# Episode 13 - Celebrity (1998) > Music - You Oughta Be In Pictures performed by Jackie Gleason And His Orchestra. CELEBRITY is the 28th film written and directed by Woody Allen, first released in 1998. KENNETH BRANAGH stars as Lee Simon, a journalist with aspirations of higher writing and a better life. He has just split from his wife Robin, played by Judy Davis. The two go on separate searches for happiness through fame. Lee by hanging around it, Robin by accidentally becoming it. Coming straight after DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, Celebrity is another harsh, angry film. Shot in stark black and white and with a biting, sour message. It is one of Allen’s biggest casts and a large sprawling story. There’s a lot of film here to discuss. Welcome to the Woody Allen Pages Podcast, by me, the creator of the Woody Allen Pages website. This week, episode 13, we look at 1998’s CELEBRITY. How it was conceived, how it was made, and how just big it is. Spoilers are everywhere so watch the film first, then come back. > TONY: Look, I never believed what Andy Warhol said about everybody being famous for 15 minutes. It sounds great but it’s not true. Almost nobody will ever be famous for even one minute, so enjoy it! ## Conception and story Celebrity was released in 1998, several years after Woody Allen found himself on the front page of pretty much every newspaper in the world when he split from Mia Farrow. Not that he wasn’t famous before - but now he was famous for his private life. It was just the latest episode after 40 odd years of fame. And you have to imagine that after being put through the wringer by the culture of celebrity, Allen had some level of revenge in mind when he wrote this film. But Allen’s always had a axe to grind when it comes to celebrity. He had looked at his own relationship with fame and art in Stardust Memories. But this was different - this was less personal. He wanted to make a film that chewed on fame and how it affects people and what it says about us as a society. The structure of the story he would come up with relied on a couple of tricks Allen had used before (and would again). He would have two leads so he could attack the themes from two different angles and cut back and forth to avoid getting boring. See Crimes And Misdemeanors or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. And he would add episodic adventures that characters could explore and bounce off many different ideas. The spine he settled on to hold the story together was the characters of Lee Simon, played by KENNETH BRANAGH, and Robin Simon, played by Judy Davis. The couple break up and both go on separate adventures in their new single lives. So that’s the spine, and Allen proceeded to build a large blue whale around that spine. And Allen proceeded to build a large blue whale around that spine. There’s no getting around it. Celebrity is a huge, sprawling film. It smashes Radio Days’ 150 speaking parts with 250 speaking parts. There are lots of outdoor and location shots. There’s heaps of crowd scenes. There are dozens of characters that pass through who deliver just one line. It’s this mad array - this kaleidoscopic madness. And yet, it’s in black and white. But we’ll come back to the black and white. More than a few people pointed to La Dolce Vita as the template for this film. La Dolce Vita is a 1960 Frederico Fellini film and it certainly sets the template. Fellini’s film is about a gossip magazine journalist who is a ladies man and we follow his episodic adventures in the celebrity world of sixties Rome. Allen has riffed off Fellini premises before, and Allen just loves that Italian director. 8 1/2 for Stardust Memories. Amarcord for Radio Days. Juliet Of The Spirits is essentially Alice. There’s less obvious nods to Fellini in The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Sweet And Lowdown and of course To Rome With Love. And so he took Fellini’s starting point and wrote all new stories and scenes. La Dolce Vita, the phrase, means the sweet life. And Fellini’s film sees his gossip mag hero go on a journey to find a vapid kind of happiness through Roman high society. That film is one of the greatest of all time, and is at once personal yet has more to say about human existence. Allen, on the other hand, has less to say about the personal and uses more words to say it. Allen focusses on the fame aspect, and he makes his point bluntly at times. La Dolce Vita is the better film, but premise aside, they are very different films with very different things to say. So back to Lee and Robin, the two sides of the film. Allen sticks to pretty standard screenwriting conventions when they interact. They have a beginning, middle and end. The beginning is when we see their break up pretty early on in the film, and it’s the inciting incident that sets both of them on their path, when they break up in Central Park. Lee longs for a new life. In a way he’s like a person who spent too much time on Instagram, seeing how others lived, and