Woody And All That Jazz

Wild Man Blues MAY BE THE ONLY documentary we're ever going to have about Woody Allen, so it's kind of a historic event. How come the famously private Allen invited someone else's camera into his life? Well, he invited it into one part of his life, the musical part. And the camera belongs to Barbara Kopple, the two-time Oscar-winning maker of documentaries like ""Harlan County, U.S.A.'' (1977) and ""American Dream'' (1991), both about the sometimes violent struggles of workers in Kentucky and Minnesota. Why would the brilliant director of such powerful, socially militant films want to follow the 23-day, 18-city European tour of clarinetist Allen and his pleasant but hardly world-class New Orleans-style jazz band? Not for the music, she admits. ""I wanted to do a film about who Woody really is, and what his relationship with Soon-Yi really is.'' Aha! Soon-Yi Previn was Allen's fiancEe at the time of the tour; their relationship, born in controversy, has settled into marriage and now rumors of impending parenthood.

""I told him I needed total access, and he said no problem,'' says Kopple. ""I had a wireless mike on him at all times, 16 or 18 hours a day. I just wanted life to unfold.'' The result is the only Woody Allen movie not directed by Allen, who, says Kopple, had no part in the shooting or editing process. The man who has raised the schlemiel to Olympian status falls into his accustomed role immediately, hunched miserably on his private plane with Soon-Yi; his sister, Letty Aronson; producer Jean Doumanian, and her Weimaraner. ""I don't like dogs,'' mumbles Allen. ""I'm always afraid a dog will lick me. I'd rather be bitten than licked.'' It's clear that Allen needs no script to play the role of superschlemiel. But how much of this is the real Woody, and how much is it the role-playing of a man who has turned himself into a virtual Woody Allen?

The fun of Kopple's fascinating film is to try to spot the reality in the hilarity. In Vienna, Allen explains that he must have his own private bathroom, so he always takes an extra room or suite, just for the john. In Madrid, he makes sure he has ""my multivitamins, my baby aspirin, my antibiotics.'' In Venice, he subjects Soon-Yi to the only unromantic gondola ride in Venetian history. Huddled morosely like a spirit traversing the river Styx on the way to Hades, he speculates that ""the gondolier could cut our throats and no one would know.'' Soon-Yi endures this neurotic odyssey with charming patience. In fact, the thought occurs that Allen may be ratcheting up his schlemielness to help showcase her caring practicality that he so acutely needs. At one point she lectures him sternly about his habit of addressing only his longtime banjo player Eddy Davis and ignoring the other five band members. ""Tell them they're good,'' she exhorts him. ""You're in the room with them and don't speak. You look crazy.''

Soon-Yi is the element that we have not seen before, the down-to-earth successor to the up-in-the-air leading ladies like Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. In Milan their lavish hotel suite contains a good-size swimming pool. Serendipitously, this allows us to see Allen and Soon-Yi in shorts and bikini. At 60, he's in good shape; at 27, she's in better. Surveying the Milanese luxury, Allen muses that Soon-Yi was ""this kid eating out of garbage pails on the streets in Korea''--which may inspire the thought that it was Mia Farrow, her adoptive mother, who rescued Soon-Yi from that fate.

Besides Soon-Yi, the other revelation is Allen's tremendous popularity in Europe. Everywhere he's besieged by smiling crowds, by paparazzi, by pols who bestow gifts and honors. Every concert is sold out; the crowds listen closely to the music, which ranges from retro retread to outbursts of appealing exuberance. The final sequence takes place back in New York with Allen's parents. His father is 96, his mother 93. Father, who has splendid wavy hair, thinks that Allen might have done ""more business as a druggist than as an actor.'' Mother, boldly lipsticked and red-frizzed, says, ""I personally don't think it's right to go out with an Asian girl. That's why the Jews will some day be extinct.'' Soon-Yi, standing right there, laughs. ""This is the lunch from hell,'' says Allen. Kopple has taken us as close to Allen's gene pool, if not his genius, as we're ever likely to get.

© 1998