Department of overextended analogies

Over at Vanity Fair's website, Julian Sancton makes the inevitable Funny People/Annie Hall comparison. Which is all well and good as far as it goes (and for a lot of Allen fans who think that Apatow's not fit to be Woody's chauffeur, it has to be said that it doesn't go very far at all), except Sancton makes some unfortunate know-something-ish assumptions as he pours in the analogy extenders. "And just as Allen did with such goofy farces as Sleeper, Bananas and Love and Death, Apatow amassed enough political capital in Hollywood to convince studios to allow him to spend it all on a more serious passion project."

Well, not to nitpick overmuch, but that "studios" ought to be singular. In either case. Apatow's feature directorial career has always been with Universal, and at the time of Annie Hall, Allen had an exclusive relationship with United Artists. (He had made his genuine directorial debut, Take The Money And Run, and his sort-of directorial debut, the Japanese-thriller mash-up What's Up Tiger Lily, for indie producers.) But Sancton's real distortions (which, I should point out now, are not nearly as egregious as, say, that bow-tied twit Roger Kimball's persistent slanders against Buñuel's L'age d'or, and which I do not bring up out of a desire to condemn Sancton, but merely because I think the differences between his suppositions and actual fact are kind of historically interesting) consist of the strong implication that Allen's comic work of the early '70s was a way of amassing "political capital" that he could cash in to do more ambitious work. 

This was never the case. Yes, Apatow's stupendous box office returns on The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up did help get Funny People made, but Allen's early, funny films, while all critically praised, were never box-office blockbusters. Allen negotiated his nascent film career in a way that no contemporary filmmaker could possibly emulate, for myriad reasons. But amassing "political capital" was never how he did it. Instead, he concentrated on gathering trusted collaborators on both the business and artistic ends—producers Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe, editor Ralph Rosenblum, who famously advised him to take the Bonnie and Clyde style massacre of hero Virgil Starkwell out of Money, and so on. And,  most importantly—and this, really, was what made it thoroughly unnecessary for him to amass "political capital"—he found himself a genuine corporate patron in the person of Arthur Krim (left), the head of United Artists from 1951 to 1978, a run that looks very impressive indeed in the executive revolving door era we're in today. Krim took Allen under his wing at the studio, and let him do pretty much as he pleased. One of the more amusing ironies of that early sequence of 1980's Stardust Memories in which Sandy Bates is tormented by the suggestions of young hotshot studio execs is that Allen himself hadn't been subjected to such humiliation in years, thanks to Krim.

"There were no readers' reports, no creative meetings, no casting approvals (unless informal, from Krim), no dailies, nothing but Woody and his script and his budget and Arthur Krim's blessing," writes former UA exec Stephen Bach in his ever-useful book Final Cut. Not that it was a blank-check deal. "One reason this worked as well as it did was that Woody's pictures always came in on budget, on schedule, and were what he said they would be." The filmmaker, Bach says, "had an old-fashioned, deeply ingrained sense of honor about his commitments," and Krim, it seems, matched it. It was Bach who was deputized with trying to keep Allen at UA after Krim went over to Orion in 1978. Allen followed Krim there, and retained a freedom few filmmakers ever enjoy—reshooting an entire film, September, in the late '80s when he was dissatisfied with the initial result. 

You don't see too many idiosyncratic film artists enjoying such protective, productive relationships with execs and/or studios today, do you? A few years back there was somebody at Warners who said, off the record, that they were gonna make Darren Aronofsky into their new Stanley Kubrick. And that idea kinda fizzled...not when The Fountain bombed, but when Brad Pitt left the project. Which should give you some inkling of the idea of commitment as it exists in today's Hollywood. It's worth remembering, then, remember that Woody Allen's emergence as an auteur owed as much to his alliance with an old-school Medici prince as it did to his own shrewdness. 

Comments

[Bilge]

Nicely put, Glenn. For a pretty fascinating first-hand account of the latter part of Krim's years at UA and then at Orion, check out Mike Medavoy's for-some-reason-little-read memoir YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR NEXT ONE. Not as essential as FINAL CUT, but a very engaging read nevertheless.

[Ryan Kelly]

Steven Spielberg once said something very telling on this subject, that I think speaks to the 'revolving door' concept you talk about. When asked why he worked for so many different studios, his answer was "Because it's harder to hit a moving target". I think if the world's most financially successful director has to have that kind of mentality, then all less successful than him (which, in that field, would be everybody else) must deal with unfathomable worlds of shit.

But well said, the comparison between Allen and Apatow; two incredibly different directors working under extremely different conditions, with wholly different aims, is so frivolous that 'frivolous' doesn't quite sum it up.

[Ryland Walker Knight]

Yeah, and you didn't even get into how the movies talk to each other. --I don't think there's much of a conversation, really, besides the obvious, um, heritage particulars.

[Tony Dayoub]

If anything, Funny People bears more of a resemblance to James L. Brooks' work at its messiest.

