It’s Just How He Works

Acting in a Woody Allen movie is a nice gig as long as you don’t mind not being told what the movie is about, except in the most general terms, or how your character is supposed to act, except what’s on the page. In other words, it’s a leap of faith--but it’s one that many actors will gladly take.

Ironically, even after that leap is made, Allen’s actors often are still in the dark, as the principal cast members of his newest film, “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” demonstrate when they sit down in a midtown Manhattan hotel conference room to discuss the experience. They are: Helen Hunt, Dan Aykroyd, Elizabeth Berkley and David Ogden Stiers (Charlize Theron is absent).

Set in 1940s New York, “Jade Scorpion” is about an insurance investigator (Allen) battling an efficiency expert (Hunt) while trying to solve a series of jewel robberies. Aykroyd plays his boss, who’s having an affair with Hunt’s character; Berkley is the office squeeze; Theron is a rich vamp; and Stiers is a hypnotist who gets people to do what they are capable of doing anyway--falling in love, committing larceny. The DreamWorks release opens Aug. 24.

The actors dither amusingly as they assume their seats around the table. It’s almost as if they need a director to tell them where to sit. They are an eclectic group. There’s Hunt, an Emmy-and Oscar-winning pro and diligent acting student; Aykroyd, a “Saturday Night Live” alumnus who’s thrilled to be working with the master; Berkley, a neophyte trying to carve out a serious acting career; and Stiers, a character actor and, unlike the others, an Allen veteran (he’s been in five of his films).

Allen is here too, but unlike his colleagues, he knew exactly what was going on. At first reluctantly and then with increasing zeal, Allen explains himself, sometimes making jokes but seldom laughing at them. After all, we’re still an audience.

Question: This is an opportunity to tell everyone what it’s like to work with Mr. Allen.

Woody Allen: That’s not what this is about, right?

Q: It’s one question.

Allen: But you have questions? OK, because I can’t sit through that. [Everyone laughs uncertainly.]

Q: What’s the audition process?

Allen: I don’t think anyone here was auditioned. Everyone was just hired.

Dan Aykroyd: I got a letter, and it said, “I’ve got a part, and I’ve written this material. It may be something you want to do, it may not be something you want to do.” At that point I felt like calling and saying, “Yeah, send me the next one, Woody. I don’t know about this.”

Q: Why did you send him a letter?

Aykroyd: Because he knows I read.

Allen: I think what happened was somebody called and ascertained that he was available and open to it if he liked it. And so I sent him the part with a letter explaining how the part fits into the movie.

Aykroyd: But the tone of the letter was, “I’d love to do something with you someday, maybe this is not the piece.” Now, anything the man would write I would do, so he didn’t factor that in.

Allen: That’s funny, because we’re sitting there like this [fingers crossed] hoping that. That’s the way it is when you’re casting and send a part or script to anybody that you want for it. You sit there hoping that they’re going to like it. You always tell them that they shouldn’t feel obliged or shy about saying, “I hate this and I don’t want to do it.” It doesn’t mean that you’ll never ask them to do anything.

Aykroyd: Those who haven’t had the opportunity would love to do it.

Allen: Some. There have been a number of times where people would say, “I would do anything to be in your movies,” and then when I finally have something for them, they want their full salary, they want $10 million or $20 million, and they won’t budge off that. And I say, “The whole movie doesn’t cost that.” So it isn’t that everyone is out there champing at the bit.

Aykroyd: Did you get a letter, Helen?

Helen Hunt: I got a similar note with the script.

David Ogden Stiers: You got a script?

Hunt: Whatever. The series of pages that I got that happen to add up to a good portion of the script. [She laughs sheepishly.]

Allen: I think Helen got a whole script because her part was so big in the movie.

Hunt: We had quite a thing to map out, you and I, this relationship in the movie, so if I hadn’t read it, I think it would have been to the detriment of the film. But I do remember sitting around one day with all of these people at the Rainbow Room and everybody was trying to guess who did it, and I just kind of looked at my shoes and started coughing.