wants to be a part of it. Robin, who was happy with her lot, goes to seek help and stumbles onto another path. Their break up scene is incredible. We’ll talk about the acting a little bit later, but here are Branagh and Davis, two incredible actors, acting the hell out of the scene, in one take, staying active and kinetic around the set the whole time. And the writing is incredible - in the middle of it, Robin tells Lee to be honest. She can handle it. We know she can’t. We know she is going to get angry. It’s been set up in the most obvious way. Yet the two of them give a great pause before the punchline. Branagh underplays his line. And then it’s all on Judy. We know what’s coming and usually when you know the joke, it makes it less funny. Instead she manages to nail the joke you expected, in the middle of a very complicated scene. > ROBIN: Who else? > LEE: Nobody else! > ROBIN: OK. Lee, tell me. Now that we're clearing the air, I won't get angry. Lee, come on. Let's just clear the air. > LEE: Aren’t you cold? > ROBIN: We're clearing the air. I'm not gonna get angry. > LEE: Sheila... > ROBIN: Sheila? Sheila?! Oh, you lowlife motherfucker! > LEE: I can't talk to you! We next see the pair together in pretty much the middle of the film. In any film school screenwriting course, they tell you that the mid point is the low point for our characters. It’s where they learn a hard truth, or their task gets harder. It’s Neo meeting the Oracle and finding out he’s not The One in the Matrix. It’s Obi-Wan dying in Star Wars. It’s when Sonny is killed in the Godfather. The Avengers turning on eachother in the Helicarrier. Here, Allen makes Lee and Robin’s midpoint eachother, when they meet at a screening. Robin is a mess, hiding from Lee. Lee is a fraud. Neither are happy, and they clash. > ROBIN: Am I lying? Did you not say Sheila was a vache hollandaise? Well, didn't you? Am I lying? > LEE: You know you're a sick woman? You're ma sick woman, that's what you are! Yeah, OK. OK. They only interact one more time, right at the end of the film. By now, the tables have turned. Robin has the celebrity that Lee craves so much. Lee is left hanging on, looking blankly as he watches a screen that shows the word HELP. It’s as brutal an ending that Allen has ever created. And the only answer that Lee gets is that it’s luck. We compare Lee to Robin and vice versa throughout the film. And Robin wins. > LEE: You're so radiant. > ROBIN: Oh, thank you. You know, it's luck, Lee. No matter what the shrinks or the pundits or the books tell you. When it comes to love, it's luck. Both Lee and Robin have those interactions but they have their separate adventures. These episodes are often just standalones. I couple of them, you could just rip out of the film and it wouldn’t change much. They start and resolve before the next one begins. Because of this, neither Lee nor Robin are the best characters - they are sometimes vessels for another story. We don’t learn anything about Robin at the plastic surgeon’s. And Lee is just along for the ride with superstar Brandon Darrow, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. They are sometimes reduced to observers in their own stories. Most of Lee’s journey is him being overwhelmed. By Darrow, or by the supermodel played by Charlize Theron, and even with Nicole Oliver, played by Melanie Griffith. He tries to climb the ladder but fails to get someone to be interested in his script. These adventures are big and kind of exciting, but they aren’t terribly funny. Throughout it, Allen is taking stabs at celebrity culture. Take the supermodel stuff. They go from cool crowd to cool crowd, allowing Allen to make cracks at the cool crowd. The satire is not massively sophisticated - Allen makes the same points again and again - everyone is shallow. And Lee is a fool for wanting any part of it. For me, the best Lee sequences come when Allen is trying to make a point about something other than fame. Take the high school reunion sequence. Lee attends his average high school reunion and it gives Allen an opportunity to talk about getting old, and the compromises of a generation. Allen is brutal about Lee’s ageing classmates. All whilst a former student sings The Impossible Dream, a late 60s hit song that kind of summing up the hippie dream. All it does for Lee is make him realise that his life is empty. It’s a big moment for Lee, and it’s when he decides to leave his wife. Allen could have made the reasons more superficial. Like he just wanted some cheap fame and loose women. But Lee’s reasons are deeper than that. It doesn’t make him a better person, but Allen makes some effort to show you where he’s coming from. He doesn’t want to end up one of his loser classmates. And can you blame him? > LEE: All these dentists and veterinarians and antique dealers. Capped teeth and bald heads, grey hairs coming in. Sam Jablon has that rug on. It looks like it fell on his head from a window and nobody told him. Some are dead already. Annette DeAngelo, breasts