Woody Allen has several classic films to his name, but lately his work has been hit or miss. Case in point: his latest, Irrational Man.
Well, Allen has a pretty good excuse for his inconsistent output: “I’m lazy and an imperfectionist,” he told The Independent. “Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese will work on the details until midnight and sweat it out, whereas for me, come six o’clock, I want to go home. I want to have dinner. Film-making is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence.”
He continued, “Another shortcoming is that I don’t have the intellect or the depth or the natural gift. The greatness is not in me. When you see scenes in [Akira] Kurosawa films, you know he’s a madman on the set. There would be 100 horses and everything had to be perfect. He was crazy. I don’t have any of that.”
Meanwhile, in an interview with NPR, Allen described his film-making as “middle-class quality,” explaining, “My problem is that I’m middle class. “If I was crazy I might be better. If I shrieked on the set and demanded, it may be better, but I don’t. I say, ‘Good enough!’ It’s a middle-class quality, which does make for productivity.”