conclusion before I did. Before you did, you do it. They came to it on their own, and they got me into a room with a conclave of deans.

Now, a conclave of deans is not like an exhalation of locks. I mean, it's like it's a group of like four drips that sit around a table, and they're telling you in no uncertain terms why you're out. And, you know, I had no real argument with them because what could I say? my marks were poor, I didn't attend a lot. When I did attend, I was practicing my foot pedal on the drums. So, you know, they threw me out. And as well they should have. Did your drumming get better as a result of the class?

No, no, I gave up the drums after a while. Yeah, but you were interested in music then. You were always interested in music, though. You were always interested. From teenage on, yes. I was always interested in playing. music. So your parents wanted to go to college. Like my Jewish parents, my mother wanted me

be a doctor. I don't know what. Did your mother, did your mother, father have any, did they want you to be? Yeah, all the kids in the neighborhood that I went to school with were becoming doctors and lawyers and accountants and architects and and professors in school. I mean, all had noble ambitions. I didn't. I had sleazy underworld ambitions. I wanted to be a gambler,

a car cheat. a con man, anything so I would not have to, you know, work, a punch of time clock, or sit in an office, or I would have been, you know, if I didn't have the ability to write comedy, which is pure luck, it has nothing to do with any achievement in mine or work on. It's pure luck. It's like hitting the megaball or something. I would be probably doing some menial kind of job. I would be delivering for the florist or messenger service or something.

Because I wouldn't want a job in an office. I wouldn't want to be sitting behind a desk all day. And I don't want to say to people, you know, you'll get a lot of good wear out of the shoe, you know. I just didn't want to do that. Or open wide. You know, I didn't want any of those jobs. So I would have probably done a job that let me be out in the street.

And there's very few jobs for a totally unskilled, uneducated, irresponsible person. And I would have been, you know, I guess a messenger or something. In some extent, that's why I became an academic, too. It's kind of a non-working job. Non-working, yeah. I've never worked a day in my life. I mean, and. But it's pure luck.

It's just a blessing. Yeah, there's a lot of luck. I think there's a lot of effort. But I wanted to know why, because you look, I mean, I'm heading towards the fact that you are incredibly culture. You can't find the word. Yeah, I can't find the word. But the word doesn't quite exist. Exactly.

It doesn't quite exist. I'm not much. But cultured but knowledgeable, erudite, you know, literature, music, philosophy, art. in terms of ideas, you're fascinated with ideas, but somehow you got turned off school. Now, I know that I've been reading, and it seemed to me part of the reason may be you had miserable teachers. I had miserable, yes. But I was also miserable. I don't mean to, you know, blame it all on them.

They were terrible. You know, the education system is not good. The education system, certainly when I grew up, I don't know if it's changed, but the burden of education was all, on the student. I'm just saying I had no interest. I was not a reader as a kid. Yeah. You know, I only, only, only read comic books.

That was it. Just comic books. And I meant, I mean, to a, I don't know, I would say 16 years old, maybe 17. You just read, what comic books, by the way, do you? I read all the standard comic books, Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman,

and the Green Lantern, all that stuff. And I read with great pleasure, Walt Disney and Little Lulu and, you know, the Mighty Mouse. I just loved it all. And when you see a 15-year-old kid or 16-year-old kid and he's eating lunch and the comic book is hoping to, you know, Woody Woodpecker or something, you know, you think, gee, what is it with this kid? So I was completely uneducated. And unlike my sister, who loved always to read her idea of heavy. is to, you know, get a couple of books and just lay down and read forever.

I had no interest in reading at all. It never interested me as a kid. I didn't like it. Time spent other ways was my thing. And I only got educated, not for any noble or ambitious reason, I only did because when I hit about 17 years old or 18 years old, I was attracted. to the girls in school. And the girls that I liked, for whatever strange reason, I don't know,

were the kind of non-commercial bohemian girls, the girls that had no lipstick and very little makeup and black tights and black turtlenecks and silver earrings. And they were all interested in art and culture and literature and classical music and architecture. And, you know, and so, In order to keep up my end of the conversation, I had to learn. So was the girls?

I learned. But if it wasn't for them, you know, if I liked a different type of girl, for instance, who was not interested in that, if her interest lay elsewhere, you know, I would never have learned. But the ones I liked, for whatever reason, there were all those ones that you used to see in the Jules' Pfeiffer cartoons or, you know, the ones that liked. to hear the guitar players doing folk music. And there were socialists and they were communists. I see a lot of them in your movies. I see those in the early movies especially, yeah.

Those are the ones. And so, you know, if they would, at first, when I started going out with them, they would talk to me. And I was, you know, I had nothing to say back to them. I never read anything they read. I didn't know who Andrei Segovia was. You know, I mean, I didn't. And gradually, to keep, you know, to be able to get a second date or even the first one at times, I had to start reading.

And so I did read. Some of it I liked and some of it didn't. But the problem with being self-educated is that there are huge gaps in your education. So there's some subjects I know pretty well and can talk about it. And there are other things you think, my God, you mean you've never read any Charles Dickens or something? No, no. Yeah. You know.

Yeah, well, although, you know, it seems to me that when I look at the, at least the references in your writing and the movies, at least in terms of literature, it seems to me to be remarkably broad. You wrote once that you were not a, well, you said you were not a habitual reader, but you said it's a chore to read and you don't read for pleasure. you read because it was important to read. Now I know why it was important to read. I never got it from what I read from you. Now I know what... But surely it isn't that way now. I mean, when I read what you write or say in interviews,

you talk to pleasure about... just with trouble pleasure about Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Sart, Camus, poets, Yeats, Dickinson, Elliot, Rookie. I mean, it seems to me that there's a love ultimately of those people. So was there a switch that was turned, or did you still not read for pleasure? I don't, I read very rarely for pleasure. I don't read much for, but there are very few books in my life with a burden of entertainment was completely on the author.

I'm talking about fiction now. Sure. I can read some poetry because many of the poems are short and do not require a lot of extended, concentration. Novels. It's not my pleasure of first choice. I'd always rather see a movie, see a show in the theater,

listen to music, watch a ballgame, you know, and I read a certain amount of nonfiction, again, just to keep up in a conversation, but it was just never a great, great

pleasure for me. I got off to a bad start, I guess. Yeah, well, that's the bad start, I think, is the key point. I mean, again, I keep blaming your early teachers. I think I love a description you wrote once about teachers. He said, talk, talk, talk, but when you see them, they're mean-looking, sorry, sad, and bitter. You know what their lives were like. And you said you imbibed from school, Socratically, rather than intellectually, just by looking at your teachers and learning how miserable their lives were. Yes, and it's also, the stuff they gave you to read,

the stuff they gave you in school was no fun. It was, first of all, antiseptic. Yeah. You know, do you really want to read The Gift of the Magi? You know, you're a kid. You want to read about, when I was a kid, I went to read about guns and gangsters and excitement and war stories and intrigue and spies.

And I don't want to read about, you know, her combs and his watch fob. And everything they picked out for you had that kind of bland antiseptic, don't, you know, offend anybody. Do you God, these kids are so. And it was the same with music. When you went into your music periods or auditorium periods, there was so much beautiful music out there. So much Cole Porter, so much George Gershwin and Jerome Kern that was pleasure. to listen to, and they could have turned you on to music so it was a true pleasure. They didn't. You would go in there and they would, you'd sing, abide with me or, or, you know, recessional or, you know, I mean, stuff that, you know, a melodic, yeah, antiseptic or solemn stuff that was joyless to kids. And so, you know, I didn't get educated very much. because I didn't have a background.

Or the right kind of curse, apparently at home or at school. But now, two things, though, if your parents didn't listen to music, where did you get your loving music? Was it, again, I mean, was it, in some sense, rebelling against your parents, your friends, your peers, your peer group,

because music is cool? I listened to pop music. On the radio. The radio was a big deal, and it was a big deal. You know, you get up in the morning, radio would go right on, because it wouldn't interfere with your,

you know, your matutinal ablutions. You could just do your thing. And it was fine. So, you know, the radio was on. And I'd be getting dressed and showering and I shower at first. Then I got dressed. And then, you know, breakfast.

And the music could be on the music in those days, you know, took me about many years ago now, was as you know, Benny Goodman and Artie Shore and Billy Holiday and Peggy Lee. And it was great music. and it was Gershwin and Kern and Irving Berlin and Rogers and Hart. And so that gets baked into you. Yeah, sure. And so you know, you like it.

Well, and obviously it influenced your taste because we always make one. Again, when I think about your music taste, at least in terms of the music you use for the movies, it's very broad. It's not just, it's not just jazz, of course, which appears in a lot of movies, but it's Stravinsky, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's the classics as well, which I love classical music too.

