Are you tired of hearing about Bop Decameron, Woody Allen’s new movie being shot in Rome right now?
As Marianne Wi, at PrimoCiak pointed out, there’s not much happening in Italian film – not much gets done in Italy in August, anyway. I’m pretty excited about the Venice Film Festival, so I’ve thinking, talking and writing a lot about that lately. Believe me, while I’m there and when I get back you’ll hear more about that than you want to know.
I’ve seen Woody Allen in New York, a couple of times, actually. Once I was having dinner at a midtown Italian restaurant and he was there with his controversial (is she still controversial?) lady friend/former adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi. He was seated at a table not far from ours, and if I hadn’t noticed him there I couldn’t have missed him clowning around as he left, going round and round in the revolving door like he was trapped in it. I guess Woody isn’t shy about his fans spotting him.
Anyway, this week’s Oggi (Oggi means “today”) magazine has a fun article with lots of good pictures of Woody in Rome. The article’s author, Roberto Alessi, tells about how upon his arrival for the interview, a staff member asked him to remove his jacket – because it was blue and “With the Maestro blue is forbidden. Nobody can wear it (except for the Maestro, apparently, who appears to be wearing a blue shirt in every picture I’ve seen of him). Creative insanity , the writer calls it. (Generous – I’d call it Allen being an asshole.)
But the heat was getting to him. He told Alessi that he hadn’t imagined it would be so hot (hot in Rome in August – who would have imagined?) and that he was stressed out. The heat, the paparazzi, and tunnels (they make him anxious) are not making it easy on Woody Allen, but everybody on the set adores him. He’s very calm as he directs, and of Rome he tells Alessi, “It’s a city that knows how to tug at your heart – maybe more than Barcelona.”
And of the Italian actors, he said that in contrast with the American ones, “they are working practically for free” – the chance to be in a Woody Allen movie is “priceless”.
I Love Italian Everything 