One week I’m singing the praises of the “lesser works” of great songwriters, the next I am complaining about the lesser works of great screenwriters. Woody Allen, if you follow last week’s logic, would be one of those exceptional artists whose oeuvre is so rewarding, you still want to go and see his failures. That worked for about a decade, but as the 90’s became the 00’s everyone was excused any time they wanted to tune him out. Now it’s 2014.
No single post on this blog inspired so many private messages of “Hold on now” as one I posted about Woody back in February. His fans, and the fans of due process, are correct to point out that he still deserves the presumption of innocence regarding his family life. Andrew O’Hehir at Salon correctly points out that his movies are another story.
If this were a soviet republic, and I were the Commissar of Cinema, I would force Comrade Allen to make half as many films, and to take notes and do script revisions like everyone else does. He’s well into his Mermaid Avenue years, if he were that other Woody, but still living on the Upper East Side, which I suppose is a testament to our lack of imagination. As long as he lines up a few names in his films, we’ll keep seeing them, just enough of us at a time.
More Has To Happen 
What do you think?