Again, that came later, I assume. That came later, yeah, that was the later thing. You know, at first, we never heard any classical music. I grew up on Harry James and, you know, those swing musicians. And when I got older and actually I married young and my wife came home from school and said, you've got to hear this, she had the Brandenburg Concerto. Yeah, sure. And she said, we took this in schools, and she played them for me, and they were good.

I liked them. And so she got me into listening to classical music, and I did it more and more. And I, you know, and this past summer, if you can believe it, me, who was a stickball officinado and champion in the Brooklyn streets, was at La Scala directing a Puccini. opera. Really? Yeah. So I have developed in spite of myself, in spite of all my, my, you know, obstacles and reluctance and laziness and bad habit. It gives hope. It gives hope to people. It's hope for everyone. You know, I mean, I grew up on none of this. Did not grow up on classical music or literature or anything. I grew up playing stickball, playing punch ball, playing stoop ball, playing baseball, playing

baseball, school yard basketball, and I wound up making a living in the art. Did you have any good teachers, by the way? Yes. There were a couple of good teachers. Well, you had, I have to say, you had a biology teacher that I liked, at least, namely Jesse Kiosian, who was in Edivus Rex. She's been in a couple of films on. A couple of.

She's a cute little biology teacher. She was a tiny, tiny little teacher at Midwood High School. And I think I was in her class. But I know she was a bioteacher there. And I think I was in her class. Years, years later, I was looking for interesting types for small parts. And Juliet Taylor, my casting director, said, I met this wonderful woman who says she knows you.

and she's a great type. And then she said her name, and I said, well, yes, I do remember her from Midwood. I can't recall if I was in her class or not. And then she came in, and I used to it. And she was wonderful. She was a tiny little thing, and she loved culture in general. Yeah, did you find that out afterwards? You certainly didn't find that when you were a student.

No, when a student, I fled the class always. But she loved culture. But when I saw her, I remember seeing her once when I went with my then wife to a little tiny, private, classical piano recital, upstairs and a walk-up in the East Village. Some guy was playing some sonatas, and Jesse Kiosian was there. And I said, hey, she was my body. And then years later, she showed up. casting and was very good. Yeah, no, I thought the fact that she had the husband to show up for casting, she must have been at least, I would have thought you would be a fun teacher. Well, I want to

switch a little bit. So you didn't find out what you were interested in school really, although it's interesting to me, it is interesting to me given what you've done since, that the teachers you found interesting were English teachers, both in high school and in university. Yes, now I have to just interrupt you for a second. When I first went to come, at NYU and had the English teacher, you know, he was a guy, and we had to hand in our first essays, and I handed in my essay, and he failed me on it, and said, sent me back the paper and said, son, you need a lesson in rudimentary manners. You are a callow adolescent and not a diamond in the rough. Wow. And now I was at that time trying to write funny. And I had some talent because I was

while I was in that class, I was being paid. I was working as a comedy writer. So I wasn't, I did have some talent as a writer, but instead of encouraging me or saying, you know, look, this is This may not have hit the mark, but, you know, if you want to write comedy, I would suggest you read S.J. Parleman or Robert Benchley or something. There was no, the teachers never stimulated you. There was never any, they didn't know how to make the most of it. Now, you know, I didn't care. I thought the guy was a screwball and, you know, I couldn't care less.

But. You think if he'd been different, it would have made a difference to you at that time? Or you already turned off. I think if he had said, I want to speak to you after school, and it wasn't that dressing down. Yeah. If you want to speak to me and say, look, you know, if you want to write comedy, I can, you know, I think you struck out here. But I try reading these things and, you know, try again and see after you read you, see if you think these are funny and let's talk about it. But there was never any, you know, if you didn't do it, you failed.

Yeah, yeah, that's just, what about science? The reason I'm asking is it seems to me that you have at some level a scientific sensibility, which is really asking questions about the universe. And in fact, you know, I was struck early on, obviously because of my own interest, before I knew you, you know, there's wonderful lines about the universe expanding, what's the point, and, you know, and everything's going to, and protons are decaying. So, I mean, there's one of your movies where you're going around saying, but protons are decaying, what's the point?

And so you had this, at least you were following what was going on. And in fact, we first met when I think you were subjected to me talking about physics, I think. And was there ever any thought or interest in science? Yes, as a boy, I was interested in science. But you got turned off. Yeah. That's what happens to so many kids. I was interested.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I, I'm a, I'm a chemistry kit maybe, a linel chemistry set. Yeah, those were great. And, uh, with the cabinets that opened and there's many chemicals in it. And, and, and, but I, I, I, I didn't have the, the, the strength of character or the, or the, or the, or the, or, I didn't have it. I was, I was, there was nobody's fault, but my own. I just, because they, I, I, I, I, I just, I, I, I, I, I. When I expressed interest, they did, my parents did get me the microscope and did get me the chemistry set years later. But I just wasn't, I was a goof off. I was a kid that wanted to watch baseball rather than, and then when I got older, I became interested in all these, you know, physics and astronomy, interested in it only. In that the large questions, the unanswerable questions, I came to the conclusion, were the only questions worth asking or dealing with? Sure.

Because, yes, of course, there's a great deal of difference if you're living under communism or socialism or democracy or, and there's a great deal of difference in your living day to day. and all these things that make up the warp and roof of politics. But in the end, if you had an ideal society, and it was everybody had enough money and everybody had their health and everything was great and there was no war and there was no climate change, everything was solved, you would still be faced with these terrifying, unanswerable issues. You still wouldn't be happy. You say, well, yeah, I got everything.

And then you think to yourself it would become even more poignant because you'd be saying, gee, I'm going to lose all this one day. It's all going to be taken away from me. Now, if your life is not so good, if you're struggling to make a buck or to think up a couple of good jokes for the second act of a play or trying to get your invention, patent it or something, you know, you're concentrated on a small thing. And it takes your mind off that. But in the end, sooner or later, if you accomplish everything you want in life, you still come up against these big questions. And the big questions are terrifying, and there are, you know, there are no satisfactory answers.

And so I keep coming back to them all the time. Yeah, sure. Because they're nagging. Yeah, sure. They're not the kind of questions you can say, well, can't answer that, and no one will ever answer it. But that's the scientific part of you. That's the fact that you keep coming back to, I mean, I'm a physicist, now theoretical physicist, because it's those deep questions that intrigued me, and I keep liking to ask them and return to them.

And for me, almost the questioning is as important as the answering, the fact that you keep searching. I guess I find the conclusion equally the same, that the universe is meaningless and it's all going to end miserably. but right you you you want the answers but it isn't necessarily the answers you want you want a certain set of answers and it's not the answers that you're getting well no i'm willing to take whatever the universe gives me and it doesn't bother me the universe is going to end miserably it's sort of for me it's always kind of and we'll get to because i want to talk you it's a it's a worrisome thought It's a bothersome thought that the universe is flying apart and everything will be gone. But it makes the fact that you and I are here chatting so much more amazing to me.

I guess that's my attitude, is that, yes, we're cosmically insignificant, and we're going to be gone, and human civilization is going to end, and no, the universe doesn't care about us. In fact, it's trying to kill us in many ways. It doesn't matter, and it's sure it's expanding, and it's eventually going to become cold, dark, and empty. But hey, that means what an incredible stroke of fortune it is for me to have this little time with you. You have to think about these things in fairly grim terms. Safferically said, you know, better never to have been born at all. That's the greatest blessing. I don't know. You're, you're here for a short amount of time and you search for answers. Yeah. But,

I feel that I'm not, I've never been searching, I've been searching for the answers I want to hear. I don't want to come up with the answers you come up with. You as a physicist come up with substantial answers about the real structure and working of, but those are not fun answers to hear. They're not soothing answers. Well, they're not soothing, but they are inspiring because they must. Because it must resonate with you at some level because you learned enough about it to know that matter is decaying or that the universe is expanding. I was hoping it wasn't.

Yeah, of course. You know? And I don't find I'm inspiring. I find I'm dispiriting. Okay. That you've got to find ways to go through the day with a dark cloud hanging over your head that the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the, you know, the. general narrative of the universe is a negative, finite, stressful one. Well, it's negative as far as humans are concerned.

There's amazing things going on. What about, Lo? But if you're asking questions and the answer is not what you expected, is that depressed? I expected it. You know, that's the problem. And I got it. You assume the universe is miserable and is. But in life in general, if you're asking questions about anything,

in the terms of your art and what you're working on. And the answer comes out to be something you totally didn't expect. Isn't that make you happy? If it's good, if the answer is the seven numbers to the lottery, fine. But no, if the answer is if you're a little kid and you say, how long do we live to your mother? And she says, oh, you know, people live to 100. And then you get older and you say, hey, wait a minute, the life expectancy is.

