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“This is the Woody doc everybody has been waiting for, and I am delighted that this creative giant is finally assuming his rightful place in the American Masters library,” says Susan Lacy, series creator and executive producer of American Masters, an eight-time winner of the Emmy^® Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. The series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations, and operator of NJTV. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentaries and other programs to the New York community.

“Woody Allen was always the big ‘get’ for me,” says Robert Weide, best known for his long-term directing/producing stint on Curb Your Enthusiasm, which earned him Emmy^® and Golden Globe^® Awards. “The prolific nature of Woody’s output has provided me with an embarrassment of riches. In fact, Woody will have made three features just in the time it’s taken me to make this one documentary.”

Beginning with Allen’s childhood and his first professional gigs as a teen — furnishing jokes for comics and publicists — American Masters – Woody Allen: A Documentary chronicles the trajectory and longevity of Allen’s career: from his work in the 1950s-60s as a TV scribe for Sid Caesar, standup comedian and frequent TV talk show guest, to a writer-director averaging one film-per-year for more than 40 years. Weide covers Allen’s earliest film work in Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Sleeper, and Love and Death; frequent Oscar^® favorites such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Purple Rose of Cairo, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands & Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, and Mighty Aphrodite; and his recent globetrotting phase with Match Point, Vicky Christina Barcelona, and this year’s commercial success Midnight in Paris.

Exploring the ultimate “independent filmmaker’s” writing habits, casting, directing, and relationship with his actors, Weide traveled with Allen from the London set of You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger — a major coup “considering Woody has never allowed so much as an EPK [Electronic Press Kit] crew on his sets,” claims Weide — to the Cannes premiere of Midnight in Paris this May. He also filmed Allen at home, in the editing room and touring his childhood haunts in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. New interviews provide insight and backstory: actors Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Penelope Cruz, John Cusack, Larry David, Seth Green, Mariel Hemingway, Scarlett Johansson, Julie Kavner, Diane Keaton, Martin Landau, Louise Lasser, Sean Penn, Tony Roberts, Chris Rock, Mira Sorvino, Naomi Watts, Dianne Wiest, and Owen Wilson; writing collaborators Marshall Brickman, Mickey Rose and Doug McGrath; cinematographers Gordon Willis and Vilmos Zsigmond; Allen’s sister and producing partner Letty Aronson; producers Robert Greenhut and Stephen Tenenbaum; longtime managers Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe; casting director Juliet Taylor; pal Dick Cavett; and Martin Scorsese; among many others.

American Masters – Woody Allen: A Documentary also touches on Allen’s contributions as a writer for the theater and his casual pieces for The New Yorker, as well as his frequent moonlighting gig as a clarinet player with a New Orleans-style jazz band. “He never refused a request and he never declined to answer a question,” says Weide.

Woody Allen: A Documentary is a Whyaduck Productions, Rat Entertainment, Mike’s Movies, and Insurgent Media production in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Robert Weide is director, writer, producer, and co-editor. Michael Peyser, Brett Ratner, Erik Gordon, Fisher Stevens, and Andrew Karsch are executive producers. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Jody and John Arnhold, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers. Funding for this program is provided by Miriam and Sam Blatt.

Can you discuss the role Maestro Levine played in transforming the Metropolitan Opera’s Orchestra into what it is today?

Susan Froemke. Photo courtesy HBO.

Susan Froemke: I learned during the filming that when Levine became the music director of the Metropolitan opera in 1974 at age 31, he felt that the Met was a great orchestra but one that needed improvement in certain areas.  He also believed that opera was in a state of quiet crisis and told the New York Times at the time, “I often think, my God, I’m going to be in the generation that sees this whole thing die.”  For him, what was at stake was the quality and emotional content of the Met’s performances.

