Who is Marshall Brickman?

A documentary about Woody Allen premiered a few days ago on PBS and it is really good. You can watch it online here.

Surprisingly, Woody cooperated with the movie and is interviewed throughout. Because of this, there isn't much about the whole "fucking his daughter" thing. The focus is on the movies and his process, and if you like his work, that's what you want to hear about.

It also does a nice job of glossing over all of the garbage that came between Deconstructing Harry (which I think is highly underrated) and Match Point (which is overrated).

But one thing that the movie didn't do that I would've liked is talk about Marshall Brickman. He was a co-writer on Sleepers, Annie Hall, and Manhattan. He's interviewed in the documentary, but it's just to fawn over Woody's greatness. There's nothing in there about their collaboration, how it came about, and his contribution to those films.

Annie Hall and Manhattan happen to be Woody's most critically acclaimed and successful movies. Seems like a pretty big coincidence that this other guy helped write those two and hardly any of the rest. Isn't it natural to suppose that something about Brickman's contribution helped make that happen?

I have no doubt Woody is a genius. And making a movie every year is insane. But perhaps collaboration, or lack thereof, is the reason so many of his movies have been, well, crappy.

Just look at Midnight in Paris, which despite the fact that it somehow did well at the box office, is an incredibly lazy movie. It had potential, but every scene took the least interesting/enjoyable route possible. It just feels like these movies are spit out of his typewriter in one shot and then go directly in front of the cameras. And after watching the documentary, that seems to be exactly what happens. Unfortunately, making good movies are a lot harder to do than that.

It's the George Lucas syndrome. The Star Wars prequels sucked because George wrote them by himself and no one had the balls to tell him Jar Jar Binks was a bad idea. In the same way, there was no one to add jokes and story and goodness to Cassandra's Dream, Scoop, Hollywood Ending, Small Time Crooks, Whatever Works, Celebrity...

Marshall Brickman was the key! Well, maybe not the key, but at least he was an opposing voice to say "hey, before we go shoot this first draft, how about we read it over again and punch it up?"

It's too easy when you're working by yourself to go down some bad roads. It helps to have someone there to challenge you and keep you on the genius track. Woody has missed that.

Anyway, I just thought this would be explored a little more since the rest of the movie features Woody as a one man dynamo. And it's so clear that the few times he wasn't, the best art was produced. But that's a minor quibble, cause the rest of the documentary is pretty darn enjoyable.