New York Magazine's Conversation with Woody Allen

photo by Dan Winters
New York’s hometown auteur on whether a lifetime of psychoanalysis has paid off, and why kids from Yale no longer like good movies.

By Adam Moss Published Sep 28, 2008

An excerpt:

NY: Do you think audiences are less sophisticated?

WA: People are always talking about the dumbing down of the country. Now, it’s hard to believe that they could be dumber now than they were in my time. Theoretically that can’t be. But when you look around at Broadway theater and films, it’s hard to argue with the fact that we’re going through a period of coarsened public taste. And yet you don’t want to be caught saying that because then it seems like you’re one of those people saying, In my day, it was great. You know, it wasn’t that great in my day either. I’m sure if you went back to the 1800s and the 1500s and the Greeks, they would say garbage sells, too.

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NY: Do you have a theory about why the culture keeps getting coarser?

WA: The country has, over the years, moved to the right. And it’s possible that accompanying that move to the right, you also get a lessening of taste. But I don’t know if what I’m saying is true, because I have shown some very good films—Bergman, Fellini—to kids from good schools like Yale. Bright kids. And they were not impressed. You know, it wasn’t as though I picked out some kid from the Midwest who’s a churchgoing barbarian. Those same kids that you see in the movie house doubled over with laughter over fraternity toilet jokes are very often kids from Columbia and Yale. We might also still be feeling the fallout from the sexual revolution, when everybody just ran amok talking dirty and doing things that were forbidden and it became the mark of drama and comedy to be simply outrageous. Not necessarily dramatically interesting or particularly comic, but just outrageous. Read more...