78 or something, you've learned something, but you have not learned a good thing or a pleasing thing. Well, it's not a pleasing thing. I'm not sure whether good. But if you know it's shorter, then do you think it becomes more precious? No, it becomes more anxiety-ridden. Okay, well, we'll get there because I can say, well, there's issues. I mean, I've been, because I've been reading you a lot and listening to you a lot to prepare

for talking, one can deal with the absurdity of life. if you want to call meaninglessness absurdity in a variety of ways but one of the ways is comedy surely I mean did you get

very unsatisfying none of the ways you're thinking of are satisfying they're all selling yourself a bill of goods maybe they are but what else can we do

in fact when did you find out you were funny I've always been I had a sense of humor I could always make people laugh was it a family thing I mean I grew up in it

sort of a Jewish family where you had to force your way into the conversation was happening everywhere and you had to come up with something for people to listen to you. And I also had a role model. My uncle was very funny. And I saw how it endeared him to everyone around and it made me want to. I think it made me, I want to be that way. Was there anyone in your family? No, there's no one in my family that was funny or made jokes or had any proclivity toward culture or the arts or show business. So, no. And so when you, what just funny was just natural? I have no idea where any of it came from. I just know that when I was a kid, I could make

people laugh and I did it. When I got to be an adolescent, you know, people suggested that I write what I was saying down and sell it to people. Well, yeah, no, and they were very wise to suggest it. And they'd buy it, and that was very wide. Let me ask you, because of what you said about literature and what made you learn that, did it also help you with girls, the fact you were funny? Oddly enough, it's an interesting thing. Whenever they ask questions and do surveys and studies about what is attractive about other people,

to eat the sex, there's always a disproportionate. proportionate emphasis put on a sense of humor. Yeah. And they always say, well, I want someone who's kind and this with a great sense of humor, who's funny. You know, it always comes up to guys talking about the women they want, women talking about the men they want. For some reason, funny is always right up there with the real essentials of desirability.

But did you note that, I mean, is that something you consciously were aware of as a young man? I even to this day can't figure why. No, not why, but did it impact upon the fact that you knew it might help you meet? No, no, no, I was never conscious. I just assume the women in my life that were attracted to me. The fact that I was amusing was meaningful to them. To them. And it's self-selecting, I guess, in that way.

You said somewhere that comedies, but always about insecurity in life, insecurity, about women, fear, cowardice, difficulties, and relationships. That's sort of the basis you claimed, at least in one place. Well, I mean, if you look at all the comedies that you see, whether it's Bob Hope or Groucho Marx or W.C. Fields or Charlie Chaplin, that's what 99% of it's about, you know, about fear, about anxiety, about, you know, falling in love, chasing. after the woman and getting or not getting. You know, I mean, that's where the jokes lie. That's where the jokes lie. Except when I also think about your jokes, I think about existential themes, cosmology, death, philosophy.

They're built into, those themes are built into your jokes. And much sort of, if you wish, a grander. As you once said, the only things, the only questions worth asking are ultimately sort of those existential ones. In my opinion, someone else would come to a very, different opinion and feel that, you know, there are many questions. There are starving people and there are terrible things that need attention and my stuff is all, you know, irrelevant nonsense.

And meanwhile, the practical pain and living and suffering of real people is what they have to deal with. I didn't feel that way. I mean, that was just my, I don't mean to inflict my. ideas or my feelings on other people. For me, I just felt, given the circumstances of my life and what I observe around me and read in the papers or reading books, that those questions are questions that you ultimately have to come up with.

When I did my movie, Stardous Memories. Startus Memories, yeah, which is one of my favorite. I felt that that was a question. People would ask me, gee, the character in your movie has got. fame and money and why what does he got a right to complain well he was complaining me because fame and money does not make a happy person as a cliche but does not make a happy person and he was complaining about that and he was complaining he was a lucky guy he was complaining for the millions of people that don't have anything and have to wrestle with day to day living and all the terrible

cruelties of life but you know but that but that's I'm asking, in some sense, everyone seems to think all your movies are autobiographical. Why they do is an interesting question. They don't assume other people's movies are autobiographical. And I wondered if it's because the character you play in movies is a natural outgrowth of your stand-up. And so people always see the same, to some extent, the same character from the time you were before you're making movies to the time after, and therefore assumes it must be you. I, you know, I once heard Malam Brando say in an interview that people confuse him with the characters he plays. Yeah. And that he was not like that. He was not Stanley Kowalski. And I'm not like that. Yeah, no, I mean. And, and but if you see Charlie Chaplin, for example, you know, this guy puts on a mustache and his cane and his Hannah, I play in a movie. And I, this is why.

This is what I wear. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So they understandably think that the guy in Annie Hall or the guy in Manhattan or the guy in is me, give or take a few emotions or a few exaggerations. And sometimes it is true that the character will be saying something that I babble about in life. But the characters in my movies.

are greatly exaggerated because otherwise the movies would really be dull. If I was the character in the movies, you would go to sleep in the first reel and leave the theater. So I have to exaggerate the characters tremendous. In real life, I'm not like I am in the movies. Maybe there's a touch here and there, a touch there, but... No, I think it's amazing. And I have to say, whenever, when people have found out I know you, the first thing they say is, is he like he is in the movies. And I think it's the most, I've read other people say the same thing.

It's the most amazing thing because you are not at all, in my experience. No, I'm not. Like the characters in the movie. Ironic, relaxed, thoughtful, not particularly neurotic as far as I can see, all of those things. And it's kind of interesting that those characteristics are what people, well, it works. I mean, it's works in the movies. It's done very well for you. But in real life, I've led a very middle-class, productive, you know, well-disciplined, responsible life.

In the movies, of course, the character I'm playing is frantic and neurotic and, you know, meant to be amusing, trying to amuse people. But people think that, but if you were around me for a while, you'd, you'd, you. And I don't mean the self-deprecatingly or facetiously. You would see that I'm dull. I get up in the morning and, you know, what do I do? The treadmill. And then I lay down to my bed and write and practice my clarinet and take a walk with my wife. And, you know, I mean, I watch a basketball game.

There's no real adventure in my life. No, no. But there isn't the movies that you make. And I think, you know, he said something like the artist creates his own world that, you know, You can make the adventure in your writing. Yes, you have to, you have to, you're obliged to, that's why 90% of the movies you see. If you turn on the television set and you surf through the movies or something, almost every channel, some guy's got a gun out or somebody's running them on a, you know,

chasing after or fighting or people are searching all the time for conflict, for drama, for, you know, adversarial things that, you know, that engage your interest. But the truth of the matter is, most lives and mine certainly, is very quiet and very uninteresting. One of the characters wanting movies... Even to me. Yeah, well, one of the characters wanting movies said,

life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television. Yeah, I think that's true. Well, as you wrote it. It doesn't imitate art. If it imitated art, it would be... a little nicer, but it imitates cornball, you know, not the best of television, but the worst of it. Another thing you said about that a central theme of your movies is the sort of reality versus fantasy. And I read somewhere where he said, you know, reality versus isn't fantasy, unfortunately.

Right. Fantasy is much better. Fantasy is much better. You learn this when you were a child. When I was taken to the movies at five, six, seven years old. and you went into a movie house and there was a movie on the screen and it was, you know, whatever it was, Esther Williams in a swimming pool and the people, you know, poured martinis and the men were witty and charming and the women were beautiful and the conflicts were, had nothing to do with starvation, cancer, concentration camps or, or, or, you know, anything that makes up the fabric of society. Well, I mean, the Purple Rose of Cairo is a great, to me, epitomizes that, right?

She's, it's the Depression-era woman whose life is in some ways miserable, looking at the, in fact, the movie within a movie there is, is one of these wonderful 1940, 30s or whatever, you know, movies where everyone is drinking cocktails and going to see jazz and having a lovely time. Yes, and I would like that. I would like to be able to step into a Vincent Manelli movie and never come out of it and just live there the rest of my life. That would be great.

See, this is my point I was saying earlier. I think, I'm not going to give up this point, that your reaction to the meaninglessness of the universe, which is real. But there are two things. In an absurd universe, one of the ways to react is to treat it absurdly, which is comedy. and the other is to create a universe you'd rather be in, whether in my case it happens to be, you know, thinking about the cosmos and dissociating myself from humanity

or making a universe via movies. So it seems to me being, some sense that being driven to comedy and movies are so natural given your view of the world, that comedy is your response to dealing with a meaningless universe. And the other response is to make movies where life is better. Yeah, you're trying to find something good about it. And so metaphorically, you think, yeah, well, but it doesn't work the way. The universe is up there saying, treat it with comedy, treat it with drama, you know.

