Interiors (1978)

I had actual nightmares from watching that Swedish dame march into the sea.

Loved the earthy, unpretentious Maureen Stapleton character.

One of my favorite Alle movies. From the sterile sets through the washed out (like their souls) cinematography to the sterile relationships, the movie is just a brilliant observation of the dynamics between a bourgeoise New Yorker family who seem to have it all and in the process of their parents' separation must come to terms with the absolute emptiness in their lives. Perfectly calibrated performances, especially the women. A must see.

I was molested.

R2 That was my opinion - the first time I saw it back in 1978. Have you watched it lately?

Yes every Joey line is a howler. My favorite is said to her father: "We knew about your affairs when mother was in the hospital but your choices were just a little more discreet!"

Mary Beth Hurt was excellent in "The World According to Garp": brought a lot to an underwritten role.

There was this weird Swedish movie I once watched. Some women in a mansion. They argue and then the maid tries to comfort a dying sister by breastfeeding her.

Then another South African movie where a rich family gathers. They talk for a bit, then it comes out that suicides happened because the dad molested the children.

Another one was an Iranian film where doctors talk and try to push a rock off a cliff. I stopped seeking foreign films after these.

Check out this howling Diane Keaton scene, "The intimacy of it embarrasses me"

The Swedish one sounds like Cries and Whispers.

"this weird Swedish movie I once watched. Some women in a mansion. They argue and then the maid tries to comfort a dying sister by breastfeeding her."

It sounds like an SCTV parody with Andrea Martin and Catherine O'Hara.

Whispers of the Wolf

R5 My favorite, "Leave her alone.... she's a sick woman!"

R8 yeah that’s bad as I remember it . And her character was supposed to be some world class poet, right? It seems like she would have been a pretty shitty poet.

SHE’S A VULGARIAN!!!

Mostly, it's a movie about bangs.

Existential pain, ennui, and bangs.

Poor Geraldine Page. Her character is a deeply neurotic woman, a designer who's obsessed with the world of surfaces. She's supposed to look both uptight and chic, but Page is such a bloated mess that she makes Maureen Stapleton look slim and stylish by comparison. So they don't really dress Page so much as upholster her.

R9 Yes, that's it. Maybe it was too close to the narcissism of real families. Didn't want Sweden to be that.

For all the Woody haters out there, all they have to do is tie him to a chair and force him to watch this. I suspect he'd be dead of embarrassment 20 minutes in...

R7

That sounds like The Celebration, which was actually Danish. That was one of the first foreign movies to sour me to foreign movies in general. The other one was L'humanite. Fortunately I was completely over pretentious foreign films by the time Irreversible came out.

R16 - I agree about Page. And her Method fidgets don't do her any favors, because no man would want to be with someone like that, except Rip Torn.

Is this an attempt at a Bergman film?

Woody was just embarrassing when he imitated his idols. Interiors, where he aped Bergman, and Stardust Memories, in which he mimicked Fellini, are two of his very worst, smack dab in the middle of his best, most fertile period.

Geraldine and Maureen both got Oscar noms, Geraldine in the lead and Maureen in supporting. They both lost.

Diane switched parts with Mary Beth just before shooting started. She was allowed since she was sleeping with the director.

The movie received almost unanimous praise from American critics, and Woody was praised for his first "serious" work.

Mary Beth received the best reviews of the sisters but her career soon fizzled out. She was married to actor William Hurt. They divorced.

Woody received two Oscar nominations for writing and directing. He lost both. The set designer also was nominated. He lost too.

The actress who played the third sister, Kristin Griffith, never had another major role in movies. She was supposed to have played a great beauty, but she was miscast.

Yes Maureen Stapleton is wonderful, and Mary Beth Hurt overcomes the dialogue (Woody thinks that's how Protestants talk) BUT it's Geraldine Page that steals the movie.

She is scary, haunting, and ultimately heartbreaking.

No one has mentioned the famous church scene where Eve smashes the candle altar. You have to wonder how many takes they did.

Page and Stapleton were excellent. You never knew what the Page character was going to do next. Another suicide attempt. Rant at family members. Or the candle scene at the church. Pages brand of twitchy acting fit this part perfectly. And yes Joey had some hilarious lines. Jesus Christ! Be careful!

