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Articles and Reviews: FILM
Woody Allen - Celebrity
Warhol was right, of course: everyone
is now famous for fifteen minutes. But Woody Allen
challenges the veracity of Warhol’s most widely
quoted quip: ‘That’s one of those things
that sounds great, but has nothing to do with reality.
Fame is a major goal for many people, but really only
a fraction of one percent of the population enjoys
any kind of notoriety or fame.’ Maybe their
respective pronouncements can be reconciled in J G
Ballard’s observation: ‘A kind of banalisation
of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant,
ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup. Warhol’s
screen-prints show the process at work. His portraits
of Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy drain the tragedy
from the lives of these desperate women, while his
day-glow palette returns them to the innocent world
of the child’s colouring book.’ But some
people still want the real deal. They want to be famous
for longer than fifteen minutes. They want to become
legendary, iconic, mythic, even if ultimately that
still doesn’t spare them the day-glow treatment.
Or else they want to be able to get as close as possible
to those who possess these qualities.
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Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh) is a celebrity
journalist and failed novelist (his first effort got
the three Ss from reviewers: self-indulgent, solipsistic,
and sophomore), who has fallen in love with the glitz
of fame. Tellingly, in a film which examines the notion
of celebrity in all its manifestations, Allen chooses
not to appear in front of the camera, and Branagh inhabits
the director’s usual anxiously stammering screen
persona. This allows Allen a necessary distance, although
maybe his motives were more pragmatic than that: he’s
just getting too old to play frustrated middle-aged
men.
Lee is recently divorced from Robin (Judy Davis), and
their paths cross as they try to construct new lives
for themselves. He pursues a number of unsuccessful
connections with a series of beautiful women: Nola (Winona
Ryder), an actress/waitress, who, it goes without saying,
is in psychoanalysis; an airhead socialite supermodel
(Charlize Theron); and Bonnie (Famke Janssen), an editor
at a publishing house, who encourages him to return
to serious writing. At the same time, he attempts to
ingratiate himself with a number of famous people who
might be useful to him professionally, if only he can
persuade them to read his screenplay. These include
beautiful actress Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith),
and young screen star Brandon Darrow (Leonardo Di Caprio).
Trouble is, they can smell his desperation.
Lee, on the other hand, is trying everything from a
Catholic retreat to plastic surgery (the good doctor
is so booked up that someone sold their appointment
for $3000) to fill the emptiness in her life. Then a
chance meeting with television producer Tony Gardella
(Joe Mantegna), gets her a job presenting a Hello style
show. Tony guesses that Robin’s self-consciousness,
her sense that she doesn’t belong in the same
room with the rich and famous, will play well on TV.
She’s as addled as anyone in her audience would
be in stellar company (there’s a marvellous scene
where she hesitantly interviews the guests at a wedding
reception in the outdoor garden of Barbetta’s
Restaurant on West 46th Street) so of course they identify
with her, and in turn grant her star status. She also,
inter alia, winds up marrying Tony.
Stardust Memories is the previous Allen movie his new
one most resembles, although it is not confined to being
a study of the movie business alone, but broadens its
scope to encompass other media, flitting episodically
between filmmaking, book publishing, fashion and television.
Robin’s rise, and Lee’s fall (he doesn’t
get the girl - any girl - in the end) take place against
the backdrop of the intensely striving world of Manhattan’s
cultural demimonde, and literally features a cast of
thousands, including: a film critic who used to hate
every movie, but then married a busty young blonde,
and now loves every movie; a director named Papadakis,
who is described as “an arty farty pretentious
guy who makes all his films in black and white”
(Celebrity is in black and white); fashion designer
Isaac Mizrahi as artist Bruce Bishop (“He’s
a genius,” declares the supermodel at his opening);
Donald Trump as himself; and those in attendance at
Lee’s high school reunion, none of whom seem very
satisfied with their lot. The stage upon which all of
this plays out, New York City, has rarely looked so
good on film. Not since Manhattan, in fact.
Jokes range from a role-reversal Clinton swipe, courtesy
of Griffith’s character (“I could never
be unfaithful to my husband, but whatever I do from
the neck up is my business.”, to an eye-watering
rather than mouth-watering blowjob gag (you’ll
see why this is le mot juste when you see the movie),
from Davis and Bebe Neuwirth, as the hooker she consults
for sex tips.
The film will invite the inevitable accusations of misogyny
from ideologically blinkered women (and their right-on
menfolk), who fail to see that such satire stems from
a general misanthropy, and is not solely directed against
only one gender. Not that Allen can be written off as
merely a malcontented old misanthrope, for he has produced
a strangely moving, wryly rueful look at this microcosm
which contains the macrocosm, and captured perfectly
with great lightness of touch the sadness, unease and
unfulfillment of much of modern life.
Perhaps ambition has always far outstripped talent,
but Celebrity finally implies that it’s not always
those who want fame most who wind up getting it. Don’t
be fooled into thinking that it’s just about a
clique of terminally sophisticated, self-obsessed Manhattan
socialites either. You only have to watch The Lyrics
Board or read The Sunday Independent to realise that
there’s an army of people out there, mad for fame.
(One doubts that VIP, the proposed new Irish-style Hello,
will even have to pay its interviewees, a la the magazine
it is based on. Irish people will pay to be in it.)
The funniest moment in Celebrity for me is when Branagh,
amid a misguided attempt to interest Di Caprio in his
screenplay, finds himself a reluctant participant in
an orgy in an Atlantic City hotel room with the young
star and two bimbos (no guy-on-guy stuff, of course).
While Leonardo gets down to business with his girl,
Branagh is having problems getting started with his.
So she starts telling him about her screenplay (you
see, it is just like Ireland: every asshole you meet
is flogging a film script.) “You know Chekhov?”
the ingénue asks, without a trace of irony. “Yeah.”
“I write like him.” This claim is dubious
at best, one suspects. But Woody Allen, on the other
hand...
First published in Film Ireland
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