[Christian]

Woody's comedies were not "blockbusters" but were all certainly substantitive hits, especially SLEEPER. His films cost little so the return was heftier.

[Nick]

If Allen built up capital for anything, it wasn't Annie Hall, it was Interiors. Up until Annie Hall his films pulled about $20 million during their runs (a respectable figure for a big comedy), and then Annie Hall doubled that. The next year Interiors cut it in half, making $10 million, and flip flopped for the rest of his career between financial successes making the typical "Woody Allen movie," that is, new york relationship films, and other more diverse films. Hell, even the film he shot twice, September, only took in under a million dollars in its entire run. It's about now you consider how inconsequential these figures are of course. Allen's made a film a year for over 40 years, and he's never had the success Apatow has financially. A key distinction between Apatow and Allen is that Apatow is foremost a producer, and is incapable, I believe, of making a film that doesn't interest audiences. Even his "flop" Walk Hard, took in more than a lot of comedies. I think the Brooks comparisons are more apt, and if you've seen both Annie Hall and Funny People, you'd have to be an idiot to think they're anything alike as films. But I guess to work at Vanity "Celebrity Death Whores" Fair, you might just have to be that idiot.

[Dan]

@Ryan Kelly

I'll avoid name-dropping because it's tacky, but I've had a chance to see several "name" directors speak courtesy of my school, and Spielberg isn't the only one with that mentality. Listening to what very experienced and successful directors have to say about dealing with executives is flat-out depressing and explains, frankly, why most movies suck. Most memorably, one speaker said that most executives he deals with are functionally ignorant of film history and usually don't even like movies or TV. They're just in it because TV is a "popular product".

[Brian]

There's a wonderful anecdote on the commentary for Criterion's release of Days of Heaven(paraphrasing from memory here) where someone says that then Paramount owner and Gulf + Wsstern CEO Charles Bluhdorn saw a cut of the film and was extremely impressed. Apparently he later approached Malick and said (something to the effect of) "I don't care if you make a penny, you can do whatever you want here".

It's hard to imagine anything like that happening in the movie industry today, no matter how much capital you have.

[Christian]

For all his corporate background, Charles Bludhorn actually loved movies. He gave Leone carte blanche on OUATITW as well.

[The Siren]

Always very glad to see someone correcting the record on a matter of film history. And The 40-Year-Old Virgin is very cute but if Apatow is the next Woody Allen I just don't want to live anymore.

Final Cut is an excellent book and my copy wound up with an ex-boyfriend. I lost more good books that way. And CDs too. The boyfriends on the other hand...I digress. Anyway, my favorite part of the book is toward the end, when Martin Scorsese is screening "Raging Bull" for a roomful of suits. The credits roll and everyone is silent -- not even applause -- and then Andy Albeck gets up, shakes Scorsese's hand and says, "Mr Scorsese, you are an artist." And leaves.

[DVertino]

Great stuff, Glenn

[Zach]

Glenn - really enjoyed this post. Interesting side note of which I'm reasonably confident you're aware:

Apatow has apparently signed a three-movie deal with Universal. From what I've heard, he'll be writing and directing all three. Interesting...

[Yuval]

I love Woody Allen, but does anyone here think he's made a worse movie than September? I remember the scene where Sam Waterston was caught kissing Dianne Wiest and he explains it to a hurt Mia Farrow "I want her to come with me to New York... (looking at Wiest and remembers something) or Paris?". That was hilarious.

[Dan Coyle]

It hurts me, it HURTS me that anyone would dare compare Apatow, at this stage of his career and development as a writer, to the Woody Allen of Annie Hall.

[MovieMan0283]

Great corrective, Glenn...it really provides perspective.

Frankly, I think the more film artistry can be separated from the industry apparatus the better, but maybe that's just me. There was a time when it worked wonders but that time is long past.

[MovieMan0283]

Richard Brody also had an interesting response to this:

"Above all, Allen is an intellectual, and Apatow isn’t. Allen’s references to Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky have no place in Apatow’s comic world; imagine the “Seventh Seal” spin Allen would have put on Apatow’s Swedish doctor (and imagine the dick jokes Apatow would have gotten out of Wallace Shawn’s “homunculus,” from “Manhattan”). The interests and inclinations of intellectuals are put in a favorable light by their reflection—and commercial validation—in Allen-land. It’s as if the Oscar had been won by the whole Upper West Side. Whereas Apatow, who went from Syosset to Los Angeles seemingly without absorbing much of the cultural authority of the slender island in between, brings to bear on his work and his worldview a moralism similar to Allen’s but without the overtly intellectual justifications. And I think that many critics are made uneasy by Apatow’s separation of moral seriousness from explicit intellectual references. Of course, the best classic Hollywood movie directors did the same thing—and, until the French New Wave came along to show Americans what they were missing, many of those directors’ best films took their lumps from most critics here too."

As I said there, I like Apatow, but if he's today's Woody Allen that says quite a bit about "today" doesn't it?

[MovieMan0283]

(And no, I don't quite think that's Brody's point but to me it seems inevitable...)