Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)

The same year Francis Ford Coppola premiered The Godfather, Woody Allen directed this follow-up to the madcap shtick-fest, Bananas. Based, in name only, on the sixties sex self-help book, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) is a series of seven vignettes that comedically covers taboo topics from aphrodisiacs, frigidity, ejaculation, and more. Apart from directing one of the segments in 1989’s New York Stories, it’s the only time Woody structured a movie as a series of isolated sketches. In addition, the film is a rare example of the director overtly basing a project off the work of another writer. “Allen has made his career primarily out of writing his own original ideas,” writes Mitchell Beaupre of Letterboxd. “But when book author David Reuben reportedly used one of Allen’s jokes from his previous film Take the Money and Run on Johnny Carson, Allen made the hilariously bitter decision to take Reuben’s book and make a film out of it in an act of revenge.”

Across the series of shorts, Woody parodies the subjects in Reuben’s book with varying degrees of success. “If Take the Money and Run was a satire on pop sociology, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex pokes fun now at pop sexual psychology,” writes critic Neil Sinyard. The most-successful stories of the bunch include a medieval court jester, played by what looks like a time-traveling misplaced Woody, attempting to seduce the Queen with deadly repercussions, a milquetoast doctor’s (played perfectly by Gene Wilder) bizarre but heartfelt love affair with a sheep, a scenario done completely in Italian between a man trying to defrost the cold sexual intimacy between he and his wife, and the personification of the inner-workings of a man on a date. What drags the movie down are sketches that might even illicit a few laughs but, overall, feel either half-baked or go on far too long. A send-up of game shows, What’s My Perversion, looks the part of a 60’s-era game show, complete with celebrity panel. But blink and you’ll miss it. The less said of the sketch with the cross-dressing man who is the victim of a purse-snatching the better. The largest tale in terms of scale includes Woody and a female companion joining a crazed researcher, a mix of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Frankenstein, in his secluded mansion, culminating in a B-movie sequence as they fight off a monstrous mammary the size of a house.

Whether it was due to Woody’s rising popularity or the titillating title, Everything was his most-successful film at the box office, earning $18 million off a $3 million budget. Compare that to a movie like Bananas which earned about $3.5 million, domestically. Despite it’s success at the box office, critics seem to be interestingly divided on its good-standing in the Allen filmography. A Variety review of the film reads particularly scathing. “One of the episodes is a prolonged piece of nonsense involving a 2001-inspired mission control centre that is engineering a bout of intercourse in a parked car. Idea of Allen as a reluctant sperm may sound funny on paper, but it plays like an adolescent jape.” Meanwhile, film critic Emanuel Levy wrote, “By standards of mainstream Hollywood comedies, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know” was audacious, depicting, among other deviant phenomena bestiality, exposure, perversion, and S&M. The final scene, which takes place inside a man’s body during a hot date, is truly funny.” I happen to land somewhere in the middle.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex has never been my favorite Woody Allen movie, not even amongst his early zany stuff. While some of the sketches work better than others, the highlights such as Gene Wilder or Woody as a reluctant sperm cell and lovelorn Romeo with an exhibitionist wife are memorable and hilarious.

Play It Again, Sam

Originally written as a play, Play it Again, Sam is the most-successful film adaptation of Woody’s theater work. The Broadway production went on for 453 performances between February 1969 and March of 1970, which is why it’s no surprise the actors worked so well bringing the story to celluloid. It wasn’t the first time Woody wrote for the stage. His previous play, Don’t Drink the Water was a hit, running for 598 performances in 1966. However, I’ve always had a fondness, a special affinity for Play It Again, Sam. In my mind, it received a much better movie treatment. Perhaps that’s due, in part, to the direction of Herbert Ross, best known for films like The Sunshine Boys, The Goodbye Girl, and Steel Magnolias. The play was directed by Joseph Hardy who received a Tony nomination for his work on Play It Again, Sam. I’ve always wondered why Woody didn’t direct the movie himself— coming off a three-film streak (What’s Up Tiger Lily, Take The Money And Run, Bananas), Play It Again, Sam is the odd-man out in his filmography. According to a 1972 interview in Cinema Magazine, Woody said, “I would never want to direct a play into a movie. I would only be interested in working on original projects for the screen.” In the 2012 film, Woody Allen: A Documentary, he discusses his stories and characters, about spending a year developing them, getting the film out the door, and moving onto the next one. “I was already at work on Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask and I didn’t want to spend a year doing a project that I had done on Broadway,” he told Cinema. Play It Again, Sam breaks the Woody Allen convention of directing his own written work but, in the context of his desire to always look forward to the next project, it starts to make sense.

