How Woody Allen Recycled Whatever Works

If the trailer for Woody Allen's upcoming Whatever Works reminded you a little bit (OK, a lot) of the filmmaker's talky mid-'70s gems minus Allen and/or the humor, your apprehensions are justified this week in a New York Magazine profile.

In a piece ostensibly devoted to the current state of Jewish humor, Allen and his star Larry David reflect on their places in its more recent history. Coincidentally, it turns out their present status has a lot to do with Allen's anticipation of an actors' strike, when he conveniently dug into his desk and withdrew a 30-year-old script he could fall back on to keep his film-per-year streak alive. With a little bit of polishing and some healthy improv from David, that script became Whatever Works. Furthermore, notes NYM's Mark Harris, it fills something of a thematic vacuum left over from Allen's masterpiece days:

Remember the Woody Allen of the seventies, the guy who several generations of New Yorkers decided was the comedic poet laureate of their era of the city? The man with whom they had a great first date (1973's Sleeper) that deepened into a full-on relationship (1977's Annie Hall) and then further enriched itself into true love (1979's Manhattan), because we always fall in love with the one who makes us laugh? Whatever Works is, in essence, the missing movie from that period--the film that would have rounded out the New York phase of Allen's early career if only he had made it.

The best part: Allen says the film was always intended to star Zero Mostel (Allen's co-star in The Front) in the lead role of Boris, thus offering the progenitor for all the director's late-career surrogates to come. I guess we have no reason not to believe him, though the prospect of Mostel engaging a teenage Southern belle in any way at all probably was a little ahead of its time. Next we'll hear how Ricardo Montalban was intended to seduce Mariel Hemingway in his original conception of Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Anyway, credit where credit is due: Funny or not, at least Allen is persistent.

[Photo: NYM]

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