Aykroyd: I still don’t know.

Q: So why do you keep other people in the dark about what’s going on in the rest of the movie?

Allen: It’s not keeping them in the dark. There’s no reason that they even want to read 120 pages when they appear in 30 or 40 of them or whatever. Usually if you sent the whole script to certain actors or actresses, they’d appreciate it if you highlighted [laugh of recognition from the others].

I’ve been doing this for years, and no one has ever said, “Unless I can read the whole script, I can’t tell you”--they either like the part or they don’t. There’s no need for them to know everything. If the part is as vast as Helen’s was, you have to know the whole script. You don’t have to know it in 90% of the other characters.

Stiers: And I assumed that it was to protect the jokes that we never got the [script] that you didn’t want to fall into usage.

Allen: You don’t like comedy to get around too much because the stuff will show up on television shows and the newspapers. I was just thinking that in Helen’s case, it was easy because as soon as her name came up with Juliet Taylor, who cast this with me, we instantly felt this is perfect. I’ve worked with some wonderful comediennes who could have played this, but they’d be playing it. They weren’t as right on the nose for it as Helen was. Dan’s part was more complicated. He had to be a scoundrel and exploit Helen and cheat on his wife, but he had to be likable because you just don’t want a distasteful guy who’s doing an ugly thing.

Q: Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re almost into production and you still haven’t got the right person?

Allen: Yeah, when I did “Deconstructing Harry,” I tried to get six other actors before I played that part. And I went in and did it at the last moment, as a last resort.

Q: You knew the whole script, right?

Allen: I read the whole script. I tried to get everyone. I gave it to Robert De Niro, to Dustin Hoffman, to Albert Brooks, to Elliot Gould. Everyone. Dennis Hopper. [A few raised eyebrows.]

Q: Dennis Hopper!

Allen: Now with Elizabeth, it was Elizabeth who was doing us the favor by doing it, so we were hoping that she would like it. It’s not a huge part. We all thought she would be great doing it, but we had to hope that she was between jobs.

Q: Did you get a letter also?

Elizabeth Berkley: I got a phone call to meet Woody at his screening room with Juliet Taylor. I was so terrified because on the way there--first of all I was so thrilled and excited because I’ve seen all of Woody’s movies. [To Allen] This is the first time you’re hearing this....

Allen: And we’re hoping that she would like us.

Berkley: The only thing I knew was it was 1940, and I did my hair perfectly ‘40s and I’m shaking while I’m doing it. And I stepped out, and I got so rained on. I looked like a drowned rat. And I just thought, “Well, this is it.” So I just kind of wrung my hair out and hoped for the best that this drowned rat walking into the office wasn’t going to blow it.

Allen: But she had the job.

Allen: With David, we’ve done four or five pictures together, so that was an easy one, and we knew that he would be great and sent it to him, again hoping he would say yes.

Stiers: You floor me. The strange thing is the diffidence from the print letters to Helen and Dan and the diffidence you’re seeing in the man now, the sort of self-effacing quality to him, is not invented. The extrovert persona on the screen is not the man who sits here. On set it’s extremely soft-spoken and collegial. It’s never authoritarian. The authority was exerted by his having written the script and cast it. That seems to be the most you like to direct, unless it’s a little technical thing ....

Allen: I don’t like to direct much and have always surrounded myself with people who could come and do it, and then I wouldn’t have to deal with them. [Laughter from the group.]

Hunt: I don’t know. I had a different experience of you, which is the first thing I saw in the movie where I’m on-screen and people laugh is when I roll my eyes at you in the Rainbow Room. And that’s because you said, “Now roll your eyes really big.” One of our scenes we reshot because you saw it and felt we had to be even more contentious.

Allen: The only thing that I had to say to you ever was, “Could you make more faces?” Your natural good taste kept you from ...

Hunt: My natural good taste may not have made them laugh.

