The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (31 page)

Some critics saw
Radio Days
as a retread of Neil Simon's play
Brighton Beach Memoirs
or Federico Fellinis 1974 anecdotal memoir of growing up,
Amarcord.
The nostalgia did not appeal to Pauline Kael, who cruelly anatomized Woody as an old-timey movie pasha from the lump-in-the-throat school of moviemaking. "Woody Allen has found in himself the heartfelt coyness of Louis B. Mayer—without the redeeming vulgar joyfulness." But
Radio Days
had passionate admirers, among them Vincent Canby, who was reminded of Proust, and Richard Schickel, of Chekhov. These grandiose literary allusions on the part of his reviewing colleagues made John Simon roll his eyes in wonderment. "What's left for Woody to look forward to?" he mused. "Shakespeare, I guess."

"I think this may be my last New Year's Eve," Woody said. "I think I've outgrown it."

He was sitting with Gene Siskel, in the Fortune Gardens Chinese restaurant on Third Avenue, at 2 P.M. on December 31, 1985. Foregoing his usual deli tuna sandwich, he was having a sit-down luncheon interview with the personable
Chicago Tribune
critic. Privately, Woody enjoyed poking fun at both Siskel and Roger Ebert, wickedly dubbing them "the Chicago morons," a perverse salute to their enormous influence as leading newspaper critics as well as national tastemakers on their popular "thumbs up—thumbs down" television show
Sneak Previews.
Thrown over a nearby chair lay Woody’s green army jacket. In his everyday uniform of faded gray slacks and a lumpy pullover sweater, and a day-old beard, he had an air of stylish scruffiness. When the waiter appeared, he asked for a double order of shrimp dumplings, wonton soup, spring rolls, and a bottle of Heineken beer.

That evening Woody planned to toast the new year with Mia, and Diane Keaton, visiting from the Coast. After dinner they were going to a party. "If I had my way we wouldn't go out," he said. Parties still terrified him, as did elevators. (Sometimes he walked up twenty flights of stairs.) Fortunately the elevator would be no problem that night because the party was at a town house.

Tucking in his shrimp dumplings with a pair of chopsticks, he embarked on a paean to adoptions. "It's a wonderful, wonderful thing," he told Siskel. For the first time he could "see the joy of it" himself because he was "in on it from the very beginning. I was there when she got off the plane from Texas with the baby." Most days Mia brought six-month-old Dylan to the set, usually accompanied by a pretty baby-sitter, Rebecca Miller (daughter of playwright Arthur Miller). No sooner did Woody glimpse Dylan than he dropped everything and ran over to take her in his arms, then continued to direct while holding her. Whenever another person wanted to take her, he became noticeably jealous. To capture her attention again, he would make faces, put his cap on her head, and kiss her belly, until she screamed with laughter.

After lunch, Woody remained in a good mood. With Gene Siskel in tow, he headed back to Julia Richman High School on East Sixty-seventh Street, where he was shooting classroom scenes on the top floor with a group of children. As baby Dylan was not there, Woody read the
New York Times
entertainment section between takes. At 4:30 everyone but Woody gathered for cake and champagne. Already he was on his way to Central Park West. That December afternoon, Gene Siskel felt certain that he was witnessing a turning point in Woody’s career. Despite his neuroses, he was "a happy man," and his new picture was "the life-affirming work" of a director at the height of his game.

Nineteen eighty-five, the year Woody turned fifty, was a vintage year. In a few weeks his fourteenth film was scheduled to "open wide" on four hundred screens. Well ahead of time, the media was calling
Hannah and Her Sisters
his best film ever, another breakthrough. Once again he would ascend to the top of the hill, to bask in the glory of a big film and a domestic box-office gross of $40.1 million, his first commercial hit in five years. But for Woody, the year about to close had brought him an experience far richer than mere commercial triumph. Into his life had unexpectedly entered fantastic happiness, someone upon whom he could shower all the love he had to give. If she happened to be a baby, what was wrong with that?

