Google
 

Dig A Hole: Charles H. Joffe, Woody Allen’s loyal producer

July 15th, 2008 by Scott Marks

With Woody Allen off playing jazz, Jack Nicholson presents producers Charles H. Joffe (left) and Jack Rollins with their 1977 best pictures Oscar for Annie Hall.

Until today, I never knew what Charles H. Joffe looked like. His business partner Jack Rollins had a bit part in Broadway Danny Rose and frequent (hilarious) cutaways on Late Night with David Letterman, but until I stumbled across this photo on the LA Times website, Mr. Joffe’s face remained a mystery.

His name was anything but.

As with any good Hebrew student/retardate, repetition is the key to learning and I saw Mr. Joffe’s name appear on screen at least a hundred times. And that was just one movie!

That opening weekend screening of Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run in the big Old Orchard Theatre was oxygen to my 14-year-old brain. It must have been a cheap rental for the film played on the bottom half of double-bills for years to come. No matter what theater, I was there and each one of my hundred-plus viewings came before home video.

Don’t ask how many times I saw Bananas.

More than Diane Keaton or Carlo Di Palma or Mia Farrow or even Jack Rollins, Charles H. Joffe’s name was synonymous with Woody Allen’s. Of the 44 films directed by Allen only four (two shorts, a made for TV feature and Tiger Lily) don’t include Charles H. Joffe’s name in the credits. He also produced two of Allen’s early non-directorial efforts, Play it Again, Sam and The Front.

I am saddened to report that Mr. Joffe died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a long illness. He was 78.

Continue reading Dig A Hole: Charles H. Joffe, Woody Allen’s loyal producer

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Filed Under Obituaries

Jerry Lewis considered directing Woody Allen’s debut film

December 18th, 2007 by Scott Marks

take-the-money-and-run.jpg

It’s one question that never came up during our conversation: What hand, if any, did Jerry Lewis have in Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run? If you think about it, there aren’t two more dissimilar comedic directors than Jerry and Woody.

In spite of what Mr. Allen has to say, Jerry’s films are beautifully (and overly) lit. Lewis knows how to pace a scene, when to cut, how to frame and where his body is in proximity to objects and other characters around him. Woody has a Zelig-esque visual style. Jerry was frequently photographed by a guy named “Wally.” Woody has the good taste to hire expensive European cinematographers to help plaster the cracks.

Biographer Eric Lax raised the Lewis question to Woody Allen during interviews conducted in 2005-6.

“Woody Allen: When I wrote Take the Money and Run with Mickey Rose, [the studio] didn’t want me to appear in and direct a film because they felt like there might be some kind of backlash… And I didn’t care about directing it. I just didn’t want somebody to ruin it… For a while I had Jerry Lewis interested in directing it, but the studio didn’t want to go along with that–it was United Artists who made What’s New Pussycat? and Casino Royale [both pictures Allen detested].

I had originally wanted to shoot it in black and white because it was a documentary and the documentaries were in black and white at the time. I remember telling that to Jerry Lewis and he said, “They won’t even play the picture in certain countries if it’s not in color.” Then he suggested I shoot it
in color and it could be changed to black and white here but in Thailand and places like that it will be in color. But in the end I couldn’t shoot it in black and white. The studio wouldn’t let me.

Eric Lax: Were you spending a lot of time with Jerry Lewis then?

Woody: Not a lot of time with him, but I did spend a little time with him. I spent a whole evening at his house in Bel Air. He couldn’t have been nicer. He got into his car and drove me back to my hotel in Beverly Hills himself. And then [Diane] Keaton and I went up to see him when he played the Concord or Grossinger’s, somewhere up in the [Catskills], and, of course, he was brilliant onstage. We spent a little time with him up there. I think he’s a tremendous talent who if he had been used more selectively would have made a stupendous contribution, because all the talent is there. It’s just immense.”

EL: You have managed to make comedies look stylish. I watched a comedy on the plane flying in to see you that was completely in flat, bright light.

Woody: Right, they don’t waste their time with it–and maybe in a way they’re right–because they’re thinking, Why put a lot of time and effort into that? What we want to put our time and effort in is the jokes, the speed, the music. When Jerry Lewis does a brilliant bit, he wants it bright and lit. He doesn’t want any artsy kind of nonsense competing with him. He doesn’t want anybody in the audience to feel, Oh, there’s some beautiful chiaroscuro. He wants you to see him doing his thing. Like Charlie Chaplin wanted it bright and right in front of you.

EL: Is that something he ever talked about with you when you were discussing doing Take the Money?

Woody: No. I never talked about it with him but I observed it in his films. The cameramen he worked with gave him exactly what he wanted. If you see a Jerry Lewis picture or a Charlie Chaplin picture or a Buster Keaton picture, you will never see that beautiful lighting… Keaton’s movies are beautifully photographed but not arty or pretentiously arty.”

Tags: , ,

Filed Under Rants