I once caressed lying cold in the ground. God, how I wanted to sleep with Polly Weiss. Now she's turned into her mother. And Freddie Kaplan's my age! He could be my father's pinochle partner. I'm fucking Prufrock! I gotta change my life before it's too late. Lee doesn’t get a happy ending. He’s unable to finish his book. He gets lost in the whirlwind of fame, but doesn’t find love or satisfaction. The through line in his story is Nola, played by Winona Ryder. We meet Lee when he meets her. They court and he wins her over in a scene that seems like Lee’s romantic fantasy. This huge rush of strings and a kiss under the streetlight. But soon the relationship turns real, and they are deciding on pasta for dinner. Lee’s journey ends in quiet disappointment. > LEE: I just... I give up. So what do you want for dinner? What should I buy? > NOLA: Spaghetti. > LEE: I was gonna ask you to marry me. > NOLA: No. Penne, with marinara. Robin’s adventures are more comical and farcical. She meets a man, Tony, played by Joe Mantegna. He’s a stand up guy - and he’s kind of the only guy in the film who has worked things out. He knows how to make the celebrity life work for him, and over the course of the film, he shows Robin how it’s done. Robin sometimes feels like she’s in a different film from Lee. Her adventures with plastic surgeons or learning how to give blowjobs are pretty broad comedy. They are fine, they are funny, but not much else. It lacks the depth of Lee’s side of the story. The heart of Robin’s story is her acceptance of happiness - and letting go of the guilt that comes with it. She is, in a lot of ways, the real Woody Allen surrogate here. She expresses her views that Allen has said all the time about his own career. That he was lucky, he got a break. And he is guilty about it, but has to learn how to accept it. And admit that his life is more comfortable than most. That’s Robin’s story - and her rags to riches career is a little like Allen’s own. And like Allen at this time, she lucked into finding a lovely life partner. Robin gets the happy ending, but it’s just luck. > ROBIN: OK. How did I manage to swing this? Last year I was teaching English, performing a serious function. And suddenly, through a whirlwind series of events, I've become the kind of woman I've always hated. But I'm happier. Throughout the screenplay there are wonderful ideas. I love how Lee is writing a book on the topic of celebrity. Allen’s had so many characters who are writers, but he really makes it part of the story here. That book Lee is working on is subtext about the themes of this film, but it also says something about Lee as a person, and is also used as a plot point, when Bonnie throws it into the river. Theme, character and plot with just one device. Just lovely. > PHILIP: What happened to that book you were toying with? > LEE: It just kind of floated away. > PHILIP: I thought about it the other day. > LEE: Really? > PHILIP: A culture that took a wrong turn, an individual that can't find himself. > LEE: That was it. That was my book. There’s a lot of symbolism. The sky written word of HELP is certainly memorable. And I love how the removalists are trying to move boxes in as Bonnie and Lee are breaking up. A bit of extra comic farce on top of a serious and tense scene. Allen’s writing is just top notch, finding the voice of 200 plus characters from all walks of life. There’s energy on every page. Theres a lovely scene where Lee and Nola talk over their friends at Elaines. It comes at the point in the film when we need something to take us to the ending. Nola and David arrive, and Lee is paused for about 15 seconds, and the film takes almost a break. Then Lee talks over the friends and at Nola. Everyone else is still speaking. And they have their own private conversation amongst the noise. But they do break back and forth. The sound design is incredible. The camera work follows faces around and helps to make sense of the dialogue. Two conversations happen at once, and it’s a fine balancing act between good actors, a very well written script and technical work to make it all make sense. And it’s one long unbroken take. It’s just another incredible bit of screenwriting, matched with great filmmaking. > DAVID: I'm good, I've finished a very long article. I was working on it for five months, and then we've been vacationing. > BONNIE: Where'd you go? > DAVID: We went to California. > BONNIE: Have you read Sid's book? > LEE: How have you been? > NOLA: Good. > DAVID: I liked it very much. A bit long. > BONNIE: Oh, I didn't find it long. > LEE: How's your acting career? > NOLA: Slow but breathing. > LEE: You still work in Chippers? > NOLA: You remembered! > DAVID: What was the spy movie we saw on TV last week with the hawk and... > NOLA: The Falcon And The Snowman. The biggest weakness in the script for me is when it starts to feel episodic. I wonder if Allen took short story ideas he had and put them into this film. It feels like we bounce around. There was actually more