Woody and Larry: Whatever Works

The creative collaboration of those two whiny masters of comedy, Woody Allen and Larry David, seems like a no-brainer.  So it was a surprise to learn at the press conference for Allen’s new film “Whatever Works,” in which David stars as the Woody surrogate, that he had originally written this comedy with the late Zero Mostel in mind. Think of “Fiddler on the Roof” with an axe to grind and I do not mean Russian pogroms, just the normal vicissitudes of life. Though Allen has performed as the much older lead to a beautiful and hot young thing in some of his films, he never intended to play Boris Yellnikoff himself, he said. Larry David plays this curmudgeonly former physicist/ chess teacher as an extension of his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” persona. His twenty-something sweet Southern wife Melody is Evan Rachel Wood, the young actress who got raves for playing the daughter in “The Wrestler,” and who in real life has been romantically linked to Marilyn Manson. All goes well in this improbable marriage until Melody’s mom Marietta, the superb Patricia Clarkson, shows up all big-haired and huffy, and seizing the New York moment, turns hip and artistic, starting a career in photography and a domestic ménage a trois. At the movie’s premiere, a sublime New York night at Brooklyn’s River Café where the Moet et Chandon was poured with élan, the exquisite food featured ice cream cones, and guests included Stanley Tucci, Dana Delany, and Jay Mcinerny, I asked Clarkson--so sleek in a red satin Dolce and Gabanna sheath--about working with Woody, this being her second film with him. (She was in Vicky Christina Barcelona last summer.) “We just clicked,” she told me. “I don’t know what it is.”  I do. She may be blond but intelligence always attracts.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Comments

[Catherine Hiller]

"Intelligence always attracts" is what Paul Bowles said about his wife, Jane. This is in a documentary film you have probably seen, Regina!