WOODY ALLEN

What a career! What an effect Woody Allen has had on my world! Friends rave, discuss his work as they reel off the names of his films, the names of who played what in his films, and what happened to so-and-so.

It annoys me.

I skimmed an article about Woody that was written by Sam Tanenhaus, NY Times Book Review Editor, and studied the photos of Woody working with Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin and others in the cast of TO ROME WITH LOVE – his latest new film that just opened.

I found myself wondering why Woody’s doing films about European places – tourists hot spots -- what’s on his mind? Vacationing? Or his usual man-living-in-a-movie character, pursuing new sexual adventures?

The NY Times critic said: “The legendary film maker returns to his old obsessions -- sexual avarice and megalomaniacal control.” The Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times said that Woody’s rehashing scenes we’ve seen and laughed at before, and they are no longer very amusing.

Has Allen become a creative genius who has nothing new to say? Has he run out of gas – become what I call a “once waser” ?

For me, Woody Allen was never very important or inspiring.. His first slapstick movies, BANANAS, and SLEEPER, that won him a cult following, mostly annoyed me. I liked ANNIE HALL, (with Diane Keaton) -- because of her performance, I've seen it a few times. I didn’t love MANHATTAN, or the soap-opera-ish HANNAH AND HER SISTERS.

It annoyed me back then, and annoys me now, when Woody Allen is mentioned in the same breath as Stanley Kubrick or Francis Ford Coppola.

Hell, I’m not going to list of his successes and failures and what earned him awards. I um-um when our theater friends rave about Woody. I think he lucked into fame and glory because his psychoanalytic self was the storyteller, and psycho stuff was IN during the seventies, when Woody Allen was rising as a performer and movie maker.

I know I’m offending my friends and neighbors, who love old movies and musicals, and the actors who starred in them. Declaring I don’t love Woody is sinfully worse than saying Ingmar Bergman films bore me. Even the mess Allen made when he slept with his stepdaughter and married her, doesn’t really interest me -- it just annoys me, that the scandal made him more famous, more successful.

Why does his success annoy me? It’s jealousy, mixed with a sense of myself needing praise, and wise eyes on my work – needing help and artistic direction -- needing parents watching over me and helping me like Jack Rollins and Charles Joffee, the high-powered agent and manager team who helped shape the careers of Dick Cavett, Steve Martin and Billy Crystal, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Robin Williams, Robert Klein, and David Letterman. Oh my -- how Rollins-Joffee helped Woody, and Rollins, even now, watches over and supports Allen.

If ... If I’d had an eye on me, other than my own ... If I had been willing to compete ... If, if ...

If Woody hadn’t had the ability to let himself be helped by outside eyes, would he be the legendary movie maker that he is now?

Right now, though his latest movie received mostly negative reviews, he’s already working on his next movie, hiring actors, working on the script.

I admire and am inspired by the gut in him, the thing in him that keeps him fired up, taking chances, reaching, creating – ignoring the success/failure issues.

Is it a gut for making money? Nope. Woody Allen needs to create like I need to write and explain why I don’t admire what he creates and deeply admire the thing in a man or woman that keeps them trying new things.

(Video) SELLING IS HELL

"How am I going to sell my six e-novels!" Em moans.

How to promote herself as a writer nags at Emily Frankel, who remembers, all too well, when they produced their own show on Broadway, in NYC.

The Cullums recall their venture at the Alvin Theater -- four Sundays and a Monday. The show, "Kings." consisted of "Oedipus," adapted and performed by John and a dozen actors; "Medea,"choreographed by Norman Walker, and performed by Emily and trio of other dancers; "Theseus and Hippolyta," a duet which John Cullum and Emily Frankel performed together -- it was dance drama written by Emily, based on Mary Renault's book about Theseus, "Bull From The Sea.".

The memories of selling tickets for "Kings" haunt Emily, but John Cullum's passionate, unwavering support of her work as a writer, perks her up.

