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Woody Allen on Vicky Cristina Barcelona
By Fred Topel | Image property of Fox Searchlight
 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Woody Allen Takes Us to Barcelona
"The cameraman was a Spanish cameraman, and he did a beautiful job," said Allen. "He was as good as any cameraman in the world, wonderful cameraman, and he didn’t speak English. It didn’t matter. I’ve made a number of pictures with a Chinese cameraman who didn’t speak any English in the past. I worked for 10 years with Carlos DePalma who spoke a tiny bit of English but not much. Those things are the easy things. That stuff is easy, but what is hard is getting a good script."
Even his actors were Spanish, so Allen's usual linguistics wouldn't always work. "Once I had the script, and it was decent, the fact that nobody could speak English didn’t matter. Penelope [Cruz] and Javier [Bardem], I encouraged them to improvise all the time. They are great actors and they improvised all over the place. I had no idea what they were saying. No idea. I could tell from the body language that clearly it was the scene I wrote in some way. It was not the words I wrote, but they were breaking up, or arguing over the emotional life, it was something."
Once in post production, Allen received confirmation that the scenes were in fact relevant to the film. "I never knew what they were saying until I got back to New York City and I was putting the titles in the picture. The person who did the titles was bilingual and told me what they were saying. It was fine. It was not always what I wrote by any means, often flamboyant flights of fancy that they took, but it was fine. You can do it if you have a story to tell. As long as it’s a decent story, then everybody has common sense about how to tell the story, then you can do it. If the script is not good, then no amount of great acting, or flashy direction, great camera work, it will never bail you out. This I know from many years of being on both ends of these things."
Allen can put so much pressure on the script, because it is always his own underlying his directing or acting. "When a project fails, 90 percent of the time, it’s that the script is no good. The actors are generally quite good. It’s rare that something doesn’t work because the actors have torpedoed you in some way. It’s rare that you directed it so badly that it doesn’t work. Directing is not rocket science. But if you have a bad script, then no amount of being Fellini, or a great stylist or anything saves you. In the end you have a flawed movie, a boring movie, or illogical story, or un-engaging story."
Vicky Cristina Barcelona opens to theaters on August 15th.
For the trailer, posters, interviews and more movie info, go to the Vicky Cristina Barcelona Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Fox Searchlight
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