The film breaks another Woody convention he’d soon become known for— a New York setting. While the play is set entirely in a New York apartment, original plans to shoot the film in Manhattan and Long Island were scrapped and production moved west to San Francisco due to a strike by the New York film workers union. The story is classic Woody fare. Allan, a writer and film buff spends his days watching movies and his nights dreaming of them. When his wife leaves him for warm weather and hot bodies, Allan seeks comfort from his best friend Dick and his wife, Linda. The couple do their best to coax him out of his own head, setting him up with some women they know but his insecurities and trembling exterior hinder any chance for romance. Allan “regularly conjures up Humphrey Bogart as a noir-style Dr. Phil, doling out relationship advice that often forces Allen to emulate Bogart’s indifferent approach to dating women,” writes Richard Saad of Cinephile Magazine. “What’s the matter with me?” Allan asks of himself. “Why can’t I be cool? What’s the secret?” The ghost of Bogey appears and responds, “There’s no secret, kid. Dames are simple. I never met one who didn’t understand a slap in the mouth or a slug from a forty-five.” Whether you want to think of Bogart as some form of Hamlet’s ghost or Fred Flintstone’s Great Gazoo or just a representation of Allan’s id, the contrast of the cool, calm Humphrey and the nervous Allan plays out great in several big scenes.

Dialogue in the film is faithful to the play’s script.

Play It Again, Sam is a more conventional film than Allen’s previous movies. It’s less farcical, more grounded, sweeter, and sincere. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its share of laughs. Woody manages to get in some great physical comedy including his struggle with a hairdryer putting out hurricane-force winds. The dialogue, as well, includes his trademark wit. “Have you heard from her?” Linda asks about his ex-wife. “I heard from the firm of Schulman and Weiss,” says Allan. “It’s funny. We went to Mexico on our honeymoon. Spent the entire two weeks in bed. I had dysentery.”

The actors who brought it to the stage returned to their roles three years later for the film adaptation including Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, and Jerry Lacy as Humphrey Bogart. Rumor has it Woody and Diane were already seeing each other during the play production but this movie marks the first of their on-screen collaborations. The two would go on to make many more movies together including Annie Hall and Manhattan. Like Picasso going through a red or blue period, Woody goes through leading-lady phases in his career, starting with Diane Keaton. Tony Roberts shows up again in movies like Annie Hall, as well. In fact, so much of what makes Play It Again, Sam special re-appears in Annie Hall. Both films are stories about relationships, starring the same actors, with a touch of whimsical flair. The implausible scenes with Bogart remind me of the fourth-wall breaking scenes in Annie Hall such as Alvy Singer conjuring director Marshall McCluhan to settle an argument with a stranger. Play It Again, Sam is an often over-looked part of Woody’s catalogue but one worth seeing. Amidst the slapstick shenanigans of Bananas and Sleeper is this more subdued gem, a prototype of Woody Allen films to come.

Bananas

As big a fan of Woody Allen as I am, I still anticipate there will be weeks when I’m in the mood for something else. After all, spending a year with his work, as great as it is, well- that’s a lot of idiosyncrasies and neuroses to take in. Luckily, this week was not that time. I was excited to watch Bananas, a movie I’ve seen several times. I know the movie thanks to a friend of mine, who introduced me to it, and Woody Allen in general, a long time ago. I think most people have that person in their life. Whether it’s your older brother’s taste in books that gets you hooked, that musical guru at the record store who knows something about every band, the store-clerk with an encyclopedic knowledge of comics, or the friend who shows you movies off the beaten path, we all have our taste-makers.

Woody Allen and co-writer Mickey Rose join forces once again and further define their brand of comedy. As a result, Bananas feels like a more refined version of the comedic stylings seen in their previous film, Take the Money and Run. It’s also a much more ambitious film, with some fairly impressive action sequences and exotic shooting locales. Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a nebbish products tester living with his activist girlfriend in New York City. After a break-up, Fielding joins a Castro-esque revolution in the fictional island nation of San Marcos. Through a series of physical and political pratfalls, Fielding unwittingly finds himself at the epicenter of a power struggle. Despite the backdrop of a revolution, the movie itself isn’t necessarily political. It’s much more concerned with simply being funny, though I think it’s unfair to say it has no ambition to comment on society. The opening scene with Howard Cosell giving color commentary on a televised political assassination as if it were a sports event speaks volumes about our own country’s obsession with violence, particularly in media, while also being extremely funny.

