Barbara Kopple by Brown Gregory;

Author:Brown, Gregory;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2015-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Woody Captured on the Spot, without a Script

Michel Ciment / 1998

From Positif, February 1998, 37–39. Translated from French by Holly Prall. Reprinted by permission.

Michel Ciment: How did you come up with the idea to devote a film to Woody Allen after all the great social and political documentaries like Harlan County, U.S.A. and American Dream?

Barbara Kopple: One of my friends from Chicago, Jim Stern, a theatrical producer who made the show Bunny Bunny after the life of Gilda Radner (one of the Saturday Night Live actors who died from cancer), telephoned me one day to ask me if I was interested in following Woody Allen during the first tour of his life. He was going to Europe for twenty-three days and to eighteen different cities. I didn’t think for more than ten minutes before I agreed! Then I went to his house, and we talked together for half an hour, which is a lot for Woody Allen! At the end of our conversation, he accompanied me to the door and told me that he did not want to go! He had liked the idea from a distance, but, now that it was approaching, it seemed like it was too imposing. As I left, I thought that this would be a very special film and I wished I’d had my camera with me to film that moment. There were no conditions that he posed, and the only thing that I asked from him, was that he give me access to everything wherever he went. He agreed. And, in fact, I could do whatever I wanted.

Ciment: It’s well known that Woody Allen likes to protect his private life and that he’s very timid. He was going to, during this trip, expose himself not only to ridicule, but also to your objective eye.

Kopple: Our team was made up of four people. Most of the time, I was busy with sound for the part of the documentary on Woody Allen himself, because my sound engineer, Peter Miller, put in place a system for recording the concerts that had him almost every day in a different city. My style of film has always been very intimate, and I made sure that the camera wasn’t too present, so that people weren’t aware of it. The people that I film can just live their lives and forget that we’re there. We can be like a sofa or a lamp! That’s what we did. I was with Woody between sixteen and eighteen hours a day. We traveled in the same airplane, and I spent with him all the time that he was awake, and sometimes when he wasn’t! I could go and come as I wanted. He said that we could always be there during the day without asking permission. He conducted himself as a perfect gentleman, always agreeable, and it was a pleasure to travel with him.

Ciment: I know that children forget easily that they are in front of a camera, like adults who are not in

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