Cyber Woody
Bob Weide – it's pronounced Wide-ee – directed Woody Allen: A Documentary (Bob also directed many episodes of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm).He tells me he's always regretted he couldn't call his son Woody, because Woody Weide would be a silly name. While working with Allen on the rather splendid documentary they used to send emails to each other: From: Weide To: Woody and back, From: Woody To: Weide.
However, in the doc, Woody takes Weide into his study and shows him the typewriter on which he still writes and has written every joke and script since he was 16 years old. So, how does Woody email? "He does have an iPhone," Bob tells me. "But he uses it to make calls, listen to music and to check the weather, which he does obsessively. The email process is laborious. You mail him care of his assistant, who reads it out loud to him or prints it out for him to read, and then you get a reply that he has dictated to her and she has then typed in and sent to you." Whatever works, indeed.
Jury fury
Cannes president Gilles Jacob created a bit of fuss among purists last month when he tweeted photos of the jury as they debated this year's winners at the Villa Domergue (I hear Diane Kruger was particularly unflattered by the picture of her in full gesticulation). However, more revelations of that previously secretive Cannes jury process are filtering out. The current Cannes boss, Thierry Frémaux, was angrily responding recently to accusations in the French press that the process was in some way biased in favour of the whims of the jury president, with Nanni Moretti this year rewarding compatriot Matteo Garrone's Reality with the Grand Prize (a terrific film, widely undervalued by many in Cannes, but it will be a big success).
One critic cited the victory of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 under the aegis of Quentin Tarantino's jury in 2004 as further evidence of bias, prompting Frémaux to reveal that Moore's documentary had won by just one vote, five to four, over Park Chan-Wook's Old Boy. And, added Frémaux with a flourish, Tarantino did not vote for Moore.
Amma's back
Having won a Bafta for best debut in 2005 for A Way of Life, the talented writer-director Amma Asante has been absent from British film-making. Quite how a personality such as hers has been allowed to slip away is one of the typically enduring idiocies of the British film industry, which should always look to keep its talents working.
Anyway, I hear Amma's back and has recruited cash, cast and crew for Belle, the period story of a mixed-race girl adopted into an aristocratic family and becoming influential in the abolition of slavery. The lead role should see the breakthrough of the hugely impressive British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, whose own lack of opportunities here has seen her increasingly seek work in the US, where she's currently starring in the TV series Touch with Kiefer Sutherland.
Dress to confess
Film-maker Todd Solondz, director of Happiness, will be in London at the end of the month, hosting a Q&A for his bitterly hilarious new film Dark Horse at the Curzon Soho on Friday 29 June. Jordan Gelber, the lead actor in the film, plays Abe, a thirtysomething Jewish suburban schlub who still lives at home with his mother and father (played by the remarkable duo of Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow). He sports an array of Jewish-themed T-shirts. "We got them all on a website called kosherham.com," Gelber told me when the film screened at Venice last year. "My favourite is Matzo Baller, but there are so many. Todd let me keep a couple and I do wear them, but only around the house." Wouldn't it be great if the crowd at the Curzon all turned up in one of the T-shirts? Let's make the notoriously unamused Todd happy with a T-shirt.
