Woody Allen makes more movies than most other directors because he needs to escape from the realities of life into fiction, he told the media after the Cannes premiere of Match Point, his 36th film as a director.
"All my life I've been fighting terror and anxiety, so making films is the distraction I need. It's the same with patients in mental institutions. Keep them figure painting. I don't make movies for the money. I do it for myself. If people like them, all the better. Immersing myself in a movie for a year distracts me from the real world, and when I'm finished one, I have to start planning the next one."
As Allen praised his predominantly British cast and crew on the film, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, his leading actor, interjected to state firmly: "Just for the record, I'm Irish." Born in Dublin and raised in Cork, the actor who made his mark as the assassin who killed Michael Collins in Neil Jordan's film, also played Elvis Presley in a TV mini-series.
"Woody puts a lot of trust in the actors he casts, and with that trust comes a lot of responsibility for the actor," Rhys Meyers said. "You have to constantly keep yourself in check. When you're wrong, Woody will tell you, and when you're right he doesn't say much at all. He is very easy to work with because he has so much experience as a director, writer and actor. I felt very comfortable with him."
Now 69, Allen had to have a number of questions repeated to him at Cannes, explaining he is hard of hearing. He criticised the US film industry for becoming so intrusive, saying that he wrote Match Point as a screenplay set in his native New York.
"No one would give me the money to shoot it there," he said. "It is getting increasingly difficult to get financing in America, and then the studios want to participate more in what you do - in casting, the screenplay and so on. They want to be seen as more than a bank.
"I've never worked like that before in my life. I just want the money in a brown paper bag. In London I could do all I wanted to do without any of that rigmarole with the American studios. There was no interference. For a film that deals a lot with luck, I was very lucky with everything - my actors, the weather, the locations." In addition to dealing with luck, the film also reflects on crime and punishment, a theme Allen explored in earlier films. "I don't believe I feel cynical on that subject," he said.
"I never think I feel cynical in general. Cynical is reality with an alternate spelling. I feel there's a gigantic amount of injustice and overt crime every day in the world, from emotional crimes to international crimes, and it often carries rewards." Allen added that his next movie, which starts shooting next month, will be made in London and that he joins Scarlett Johansson in the cast.