Doesn't matter. You're lost. You're all going down the toilet in the end. So all of these things that you try and put a positive spin on, you know, don't really cut it when you. are absolutely on it when you wake up at three in the morning and you don't have anyone around to and you think to yourself what the real situation is you know you put a positive spin so you say well isn't one reaction to it religion isn't one reaction to it comedy isn't some you know and the meaningless of life can be mitigated in this way I don't think so I think um I was thought

the artists, in my opinion, again, this is all me. Well, I'm just... Well, I do. That's why I'm here. The artist's job, in my case, is to try, given the bleakness of the universe and the fate of man and the emptiness and meaninglessness of it, to find a reason to go on. Now, it's hard to find a reason to go on cerebrally. You go on because it's in your blood. The blood trumps the brain.

You go on because something hardwired and makes you go on. So you can babble about the meaninglessness of life for hours. The guy comes into the room with a gun. All of a sudden, the meaninglessness vanishes. You grab the gun. You wrestle with them. You, you know, I run. But, you know, that's what you do.

Now, all you can do is try and find some way to go. And it's very hard to find a reason to justify life cerebrally. I go on with life because something in me is frightened not to. It tells me to, urges me to, to preserve myself and to keep going. It's hard for me to make a case for it cerebrally. And so I'm trying in work to make a case for it and to explain to you how you can cope with this terrifying, flying apart, meaningless, absurd universe. And the best I've been able to come up with is that you can only distract yourself from reality. that if you come nose to nose with reality, you're not going to like it.

And the real situation is you're checkmated. You're not going to, there is no good answer. And you can come up with these metaphors or these or religious things or philosophical explanations. But in the end, it's a bad deal that we've got. It's a bad situation. And all you can do is distract yourself. You can watch a show, you can watch a movie, you can get involved in your kids, problems, tutoring them. You can get involved in trivial stuff.

So you don't have to think about it. And that's the best advice you can have is don't think about it. Well, you know, actually, this is interesting because you talked about Star-Dist memories. You talked about the fact that this comedy director is now faced with the fact that, you know, but it's not what he does and meaningful. He's not dealing with the world's problems and it's bothering him. And he goes around and he annoys everyone around him with the fact that he doesn't want to make funny movies anymore. He doesn't think it's worthwhile.

And then he meets these aliens and he sort of tries to ask what's the meaning. And they're basically saying, forget it. and they say to him, if you want to do mankind of service, tell better jokes. And in some sense, is that what is, was that, that's where I see as the movie version of what you just said, is that, do be mankind of service, by telling jokes, you're distracting them from, from, from. Yes, it's, it's, it's, you know, you're, you're in life and it's hard and harsh, you read the papers, you watch the news. Yeah. Your own life is therefore closing on your car. You know, you're now...

And so you go into a movie house. Now, you can go into a very serious movie and it will confront some of these problems, but you never get a satisfying answer. You get some spin that the director or the author wants to give you. But let's say you go into a musical and you completely forget about your problems for an hour and a half.

And then you walk out and you're refreshed because you've had a breather. You've had a cold glass of water on a hot day. You're refreshed and you can go on with your life. If you choose to go into a serious thing, if it's entertaining, perhaps it will distract you, but it's also possible that the very problems of the movie, making it a dramatic and serious work, will force you to confront issues.

And you won't come out so refreshed. So I'm making a case here for certain types of movies or certain types of entertainment as being distraction and distraction being the best you can do. That's why I watch so much sports. I was going to ask you a sports. You're going. Because it's a distraction.

And it gives me a couple of hours where I'm not thinking about the terrible things that exist in life or the terrible existential realities. I'm just thinking I get lost in a trivial. But it's the ultimate in meaninglessness, sports. I mean, besides the fact, there's these genetic freaks. But I think you say, I mean, it's just one person win, one person loses, and it doesn't mean anything. Right. And yet, interestingly, it means as much as all the universe. It means no less, who wins the game between the Yankees and the Red Sox means as much as the entire existence of the universe.

It has no less meaning. Yeah. But what worries me, I agree with you. But the problem is that people ascribe meaning to it. And that's what is, I would love it if everyone went to sports and said, I've just entertained. But people care. And actually, that's the thing. It is entertaining.

Well, insights can be extrapolated from it. I mean, you know, Hemingway can write about both fighting and write some interesting things to talk about. But when you lose yourself, you know, in a apparently meaningless, entertainment of some sort of musical or sporting event, you know, it's got as much meaning as why you're on earth. Let's go, let's leave sports because we spent too much time on it already, but for you not only is the universe meaningless, but you don't like nature. Do not, no. Yeah, no, I say somewhere I don't like nature. It intrigued me because of a relationship,

something you said that reminded me of something that Werner Herzog actually said. Did you ever see the movie Grizzly Man? Grizzly Man, no, not to the best of my knowledge. Okay, it was a movie about he made about a fellow who lived in Alaska with grizzly bears for many years until he got eaten by one. Is that a documentary? Well, this person made documentary footage, and it's a documentary, but Werner used this guy's own footage, which is remarkable footage of grizzly bears, to make a commentary on his life. I may have seen it. It's a, it's a, but they didn't show him being eaten by the bear.

No, they don't show them, that's right. Yeah, I think I did see that movie. And, and, but there's a line in there that reminded me a lot of something. something you wrote, which is he's looking at one point near the end of the movie. They actually have the footage. It was near the end of the season. And they think that he's looking at the bear that eventually ate him. And he says, and there's a close-up. And he says, look in those eyes. You know, that's indifference. You know, it's not mother nature. Nature doesn't care about you. It's, you know, the big mistake that he made and people make

is somehow thinking that nature cares about you, but nature's indifferent. In fact, it's worse. It's banal. Well, he doesn't say this, but you say it. It's banal. The indifference of the universe is almost evil. And you said, you know, even in looking at a beautiful scene, when you look more closely, you see violence and chaos and murder and cannibalism. And when you look closely at nature, you find it is not your friend, which I've, which is almost the same as looking at Barrett saying it's not your friend.

It's going to eat you if it's hungry. I'm agreeing with everything you're saying. Okay, but I find that intriguing. When I read that, it suddenly hit me why you like New York so much, because it's the opposite of nature. Yeah, it's like cities. Yeah, because New York's a city. And, you know, I was reading and I was thinking about this in terms of the movie Shadows and Fog that you made, where, you know, the night is dangerous. And it's not, and what rescues the person is civilization.

that being alone in a, either in a dark or in a natural, without the trappings of civilization around you is what's terrifying. Yes, I agree. But then that's interesting to me. So you're kind of anti-Rusonian in a sense, sort of that man was born free but lives forever in chains. Okay? So I think he viewed the primeval man before society is the ultimate free being,

and society imposes chains on that person. But in some sense, you're saying it really, actually, it's the opposite. Society provides a safety net. Yes, a structure and a civilization. You know, if I walk out into the street, I live in an environment that has other families and restaurants and museums and schools and libraries

and theaters and... You know, it's a living a civilized, structured place, whereas if I'm out in the wild, but I learned this when I was a little kid. I could see, you know, that animals bite and smell and bark and lick and, you know, I mean, there's nothing to commend them to me. You know, other people go crazy. You never had an animal? No.

Never? Yeah, when I was a little kid, but I didn't like it. I thought that I would like a dog because every kid had a dog. And when I got the dog, you know, it was a big nothing. I mean, the first couple of days, they were excited. But then you have to walk the dog, and the dog runs around the house and makes noise and jumps on the couch and barks. And, you know, and I think it was a weird, what's the pleasure here? But, of course, billions of people could not disagree with me more fervently.

I was never a pet lover, cats, dogs, birds, fish. Or nature. And the other thing you weren't, I remember trying to convince you to come out to Arizona in the wintertime. And you said, no way. And then I read you said, you hate sunshine. Is that because you're red hair? I never liked sunshine. I don't see the...

It sounds so neurotic, but it doesn't... The sunshine, one, the rays of the sun produced cancer. Forget about that. I'm not someone who's intimidated that way. I mean, you know, but they cause heat. I don't like that. The only one is too hot. And the light that it casts is harsh and unpleasant.

So when I get up in the morning and I get up in the morning and I opened my Venetian blinds and its sun, you know, once in a while, that's nice, once in a while. But it's much nicer if I opened it, and it's a gray day and misty and moody and cloudy, and the light is soft, and the color saturation is beautiful, and it's just, it's kind of, if I go out for a walk, and the sun's not beautiful. beating down on me or shining in my eyes. And I'm seeing everything in a kind of gray, but not an unpleasantly gray. It's rather a beautiful gray.