I remember reading in Maureen Stapleton's memoirs she said Pearl's fondness for red dresses defined the character.

I love Joey's reaction to when her father says he is just happy to lie on the beach with Pearl, as if that is something outrageous.

Love this movie!

R7 - R9 is correct & R19 is wrong.

The first movie you mentioned is obviously Cries and Whispers.

I'm not sure about the other two.

I am Pearl and Mia is Eve hee-hee!

It's hard to see why Woody wanted Ingrid Bergman for Eve and said he wrote the part for her. Bergman has a natural warmth which also worked against the idea of her being the supposed monstrous mother in Autumn Sonata too. And this is apart from the fact of her Swedish accent needing to be explained.

R2 does not understand the difference between intention and result. Accepting the obvious loses the failure of the piece. Or, rather, loses the chance to glory in the unintentional camp value that is its only worth. Even Stapleton is just a cartoon pushing jabbed along to look like "real, vulgar life." SHE WEARS RED AND DRINKS BEER!!!!! Please.

OP has it right. We laughed so hard, not wanting to make a scene but not being able to help it, during the movie that people shushed us. I had to go to the lobby, roaring, to steady myself. When the blanched prune Page, every tic anesthetized but still visibly working, headed into that water, filmed with the pomp of a royal funeral, I burst.

As itself, it is a disaster of bad judgment. It is a Borscht-Belt comedian's heartless attempt to create Ibsen through an outsider's view of High Church US Protestantism with Bergman's rewrite and Nykvist's camera. Thoroughly wrong. Hateful. Self-eviscerating by projection, clinging to the outsider's glimpse of The Mighty Them while lusting for their marble-like detachment, hating them for never having had to tolerate a bad, sweet kugel.

But as a camp piece it is absolutely wonderful. Inadvertently it achieves achieves much more than its overreaching aims. Sometimes the best cinematic truth is unconsciously presented.

"Check out this howling Diane Keaton scene, "The intimacy of it embarrasses me""

R8 If you don't get it it's because you don't get the neurosis of over-psychoanalyzed New York intellectuals in those days, so you're laughing at what you don't understand like a moron.

From IMDB: [While watching the movie with a friend, of this film, Woody Allen once said words to the effect of: "It's always been my fear. I think I'm writing Long Day's Journey into Night, and it turns into Edge of Night."]

I think his fear was realized.

At least Edge of Night was entertaining. Is there a longer more tedious slog into banality than LDJIN?

OP here. Despite my disparaging the movie, I think I enjoyed it just as much now as I did the first time I saw it. Possibly even more.

I enjoy it much more today also than when it first came out.

I saw it at the first morning show on Saturday opening weekend at the Baronet I believe. I thought it was wonderful. But the word around me was that it was a pretentious lousy Bergman knock off. I was the only person I knew who liked it. So a little while later I went to see it again and I found it just as good. I haven't seen it since then so I'm now afraid to take another look. I'll just leave it in the late 70s where perhaps it belongs.

I loved Stardust Memories as well.

funny? This was about a woman who commits suicide and her family. Maybe some of the dialogue was ironic and thought provoking but it wasnt a ha ha movie. I thought it was fairly brillant and his best film. I cant stand Allennow or his other crap.

R40 Soon Yi

This movie is an absolute riot to me too OP. I like to watch it as a double feature with Ordinary People.

WASPS in existential crisis...what the fuck did Woody Allen ever know about that, except from movies? Leave that stuff to Ingmar Bergman, darling. It's bad enough when he does it, but at least it's the real deal. Maureen Stapleton in red....give me a fucking break.

You 'taped' it?

OP, YOU"RE A VULGARIAN!!

R42 Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People, or Sissy Spacek - In the Bedroom: who did a better job breaking that plate?

^ Sissy.

The only movie that made me laugh harder it its over-the-top pretentiousness and faux-angst was "Natural Enemies," with Louise Fletcher and Hal Holbrook.

It was the only time I actually fell onto the floor laughing at a theater. Which was a nasty thing to do. The WORST "drama" ever.

But "Interiors" is in a class by itself, because Allen is so fucking talented and smart, and has a lot to say. Just not about THESE people. He did better with wealthy, established, educated goyim later on. Often with nubile teens playing "natural innocent life."

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

"And her Method fidgets don't do her any favors, because no man would want to be with someone like that, except Rip Torn."

I had a different take on Page's character - granted based on anecdotal experience. She reminded me of some of my mom's friends. Affluent women who were once dynamic, charismatic and alive but withered within the confines of detached, loveless yet respectable marriages. Unceremoniously dumped by their husbands, a few found new life, went back to school, had a career - one came out as gay. But one or two were just like this woman. Depressed, delusional, neurotic, increasingly unhinged.

My mom's friend Katherine was the worst - though she was wealthy, she became a high school teacher after her divorce and drank herself to death in under a decade. She was the teacher people always whispered about because she reeked of booze all the time and had these truly terrifying flashes of anger out of the blue. I was too young to have compassion for her - I could only see the damage. My mom tried to maintain their friendship but in the end avoided her phone calls.

At Katherine's wake, there were photos of her from when she was young. It was--crazy. In them, she was beautiful, sexy, radiant. It was so weird. I just couldnt reconcile the woman I knew with this amazing, vibrant person I was seeing. And she totally reminded me of Page - in a way - when I saw Interiors. Allen was definitely riffing on a type when writing her character. They were not that in uncommon within a certain milieu in the 70s/80s.

Has anyone here mentioned how HANNAH AND HER SISTERS is the successful, better received reverse of this coin?

The same key elements (3 sisters, so Chekhovian; a family both WASPy and bohemian) and themes (sibling rivalry; having one sister but desiring another; crazy substance-abusing mothers) are all there, and even the men play similar roles; etc.

But HANNAH is a sophisticated warm comedy and it all works so much better.

Pauline Kael has fun dissecting this. "Its deep on the surface."

My EARTH TONES and my BEIGES!

R36 I couldn't agree more about LDJIN. I saw it with a stellar cast (Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy, Robert Sean Leonard, Philip Seymour Hoffman) and I thought I was going to go out of my mind. It was so boring, even while I was telling myself that on some level I was being culturally enriched. How maddeningly tedious was it? In the longed for Intermission I stepped outside and bummed a cigarette (I no longer smoked) from someone just so there would be something I didn't like more than the play (if that makes sense).

R43 Stapleton in the red dress is really obvious, true, but when she's at dinner talking about how she likes her steak and lying on the beach you can see what a powerful actress can do with a part.

Mary Beth Hurt is wonderful, and I'm sad she didn't achieve the level of fame that her contemporaries (M and G mostly) did.

The Keaton to-camera interview sticks out because she is the only character to do it and we don't know who she is talking to. Joey gets a final narration but that is different.

Mary Beth Hurt is also wonderful in Head over Heels aka Chilly Scenes of Winter.

"The Keaton to-camera interview sticks out because she is the only character to do it and we don't know who she is talking to."

Oh honey, she's talking to her analyst.

R30

R19 here. I was referring to the "South African" movie. That was "The Celebration", which is actually Danish. I agree that the first was "Cries and Whispers".

Is this the one where one of the women commits suicide at the end by walking into the ocean?

I ROARED with laughter when I first saw that scene. So fucking over pretentious.

you're a VULGARIAN!!

For me the funniest part of Eve's suicide is that she is wearing heels.

There was... perversity

A wonderful film, with a performance by Ms Page for the ages. Sure, the Bergman-Chekhov homages are a little much, but, damn, it's completely gripping from start to finish.

[quote] Is this the one where one of the women commits suicide at the end by walking into the ocean? I ROARED with laughter when I first saw that scene.

r58, at the center of a sick psyche is a sick spirit.

It felt like every awful student film I've seen but stretched to feature length. Not an interesting character in the bunch besides Stapelton.

"I do nothing but cater to you!"

Fun Fact: Mary Beth Hurt used to be married to William Hurt. But divorced because he used to beat the shit out of her. (A friend of mine worked in her agent's office). She then married, (and apparantly is still married to) writer/Director Paul Schrader. Who is also abusive. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

In retrospect, the trailer is pretty funny too. Unintentionally, (of course).

I sent so many friends to see this movie, you'd think I had a piece of the gross.

Several years later, I happened to sit next to Richard Jordan at a Broadway matinee of Bent and spoke to him about "Interiors" at the intermission.

What did he tell you?

R68 Did you ask him to help you take your boots off?

It actually received a lot of scathing reviews from American critics. As was posted above, Bergman could have sued for plagiarism, and "Stardust Memories" is the most brazen rip-off of another movie ("8 1/2") imaginable. If the equivalent cutting and pasting had been done with a novel, it would never have been published.

Pauline Kael on Diane Keaton:

Diane Keaton does something very courageous for a rising star. She appears here with the dead-looking hair of someone who's too distracted to do anything with it but get a permanent, and her skin looks dry and pasty. There's discontent right in the flesh, while Kristin Griffith, the TV sexpot, appears with fluffy hair, blooming skin, and bright white teeth — the radiance that we normally see in Keaton. This physical transformation is the key to Keaton's thoughtful performance: she plays an unlikable woman -- a woman who dodges issues whenever she can, who may become almost as remote as her mother.

I agree with Kael about Keaton's appearance. Not so much about her performance.

I liked the house on the beach.

R72 so Kael is basically saying Keaton gave a great performance because she was brave enough to look like shit?

I’m with r73.

Interiors is one of John Waters' favourite films.

Who was he basing Flynn on? A bimbo actress of that tiime?

He’s basing it on Keaton

"Who was he basing Flynn on? A bimbo actress of that tiime?"

She was just the freewheeling disco sister. Again, a common type at that time.

she barely is on screen

I read somewhere that after Louise Lasser saw 'Interiors', she telephoned Woody Allen in a fury and accused him of using her family as characters in the movie. Her mother had been an interior decorator, and committed suicide.

Your life is my content, Louise.

Louise Lasser in the Diane Keaton role would have been amazing!

r81, knowing how mean and insane woody is it is a likely thing

In the horrible, self-loathing, repulsive film "Deconstructing Harry", Woody plays a writer whose ex-wives and colleagues all rip him to shreds for using their lives as raw material.

So yes, betcha that Woody has done that in real life.

I love this movie, partly because of the laugh out loud dialogue discussed in this thread. I do think that the actors, including Keaton, are all great despite some of the awful lines they were given.

As far as Woody’s dramas go my favorite is “Another Woman” with Gena Rowlands as the lead. She should have been nominated that year.

I prefer Crimes and Misdemeanors but yea, Gena rowlands is great in that film

Crimes is his best work but I don’t consider it a pure drama like Interiors and AW.

And Match Point was boring!

AW!!!

Gena and Sandy’s fun argument starts at 2:20. Lmao. Right up there with Interiors.

R90, that is one of my favorite Woody Allen scenes. Rowland and Dennis both should have been nominated.

R86, great film.

a delight

VULGARIAN

Another Woman is definitely his best drama with brilliant performances by Rowland and Dennis. Interiors mostly bored me and I found myself hoping the entire family would take a trip out to sea with their mother.

Blue Jasmine was pretty good, even though it has a little more humor than most of his other dramas.

r48 Thank you for educating us about "Natural Enemies". I just watched it for free on youtube and it is a very campy & interesting forgotten film. I recommend it to all fans of late 70's cinema.

The ocean at the end is so beautiful. I wonder if Geraldine Page went into the water or did they have a stunt double.

Woody’s drama is so much more effective when he allows humor in them. Crimes & Misdemeanors is simultaneously his funniest & most devastating film (his “masterpiece” imo).

OP here. R98, I'm in agreement. Total. I watched Crimes recently, and unlike Interiors, it holds up. (although again, I think I enjoy Interiors now more than ever).

When Mike goes into the water to save Joey and then suddenly loses hold of her did you hold your breath, thinking Joey was gone?

[quote] The movie received almost unanimous praise from American critics,

Really.

Pauline Kael in the New Yorker wrote, "It's a handbook of art-film mannerisms; it's so austere and studied that it might have been directed by that icy mother herself [that Geraldine Page plays]--from the grave." She ads, "People who watch this movie are almost inevitably going to ask themselves, How can Woody Allen present in a a measured, digni=fied straight manner the same sorts of tinny anxiety discourse that he generally parodies?

