Woody Allen once opined that the key to success was turning up, but it is not clear he will take his own advice at next year's Golden Globes, where he will be awarded the prestigious Cecil B DeMille award for contribution to cinema, it was announced on Sunday.
Allen has previously shunned the red carpet, leaving Nicole Kidman to accept a Golden Globe for best original screenplay for his Parisian time-travel comedy Midnight In Paris last year. But the prolific film-maker –with his latest comedy-drama Blue Jasmine starring Cate Blanchett as a pill-popping socialite - has admitted that while making films isn't difficult, making good ones can be.
"I don't work hard compared to a taxi driver or a teacher or a policeman. People think making a film every year is overwhelming. It's not. Once you have the money and the script, how long does it take? It's not that big a deal," said Allen, in a interview with this week's Time Out magazine. "Making films is not difficult. The problem is making good films, that's the hard part."
Golden Globes organiser Theo Kingma said on Sunday that "there is no one more worthy" of the Cecil B DeMille award.
Though the writer and director, whose most recent film has been hailed as a return to the form that produced classic romantic comedies such as Annie Hall, revealed that he is often disappointed with his films, which do not turn out as he originally imagined.
"If I get an idea in my bedroom, and I love what I write, and I make the film, once in a while I think: 'This is perfect, I made exactly what I set out to make.' More times than not, I finish it and have a negative feeling," he said. "I think: 'Oh my God, I had such a great idea and look what I did with it.' Usually you get an unpleasant surprise when you see what you've done. Once in a while, you think it's what you wanted, and then the public has to like it or not."
The writer, who describes himself in the interview as a "careless, fast writer" who writes lying down on his bed, added that Purple Rose of Cairo, Bullets Over Broadway, Husbands and Wives and Midnight in Paris came closest to realising his original ideas.
Speaking about his most recent release, in which Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a socialite whose luxurious New York life abruptly ends with the suicide of her corrupt financier husband, Allen said he felt more comfortable writing serious roles for women, rather than men.
"When I started writing years ago, I only wrote for men, and I was the lead. People would say I was always writing for the guy and the guy's point of view, and it was limiting. Then, when I was living with Diane Keaton [who appeared in eight of his films and was his partner in the 1970s], and I got to know her well, she was very impressive to me and very influential. I was able to write Annie Hall for her. It was the first, really significant woman's part I ever wrote."
Stoking rumours that he is set to return to standup comedy, he added: "I'm much more comfortable feeling the perspective of men when I'm doing comedy. I guess it's because I'm a comedian. I just feel it from my own experience."
But while the 77-year-old New Yorker, whose first play Don't Drink The Water debuted on Broadway in 1966, shows no sign of slowing his output, he admitted that he is less willing to play the lead in his own films, because he is no longer a conceivable hero.
"I don't write for myself at the moment. It's only because for decades I could believably get the girl and be the hero. But when you get older, the possibility for parts diminishes," he said. "I can no longer play the husband longing for the neighbour's wife or the guy who's lusting after the girl. It's not believable. It's hard for me to find parts for myself that are funny. I don't want to play geriatric parts. I want to play something that's funny."
He did not rule out starring in front of camera in the future, however: "If, tomorrow, there's a great part for me, I'll write it and do it in a minute. It makes life easier if I'm the star of the picture. It means I don't have to direct anybody. It cuts down on the conversations. It's not twice as difficult to direct yourself. It's half as difficult."