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dead Sharks

Woody told his mother that Mia was pregnant. "By you?" she said. "I guess so," he replied. Nettie was not the only one to react with hostility. Letty, too, was horrified to learn that her fifty-one-year-old brother had fathered a child with "a second-rate actress, a bad mother, a completely dishonest person." There was bad blood between Mia and the suspicious Letty, who always believed, she said later, that Mia had "a grand plan to meet Woody, have a relationship with him, be in his films, and eventually have his child." The person least pleased by the news, however, seemed to be Woody himself, which seems odd given the fervor with which he embraced parenthood with Dylan, who was not quite two years old. Presumably, more children simply did not interest him very much at that point, and he made no effort to hide his annoyance. Just about the only one celebrating the unexpected pregnancy was Mia, who had given up trying to conceive after the adoption of Dylan. Dispirited over Woody’s indifference, which she knew was not her imagination, she withdrew emotionally and even considered breaking off with him.

In her own family, the news that she was pregnant with Woody’s child shocked the children, particularly Soon-Yi, who "just hated him," recalled her sister Lark. She burst into angry tears and cried that Woody was ugly and awful-tempered, and the baby would be just like him. In the outside world, the news was greeted with skepticism. On
The Tonight Show,
Garry Shandling jokingly predicted that the baby would be born on a Monday night "so of course Woody won’t be there to accept it. He'll be playing his clarinet at Michaels Pub."

A few years earlier the pregnancy might have inspired Woody to marry. If he needed no piece of paper to prove his commitment, a child might one day view it differently. But their relationship had grown complicated, and apparently not even Mia felt that the birth of a baby was sufficient reason for marriage. She charged into Woody’s dressing room at the Kaufman-Astoria Studios and warned him not to become emotionally attached to the child because, she said, "I don't think this relationship is going to go anyplace," a threat that left him shaking. As he knew full well, he had no parental rights over Dylan. In his bones he must have sensed that should he and Mia split up, she would never let him see Dylan again.

That summer he took the family to Europe, where they toured Paris, Stockholm, Venice, and Luxembourg by van and limo, with the capable Jane Martin smoothing the way. During the days the family went sight-seeing while Woody holed up in the separate room that Jane always booked so that he might have a private bath and privacy for writing. In London, in the middle of an interview with the BBC, he was asked how he felt about becoming a father at his age. He replied, "I hope it’s a she. That would be very important for me." Back in New York, those hopes were dashed when amniocentesis showed that the child would be a boy. After hearing the results of the test, he became disinterested in the new baby. Unlike most expectant fathers, he never wanted to touch Mia's stomach or feel the fetus kick. A few weeks before her due date, he told Roger Ebert that "I love Dylan so much that I would be pleasantly surprised if I love the baby we are having as much as the one we adopted." Although he liked to refer to himself as Dylan’s adoptive father, he was not her legal parent, nor did the attorneys he had consulted offer hope of that ever happening.

On a Saturday morning, December 19, 1987, a nine-pound four-ounce son was delivered by cesarean section at New York University Medical Center. Because Woody felt reluctant about participating, Casey Pascal acted as Mia's Lamaze coach during labor. At the last minute, however, he overcame his squeamishness and decided to be present in the delivery room, but told Mia that he would leave if he felt queasy. In the end, he remained for the entire procedure, even though, he said later, it was "not my idea of a fun Saturday morning."

In the hospital, he and Mia began fighting over the name for their child. She refused to name the boy Ingmar, and she was not crazy about his second choice, either—Satchel, after Leroy "Satchel" Paige, a black baseball player who was the most famous pitcher in the Negro Leagues in the forties. Woody was adamant, and in the end she went along. But she gave Satchel her own family surnames—O'Sullivan Farrow. Filling out the birth certificate form, she omitted Woody’s name altogether, an oversight on the part of the hospital, she told him when he objected. Besides, she was unsure if he wanted his name on the certificate of an illegitimate child. When she came home from the hospital, he tried to be helpful and picked up the tab for a private nurse, but they remained at odds. Mia's recovery from the cesarean was slow. As for Satchel, he was a colicky infant who seemed to scream night and day. During the first week, she used a supplemental nutrition system, thin tubes taped to each breast to carry formula from a plastic bottle to the nursing baby. Ignoring the practical point of the tubes—to assist newborns with sucking problems—Woody regarded the device as unnecessary. The idea of breast-feeding made him uneasy.