Richard Schickel of Time wrote that the film's "desperate sobriety ... robs it of energy and passion"; Allen's "style is Bergmanesque, but his material is Mankiewiczian, and the discontinuity is fatal. Doubtless this was a necessary movie for Allen, but it is both unnecessary and a minor embarrassment for his well-wishers."

E.G. Marshall played Vladimir in the first Broadway production of "Waiting for Godot".

I looked up “Natural Enemies” on IMDB and noticed that the director went on to do “Revenge Of The Nerds” several years later.

I haven't seen Natural Enemies. It was lambasted by Janet Maslin in The New York Times but it does feature those acting hams Jose Ferrer and Viveca Lindfors so it can't be all bad.

Wasn’t E.G. Marshall gay?

r105, he once said his initials stood for "Everybody's Guess," so who knows.

I adore Geraldine Page, Gena Rowlands, Sandy Dennis and Maureen Stapleton. All great actresses.

AW also had nice supporting performances from Gene Hackman, Harris Yulin, Ian Holm, young Martha Plimpton, and DL icon Miss Betty Buckley.

Can you imagine Woody giving Gene Hackman notes? Gene would tear him a new one.

Gene Hackman gives a really lovely performance in Another World.

Even Betty Buckley is good in her one scene!

And I love Frances Conroy revealing to Gena Rowlands that her brother hates her. It comes as a complete shock to her which is totally fitting with her character.

*Another Woman

I forgot that was Frances Conroy! She was great.

There’s a flashback sequence in Another Woman involving Gena’s brother who was constantly at odds with their dad over his career. The actor playing the brother says to her about the dad: “He wants me to work in a paper box company”. The way he says it - very flatly and in a tone you would expect from a Woody Allen comedy - makes me crack up each time 🙃.

Otherwise I think Woody steered away from the same pitfalls that befell Interiors...though some of Mia’s psychotherapy sessions come close to inducing an eye roll.

Is INTERIORS the new FOLLIES to DL?

Discuss.

The trailer is hilariously pretentious!

R115 the reviews are even more pretentious than the movie!

Gene Shalit was such a whore!

OP here. Reminding anyone on this thread who was there at the time, (like me). Yeah, there were a few critical dissenters, but acclaim was not only mostly unanimous, but reverential. From the most respected critics of the time, (hard to believe now, but I think Shalit was more respected than Ebert back then). The trailer with the critics' quotes was standard for such a well-received "artistic achievement". I, myself, couldn't wait to see Woody accept his second Oscar in a row for Interiors.

Now I'm having fun laughing at my former overly influenced, naive, pretentious self.

It certainly is a hard movie to swallow now. But my god, it was the late 70s. A totally different time - a more culturally serious time. It was post-Vietnam; depression and introspection - the flipside of disco - informed the culture, at least in the realm that this movie investigates. People utilized the language of inquiry, analysis, psychotherapy much more freely. I was just a kid at the time, and in NYC, but it seemed everyone was suddenly in therapy.

So I kinda look at it that way, too. A real time-capsule.

Geraldine page represents the death of the american conscience

OP at r118: we've already established the reviews were not "mostly unanimous" in their praise for the film, as you claim.

reviews represent the death of the airman conscience

Gene Shalit for Bufferil

No love for September?

Elaine Stritch telling Mia Farrow she dresses like a Bulgarian peasant!

Also from SCTV: Gene Shalit's Critics Special, with special guest stars Siskel and ebert (Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty) and Rona Barrett (Catherine O'Hara).

R124 Not really. I found it drab, depressing, and kind of boring the first time. Not much different when I attempted to watch again years later....Not the goddamn laugh riot Interiors has become.

I am an Australian so when I saw Interiors at the cinema the audience all laughed at Pearl's putdown of our country. Also laughed at the opening credit for Mel Bourne.

R127 Was she right?

128 Back when Interiors was sent - YES she was correct.

How did everyone afford all that psychoanalysis back then?

How did everyone afford all that psychoanalysis back then?

You taped it OP?

"How did everyone afford all that psychoanalysis back then?"