Levine’s dream was to bring the Met orchestra up to the level of the Cleveland Orchestra at its peak. “I wanted to hear the Met orchestra play Mozart operas with the sophistication and communication of detail like George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra.” In the 1960’s, Levine had studied for six years with Szell, first as an apprentice and later as an assistant conductor.  Szell, a Hungarian born autocrat, had built the Cleveland Orchestra into one of the country’s finest symphonic ensembles. It bothered Levine that many people thought an opera could be performed better in concert with a symphony orchestra on the stage than with an opera orchestra in the pit. He felt that this shouldn’t be the case.  He said, “The orchestra that plays in the pit should produce a panorama of expression, of details, that’s astonishing from beginning to end.”

So Levine accepted the job of music director but only after he was able to obtain control over casting, musical staff, directors and designers. This was the first time in the Met’s history any conductor had held this position.

His vision was to bring the Met into the contemporary era by broadening and expanding the orchestra’s repertoire, increasing the capacity of the orchestra, chorus and ensemble, and rotating the repertoire with new productions.

To do this, he made a commitment to stay in New York and developed a kind of collaborative stability with the orchestra that existed in opera before the jet age when maestro’s built orchestras.

David Langlitz, principal trombone, recalled in one interview, “In rehearsals, I’d see him work slowly over a period of weeks, sometimes even months, looking for a particular sound, looking for a particular interpretation, and just patiently going with it, going through it, working with a player. That’s the way to build an orchestra:  we feel as if what we’re doing is valued.”  Numerous players echoed this sentiment.

He really invigorated the Met orchestra, making it into a world-class ensemble.

During one of our last shoot days, Levine told me, “After all the work I’ve done over the 40 years with the orchestra, I find they are more dramatic, more lyric, more vocal, more consistent, more committed, more able to deal with the pressure than any other orchestra. And there’s stability to the way we work that produces a different kind of result than you can get in any relationship that is more ad hoc. You can’t conduct that. They have to know how to do it.”

Was there anything you were surprised to learn about Levine and/or his career during the making of this program?

I knew that Maestro Levine was a genius musically. I saw it every time I filmed him rehearsing with his orchestra, working with a renowned singer or coaching a young artist.  What I wasn’t aware of was his business acumen—something often lacking in artists.  During his tenure at the Met, he has always had a vision of where he wanted to take the company. When he sensed during the late 70’s that the Board leadership was weak, he was savvy enough to ask for more artistic control so there would be no creative backsliding. When top management positions became available, he lobbied for people whom he could partner with successfully to achieve his goals. He always kept an eye on the box office even while introducing new, unfamiliar productions from modern composers in the 70’s and 80’s.

How does Levine differ from other prominent conductors, and what makes his approach to music and conducting unique?

I’m not really an authority on this subject but I can offer some anecdotal observations. Many of the Met musicians that I spoke to agreed that Levine–to some degree–ushered in the “love conductor” era. As demanding as his musical ethos is, it’s still a far cry from that of the old-fashioned tyrant conductors like his mentor George Szell or Herbert von Karajan.

In 1987, I filmed Karajan during the Salzburg Summer Festival rehearsing the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (one of the world’s best) for a rare Wagner concert.  Karajan was exacting in his instructions, often insulting the players as though they were schoolboys. He drilled them over and over on certain passages, barking at them until he finally got the sound he wanted. Levine couldn’t be more different. He absolutely does not believe in being confrontational because it doesn’t build relationships. If some player or singer is having a bad day, he will never criticize them then. He is aware of human limitations.

Michael Ouzounia, the Met’s principal viola player and longtime friend says, “He gives musicians a certain latitude for being temperamental.  I think he feels that his function is to get the best performances out of the forces, and not to be imposing because he doesn’t really believe you can impose. He grew up in a milieu where fear was a component of orchestra playing, but that doesn’t suit his personality. He developed a way to get great results without being autocratic.”

Ray Gniewek, a former Met concertmaster agrees, “His approach is one of understanding. It gives players, especially those who had played under stricter conductors, confidence that he was going to help you through a difficult spot, not challenge you.”

I think Levine’s understanding of human psychology and the role that confidence plays in delivering a strong performance is one of his strongest assets.