Does that impact in movie making? I can't remember. I mean, well, you work, of course, with cinematographers who themselves determine what lighting they like. Right, but we all want the gray days. You all want the gray days. They want them and I want them.

Yeah, everyone. So the harsh sunlight is not good for movie making. Not for my movies. or not, no, and maybe for nobody's, but there are times where we've made movies where we get on the set in the morning and wait all day long without doing any work at all till the sun starts to drop at the 5 o'clock in the afternoon or something, and only then begin to work because the sunlight is not so pretty. Yeah, and that's not just your view. That's your, that's your, your cinematographers?

Certainly the cinematographers would be very happy, you know, shooting in great... You know, when you see these Swedish movies and these British movies, they look so beautiful. The green grass or even in black and white. They're so moody and lovely.

So the sunlight, nature, but we're getting back to the fact that somehow the chains of civilization are for you not changed there in some sense, a security blanket but at the same time, one of my favorite movies of yours points out at least one of the dangers of living in a society, and that's Zellig, that imposes on people the tyranny of society,

of conformity, of the need to blend in. Right. Which is part of the chains that Rousseau was talking about, the fact that we have a social contract, when we don't blend in well, society punishes us one way or another. in this case, Zelig's parents and other people early on imposing that on him. And he's the prototypical example of someone who wants to blend in. Yeah, you want to be liked.

Yeah. And in order to be liked, you know, I mean, in the simplest sense in that movie, you know, where he could read Moby Dick. And if he's with someone who hated the book, he's right along with him. Oh, yeah, I hated it. And it was terrible. And it was terrible. And can give reasons.

and if the person liked it, he can go with that person. Anything to blend in, to be like, not to offend. Or to say you'd read it when you hadn't, which is, which is, I think, what. Yeah, well, that, but, but no matter what. I think he was, when he was hypnotized at one point, he was embarrassed that he hadn't read Moby Dick, as I remember. And it's interesting to me in that movie that it moves towards fascism,

that at some point his desire to be part of blend in. Yeah, it ends up next to Hitler in the movie. Yeah. And you have come. I forget whether it's Saul Bello or someone in the movie comments, that it was natural. If you want to conform, and you say the danger of abandoning one's true self to fit in leads to conformity and submission and to the will and requirements of a strong personality, which naturally leads to the fascist. Yes. You know, if you live in a fascist society, it's very hard to be an individual.

and they constantly forcing you to live up to the rules of the authoritarian leader and to, if you're an artist, to make your art conform and in any way not be outstanding or not be individual. And in extreme situation, is Nazi Germany. And they're all wearing uniforms and, spouting the same thing. And if you don't, the penalties can be very harsh. They would kill you. In the social situation, it can just be where you're persona non grata. Yeah, yeah. So when I read that, to his mission of the will, the requirements of a strong personality, I couldn't help think of the current climate we're in in some sense. I want to talk about

the left and the right. Okay. So one thinks of Trump. I couldn't help think of the fact that in some sense, this base and this and this need to, this xenophobia that's a key part of it, of other, you know, wanting to be the same, that we suffer from that on the right, that Trump's success, if you wish, is in some sense related to people wanting to. The right is always that. The right always wants a certain conformity. The right in any country in any time, and the left is always more liberal. Well, yeah, it is, but I'm not sure it is now. But I wanted to ask you about that because that conformed.

Were you influenced in Zellig at all by, I know we've talked about this personally, about by knowing people who were blacklisted during the, the fact that during the communist during the period of blacklisting during the McCarthy era where clearly non-conformity at some level was labor. and then you lost your whole livelihood. I do remember the McCarthy's. I was young for the brunt of it, but since I appeared in that movie The Front,

and Walter Bernstein wrote it and he had been blacklisted, Marty Ritt directed, and he had been blacklisted, and we hung out together for the duration of the shooting of that picture. I learned a lot about it, because everybody, you know, Zeromastel who starred in a picture, these people were all blacklisted, so I learned about it,

and I knew about it from, you know, because everybody knows about it, and I knew about it when some of it was happening, but I was too young to really be actively committed to a position on it. Okay, but so that didn't play in any part, and you're thinking in terms of Zellig, in terms of the blacklisting on the... No, the blacklisting thing for me was all centered around the front, the movie The Front.

Yeah, I remember. Which, again, I only acted in, but I did learn a lot about blacklisting. And, you know, it was a terrible and ineffective thing. Well, it was effective for a while at suppressing people. But you know, you said it's always that way in the right, but I'm a little worried that on the left we see the same kind of necessity for conformity right now.

University, obviously coming from universities, I see university students not wanting to hear anything they disagree with. Well, that's, on the face of it, that's a terrible thing. I mean, that doesn't require any kind of real debate or conversation. It's just to a common sense person, you would think that a university, you know, would not tolerate that, that it's a place where there should be a, free forum for discussion, even the most unpleasant kind. And these things should be debated. And you're there to learn. You're not there to advance a social agenda. You're there, you know,

so I never have any patience with that, you know, when a university stifles free speech. Now, you then get into some nuances here. I mean, if some guy gets on stage and says, you know, so go home and get your rifles and go and kill all the Jews, kill all the black people. You know, I mean, there is a line that a common sense person can figure out, and this thing is not rocket science. You hear a guy talking and he's trying to advance a political position that's hateful to you. That's fine as long as it doesn't cross a certain line. You can argue with them to death. In fact, that's what free speech is all about,

is to guarantee the speech you don't like. That's the point of it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, as long as you're not inciting violence, I think that's the key point. But we're seeing that the universities, what's, are now, not just the students,

but when the students complain, the universities are immediately coutowing. And you're getting this rule of social justice, of conformity that is, Every bit as restricting, as you used to say, you know, that fascism was in one way or another. You know, there's a famous, those Yale students who were yelling at that Yale professor when they talked about the Halloween. A common sense person will see that as, but. But why the common sense isn't happening in University of administrations?

It's really, what are so? Commercial institutions, whether it's a university, a television network, Hollywood studio, a job, and a business. They're very quick to succumb to the slightest kind of pressure because they feel even a small pinch here and they're in their pocketbook. And that terrifies them. They don't know how deep that pocket is going to go, and they get terrified. So a university or a television network or a film studio or a.

a publishing house or a job, a business, will Bachelanda at the slightest pressure. And someone like yourself watching that or someone watching, will say, God, that's so terrible. You know, this guy listened to folk music in the 50s and now he can't get a job because they're afraid he's a communist. Yes, but this is one of the many terrible traits of the human personality. It folds under pressure. Look, you lived in Germany in the 30s, and you lived all over Europe, and you lived next door and were friendly with Jewish families, and your kids played together, and you had no problem at all,

and then you got some pressure, and as soon as the pressure, you were ready to dump them right into the concentration camps, you know, shoot them, get rid of them. And because, you know, basically people are frightened. They live their lives in terror. They live in terror, the existential terror we were talking about before. And they live it in terror of, you know, they want only to survive. They don't want trouble. They're not looking for trouble.

And we tend to reward virtue signaling in all these cases, meaning we tend to reward in the communist era, you know, in the McCarthy era, labeling the communist in Germany, labing the Jews, and now labeling the those who offend by their speech as being, as being, and it's not just condemning that, it's just not, it's just condemning anyone who, who is associated with that. It's kind of a really strong effort to. Yes, it's an insidious thing. And, you know, what happens is the, the first person gets fired. And a wave of panic comes in after that. And everyone associated with them gets fired.

And, you know, but this is, this is what people are. They're, and it's hard to blame. It's hard to despise them or blame them for their timorousness or cowardness. It's because people are afraid and their life. Because people are, people are frightened. They're living in a difficult. But then, you know, I remember those lines about. First they came for the lawyers and then they came for the, you know, and then they came for me.

I mean, ultimately it's there, but for the grace of God, go I, is what seems to me to be, to the way to protect society. If you realize that whatever is happening to other people can happen to you. Yes, yes. But nobody, but it's hard when it actually happens when you're, if you're running a school or running a television network and somebody, you know, gets in some kind of trouble, social trouble. You're thinking, what do I need it for?

You know, I'm trying to make a living. I run this network. I run this university. I'm trying to earn some money and do a good thing. I could just as easily have a professor working here who's smart and the kids love, who's not connected to anti-Israel boycott or something. So what do I need it? And that's the way people are.

They're not looking for trouble. And so most people are not ready to take a stand. One of the last lines in Zellig is one wonders what would have happened if right at the outset he'd had the courage to speak his mind and not pretend. And that really resonated with me to think about that. Because ultimately, it seems to me that the health of society depends on people willing to speak their mind and not pretend. Yes, I would guess, and I'm on. only guessing, because I know nothing about what I'm talking about, of course, is that it would work.

