SlapClap

From Onion A/V:

AVC: So it wouldn’t be a pleasure to look at them [past movies], like an old photo album or something, just to see where you were at a particular time?

Woody Allen: That’s a pleasure I deny myself, because then you get into nostalgic self-involvement, and I don’t think that would be good for me. I don’t like to reminisce much, and my walls don’t have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff. If you were in my house in New York, you wouldn’t know I was in the movie business. It just looks like a regular house, like the home of a lawyer or something, and I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.

On the Knicks:

What I’d like the Knicks to develop into is a team that’s fun and that’s colorful and that you really like to watch every night, which is the way they were many years ago. It was fun to watch them, because they didn’t just pile up wins in unappealing ways.

AVC: Like the [San Antonio] Spurs.

WA: Yeah. I’d really rather be entertained and have them come in second than be bored stiff and see them grind to a first-place finish.

What Comic-Con conventions need are less storm troopers and more Woody Allen nerds. Nerds with dark rimmed glasses who take 5 minutes to finish a thought; nerds who would rather be at a book party at Elaine’s than in outer space. Light sabers in the form of self-deprecation, but with a hint of self-assured intellectual superiority. From 1977-1994 Woody Allen made movies that made me happier than any movie by any other filmmaker at any other point in time. Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, just to name eight. And those aren’t even mentioning his “earlier, funnier ones.”

There’s alot to take away from the Woody-verse of films, especially in your mid-20’s when maturity is suddenly in reach. What’s more sophisticated at age 25 than acquiring a taste for Sidney Bechet records, the Marx Brothers, the word “didactic,” Bergman, existentialism, muted colors, jokes that reference books, Sentimental Education by Flaubert, Tracy’s face …

Of course the other reason to love Woody - that is, if you like New York - is because he loves New York. Instead of grilling the immigrants the city should make every 1st year investment banker in this town watch Manhattan. The Woody-verse bolsters your NY IQ ten-fold. Never mind that when you actually move to New York not even 5% of his movies translate to your day-to-day life. For instance: Winona Ryder won’t be asking you to meet her at El Teddy’s at midnight (closed anyway), and that table at Rao’s is not available even if its restaurant week. But this is not my point. We’re not talking about the show Friends here - disparities don’t make his New York any less real, or the love-contempt relationship to the city his characters embody any less authentic. And there is always the opening sequence of his 1979 masterpiece Manhattan to consider; as rapturous a valentine from an artist to his environment as you’ll find.

Having said all of that let me now say this: 2nd entrant into SlapClap’s Clap Academy Hall of Fame … (drumroll) … I wasn’t planning to do this … (drumroll)

Get up here Wood-man! It’s Woody Allen. Save your messages of praise for after the jump.