Allen: I had to hardly ever say anything to anybody, and it’s that way picture to picture. I’m almost always surrounded by very good people who read the script and they understand it. That’s why they want to do it, and they come in and do it. And once in a great while I might have to say, “Could you do that a little broader or could we go a little faster?” Helen did a lot of work on her part, because you used to have those little notes in your script.

Hunt: I had more work to do than I thought. I had a trip planned for four years to go to the [Sydney Summer] Olympics. I asked if I could start my scenes a couple of days later. I then canceled my trip. I got to the set, and Woody said, “How were the Olympics?” I didn’t go to the Olympics. I have a huge part on my hands.

Allen: Exactly what she’s saying is what I count on. She really in a certain sense did all of the directorial work that you would associate with Elia Kazan or somebody, someone who really directs. I’m not the one who says, “We’ve got to discuss the role and it’s more complex than you think.” She saw the role and figured it out and went home and did work. This is all unbeknownst to me.

I never had to have any kind of rehearsal or heavy talk about the character. Most of the time the instincts of good performers is what got them where they are, and it’s what you want to go with. Some of the best things in films of mine over the years have been contributions by actors and actresses who improvise things, and I get all the credit. Leave them alone, they do your job for you. The worst thing you can do is inhibit or put limits on them.

Q: What if Helen had come to the set with an entirely different notion of what this movie was about?

Hunt: Fired.

Allen: I would have tried to talk her out of it. [Laughter at the understatement.]

Hunt: While busily trying to replace her, I would assume.

Allen: How far afield can you go [with “Jade Scorpion”]? It’s so clear. You read the script, he’s [Aykroyd] the boss that’s having the affair with her, she’s in the office and the guys are panting after her, and he’s the hypnotist. It’s not, I don’t know what, Kafka or something.

Stiers: But we can always complicate something.

Q: I have talked to actors who, when they first went on your movies, they were like, “I didn’t get any response, I didn’t know whether I was doing a good job or not.”

Allen: I would tell them if they were wrong, and probably I’m not effusive enough when they’re good, but I just assume they’re good and they know it and they do it all the time and they’re paid to do it. So I’m not always hugging and kissing and saying, “That was great.” [Laughter, as in “No kidding!”]

Q: Did any of you have any preconceptions about working with him?

Aykroyd: I checked with John Cusack [who worked with Allen on “Bullets Over Broadway”]. He said, “You’ll have a ball.”

Hunt: I decided not to worry about what it would be like, and then three days before, I called Sean Penn [from “Sweet and Lowdown”] in a panic. I don’t evenreally know him that well. To which he said, “You’ll have a wonderful time.”

Allen: It’s so funny when you hear it from the other side. I always thought it was only Juliet Taylor and I who did that. Very frequently when we cast, people call up the last couple of directors they’ve worked with and find out what it was like working with them. Because we’re always intimidated that they’re going to come in and be trouble. You can imagine how much I checked Sean Penn out. [Laughter and surprise at his candor.] We’re the ones who suffer the most when there’s a problem, because we’re paying for the film.

Aykroyd: I had a director once hire a guy that I disliked, thinking that he would get a better performance out of me. Like he didn’t have the faith in me to do the performance with a colleague that I have respect for. I called my agent in tears, saying, “What is he doing to me?” And we stopped production for a whole day, and I ended up paying $125,000 of my own money for that. And he replaced the actor and we moved on.

Allen: I hear those things all the time, directorial tricks. They’re usually not sadistic but to get a performance out of somebody. I always think that I could never do that. I always feel you hire a person, that’s what they do. And if you can’t get a performance out of someone, I have never found that I was able to try any kind of trick, tell them that their parents have been killed in a fire. [Allen laughs.]

Stiers: This has been very illuminating. I’ve done five films [with Allen]. Because I’ve only done small pieces in the prior movies, I’m now starting to understand how much you rely on our work at home. I’ve never had this conversation, so I’ll be much more relaxed if there’s a sixth.

Allen: We haven’t spoken this much in five pictures. It’s true.