HURRAY FOR ART IN PHILLY

Golly, it's wonderful to see art --ART that makes me want to drink in the colors, the mood of this painting -- "Large Bather's By The Sea." It was painted by Cezanne in, 1906.

The show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is called "Visions of Arcadia Over the Years." Arcadia -- in music, painting, and theater -- has come to mean a mystical place of harmony and contentment, a paradise.

The Museum in Philly brought together three great painters who lived around the same time -- Cezanne, Matisse and Gauguin.

This is Matisse's vision -- "Bathers by the River," painted by him around 1909.

This is a Gauguin.



When he painted this in 1898, Gauguin called it, "Where Do We Come From. What Are We? Where Are We Going?"

These three painters, at the beginning of the nineteen-hundreds, (the beginning of the 20th Century), were blessing life, breathing it in, seeing, enjoying, reflecting on the world we live in.

This inspires me to say, loud and clear, I don't want to see artist Damien Hirst's spots, his animals in formaldehyde, his diamond skull. and be told it is "great art," and how many millions Hirst's art is making.

I can't bow to current art critics, or the heads of various museums, and take their words as truth about what is good. If what I'm looking at evokes no feeling or reaction except "gee, what is this? why is this here?" I stop looking.

I'm not selling this to you. I'm just telling the truth about how I feel about art and artists right now. For me, the mystical world of harmony and contentment doesn't exist anymore. Bathers? In seas polluted by residue from the killer earthquake in Japan? Beaches ruined by the last horrifying oil leak? The few untouched beaches are horrifically crowded with too many people yearning for a happy time in the sun, despite what we know about sun rays and cancer?

Hey, we are living in a world where every day there are revelations of bad stuff -- poverty, wrong-doings, innocents murdered, political doings chock full of hate -- hate in the air, which is polluted we're told.

Okay, I like Picasso --he never ceases to amaze me. I don't love Andy Warhol's works, but I sense his search and like that he "talked" in his art works about the world he landed in. Yes, I'm confused and bored by Rothko, but I'm glad that I've got these painters to view. And I'm glad, oh my, I am glad -- so very glad we've got Cezanne, Matisse and Gauguin at the Philly museum, along with Henri Rousseau.

Rousseau's' last painting is also on display there. He painted 350 paintings. This last one is "Dream," first exhibited in 1910, a few months before he died.

Ah, the dream of that dream touches me.

CUDDLING

Cuddle means to hold close for warmth or comfort or in affection; to lie close, or snuggle, or nestle.

Moms cuddle babies; lovers cuddle; teenagers sometimes cuddle; cats and dogs cuddle; birds do it; other pets snuggle. I know from nature movies and visits to the zoo, that other animals cuddle.

I think, based on my own experiences, that cuddling is something you can do to make you feel calm, safe, less stressed.

If you’ve been with your loved one, your partner, for a long time, as I have, the calm, safe feelings comes with holding hands, or a quick kiss. Sometimes I visit my husband while he’s working, and rub his neck while he’s typing, or slide my arms down his shoulders carefully, so as not to mess up his work.

But cuddling, or being cuddled, by anyone else -- an acquaintance, or a stranger wouldn’t be pleasant, calm, safe, or soothing. It would be weird.

So when I saw this video clip – (it’s sort of like an advertisement made by a girl in her twenties, who will cuddle you for $50 an hour) – well, I blinked. I laughed and started wondering if this girl isn’t going to get slammed, severely criticized, shut down by police or some city agency when the complaints start piling up.

She isn’t licensed. Are rules posted? And gee, what about clean sheets, pillow cases, toilet and washing facilities? What happens if a client wants more than cuddling? What does she do if things get get weird?

Is cuddling a new way of earning money in these depression times? Is this a job you’d consider doing?

Hey, maybe this whole thing is a fun idea by an adventuresome, clever girl who wants to be famous. She’s figuring the video will go viral, or someone will make a big fuss – the media will grab it, and she’ll grab a great fifteen minutes.