What do you think played more of a role in informing Levine’s career, instinct and innate talent, or his training (as a pianist and conductor) and musical upbringing?

I believe James Levine was born to do what he was meant to do.

There is a wonderful story I heard about his childhood. When he was two years old, his father and mother would always sing him to sleep. The next morning, he would climb out of his crib and pick out the tune–sung to him the night before–on the piano! He was a child prodigy whose parents made all the right decisions on how to encourage his talent and educate him.

While filming, Jimmy told me: “I was born with a degree of talent that is impossible for me to understand frankly. It’s sort of like being born with a voice. I was very fortunate that almost every aspect of music, whether it was artistic style, content, or technical fascinated me and I had very good teachers.  Right from the beginning, I was able to learn in a sort of continuous flow. I didn’t really have any problem.”

When he was a kid, he used to listen to the Saturday Met opera broadcasts. As a ten year-old, he traveled to New York every other week during the winter season to take lessons from Rosina Lhevinne on the piano. He said that he probably went to two opera performances every couple of weeks at the Met. Later, while he was in Cleveland, he studied quite a bit with Pierre Boulez.  He remembers: “I brought music to him, asked him questions, and had a kind of Socratic dialogue with him. When people ask me today, where do you get an education like that? I guess it’s always true that you have to produce it for yourself. You have to go after it. I think I worked for everything.”

Levine feels that it’s important to continue to learn and he does, from his orchestra players and contemporaries. He expects it. But he also believes: “I’d been given a lot of talent and I thought it was part of the deal that if you’re one of those people who gets a lot of talent, you have to be responsible to it. So where the passion for the art form is concerned, I find it necessary to use every fiber to keep making the work better.”

This is not the first film you have made centered on the Metropolitan Opera and more broadly, classical music in general. What attracted you to making films about this genre?

First of all, I thank my lucky stars that I’ve been able to produce so many classical music films. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, and I started making films together 25 years ago. At the time, I was making documentaries with Albert and David Maysles and Peter would introduce us to great musicians who were often experiencing critical life changes. This was perfect for our cinema verite style of filmmaking, which Peter became a practitioner of as well. We made films on Vladimir Horowitz, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jessye Norman, Osawa and many others. Each film had a very different narrative but each also contained extraordinary musical performances whether in rehearsal or concert.

In the course of the filming, we would have to discover the narrative so, on one level, I never considered that I was making a film in a certain genre. I was more concerned with storytelling, character development, and capturing the drama as it unfolded before the camera–just as I would be with any subject. But deep down, I always knew that I could count on a few astonishing performances from these great artists that would complement the narrative action in each film. I was never disappointed. These films tell great human stories but they also give the audience the best seat in the house during an outstanding musical performance. That’s the great appeal to me of this genre.

At one point in the film, in an interview at the New York Times, Levine refers to himself as a “teacher conductor.” We also get to watch him working with the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. How much do you think Levine’s love of teaching has shaped his role in the opera community, his repertoire, and how he views himself?

Maestro Levine is a self-professed “teacher conductor” and I think, within the world of classical music, no one disagrees.  It’s his modus operandi.  It is how he has built the Met orchestra into one of the world’s best.  When you watch him rehearse, he talks throughout telling the players in detail what he wants and why. He makes them repeat a phrase until he feels they have it in their minds and can do it without him. Through this approach, the orchestra becomes more agile in their ability to play in a large variety of styles which, in turn, has allowed Levine to expand their repertoire.

It’s uncanny how so many singers — from Placido Domingo to very young artists — have told me that they learned more from Levine in one hour of coaching than in three years spent at a vocal school. Another consistent remark I heard was how he has an almost psychic ability to know exactly what a singer needs at any given moment. With his ability to clearly communicate the necessary instruction and through positive reinforcement, he leads the singer to a new understanding of text or technique.

I believe Maestro Levine is driven to teach because he feels it the most important work that he does. Through numerous rehearsals, he knows he can achieve a performance that is the intent of the composer. And that is always his greatest goal.