It wasnt that hard to have an upwardly mobile middle class existence back then. Jobs afforded you a comfortable lifestyle back then.

Medicine was cheap

Page was incredible in A Trip to Bountiful

"How did everyone afford all that psychoanalysis back then?"

R131 Psychoanalysis was not cheap but it was considered an absolute necessity by the intellectual elite. So psychoanalysts took advantage of that and made you come in 3 or 4 times a week, sometimes more. And you had to pay for any missed sessions, justified or not. And if you wanted to take a vacation, it had to be on the same month as your analyst (generally August) otherwise you had to pay them. It was highway robbery.

they robbed woody blind

R136 is correct. Additionally, psychopharmaceuticals were not available the way they are now. If you were clinically depressed, for example, you saw a psychotherapist. You didn't take a pill, at least for most of us.

I do believe "talk" therapy is helpful, but I don't miss those days when it was the only option.

79% on Rotten Tomatoes

R135 = Meryl Streep.

R140 considering Page beat Meryl for the Oscar, I doubt its you Meryl.

Psychotherapy (particularly psychoanalysis) has always been much bigger in NYC than in the rest of the country. It still is today. It was particularly big in the sorts of circles Woody Allen ran around with in the 70s: wealthy Jewish intellectuals.

Remember, though, that in the Seventies living in NYC was also MUCH cheaper--rents and mortgages were not nearly so high then as now, even comparatively.

Gena Rowlands and (especially) Sandy Dennis were terrific in “Another Woman” — Dennis was electrifying in that scene at R90. Interesting to see Dennis reunited in the film with her costar in “Any Wednesday” on Broadway, Gene Hackman!

Movie a bit pretentious

R142 you know it’s the 70s because back then they called them “analysts.”

No one’s used that term in at least 40 years.

Yes, r39,I saw it at the Baronet also, August of '78, on my first trip to NYC as an adult . . . well, I turned 18 on August2nd, and was on my own, no family with me, and only knew some people in NY but not closely. Every day was pure magic.

I think it was called the Baronet & Coronet. And the theatre had these odd, Euro-modern metal seats with white cushions that slid back when you sat down. YOu know, the kind of small touch that would make a visitor/tourist sayt "I'm in a real city now." Annie Hall had just won best picture that year, "Manhattan" wouldn't come out until spring of '79, but it didnt matter. Allen was on a roll. Standing on a line that wrapped around the block felt like an EVENT. Remember this was his first non-comedy, and everyone was skeptical and/or curious. "Woody Allen made movie that isn't funny? What? Huh? I don't understand. His movies are so funny!""

Anyways, when Interiors ends with the three sisters in profile, the last line "Yes, it is very peaceful" and fades to gorgeous black, the packed audience let out an audible, collective gasp that I still recall. That was back when going to the movies was a shared experience.

^ That last line is curious.

We'd like it to mean the mother is at peace, and died peacefully in the peaceful ocean.

But it could very well mean, their lives are "very peaceful" now that the mother is gone.

They were all beautiful. Very beautiful. Everything in the movie was beautiful. (How many times was that word used in the screenplay?)

"But it could very well mean, their lives are "very peaceful" now that the mother is gone."

I think it's that. Definitely.

Because that ocean was NOT peaceful when Eve committed suicide. It was roiling and furious with pounding waves. Joey almost died trying to save her.

Was Joey named after Joey Heatherton?

Or, maybe the ocean looked peaceful because the mother was in there decorating it with her neutral and beige tones.

I remember Soon Yi deriding the film to Woody's face in a documentary.

This is a very polarizing movie. Some people see it as brilliant and others as horribly pretentious in an entertaining way. The dialogue is so cringey with these "artistes" taking themselves so seriously. "Manhattan" did the same thing to intentionally humorous affect

This is one of Woody's movies that would make for a great modern opera.

R152...Donny's in a coma

Huh? Please translate!

Diane Keaton's character in Manhattan basically relied on her analysts to survive. Donny - her therapist - couldn't be reached because he was in a coma.

"This is one of Woody's movies that would make for a great modern opera."

It's been done (practically): Bernstein's A QUIET PLACE. Family gathering, death of the mother, wrangling with the father, LOTSA angst.

pretty much

I would love to see this movie with a laugh track.

