Whatever Works in One Week

Woody Allen's fortieth film, Whatever Works, opens in New York and Los Angeles one week from today, and more details and impressions have emerged since the last time I wrote about it.

Larry King gave the film very high praise last night, when he appeared on Tavis Smiley to promote his new memoir:

SMILEY: These guys, these friends of yours, who you grew up with, who you have lunch with --

KING: Breakfast.

SMILEY: Breakfast with, rather, every day. What's it like when you guys get together every day?

KING: It's a Woody Allen movie. You've got to see Woody Allen's new movie with Larry David.

SMILEY: I haven't seen it yet.

KING: Folks, the Woody Allen movie -- Whatever Works, that's the name of it -- is better than Annie Hall. Okay? It's like Woody Allen.

(The video can be found here; the comments about Whatever Works begin at 22:11 on the counter.)

Entertainment Tonight has some typically inane video from the premiere, but there are a couple of nice moments with the principals. Larry David also talks a little bit about the upcoming Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And Joy Behar has a nice moment describing Allen and David as "two of the funniest men in the world, along with Mel Brooks."

L.A. Weekly has one of the more in-depth recent interviews with Woody Allen; the whole thing is worth reading, but here's a highlight, in which he's asked whether he considered playing the lead in Whatever Works himself:

No, because when I thought of it for Zero [Mostel], I thought of it as a part for a fat man. I thought of him as a big, aggressive physicist, a Russian chess genius who had no time for “microbes” and “earthworms.” And I can’t do that. My source of comedy is more victim — I find myself frightened when I hear the noise in the other room, that sort of thing. This guy was grandiose. It was hard to think of people who could play him now, and then [casting director] Juliet Taylor mentioned Larry, whom I had worked with very briefly before and whom I knew from Curb Your Enthusiasm. But it seemed to me that he could do it, because on his television show he’s very authentic. He’s not an overacter or a fake posturer. Of course, he told me up and down the line how he couldn’t do it, how he’s not an actor and this and that, and then I knew he’d be great. Because it’s the ones like Diane Keaton, who tell you how bad they are, who always come through. It’s the ones who tell you how great they are who never come through.

In the same interview, Allen says that he had thought of titling the film The Worst Man in the World, which he has also said was a working title for Deconstructing Harry. And it certainly does seem that Boris Yellnikov (Larry David's character in the movie) is a particularly dyspeptic Allen hero, more along the lines of Harry Block in Deconstructing Harry than, say, the title character in Broadway Danny Rose.

BlackBook has a nice little piece about a recent Whatever Works press conference:

The questions were typical press conference fluff until Jefferey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere stood up and tried to use the misanthropic nature of the film to get the panel to comment on two recent tragic shootings. He was of course referring to the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller and yesterday’s frightening attack at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. When his preface ended with a question to the effect of, “Can you comment on the murders?” the stars and the rest of the reporters sat there in a kind of stunned silence at the shift in tone. Then Woody Allen showed us just why he’s a comedy legend, with a perfectly timed and perfectly delivered answer.

“Personally, I’m against the murders,” he said, straight-faced. Cue uproarious, elated laughter.

And finally, a few more short clips from the film have surfaced on YouTube, and here are two of them: