Thursday, June 18, 2009

Woody Allen: On location in New York is getting hard to do


By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Like so many denizens of the Big Apple, Woody Allen finds himself strapped for cash.

Allen, a filmmaker as synonymous with Manhattan as yellow cabs and the Brooklyn Bridge, has been priced out of the city he calls both his home and his greatest inspiration.

"I wish I could afford to be here all the time, but it's a very expensive city to work in. It's gotten worse for me. It's gotten better in that they give you tax breaks. But everything (else) has gone up. I work on a very limited budget. If I had a bigger, more grand film to make, I wouldn't have a hard time," he says during an interview at the Regency Hotel, a short walk from the Upper East Side home he shares with wife Soon-Yi Previn and their daughters Bechet, 10, and Manzie, 9. "I live right here in this neighborhood. My kids go to school here. My whole life has always been in New York."

So have his most notable films, including Manhattan,Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Now, after a three-film European defection —Match Point and Scoop in London, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona in Spain — Allen, 73, has returned to Gotham for his newest comedy, Whatever Works, opening Friday. It's an upbeat romance starring Larry David as a surly misanthrope who befriends and ultimately marries a naive Southern runaway played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Allen wrote the script five years ago, always intending to shoot it here.

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