episodic adventures that were cut out of the finished film. Several actors like Elaine Stritch filmed roles that never appeared in the finished film. But focussing on the small elements isn’t really the point here. The point is scale. The point is all this stuff is supposed to wash over you, and bury you in a wave. It all works together - from the high class fashion models to the basement fortune tellers. Hot young actors to TV priests to sports stars to book publishers to groupies who write like Chekhov. This is a story about scale. It reminds me of the best work of Robert Altman’s or Richard Linklater’s - both of whom loves to attack a subject from many angles and many characters in films like Nashville. And there’s more than a little of the dark humour of Altman’s 1992 film The Player seeping into this film. > GINA: Brandon tells me you're his writer. > LEE: Well, you know, I'm a writer. > GINA: I write. I wrote some film scripts. > LEE: Really? > GINA: Have you ever heard of Chekhov? > LEE: I have. > GINA: I write like him. > LEE: You write like him? When it comes to fame, I don’t disagree with Allen on the points he’s trying to make. In 1998 the internet was pretty new. But the world of technology and globalisation was changing anyway. And years before trending became a thing, the 90s saw the rise of this celebrity culture and a new level of being famous. Look at Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson or OJ Simpson who were these new global superstars. And they came from all corners. Sport, movie stars, rock stars and even politicians. Look at Bill Clinton playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall in 1992. Everyone is just a celebrity - what their actual day job was, is secondary. It is worse now. Any idiot with a blue tick thinks they are on the level as anyone else with a blue tick. Allen’s vision of a culture full of cheap celebrities has gotten worse. And this film seems less harsh every year. I think it’s extremely interesting that Allen uses the anecdote about John Lennon saying that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus in this film. It’s a passing conversation within a church group. It’s not a funny scene, or a clever one. It’s just one that fits this film. That incident came from a 1966 press conference when John Lennon stated, as a really dry matter of fact, that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus - that more people had heard of them. It caused all manner of outrage as the extreme nutbags took offence. But that was a moment where popularity and celebrity began to counted by the pound. And that a dark side of celebrity reared it’s head. It’s right and proper that it is referenced in this film. > WOMAN: Who would you say is more popular - the Pope or Elvis Presley > FATHER GLADDEN: I don't think there's any doubt. > WOMAN: Elvis, you think? > MAN: Did you agree with The Beatles at the height of their fame that they were bigger stars than Jesus > FATHER GLADDEN: The world population was less then... I won’t get too much into it from my personal point of view. But yeah - it’s hard not to look at Instagram influencers and how every asshole is trying to get followers - and not agree with Allen on this one. Help, indeed. ## Production, cast and crew This is Allen’s last film fully in black and white, to date. He would investigate making later films like Small Time Crooks in black and white, but always ultimately decided against it. But he would film a few sequences in black and white in 2020’s Rifkin’s Festival. The problem with black and white was the cost. Around this time, Allen was shooting and editing on film. And there just weren’t that many production places that could develop black and white films left. Not only did everyone go colour decades ago, everyone was going digital. And the decision to go black and white didn’t exactly endear him to the studios or people around him. His last film to be in black and white was SHADOWS AND FOG, a massive flop that helped drive Orion Pictures out of business. There’s no black and white films in the top 100 films of 1998, according to IMDB. Black and white on actual film stock was pretty much dead. I’m not sure what the black and white adds to the film. It immediately doubles down on the comparisons to La Dolce Vita. Allen also does the thing where even the film studio logos before the film plays is in black and white. Seen in a cinema, you would see no colour at all after the trailers. The thing it does do is make the film look gorgeous. Not that there isnt plenty of gorgeous colour films, but there are plenty simply heaps of stunning shots of New York City. > TONY: All right. See that guy? That's Papadakis, the director of the film. > ROBIN: Oh, yes? > TONY: He's very arty, pretentious. One of those assholes who shoots all his films in black and white. The cinematographer for the film is Sven Nykvist, and it’s his third film with Allen (not including filming the short segment for New York Stories). He replaced Carlo Di Palma