That if the students at a university say, we don't like this professor because he's saying this, if the university said, I'm sorry, that's, but he's a accredited professor, and he's free to talk that way. And if you don't like it, you can drop the course. or if you don't like the university, register someplace else. If they took that stand, it would, I think, be just a very short time before the situation would be better.

Yeah, no. That it would not suddenly, the university would not look up after a while and say, gee, everybody left. I don't think that would happen. Yeah, they're still going to be there. Again, easy for me to say, because it's not my college, it's not my business,

or the network, it's not my network. So I can be brave. And, you know, and again, I'm not living next to somebody. I wonder if they took my neighbor away and said, you know, we're taking away all people who are vegans and we're going to shoot them. Would I have the nerve to say, well, wait a minute. You know, and they say, yes, do you want to make trouble? Because we're going to take away your neighbor and shoot them because we don't want vegans. I don't know how courageous I would do.

Well, personally, but do you think that because the movies for you are a chance to, to some extent, escape reality, although reflect on reality, certainly, even if in your personal life, can you, though, make a movie then, in some sense, they'll like Zellig or something else that does make that statement, that hopefully, you know, through the movie making, can you do the kind of things that one, that you might do in not in real life? I mean, in terms of speaking out. You could. I'm not the filmmaker for that, only because I'm not a social or political filmmaker because it isn't in me artistically for whatever reason. But not directly political, but Zellig in some sense causes you to reflect on. Obligely. You know, I finish a film and I sit home, I think, well, what's my next film going to be about? And whatever it is, it could be a murder mystery, it could be a musical, It could be a romance or a drama.

Whatever happens to hit me, you know, it's so hard to get decent ideas that as soon as an idea comes that looks like it will form into a coherent beginning, middle, and end, you tend to go with that because they don't grow on trees. So I don't sit there and think, well, this is a good idea, but it doesn't make a social statement or it doesn't say anything. I don't care about that. I'm happy. You're happy to have ideas. That's wonderful. I wanted to go into the ideas and the process you make and ask you, do you think you're first and foremost a writer or a filmmaker?

I think probably a writer. Because if they said to me tomorrow, you can't make any more films, and that would give you another penny, I would be, you know, I would write. I'd write to the theater. And if they said to me in the theater, we're not going to produce any of your plays because we hate you.

And I would say, well, then I'm going to write books. And if they said we won't publish any of your books, I would still write them because if they're good, they will see the light of day eventually. And if they're no good, then I'm lucky nobody's publishing them. So it's a win-win situation. For me, the fun is doing the thing. care if I'm laying on my bed writing a film script,

a play, or a book or something. I mean, to me it doesn't matter. It's the writing. I'd actually put the pencil on the paper. Well, you know, I'm glad to your say. You did once say I always feel like I'm writing with film. Yeah, that's what you're doing. You spend

eight weeks, ten weeks, whatever, until your money runs out, accumulating what you would be as if you were gathering words from a dictionary and keep getting all the words you think are going to be relevant to the story. Well, I'm gathering all the footage, and then I'm going to make it into a story. And I change it. It's very malleable in the editing. I don't write something and it's all,

you know, rigid. It's very malleable. I put the end at the beginning and put the middle in the end and change this and make it about something else and put in narration and change. And and change the direction totally. For me, it's a living, breathing thing till it's completely finished and I have to hand it in. So I always feel that I'm writing and I'm happy writing

and I don't, as I say, I don't really care if I wrote stuff and threw it in the drawer and long after I'm dead, people read it and love it or, you know, the public has spared it because it's so terrible. Well, okay. Now, this is interesting to me because it seems to me

what you just said is kind of a more optimistic view of filmmaking that I've read in the sense that I wonder whether making a film for you is the least enjoyable part of the process. The more I read about it. So the actual filming. Yeah, yeah. You know, the actual filming is hard. Yeah, it's hard work.

Again, when you're home writing, you write if you get a little tired, you go make yourself tea, and you, you know, or get on the treadmill or, you know, go for a walk. You're your own boss. You're writing, nothing like riding. When you're making a film, all of a sudden they hit the taxi meter at, you know, 150 grand a day or more.

And they say, well, you've got eight weeks, and then you're not going to have any more money to pay the cab driver. Yeah. And you've got to start working. And, you know, you've got to get up in the morning. It's maybe cold out and rainy and unpleasant. You've got to get out there and be funny at 7 o'clock in the morning and keep going and then wolf down your lunch and be funny all afternoon and make the right decisions. And everybody's coming to you with decisions that you're completely unqualified to make.

Do I know which gun I should pick for the guy to have or which costume that she should wear a, you know, a rink. a red blouse or an orange blouse and these shoes. And do I want the cigarette case to look like this? And what kind of car would he drive? And, you know, I don't know any of these things. And I make those decisions. And in ignorance and in terror. And you're working all day.

And then you knock off at night and you're exhausted. You look at what you did the day before. And it's always, oh, God, did I, that I could have done that so much better. And then you go home, you're exhausted. Before you know it, you're waking up in the morning. Now, this is not physically pleasant. You know, it's a difficult regimen. But, you know, that only lasts, you know, for me, because I have limited money, eight, ten weeks.

Okay, but it's, to me, I'm not, it's not just the physical. If I at least read what you've written, it's also the intellectual. You say, it seems to me that from what you're writing, that the writing is the most fun for you. You said once, when I actually start writing, I can celebrate. Because that is the day that everything's over. Because all the agonizing work is done before that, which I assume is, which amazes me. So for you, the thinking of the plot and all that stuff is agonizing. And then once you, and you somehow have it in your brain.

You don't, do you make notes? Almost none. And so you agonize over all that thinking, and then you write and it's, and you say it's just an ultimate pleasure. But you say thinking of it, planning it, plotting it is, is, is, that's hard. Yes, writing it down is pleasurable. When you're sitting in a room by yourself, walking the streets by yourself, and you're trying to think of what to do and envision a story with characters that begins here.

and there's subplot here, and you're going to, and you're trying to think the thing out, this is a nightmare, and this goes on for weeks, maybe months before you come up, and you discard this, you're working on this idea, thinking about nothing else for six weeks in a row, and then you realize this is not going to be a good movie, this is not going to work, and you start from scratch again to think of, well, do I want to do a movie about a car thief, do I want to do a movie about a parachute jumper, do I want to do something about a brain surgeon, you know, you're thinking,

and then finally you come up with an idea and it structures out. When you have that and you sit down to write it, it's pleasurable. It's fun to write, you know, act one, scene one. Yeah, but you write about it as if it's, yeah, it's such a pleasure, and it surprises me to say that. Hear that, first of all, you must,

it's amazing to me that, you can have it all in your head, and then you can just write out the dialogue and the scenes. It's so structured in your brain already that you just write in no time. As far as, from what I read, you just zoom it out, boom, boom. And you enjoy every moment of it, which, by the way, I have to say, from my experience is somehow the opposite of my experience, not so much, well, in writing, but also in science. It's the thinking that's the fun part and the puzzling, that's the fun part. And gosh, after you've figured it out and you have to write up the paper,

paper, it's the last thing in the world you want to do is write it up. And so a lot of people just leave it. I mean, in their drawers for a long time. So the writing is much less fun than the puzzling, which is, so it was interesting. Yeah, that you like to figure it out. Yeah, and then it's funny for me when I'm writing. Then in my other hat, when I write books, in some sense I enjoy the writing, but only once I get into it, the thought of sitting down sometimes is overwhelming to me. And that barrier of, oh, my God, how am I going to, I have this idea, and I love the idea, but how am I going to put it into words? It just, and then once I do, what I enjoy most about writing is I have no idea where it's going.

When I start to write, I think I'm going to, you know, even in the nonfiction books, and I think I'm going to head here, and then the writing takes me over here to a very roundabout way of describing where I thought I'd end up at the very beginning. But for you, when you're writing, you know, it would be fatal for me. It would be fatal for you. Yeah, I have to know where I'm going. Otherwise, you know, you're working, working for weeks and you start writing and you come up with 20, 50, 70 pages and you're out. You haven't figured out where the flower flowers, you know what I mean?

And you're then you got 60 pages that are quite good, but it doesn't go any place. and you have no climax. You have no story that matures. So it's, I have to know. So when you sit down and write, you know where you're going, and you're very rarely surprised that the writing takes you anywhere else.

You've never had that experience ever? Even when it works out, whether you think you're going to write a movie about this, and you have a whole point of mind and then when you start to write, that's a fascinating. Lucky man. No, no, it's all.

I know this from other writers too. you're out of control. Your characters take over, they say. If your characters take over, you're out of control. You want to control. You know, someone who's writing dramatically for a movie or play or something, I could, if I just had a good climax only to start, I got it, I'm home free.