When asked why he named the movie Bananas, Woody Allen replied “Because there are no bananas in it”. That’s something Groucho Marx could have said and Allen must indeed have been heavily influenced by the Marx Brothers when he made this film. Fans of Airplane! and The Naked Gun will recognize the structure, but what elevates Bananas is its satirical content. -Stefan Hedmark, The Movie Halmet

In Take the Money, a job interview quickly devolves into an episode of the game show, To Tell the Truth. The Wide World of Sports segments that bookend Bananas harken back to the same idea. It’s interesting to see them returning to a joke and executing it much more effectively. But it isn’t all re-worked material in Bananas and the breadth of comedic styles from homage to slapstick to the ridiculous is impressive.

“As in Take the Money and Run, the jokes range widely in quality and style,” writes Neil Sinyard in The Films of Woody Allen. “Some of the jokes derive their humor from recognition of film quotation: a pram careens down some steps in the manner of the Odessa Steps sequence in Eisenstein’s [1925] revolutionary movie, Battleship Potemkin. Occasionally they come from the comic’s ability to exploit a convention or idea to its illogical absurdity: for example, Fielding’s ordering of a take-out meal for a thousand rebels.” While Woody only got to show off his penchant for physical comedy briefly in Take the Money and Run, the sequence in his trial scene, playing both the accused and accusatory lawyer in a self cross-examination, is one of his best.

I’ve always enjoyed Bananas so sitting down to watch it this week was a treat, something I anticipated as the weekend approached. Yet it doesn’t share many of the same qualities with my most-beloved Allen films like Manhattan, which are funny but much more sedate. Bananas is a farce, it’s Woody still in his early funny days. Perhaps the thing I like most about it is that it’s smart humor dressed-up in dumb jokes. A recurring dream of Fielding’s involves the bold imagery of himself, atop a crucifix, being carried through empty city streets, quickly turning into a street fight as another man on his cross goes after the same parking spot. The comedy still works after all these years and that’s kind of the best part about being a Woody Allen fan. While he has a distinct style all his own, some would argue he gets bogged down by it sometimes, there still manages to be variety throughout his filmography.

Take the Money and Run

Take the Money and Run was Woody’s first foray into performing triple duty as writer, director, and actor. It was also the first time he worked alongside editor Ralph Rosenblum who would go on to cut other Allen movies like Bananas, Sleeper, Love and Death, and Annie Hall. Woody shared writing credits with Mickey Rose, the man he’d known since high school and previously collaborated with on stand-up routines and television spots. In a lot of ways, the comedy in Take the Money and Run feels very specific to the pairing of Allen and Rose. When Woody fans or even Allen himself reference the “early, funny movies” I feel like they’re talking about the brand of humor that came from these two guys working together.

The opening sequence of the movie just hits you with a machine-gun-style barrage of rapid-fire jokes. It’s sight gag after quirky line after physical comedic bit, one after another. Right away you know you’re in for something silly, something that doesn’t take itself too seriously despite the fact it’s presented in a very pseudo-serious tone granted by the mockumentary format.

The mockumentary style reminds me of where he’ll go in later movies like Zelig, mixing up old footage, and newly-filmed material to great effect. Like What’s Up Tiger Lily, it’s clear that Woody has an innate understanding of how filmmaking works in a very technical sense, being able to construct a fake documentary that looks, sounds, and behaves like the real thing. But more than that, he really gets how comedic filmmaking works. As a result, the story of inept career criminal, Virgil Stockwell, is told hilariously, successfully. In the 2003 book by Richard Schickel, Woody Allen: A Life in Film, Allen said:

“The idea of doing a documentary, which I later finally perfected when I did Zelig was with me from the first day I started movies. I thought that was an ideal vehicle for doing comedy, because the documentary format was very serious, so you were immediately operating in an area where any little thing you did upset the seriousness and was thereby funny. And you could tell your story laugh by laugh by laugh… The object of the movie was for every inch of it to be a laugh.”

In that last regard, there’s no doubt Take the Money and Run was successful. The film is just absolutely saturated with jokes, reminding me in a lot of ways of movies to come like Airplane! or even Austin Powers. If a joke falls flat, there’s not much time to even absorb it because there’s another one coming right up. Woody has said in interviews that, especially earlier in his career, he was just ripping off Bob Hope. While you can see glimpses of Bob Hope in how Woody plays the lovable shmuck, or even channels his inner-Charlie Chaplin or Groucho Marx during some of the more physical scenes, he’s got a style all his own, particularly in how he managed to master the art of awkward Brooklyn banter. In those moments where the dialogue shines, you can really see how he managed to adapt his early stand-up material for the big screen.

