Woody Allen, effectively barred from the US film industry, said on Monday that he has an idea for a New York film ready to go "if some foolish person" agrees to finance it. Allen is at the Venice Film Festival, where his 50th film, Coup de Chance", premiered in the non-competition section.
Coup de Chance has been shot with French actors in Paris, and it is Allen’s first complete film in a foreign language. The 87-year-old Allen told reporters it was “very simple” working in French. "I could tell by the body language and the emotion of the actors without understanding the language when they were being realistic and when they weren't."
Allen first planned the film about Americans in Paris, but he changed his mind. "I thought to myself: It's my 50th film and I love Paris so much that I'll make it in French... And then I could think I'm a genuine European filmmaker," he said.
The four-time Oscar-winning director of Annie Hall and other comedies has had a turbulent personal life that has seen him increasingly shunned by many celebrities and executives in Hollywood. He hit the headlines in the 1990s following his affair and marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow, as well as sex abuse accusations by their adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. He has always denied the accusations and was never charged.
Asked whether he would work in his native New York again, Allen said he already had a "great idea" for a film in the city.
"If some guy steps out of the shadows and says we'll finance your film in New York and obey all my terrible strictures -- they can't read the script, they can't know who's in it, they just give me the money and go away -- if some foolish person agrees to that, I'll make a film in New York," he said.