I can always get, you know, Moss Hart said, third act problems are the killers. Nobody has first act. And I understand that completely. If you have a good third act and, and, you know, you know what you're, then the rest is all easy. You can get up there 500 ways.

It doesn't matter. So, so, but you have to know, or I have to know, where I'm going specifically, and I don't want to start writing until I know I have that. Otherwise, you know, really, you do write, you know, when I wrote

Purple Rose of Cairo, the guy comes off the screen and he sees Mia Farrow in the audience and she falls in love with him and he with her and the guy has stepped off the screen and people, the characters are panicked on the screen and people are coming into the movie. We have to see it. Now, I'm finished with 50 pages,

and I'm sitting there and it doesn't go anywhere and I got no place to go so then what happens now he's off he's met her she likes him now what do I do so I was out and I took the thing

this was after a lot of work I threw in the drawer and I figured well that's it it just doesn't work and six months later after I did another film or something it occurred to me that the actor who came off the

screen was a screen thing of an imaginary character. What if the actor playing him in Hollywood came back and there were two of them and there was a, all of a sudden, in two weeks' time, the thing just flowered like a rosebush and I had a very good story, a film of mine that I really liked. Yeah, it's one of them. It's a great movie. And but okay, but that's, so for you, when you say, then I start writing, it's finished. That wasn't an example of it, but What it really means is when you have the good third act and you know where it's going, then it's a pleasure. Yeah, but I usually structure out most of the thing in my mind. I know where I'm going and I know where the fun is going to be.

Okay, so the thinking and the puzzling is agonizing. The writing is a pleasure. But then what I meant by the fact that it's not, that maybe the making the film isn't the favorite part. It wasn't just the physical problems. You say as the process goes on, casting, shooting, editing, gets worse and worse for me. When I'm finished, I look at it and I'm disappointed. The idea for the film was so beautiful and everything's so great. And then little by little, I wounded it, writing, casting, shooting, editing, mixing.

I don't want to see it again. So, and I always wonder, when I first met you, I remember I was flying from Australia and I happened to see Annie Hall again after 25 years. I hadn't seen it before. And I told you, and you said, I haven't, and you told me, I haven't seen it since I made it. And now I know that you don't watch any of your movies after you make them. Is this the reason? Yeah, because you can only be disappointed. The thing is on film, and if I saw Annie Hall now, I think, oh, I could do this so much better.

I got a much better joke for here. Why didn't I say this? How could I say such a stupid thing? You know, so what I want to torture myself for? So I don't ever watch them because I can't do anything about them. so I don't watch them. Would you be happiest if in an imaginary world you could just have ideas for films

and write the scripts and never make the movies? No, no, I have to make the movie so it comes out the way I want it. I did that on my first movie, watched New PussyCast. And it was an embarrassing, stupid movie and a terrible experience, and I vowed that I would never do it.

That was okay you decide to go, always have the control of writing and directing. Yes, because you're shocked. You know, to you, to one, to me in this case, it's common sense what to do. But you give it to someone else, and you can't believe that they don't understand the simple common sense. They're not stupid. They're good, and they're professionals.

But, you know, I think Groucho once said that he was talking about timing and said, people don't realize that just one extra syllable totally will ruin a joke. They don't understand that. And I see that. I say, can't you see that if I say, he woke me up, it's funny. If I say he awakened me, it's not funny. One is going to make an audience laugh, and the other is not. And they can't.

So it's just like if someone said to me, Can't you hear that when the guy comes to that passage that it's a little flat, his clarinet is a little flat or his trumpets gone a little sharp there? I say, no, it sounds great to me. And he said, no, you don't hear it's a little sharp. We're going to take that passage again. And, well, people don't hear it. And you can't believe it if you can do it yourself. So I have to make those things because.

So they're not ruined. I want them to be what I want them to be. You want to ruin yourself instead of letting someone else. Yes, exactly. If it's going to be ruined, I want to ruin that. But I actually was asking a somewhat different direction. If there was an imaginary world where no one would make the film, where you could just have ideas and write scripts and not have the agony of watching it.

I won't write film scripts, for sure. Because the film is a director's medium. Okay. So you said somewhere, making the film is a big struggle, but I would rather struggle with films than other things. things. So it's really, you do want to make the movies. I mean, it's movies are what you want to do. Well, movies are only what I want to do because people back them. And it's, and the hardest part about making a movie is raising the money for it. Yeah, yeah. And so if people back them, if people

keep coming forward and saying, yes, you need this much money for a movie, we'll put it up. I'd be a fool to say no. Yeah, yeah, sure. But, but if someone's, tomorrow said to me, you can't get any backing. No one's going to back any of your films. They don't like you. Then, fine. I mean, that's okay with me.

I'm very happy to write for the theater. I would not write film scripts and give them other people. I write plays. But you wouldn't write the film scripts. But, okay, but the struggle, but you realize it's a struggle, and it seemed to me you want to,

at some level you want to struggle. And because, I mean, one of the things that I admire so much about you, again, having known you personally and learned this, is your work ethic. And the discipline you have, and you said it, you said the work is all that matters. All I do is work. If I just keep working, everything else will fall in place. You finish a movie.

You don't luxuriate in it. You're the next day. You're writing the next movie, and it's work. And you say you don't care whether the films are successful or not, whether they're... Right. The fun is making the movie. the film. When you're a kid, you think, oh, I write this film, I'll direct this film, and I'll make it, and I will be famous, and I'll go to parties, and I'll win Oscars,

and you envision some glamorous fantasy thing. Then you realize quite quickly, when you get older and you get into film, that all of that is less than meaningful. I mean, none of it is satisfying or fun or anything. And what you look and say, hey, what was really fun was creating that thing. And so when you're finished with a film, I don't mean to be arrogant. I don't care. I always like when people like my films. But if they don't like them, there's nothing I can do about it. I made the film and there it is. So what am I going to sit home and brew? I made the film. I gave it my best shot. I hope you like it. If you don't like it, nothing I can do about it. If you do like it, great. But I'm not concerned with that.

I'm concerned with, you know, when Annie Hall won the Academy Awards, someone said, weren't you thrilled? I'm thinking to myself, when Annie Hall won that, I had made Annie Hall a year ago. I was working on another film. I'm not interested. You know, people now call me and tell me how a film is doing. And I'm saying, I don't care how the film is doing.

Do I care that in Budapest or Omaha or someplace, the film had a great weekend? What does that mean to me? It means nothing. I finish that film, you know, six, eight, ten months ago and haven't seen it since or thought about it since. It's history. So I don't really care. I have a film now that's playing in Europe. It doesn't matter to me.

I finished another film. I'm worried about the editing on this film and getting the jokes right and getting the romances right and things. And I'm thinking, God, I have an idea for a new film. But let me ask you. Well, first of all, that's what I've always admired, that attitude, which is so amazing. I mean, I've written books, and I remember agonized. I mean, you know, just wanting to know how it's doing and wanting, and were you, was this always your attitude? Or were you, when you started, did you have that positive?

view of, oh, I want to win the awards. I want to be famous. I want to have the glamour. Or were you always, did you never suffer under that illusion? I never thought about awards because I was thinking of survival. I had so much trouble with take the money and run. I was so sure it was going to flop because I was such an amateur putting it together. And bananas, I wasn't even thinking in those terms.

and then when I came to the movie Love and Death, which is like the fourth movie I made, United Artists came in with a carton, a cardboard carton, with a thousand reviews from all over the country. And they said, why don't you read those reviews and give us a nice quote from each one

that you want. We'll make up a big quote ad, using 100 quotes or something. And I started reading them. And there were, you know, good reviews, 99% of them. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy likes this, this guy like this, to this guy I'm a genius, to this guy I'm an idiot because I didn't know this and I copied this and I'm too slow here. And there I was revolutionary. And, you know, I'm thinking if I read through all of these, I learn nothing just, and you hear people's opinions on things.

And so I put them aside. I said, you make up the quote ad you want. And I never, ever, ever looked at another word written about me in interviews, news stories, on television, reviews. Now, people used to say to me, oh, you should read Vincent Canby what he said about you. My God, the review's so glowing. Never ever read a word of. It's remarkably healthy. I have, you know, it's a, it's not a temptation. It's not a, that's like, I just want to, just want to see where he says, you know, masterpiece, you know, forget it. It's, it's, it's, you don't want to obsess over yourself. Well, that. You know, you don't want to sit in a room and think, God, that guy was right. I am shallow. I should turn to deeper themes or, yes, I'm quite brilliant. And I think, you don't, you, you don't want that. You don't want that. You don't. You don't. You don't. You don't. You don't.

want to think about you. You want to think about, put your nose to the grindstone and think about the work. Good plot, good plot, good plot, good work. I mean, good, that's what I mean by not being neurotic. The attitude towards your work is healthier than mine has been. I know that. But at the same time, it also illustrates something, because I want to make that connection to science, that people think that ultimately art and science are selfish. In a sense, what you're doing, is doing it for yourself. You're doing, if you're working hard, the best thing you can do. But you're also doing it because you enjoy it.