The August, 1969 New York Times review by Vincent Canby gets it best:

“The film… is the cinematic equivalent to one of Allen’s best nightclub monologues, a kind of cowardly epic peopled with shy F.B.I. agents, cons who are wanted for dancing with mailmen, over-analyzing parents and one lady blackmailer who has the soul of a Jewish mother—she likes to feed her victim good, hot meals. The nicest surprise of Take the Money and Run is that it shows he has been able to complement visually the word-oriented humor of the writer-performer.”

Not every reviewer that year enjoyed the movie as much as I seem to, Roger Ebert went so far as to say  it “has some very funny moments, and you’ll laugh a lot, but in the last analysis it isn’t a very funny movie.” But after a bad week or even a rough night it’s hard to argue there’s anything much better than sitting down and seeing a movie that really embraces silliness. It’s short, sweet- a comedic trifle and, as a film in the context of Allen’s career, feels like a proper beginning.

What’s Up, Tiger Lily

What’s Up, Tiger Lily was an odd movie with which to start off this whole project. It shares a lot of the same genetic code with later Allen films in terms of dialogue and comedic style but, as far as execution goes, it’s something wholly different. Most of the movie is footage from a Japanese Bond rip-off called Kizino Kizi with all of the audio scrubbed out and re-dubbed with American actors. Woody shows up three times in the film, including the end credits but mostly to break down the premise as well as the fourth wall. By eliminating the original audio and replacing it with his own dialogue, Allen creates a new story, turning a light-hearted spy action movie into a farcical story about a hapless hero looking for the ultimate egg salad recipe.

The original movie doesn’t look like it took itself too seriously, with its own share of visual gags. But Allen takes the concept to the extreme, superimposing his own goofy story on top. I know Tiger Lily wasn’t his first experience with movies, he previously played a sizable role in 1965’s What’s New, Pussycat, amongst others, but when choosing where to begin this project of mine it felt fitting to go with what is dubbed his directorial debut. In a lot of ways, I think Tiger Lily is his response to the bad experience he had making Pussycat. He did not direct the latter and spoke negatively (in the self-deprecating way that only Woody can) about the film saying, “If they had let me make it, I could have made it twice as funny and half as successful.” There’s probably some truth to that, I’m sure he felt he needed complete control of a picture in order to maintain the vision he saw- I mean, he hasn’t relinquished control of a movie since. I couldn’t help but noticing Woody Allen’s name all over the opening titles. It’s even titled in the film as Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily. There was certainly a greater sense of authorship when I watched it. The name What’s Up, Tiger Lily works in tandem with What’s New, Pussycat, both feature felines and essentially the same conversational quip. In addition to titles, Tiger Lily feels like a bold step away from the kind of film Pussycat was trying to be which was, at the time, a pretty conventional comedy. Tiger Lily is a strange experiment and, for the most part, works. I say, “for the most part” because, while I felt the exercise of dubbing new dialogue over a film to create something new was successful in the mechanical sense of storytelling, it’s definitely a jarring viewing experience and it’s not necessarily the most-ambitious film of his career. The plot is purposefully ridiculous which is fine, it’s supposed to be nonsense, but I do think there’s more meaning to the method.

When reviewing Woody’s 2005 film, Melinda & Melinda, Roger Ebert wrote of Allen’s technique of telling the same story, with different actors, and portraying one in a tragic light and the other comedically. The framing device for all this is a group of friends out to dinner, discussing the virtues of drama over comedy.

Why won’t Woody choose one of these stories or the other? Why won’t he either cheer or sadden us? When he abandoned comedy for neo-Bergman exercises like “Interiors,” at least they were Bergmanesque all the way through, with no excursions into romantic comedy. Why can’t he make up his mind?

But you see, he has. Allen has made up his mind to pull the rug out from under us as we stand at the cocktail party of life, chattering about how we got there, when we plan to leave, and how we’ll get back home. He has shown that the rug, the party, and all of the guests are shadows flickering on the walls. “Melinda and Melinda” is a movie about the symbiosis of the filmmaker and the audience, who are required to conspire in the creation of an imaginary world. He shows us how he does it and how we do it. In its complexity and wit, this is one of his best recent films.

What’s Up, Tiger Lily is Woody’s first attempt at the same concept- the notion that a movie is a movie- a series of sounds and images being manipulated by a filmmaker and he or she can change them as they see fit. It’s a self-aware film not just in terms of breaking the fourth-wall (which it does, several times) but also in the sense that you’re reminded how easily one can manipulate a film or story if they hone the craft. By changing the audio, Woody Allen takes a typical spy flick and turns it into something ridiculous- it’s a magic trick, it’s water into wine or lemons into lemonade, if you don’t want to get too Biblical.

One movie down, a lot more to go.