I haven't seen it since 1978. Big disappointment after Annie Hall - but I remember everyone laughing at the woman saying she had an art gallery in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel.

I was too young and unsophisticated to enjoy it as a bad pretentious movie. I'm going to watch it tomorrow and will read the thread after.

I love the clip of Keaton whining about death and the value of her poetry in the face of it. Real Woody Allen. OMG - what's he going to be like if his death is long and drawn out.... "you've got 6 months" sort of thing.

[quote]No love for September? Elaine Stritch telling Mia Farrow she dresses like a Bulgarian peasant!

Woody is such a bitch.

He also likes to say certain women look like "the wife of an astronaut".

His book is a bore because it's all him pretending to be a nice guy, so all that sort of thing is left out.

It got generally favorable reviews from critics and audiences.

And 5 Oscar nominations (actress, supporting actress, director, writer, set design)

Flynn and Her Whiny Sisters

Maureen Stapleton won the NY and LA film critics awards for it. Maggie Smith ended up winning the Oscar over her. I was only 11 when it came out, but saw it years later on cable. I remember laughing at all the Joey lines. I guess a few of the critics and audience expected something more in the vein of Annie Hall for Woodys follow up since he never attempted a serious drama. I thought it was well done and entertaining, but I’m a big Woody fan. It had that unintended comedy from keeping it from being too morbid and pretentious.

R165 I’m a big Woody fab too (well at least until this century) and he’s much better at intended comedy. His dramas are also more effective when he doesn’t attempt to strip them of humor.

woody fab!

bump

[quote]Some people see it as brilliant and others as horribly pretentious in an entertaining way. The dialogue is so cringey with these "artistes" taking themselves so seriously.

This was the second movie that made me realize there was a genre of "heterosexual camp." I saw it years after its theatrical release and howled at most of it, particularly Geraldine Page as the Live/Love/Lifer before her time who dared to wear bright primary colors because she Lived/Loved/Lifed or whatever.

The movie in the theater that made me realize heterosexual camp was a thing was "Wall Street." The dialogue was so strained-macho that when Charlie Sheen walked out on his Masters-of-New-York balcony and actually said aloud, "Who am I?" that a friend and I were asked to leave the theater because we couldn't stop howling.

"This was the second movie that made me realize there was a genre of "heterosexual camp.""

Be a doll and start a thread about Heterosexual Camp in the morning!

It's a subject the Datalounge has never, ever, explored.

[quote] Geraldine Page as the Live/Love/Lifer before her time who dared to wear bright primary colors because she Lived/Loved/Lifed or whatever.

Do you mean Maureen Stapleton, dear?

In real life the Maureen Stapleton character wouldve been at least 20 years younger and completely stupid.

bump

RUMP!

I just can't get excited about anything Woody Allen anymore...I used to love his stuff. And no, I don't believe for a minute he molested his daughter, I'm just sick of hearing about it all. I'm sick of Woody's whining, I'm sick of looking at Mia Farrow, I'm sick of listening to Ronan Sinatra, And I'm even sicker of Soon-Yi. They all need to just fuck-off.

I used to play with a major symphony orchestra and Andre Previn was guest conducting once and somebody asked him how he felt about having Woody Allen as a son-in-law...he went through the ceiling. So funny. The only normal one in the whole saga.

[quote]and Andre Previn was guest conducting once and somebody asked him how he felt about having Woody Allen as a son-in-law...he went through the ceiling

Karma, baby. Karma.

How was she vulgar exactly? Just because she wasn't a clinically depressed academic? Weird ass movie.

Pearl wore red after Rosh Hashanah.

I bet Stapleton and Page could have switched roles and been equally effective.

They sounded fabulous

R179 I disagree. They're both terrific actresses, but no way could Stapleton have carried off the fragility and frailness that was so central to the character.

bump

VULGARIAN VULGARIAN VULGARIAN!

Vulgarian bump

Interesting - 3 sisters.

Keaton was one of three sisters and Woody fucked all of them.

3 sisters in Hannah and Michael Caine becomes obsessed with his wife's sister....and hadn't Woody been Mia's husband in that? Then he too ends up with another of her sisters.

He has no sense of family boundaries.