What was the hardest part of making this documentary?

For me, the hardest part was not being able to include more scenes of Levine working with the singers in the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. There were 12 singers in the class we filmed and we had marvelous footage of Levine working with them, especially when they first began the program and were quite “green” despite their talent. His intuitive, passionate coaching was just fascinating to watch. The depth of his understanding of the text of some of the world’s most famous arias, which the students were attempting to sing, was revelatory. You can see I’m a fan!  His work with them probably changed many of their career trajectories.  It communicated so strongly what his genius is that I really regret not being able to incorporate more of that footage into the film.

CATHERINE TATGE:  I knew who John Muir was but I didn’t know much about him and three friends and colleagues from Seattle invited me to Alaska.  They wanted to do a feature film about Muir and his Alaskan travels, and I went up to Alaska and it was my first encounter with real wilderness and I was…I was awed by what I saw.  And for example when I went up on the Mendenhall Glacier and…and visited some of the ice caves, I was just, I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than these cathedrals of ice.  I have been to many cathedrals in Europe but nothing compared to these cathedrals that I saw of just sheer  ice.  The beauty there was extraordinary.  I thought, well, why not make a documentary on John Muir for public television?

I think the challenge of making this film is that the only photographs that existed of Muir were these portraits when he became well-known in America.  And that there was absolutely nothing of his early life, there was no documentation of his…his family.  There were very few pictures that existed and so I was really left with well, how was I going to tell the story without these visuals.  And so I decided that I would have to do recreations. One of the challenges was, how was I going to find actors who would play in the wilderness and be really like wilderness people?

I decided to cast the characters from people who were mountaineers, wilderness explorers because I felt that it would give a kind of integrity to the film and the sense that I didn’t want actors pretending that they were experiencing the wilderness.  I didn’t want that feeling of pretending.  I wanted people who in a sense could help us see how we might encounter nature.  And the challenge with working with those kind of people is that when I asked them to do a take over and over again, it was difficult for them.  I mean there were times where, I mean they never complained but it’s not something that they’re used to.  They are used to very, being very free-spirited and all that.  So that was kind of fun.

It was quite magical because I learned so much from the way they observed nature.  I would walk by some flowers and think oh, these are lovely flowers, but the way they looked at it, all of a sudden I realized well, it’s like looking at art.  That the way they saw these flowers and the way they cared for them and…and just appreciated them made me appreciate them.

The great surprise about John Muir is that I thought he was really someone who was only interested in preservation and nature and the wilderness but in the process of making this film I learned he was an extraordinary inventor, that in fact at a certain point in his life he could have gone in the direction of becoming a real industrialist but then he had an eye accident and lost his sight for a period of time and then during that period of recuperation he made the decision that he would go out and explore the wilderness and so that…that part of him that was the inventor was something that was completely new to me.

The other thing which I think people don’t know and which I didn’t know was that he was an extraordinary farmer.  He was raised on a farm, but then when he married Louise Strentzel  and started having a family, he ran the Strentzel family farm and he was very good at it.  So in a sense, I look at Muir as kind of a renaissance person.  He was an incredible writer, he was an inventor and when he was working on the farm as, with his family, he in fact invented many things to make farm work easier so he carried that with him.  He was an explorer, he was a geologist.  So the man and many, many talents.

I think the message John Muir gives to us is that we are connected to nature, that we have to be careful not to become too wedded to science and technology.  In a way, many of us have been cut off from nature and we somehow have to find a way to become in relationship with nature.  For example, when he says everything is hitched to everything else, what Muir is saying is that we can’t survive as a species and as a planet if we don’t, if we aren’t in relationship with nature.  If we don’t understand that we can’t survive as a species without nature.  And I think that that’s what really motivated me to make this film.

I brought the project to American Masters because I felt that in a sense, Muir was an American master as a writer.  And he doesn’t fit the typical American Master program  but Susan Lacey the executive producer of the series felt that the work that Muir had done and what he has to contribute was worthy to be on the series.