who had health problems and returned to Italy. Nykvist had cut his teeth working with Ingmar Nergman in Sweden, and he was behind the camera for all his classics like The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. Crucially, a lot of those films were in black and white. And Nykvist and Bergman conjured up many of cinema’s most memorable images. The most beautiful sequence for me is Lee and Nola’s rendezvous at the Franklin St subway. The establishing shot where we see the gorgeous subway entrance in its grand glory, lit very subtlety giving us a lot of different textures. The brightest light comes from inside the subway itself. Then the scene goes from grand settings to close ups on faces and a tightly framed kiss. It’s almost like films of another era, where the close up was the money shot, the most expensive and staged scene. It’s why people went to the cinema - to see attractive, charismatic people up close at their most romantic and vulnerable. That black and white image helps transport us to a different era. That orchestral version of Slow Boat To China, performed by Jackie Gleason and His Orchestra, also helps to set the mood. > NOLA: And believe me, every guy I meet thinks he's the one who's gonna make me faithful, so just be warned. > LEE: Well, you should know, I don't scare that easily. > NOLA: I'm just telling you, because you don't know me. > LEE: I know you, I've written about you twice. You were the obscure object of desire in books that I've written. The books failed - my fault, not yours - but I know you inside out. It's scary. > NOLA: You didn't make me up. > LEE: Well, whatever restlessness you've experienced, whatever moodiness and unpredictability you've broken hearts with, you're a...Baby, you're a heartbreaker. It's all over tonight. > NOLA: Where did you get that confidence? Nykvist surely earned his keep on this film. Just watching the film you can see it was a complicated shoot. Scale is the story here, and Allen seemed to throw scale in just for the sake of it. The high school reunion scene didn’t have to be in such a big room, with so many extras. But Allen wanted to show the scale. The same with the fashion show. Even the small party scenes are full of people. And I can’t imagine the scenes were easy to set up. Allen certainly didn’t cut corners here. He put in more corners than anyone would need. Allen also continues with his long scenes. When they are mixed with crowded rooms, it’s a marvel. It’s like watching a meticulous choreographed musical number. Take the art launch with Lee and the supermodel. The whole scene is a long take, with camera moves, the right speakers, timed perfectly with jokes that land. It’s very impressive. The black and white cinematography actually serves the purpose of making it simpler to control the colour scheme. I imagine costuming so many extras and dressing so many sets meant that having a tight colour palette would be hard. But you also don’t have colour and the production design is much harder to set mood and feeling. There’s also so many locations. It’s not just the number of locations but the breadth and style. We go from grungey fashion shows to posh hotels to Central Park to hip nightclubs. At each one is a massive amount of extras and huge sets. There’s helicopter shots and huge establishing shots. Each location is filled with noise and people. I like the small detail of construction workers everywhere. That’s New York - always some work being done. It’s a city where people are filming on the streets, paparazzi follow celebrities and the sound of construction. In terms of painting a picture of New York, Allen does an incredible job here. You can hear New York. This is the last of four Woody Allen films in a row which were set in contemporary New York, starting with Mighty Aphrodite in 1995. He usually likes to do something set out of the city or maybe in the past. But for this period in the 90s, he stayed with the time and the New York as it was. I feel like Allen’s 90s work is where he best shows his love of New York, better than any other period. Let’s talk about Kenneth Branagh’s performance. Branagh is definitely going for something very distinctive. And that thing is his take on a Woody Allen impersonation. There’s just no two ways about it. Branagh is an incredible actor. He’s also a very silly actor at times. He’s very silly in the Harry Potter films. He’s very silly as Poirot in Murder On The Orient Express. But in the late 90s, Branagh was not silly - at least he wasn’t seen as silly. In the late 90s, Branagh was Shakespeare. He had just directed and starred in an acclaimed three hour epic adaptation of Hamlet, having directed and starred in lots of other Shakespeare in the years before. So for many people this felt like a Shakespearean actor doing Woody Allen. Like Patrick Stewart as Alvy Singer. It’s telling that Allen had also considered Hugh Grant for the role. Allen wanted a comic performance - someone who could play that frantic, uncomfortable panic that