“I’ve often felt that life is a hard deal and it’s unrelentingly tragic and an uphill fight. But you can on a day walk into a movie house and for an hour-and-a-half see Fred Astaire dancing and escape in it. Then you walk back out of the darkness into the hot sun and into real life. You were at least refreshed. Like stopping in a bar on a hot day and getting a cold beer and you rest for 10 minutes and then go on with your journey. Instead of the Bergmans and filmmakers like that, is it the escapist filmmakers that are making a more practical contribution to life by giving you this respite?”
Woody Allen, interviewed in The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 15, 2010)
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog