Quote:
February 2006
EL: Some of the themes of Match Point are in Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which there is a Woody Allen character. How did the writing of these two scripts differ, having you in one and not the other?
WA: In Crimes, nobody had any interest in my aspirations [those of Cliff, the obscure documentary filmmaker]; they were only interested in success. My part of the picture was for comic relief. The real story of Crimes and Misdemeanors is Martin Landau’s.
EL: Who gets away with murder.
WA: There were a lot of people who felt that Marty was haunted and he had to keep telling the story like the Ancient Mariner. But that was not it at all. He was in no way haunted. He was just fine. He realized that in a godless universe you can get away with it and it doesn’t bother him.
EL: How does Crimes and Misdemeanors stand in your estimation?
WA: It was okay, but it was a little too mechanical for me. I think I was working too hard, whereas Match Point just flowed organically. I just happened to have the right characters in the right place at the right time.
EL: You also were fourteen years ahead in terms of experience. When you were writing Match Point were you thinking, I’ve dealt with this subject somewhat before in Crimes and Misdemeanors but I have these other things I want to say?
WA: No, I was saying that I want to obey the story and if you obey the needs of the creation of the piece of fiction, the meaning reveals itself. And for me, naturally, it’s going to reveal itself in a particular way. Years ago Paddy Chayefsky said to me,“When a movie is failing or a play is failing”–he put it so brilliantly–“cut out the wisdom.” [He laughs.] Marshall Brickman said it a different way–I told you this before–but just as cogently, just as insightful: “The message of the film can’t be in the dialogue.” And this is a truth that’s hard to live by because the temptation is to occasionally take a moment and philosophize and put in your wisdom, put in your meaning. I did that in Match Point to a certain degree–they’re sitting around the table and they’re talking about faith being the path of least resistance. But the truth of the matter is, if the meaning doesn’t come across in the action, you have nothing going for you. It doesn’t work. You can’t just have guys sitting around making hopefully wise insights or clever remarks because while they’re saying these things the audience is not digesting them the way the author intends–“Hey, did you just hear that Shavian epigram?” They’re looking at it as the dialogue of characters in a certain situation: “He’s saying this because she’s thinking this and he wants to get on her good side. . . .” They’re watching the action of the story. When you lose sight of that, and we all do–I certainly do–you think you’re making your point, you think you’re infusing your piece with wisdom, but you’re committing suicide. You’re just militating against the audience’s enjoyment.
EL: But Match Point fits into a long-standing theme of yours, that in a godless universe the only check you have on yourself is your own morality. No one else is going to punish you if you’re not caught.
WA: Interestingly, I read an article someone sent me that a Catholic priest wrote about the movie. It was very nice, but he made a wrong assumption. The assumption was: if, as I say, life is meaningless and chaos and random, then anything goes and nothing has any meaning and one action is as good as the next. And it immediately leads someone with a religious agenda to the conclusion, Well, you can just murder people and get away with it if that’s what you want to do. But that’s a false conclusion. What I’m really saying–and it’s not hidden or esoteric, it’s just clear as a bell–is that we have to accept that the universe is godless and life is meaningless, often a terrible and brutal experience with no hope, and that love relationships are very, very hard, and that we still need to find a way to not only cope but lead a decent and moral life.
People jump to the conclusion that what I’m saying is that anything goes, but actually I’m asking the question: given the worst, how do we carry on, or even why should we choose to carry on? Of course, we don’t choose–the choice is hardwired into us. The blood chooses to live. [Laughs.] Please note as I pontificate here, you’re interviewing a guy with a deficient denial mechanism. Anyhow, religious people don’t want to acknowledge the reality that contradicts their fairy tale. And if it is a godless universe [he chuckles], they’re out of business. The cash flow stops.
Now, there are plenty of people who choose to lead their lives in a completely self-centered, homicidal way. They feel, Since nothing means anything and I can get away with murder, I’m going to. But one can also make the choice that you’re alive and other people are alive and you’re in a lifeboat with them and you’ve got to try and make it as decent as you can for yourself and everybody. And it would seem to me this is so much more moral and even much more “Christian.” If you acknowledge the awful truth of human existence and choose to be a decent human being in the face of it rather than lie to yourself that there’s going to be some heavenly reward or some punishment, it seems to me more noble. If there is a reward or a punishment or a payoff somehow and you act well, then you’re acting well not out of such noble motives, the same so-called Christian motives. It’s like the suicide bombers who allegedly act out of noble religious or national motives when in fact their families get a financial payoff, revel in a heroic legacy–not to mention the promise of virgins for the perpetrators, although why anyone would want a group of virgins rather than one highly experienced woman is beyond me.
Anyhow, I disagreed with what the Catholic priest wrote, but I didn’t engage him. He was very nice; this was not a hostile thing he was writing. He was imputing to me a point of view and was trying to refute it. But he was refuting a point of view that I do not hold with what I feel is a preconceived religious agenda–and the film can’t honestly be read to imply I’m saying anything goes and that’s fine with me.
I saw another piece written by a priest-philosopher at St. John’s University, who thought the film was perhaps the most [laughs] atheistic film ever made. But he was very nice, very complimentary. His point of view was more lenient toward me because he felt that over the years the fact that I constantly espouse an atheistic and hopeless and godless and meaningless universe means I am saying that the absence of God in the universe matters. And I feel that he’s right, I am saying that it matters. I said that explicitly in Crimes and Misdemeanors. To me it’s a damn shame that the universe doesn’t have any God or meaning, and yet only when you can accept that can you then go on to lead what these people call a Christian life–that is, a decent, moral life. You can only lead it if you acknowledge what you’re up against to begin with and shuck off all the fairy tales that lead you to make choices in life that you’re making not really for moral reasons but for taking down a big score in the afterlife.
So the film inspired a lot of talk in that area and I’m glad. I’m glad it wasn’t regarded just as a suspense murder mystery, which, mind you, I’m not knocking. I love those as much as or more than anybody as a movie viewer. But I had hoped to use Match Point to at least make one or two points that are my personal philosophy and I feel I was able to do that.
EL: What do you think happens with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers [who murders his pregnant lover, played by Scarlett Johansson, and her elderly neighbor]? The same as with Martin Landau?
WA: Yeah. I think he’s in a situation that he’s not delighted with. He’s married to a woman he’s not passionate about. He’s a son-in-law who likes the easy life he’s married into but is claustrophobic working in the office. His wife is already saying to him that she wants another child.
He has no thoughts about the crime. He’s got what he wanted and he’s paid the price for that. It’s a shame that that’s what he wanted. I can see down the line that he won’t be content in that marriage and maybe he’ll be on such a good financial footing that he’ll leave her.