Hugh Grant, and Woody Allen, does so well. But also handsome and probably looks better than Allen in a fast car, and not unlikely to hang out with supermodels. So Branagh was cast against type. Branagh at the time was probably considered the most serious film actor there was at the time. Having seen lots of silly Branagh in the years since this film came out, it makes more sense to me. I can easily see past the performance now to see Lee. Yes, he could have played him as British. Yes, Branagh is definitely going for something. Regardless of whether it was right for the film, what he’s doing is really hard. He delivers long complicated monologues with a perfect style. It’s a shame that so many reviews couldn’t get past Branagh’s performance - many of them talked about it right at the start. It was considered one of Allen’s great casting blunders. Also, according to Allen, Branagh started doing his performance and the director just let him be. The two didn’t discuss it. Allen could have asked Branagh to tone it down. Allen has asked many actors over the years specifically to not sound like him or his persona. Why didn’t he do it here? As much as the performance has grown on me, it absolutely stands in the way of this film. It’s just so showy that it can’t be ignored. You are constantly reminded of it because Branagh totally commits to it. Branagh goes against what Allen usually does with casting leads, which is to cast a naturalistic actor. Someone who looks like they are playing themselves. People don’t do accents in Allen’s films. We know this is a British actor putting on a schtick. If only Branagh played him as British. Or imagine what someone like John Cusack, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton or someone more naturalistic could have done with this role. A great, but flawed, performance. > LEE: My book is about the values of a society gone astray. A culture badly in need of help. A country that gives a kid who can barely read or write a $100 million contract to play basketball? A murder trial or who's sleeping with the president is show business? Everything is show business! It doesn’t help that Branagh is up against a powerhouse actor like Judy Davis. She’s an absolute natural - you don’t feel her acting. And she goes from manic, like she is in her early break up scene, to graceful, like she is at the end. She is just able to call on a hurricane of emotion at will. She’s got the raw acting power of Marlon Brando but more than that, she uses it for humour. Let’s see Brando pull off the blowjob scene from this film. I think she’s brilliant and I understand why Woody Allen loves her. The two have a funny relationship - Davis has worked on five Woody Allen films and has said she’s never spoken to Allen. Allen for his part says he is scared of her and afraid to tell her anything because she is so intense. Look, maybe that’s true. I think maybe both of them are having a bit of fun exaggerating eachother’s stereotype to the press. Either way, Allen’s multi layered lead characters suit her, that’s for sure. You can’t beat her performance in Husbands And Wives, but this is her second best work with Allen. > ROBIN: I left him standing at the church with all his family and friends. > OLGA: If you are not sure that you love him... > ROBIN: No, I am sure, he's wonderful. > OLGA: So then I don't understand. > ROBIN: I just feel guilty. I've had such good luck. Everybody I know always has so many problems. I just have this great guy fall in my lap. > OLGA: I still don't get... > ROBIN: I told him, "You're so terrific. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop." Some awful part of him that will ruin things, but there is no other shoe. > OLGA: You provided that. > ROBIN: Me? > OLGA: He's a wonderful guy, but you screw things up. > ROBIN: Why? > OLGA: You said it yourself. It's like guilt. You don't need a fortune teller, you need a shrink. Most of the rest of the cast are cartoons - simple characters for Lee or Robin to bounce off, and then land at a point. Even Joe Mantegna’s Tony, who probably gets the third most screen time, is nothing but a nice guy. He doesn’t change or anything, so all credit to Mantegna for making the role work. Some of the minor roles chew the screen. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfect in his small role. He brings his intensity but he looks like he’s having fun too, cutting loose. Wynona Ryder does little more than look aloof and beautiful, but if that’s what you want, she’s pretty good at it. Charlize Theron’s hurricane of a character is probably the most memorable of all the secondary cast. In a strange parallel to the theme of fame, there were lots of famous people offered or considered for roles. Kim Basinger was offered the Melanie Griffith role. Kate Winslet and Drew Barrymore were both considered for the role played by Winona Ryder. Hugh Grant, like I said, could have been Kenneth Branagh. Allen wanted the director Sidney Lumet to play the director in the film, ultimately played