Every morning he dropped by Mia's apartment to have breakfast with Dylan. Sometimes he would find her crying outside Mia's closed bedroom door. Usually Dylan glued herself to Mia whenever she was feeding Satchel, which Woody could not help noticing, and he also understood—up to a point—that sibling rivalry with a newborn was normal. Nevertheless, he decided that Dylan was being neglected and that it was his duty to make up for her mother's lack of attention. His efforts to spend even more time with his little daughter was upsetting to Mia. He was monopolizing Dylan, she complained, while at the same time he never touched or held his son. In these conflicts, one thing led to another, and soon, she was accusing him of finding her unattractive, which infuriated Woody. Possibly her complaints cut too close to the bone. Turned off by the process of pregnancy, birth, and lactation, he may not have found her enticing. She also looked matronly, not her usual slender, ethereal self. Eventually the birth of Satchel would expose all the painful fault lines in their relationship.

In His Own Words:

"It's a healthy thing to fail a couple of times, because then you know you're on the right track."

—Woody Allen, 1983

Eyewitness:

"He's a magpie who picks up ideas from here and there, and makes something of them."

—Walter Bernstein

"I was numb," recalled Eric Pleskow, one of the Orion officers. Just after New Year 1987, he learned that Woody wanted to scrap his new release,
September,
and start again from scratch because he was unhappy with several of the performances. The news sent shock waves through the studio's executive suites. Discarding a picture that had completed principal photography was unusual, if not unheard of. It had never happened in Pleskow's experience. On the other hand, when had Woody liked any of his pictures? At one point, intensely displeased with
Manhattan,
he offered Orion another film for free if they would agree to junk it. This time, however, he would not be talked out of his decision to shoot the picture twice. "Look at the body of work,"

Pleskow said defensively years later. "We weren't going to destroy a relationship over that one thing."

Instead of taking the matter out of Woody's hands, once again the Orion chieftains based business decisions on personal feeling. "We never rejected anything he brought us," Pleskow said emphatically. "Not once. Not at UA, not at Orion. In any case, his scripts are road maps and they are always unique,
September
included." He added, "This is where the Medici princes come in. There is no other Woody Allen. If you want to be associated with a man like that, you can't apply the ordinary standards and rules of business."

The story idea for
September
came, indirectly, from Mia. Strolling around Frog Hollow with Woody one day, she made an offhand remark that Chekhov had set his plays in a country house like hers. "This would make a great setting for a little Russian play or something," she said. "It would be fun to shoot up here. The kids would love it."

Inspired, Woody wrote a chamber piece with a small cast and a single set, in this case six people in an isolated Vermont summer house who, like the people in
Interiors,
talk endlessly and accomplish nothing. (Woody does not appear on-screen.) He deliberately gave the film a senseless tide "that doesn't suggest anything to anybody until the movie is over," and to most viewers not even then. When shooting at Frog Hollow became out of the question because it was wintertime, Santo Loquasto re-created the house on a sound-stage at Kaufman-Astoria, where shooting began in the fall of 1986.

September
is about a suicidal woman, Lane, who at the age of fourteen accepted the blame for shooting her actress mother's brutish gangster lover (a roman a clef about the Lana Turner-Johnny Stompanato-Cheryl Crane scandal). Twenty-five years later, Lane is recovering from a nervous breakdown, but her boozy movie-star mother is still going strong. Another plot wrinkle involves Lane's unhappiness after she has fallen in love with Peter, an unpublished novelist who lives nearby. In the mother-daughter roles Woody once again cast Mia and Maureen O'Sullivan, and for the writer he chose one of his favorite actors, Christopher Walken (Annie's nutty brother in
Annie Hall).
Although Woody was eager to use Walken again, disagreements arose. "We couldn't get copacetic," he explained afterward. Walken s replacement was the star playwright—actor Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer prize—winning author of numerous serious works as well as a heartthrob actor in popular films such as
The Right Stuff (he
played the astronaut Chuck Yeager). Woody couldn't get copacetic with Shepard, either. Once he gave Shepard permission to improvise a speech, and the actor brazenly launched into a monologue about Montana. Woody almost blew a fuse. In private, he huffed to Dianne Wiest, who was playing Lane's best friend, "Montana? Montana?" No such word was going to appear in his picture.