Timesonline features an interview with Woody Allen. His view of the creative process, while dark, probably will ring a bell for most of us:
“I almost always feel
disappointed when I see my movies,” he says, returning to his theme. “When
you’re conceiving them at home, it’s only happening in your mind and
everything’s fabulous. Then you find out that Javier and Penelope are not
available, you’re not gonna be able to get Buckingham Palace and the cameraman
doesn’t quite get the lighting exactly as you want. By the time the thing is
over, between your own mistakes and the compromises and the money that you
don’t have to reshoot scenes, you never think, ‘This is amazing.’ Instead it’s:
‘Oh, God, if I take it back into the editing room, cut this, put this over here
and add some music, I think I can save it.’ You start out convinced you’re
gonna make The Bicycle Thieves and, by the time you’re in the editing room,
you’re just fighting for survival. You’ve given up all your aspirations,
greatness is out the window, you just don’t want to embarrass yourself and for
it to be coherent."
But he never gives up:
“However,”
he adds, “I would like to make a movie I could show at a film festival, where
it would sit right up there with impunity alongside The Bicycle Thieves and
Citizen Kane. That’s a goal you can’t approach head on. You just have to make
movies and hope one of them turns out to be really great. I don’t know if that
will ever happen with me . . . but I keep trying.”
Amen!