by Greg Mottola, who would go on to be a features director himself. There are dozens more. At this time Allen was working with huge stars and everyone wanted to be in his films. It was also easy - there’s no rehearsal and apart from the leads, it would only take a few days. It also provides a bit of a meta commentary that so many actors who could lead their own films get minor speaking parts here. Yet those big names - lets not forget this is post Titanic DiCaprio and Winona Ryder in her 90s prime - couldn’t make this film a smash hit. > LEE: - I hate this director, Papadakis. It's one cliché after another. When you see the scripts that get made, I just find it so depressing. Below that the film is just filled with cameos. Dozens of people who worked with Allen in his recent films return for this. People like Dan Moran, Tony Sirico, Douglas MacGrath and many others worked with Woody Allen many times. It’s a little like Radio Days when Allen just got great actors from his last few films and put them in a big one film, making it feel a little like a TV series finale. Then there’s actors who pass through that later became famous. There’s like 50 of them - from Sam Rockwell to Jeffrey Wright to JK Simmons and more. This is really a great film for Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The other cameo really worth noting is Donald Trump. He’s become a lightning rod of a figure now but back in 1998 he was this rich weirdo. He was so rich that he owned casinos and when Allen needed a casino to shoot in, he reached out to Trump’s people. Trump allowed Allen to shoot in one of his Atlantic City casinos and Allen offered to give him a small part as himself in the film. It kind of makes sense to have Trump. Because one of the things Allen was trying to say was that being a celebrity was suddenly the end of the line for everyone. Politicians, writers, actors, random members of the public - anyone could become a celebrity. And people dig into everyone’s private lives and nothing is off limits. And if there’s anything that Allen predicted with this, it’s the rise of Donald Trump. The line between a businessman and a president would be erased, as both were just the same Celebrity. > ROBIN: Look who's here. Donald Trump. What are you working on, Donald? > DONALD TRUMP: I'm working on buying St Patrick's Cathedral, maybe doing a little rip-down job and putting up a very tall building. > ROBIN: Wonderful! This was Allen’s last film with editor Susan E Morse. Allen called her Suzie, and she had worked with Allen as a editorial assistant on Annie Hall and became his main editor for Manhattan, editing every film since. She worked on 24 of Allen’s projects. She was one of a few long time Allen collaborators who were let go of, around this time. Sweetland Films, who Allen made films for at this time, wanted Allen to cut back his costs. Some of his regulars who were paid to be available at Allen’s whim were taken off the books. Like with cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Susan E Morse really earned her fee on this film. This was a long shoot with lots of footage and many scenes were cut. But more than most Woody Allen films in a while, Allen found this film in the edit. Things were moved around and removed until the story made sense and Morse drove that. It might be that Allen’s writing has changed, but the Morse years had more films where Allen changed everything in the edit. In the decades that followed, almost none of his films were found in the edit. I’m not sure what that says, other than things were not the same after Susan E Morse. Romaine Greene, who had done hair on just about every Woody Allen film since Annie Hall - some twenty plus films - would also leave after this film. Juliet Taylor on casting however would make the cut, as did long time Production Designer Santo Loquasto. Those two were pretty much the only two to hold on from Allen’s long time crew. Richard Brick remains as producer, his second film with Allen after the departure of longtime producer Robert Greenhut. He wouldn’t last for much longer - and neither would Sweetland Films. The look and the story of this film is so stylised. But one aspect that lacks character for me is the music. It’s one of the problems with Allen’s films of this period. In the 90s, Allen’s stories that were mainly set in modern New York. He kept using the same musical character. It was a hodgepodge of old jazz from different eras. There isn’t much of a score holding the film together, although there’s a couple of key musical moments. Nola and Lee’s meeting is lovingly soundtracked by On A Slow Boat To China as I mentioned. It’s a lovely romantic song that Allen used previously in September. The high school scene features the Impossible Dream. But other than that, this film is simply not about music. The opening credits song is another one that is firmly on the nose. The song is You Oughta Be In Pictures by Little Jack Little. It’s one of Little’s most popular tracks and was released in 