ALVY
I’ve a very pessimistic view of life. You should know that about me if we’re gonna go out, you know. I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.
ANNIE
M’hm.
ALVY
Those are the two categories . . .The horrible would be like, I don’t know, terminal cases.
ANNIE
M’hm.
ALVY
And blind people, crippled . . . I don’t know how they get through life, it’s amazing to me.
ANNIE
M’hm.
ALVY
You know, and the miserable is everyone else. That’s all. So when you go through life you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s—you’re very lucky . . . to be . . . (overlapping Annie’s laughter) . . . to be miserable.
Woody Allen, from Annie Hall
Fortunately for me I don’t agree with Mr. Woody Allen on this point. It’s okay to feel this way if you are writing and directing your own films or performing stand-up for adoring crowds. But most ordinary folks will have to come up with a more functional philosophy.
According to the authorized biography in my lap, Mr. Woody Allen is very hard on himself. He does not believe in awards. He is madly in love with Mia Farrow. Oops. This book came out in 1991. It was on my husband’s bookshelf when we started dating and it has hung around ever since. He had it before we met. It’s an old book.
When I picture Mr. Woody Allen, I picture him in a fluffy white bathrobe eating from a room service cart at a five-star hotel. In the documentary I saw about Mr. Woody Allen, he and his wife/daughter Soon-Yi spend a lot of time in hotel bathrobes. A bathrobe like that says you have reached a place in your life where you are floating in funds. You are no longer in danger of sinking.
So maketh your films, Daddy-o.