It satisfies you. And most scientists don't become scientists to save the world. They do it because they enjoy it. Because they enjoy it. You're doing something you love. And if you don't enjoy it, you rarely do a good job. Right. And you probably think you've never worked a day in your life.

Exactly. You probably think, you know, hey, they're paying me to play baseball. Yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, this is just the best thing I'm playing. I'm playing every day. Right. And so I feel the same way that I'm doing this to myself, that a certain amount of people enjoy it,

that's great. That's a perk. It's a bonus. I love that. But, you know, now, it's a Spartan life. You know, you don't make a movie, for example, and luxuriate in adulation. and go to parties and accept your awards

and think because you got these awards, you're better than you really are, and you don't go to your opening night and a party afterward, and suddenly you're surrounded by fascinating women and brilliant men, and you're, you know, no, that's, that's, you lead a Spartan life, you work,

and you go home, and you, work the next day and... And the work, yeah. See, I mean, the fact that work entered three times that sense, you've said it, the work is what drives you. But at the same time, I have to say, when I listen to you, and maybe you should feel good about this, I think of Richard Feynman, the physicist.

Feynman, oh, yes. Who is another idol of mine. I should be so lucky. Yeah, but two things. You know, when the Nobel Prize, he said, are you thrilled? He said, no, I was thrilled when I had the answer to the question. And the prize doesn't matter.

He also said, and there's a famous book, it was his wife tragically died early who said, why do you care what other people think? Those two things, when I think about you, it's the work that's, you know whether, if you're satisfied with it, you're satisfied with it, and if you're not, you're not. It doesn't matter what anyone else says.

And it doesn't matter what other people think. But Feynman was also, it appeared miraculously to come up with solutions to things. People didn't see there was like 50,000 pages of hard work in his life that he'd done. It's hard work. It's a detective work, the tedious checking of, you know. And it's the work. So, you know, we're getting near the end that I want to just, you know, it all came together

to me, and I said to you earlier, it was in the middle of the night, maybe that's crazy. But when I think of this being driven by these existential questions, and you say basically, yeah, you're doing this, but if you're not asking the deep questions, you're really not doing what you should be doing. You know, you're doing hard. But you think about that in art in general. If you're, you know, when you compared Flobert versus Tall Star Kafka, no matter how good you are as a craftsperson, if you're not dealing with the deep questions that are hard to address, then you're not, then you're not really doing it. And you've got

to work hard. And so I think of, when I think of your response to this meaningless universe by the work you do, which you claim is to distract, but you also say it's the work. and it's hard and it's a struggle. I hear all those things coming out. I couldn't help thinking, for me, the prototypical existential thing is Camus and Cicephas. The myth of Cisophis, of Cisphus rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity

because at the top, the gods have forced the boulder to go down. It's this meaningless existence that he's pushing the ball, almost gets up, rolls down again. And then Camus says, I think Sisyvis was smiling. Yeah, he says that because he wants to put a good spin on it. No, but I think that that's what...

That's his version of Catholicism or Judaism. No, no, maybe. No, I think it's less rosy. I think it's less rosy. I don't buy it. No, I don't think it's... I disagree. I think what he's saying is what you said in some sense is that it doesn't mean

rolling of this thing up this hill is meaningful. It's meaningless. But you're here. you're stuck. You've got to find meaning. And I see you beautifully finding meaning in your work and your comedy. Not thinking that it's profound, that it means anything for the cosmos. No, I'm finding distraction. It's a distraction because it allows you to get through the rolling the boulder up the hill. I've got to tell you, I got a joke in my

new movie, Rifkin's Festival, which I just finished shooting in Spain. It's coming home. And Wally Sean, who's playing the Intellectual. Oh, great. He's in there again. Okay. It says, I have this dream.

Someone mentions Cicophist. He says, I have this dream where I'm pushing a boulder up the hill in the boulding and pushing it. He says, finally, I get it up there. And then what the hell do I have? A boulder on a hill. And I think that's true. Then what do you got?

So that's what I'm saying. You know, you solve the task. technical problems, the physical problems, the problems of the world, you get the boulder on the hill and the gods don't stop you. It gets up there. What do you got? You got an empty life with a boulder on a hill. You know, a meaningless universe. But it's up there. But if you make me, but if you get if you get if the struggle, if this rolling. A struggle is a distraction. It's a distraction. And if you make it, you know, if you make it meaningful, even if you realize it has no cosmic, cosmic significance, if you. get joy in the searching.

And I do, as a scientist, I get more joy in the searching than the answering. The struggle of figuring it out. If some guy comes in and steps on your toe hard and you, oh, geez, I think you broke my toe, I got to go to the emergency room. You get the same distraction. You know what I mean? Yeah, but if I gave you the truth. You're not thinking about the universe flying apart.

You're thinking about it? If I gave me the choice of having me stepped on your toe when you woke up in the morning or getting up and putting that pen to paper and making your next movie, you'd make the next movie. Because that's the struggle that you want to do. Yeah, it's a struggle that I can handle. But if I get up in the morning and someone says to me, you know, you've got to get down to the Motor Vehicle Bureau and renew your license. Oh, God, this is the last day. That's also a struggle.

And I'm caught up in that trivia. And I'm not thinking I'm going to Motor Vehicle Bureau and I have to maybe take the test. test again and the universe is flying apart. I'm not thinking that. I'm thinking about the motive. So it distracts me. Okay. You know, I'm a big fan of distraction because I feel the situation is irredeemably grim, bleak, unsolvable, and absurd. And the only thing you can do, like in Hemingway's story, The Killers, and he says to the guy, gee, it's terrible, it's horrible. It's horrible. and think about it. He said, well, don't think about it. Don't think about it. Okay, well, you know, that would be a wonderful place to end,

and then I'm going to go on for a minute, because two minutes. Because I think that's a wonderful way to sum up. But at the same time, I wanted to quote a poet that you liked, and I learned this, I learned this poem, I don't want to appear more erudite than I am from watching a movie. I watched a recent movie. Did you see Jojo Rabbit? Do you know, Tai? I haven't seen it yet, no. It's an amazing, I'm so impressed with it. Let me just say. Oh, I can't wait to see it. I've heard very good things about it.

He quotes Rilke, who is a poet. And there's such an amazing quote, which I let everything happen to you. Beauty and Terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. And I thought, well, you know, that's not such a bad way to end this either. Is that, okay, no feelings final. You just keep plugging away.

You just keep plugging away. You know, he's got no choice. No, no, no. But people do have a choice. They can despair. They can say, look, Believe me, he's despairing. When he tells you this, you know, he's only telling you this because he's despairing.

Read better, you know, the one who wrote Obad. Oh, yeah, no, I forget names. You know, okay, yeah, now I'll both forget. Read that and see what you think of that. Okay. See how you feel after you've read that. Okay, but for me, the struggle, the terror, it's just, it's a distraction, but it's all we have.

As you said, reality is awful, but it's the only place to get a good steak, right? Unfortunately, yeah. Well, that would, I want to, look, that sums up the profound aspect of this. I want to end it with one last thing because it's important to me, which is, I was reading, you know,

when you cast, I read a thing about Jody Foster writing you and saying, can I be in one of your things? And, you know, you pointed out that you generally get, you know, you have Julia Taylor and people who cast for you, But sometimes there's someone, you know, and you think about it, and you put him in a roll, and you contact him, and you say, oh, that was, that was right for you, Jody Foster, and she was in one of your movies. So I was going to say that would that ever happen if there was, like, a short Jewish physicist?

A short Jewish physicist who, you might want to, you know, if he said, I want to, you know, if you ever have a role for me. Jewish physicists are not box office. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks, Woody. It's, it's, it's, I could go on for hours, but thank you very much. I'm sure they're all asleep by now, and if they're not, they should be. Thanks.

Philip Larkin. Philip Larkin, right. Okay, there we go. Couldn't you yell that out earlier? The Origins podcast is produced by Lawrence Krauss, Nancy Dahl, John and Don Edwards, Gus and Luke Holwerta, and Rob Zeps. Audio by Thomas Amison, web design by Redmond Media Lab, animation by Tomahawk Visual Effects, and music by Rickalus. To see the full video of this podcast as well as other bonus content, visit us at patreon.com slash origins podcast.