1934. I reckon Allen picked it for the name and then never thought about it again. ## Release and reception Celebrity was released in the US on the 20th November 1998, and played Venice and New York Film Festivals a couple of months earlier in September. It was released by Sweetland Films, their fifth film with Allen. It wasn’t a disaster, but it didn’t exactly burn up the box office either. It made $5.1 million in the US, half of what Deconstructing Harry made, and around half of what most of his other films did in the 90s. At the time of release this was his 4th lowest grossing film ever, only beaten out by Allen’s most memorable flops like Shadows And Fog, Another Woman and September. I think in the end it didn’t really make an impact. It just got lost - just another Woody Allen film as he rolled them out in the 90s. The black and white, the funny Kenneth Branagh performance, and bitter themes all added up to a film with limited appeal. It didn’t really threaten the awards season. And it didn’t help that Allen was now very much an independent filmmaker, but had a lot of competition. The early 90s Allen was the experienced hand in a sea of up and comers. By 1998 those up and comers were superstars. Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. The Coen Brother’s Big Lebowski. Stephen Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight. Celebrity just didn’t make it through the noise. It was such a golden era for American independent cinema. It’s a shame because I love this film. It’s so darkly funny yet with something to say. And Allen is taking a swing at fame, with a big bat. It’s also so cinematic. All those wide shots and huge scenes of extras and exotic locations. Woody Allen’s New York is black and white and cinematic. Allen has never been this purely ambitious again. He would not have a film with anywhere close to this many speaking parts again. Or make a film with so many location, sets or extras. It’s no surprise that Allen would pivot to one of his smallest films ever after this - 1999’s Sweet And Lowdown. It’s a shame because he would make great cinema, but he would not be this cinematic again for a long time. He would make little comedies that could have been TV movies, and he would make intense personal dramas. It’s not until 2012’s To Rome With Love, almost 15 years later, that he would film such huge outdoor set pieces again. The film before this one - 1997’s Deconstructing Harry - gets mthe reputation of being Allen at his angriest. That’s because Allen actually appears in that film and swears and you can see him being angry. He doesn’t appear in CELEBRITY but the point he’s making is wider and more directed. He doesn’t hate himself in this one. He hates you. And it’s way angrier and nastier than Deconstructing Harry, or any of Allen’s films. But this film kind of lives in the shadow of Deconstructing Harry. I think the public just thought it was just Allen continuing to be angry again. But it was more than that. And this film is a feast for the eyes. It’s funny as all get out. It’s deep and thoughtful. There’s actors who are at the top of their game. Yes, there’s flaws. But it’s a Woody Allen film. And a great one at that. At least that’s worth celebrating. TONY: Oh, and getting out of the elevator, I see there's a famous critic. ROBIN: Him I recognise. TONY: He used to hate every movie. Then he married a young, big-bosomed woman and now he loves every movie. ## Fun facts Some fun facts about Celebrity. This was Sven Nykvist’s last film with Allen. He was getting old too, and started to go blind. This was apparently inspiration for the blind director in Hollywood Ending. He also didn’t understand English, and Stig Bjorkman, who wrote a wonderful book called Woody Allen on Woody Allen, translated the script into Swedish. Celebrity didn’t set the box office alight, but that’s ok. Allen actually had another box office hit that year when he starred in the animated film Antz. Antz made more money than any of Allen’s own films. > Z: You know, my mother never had time for me. When you’re the middle child in a family of 5 million, you don’t get any attention. I mean, how is it possible? And-And I’ve always had these abandonment issues which plague me. My father was-was basically a drom, like I’ve said. And, you know, the guy flew away when I was just a larva. I have no idea why, but there was an actual single released for film. It seems like it was France only, but the record company there made promo CDs of the credits song, You Oughta Be In Pictures by Little Jack Little. I’m not sure why - was it really going to garner any radio plays? I know France loves Woody Allen, but come on. Finally, shortly after Allen wrapped on this film and before it came out, Allen married Soon-Yi Previn in Venice. ## Outro Next week. We look at the film that Allen says has the lead character that is most like him. > WOMAN: Excuse me, would you sign this? I use your exercise tape. > SUPERMODEL: You do? > MAN: So do I. > WOMAN: But I exercise to it.