Students Deconstruct Woody Allen

Writer, actor and director Woody Allen made a rare public appearance on Wednesday to screen his new film, Small Time Crooks, at the Loews Harvard Square Cinema.

The Oscar-winning entertainer, known for such films as Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors visited Cambridge as the final event of a four-stop promotional tour of college campuses.

The advance screening, which included a question-and-answer session with Allen, was sponsored by the Harvard Film Archive and DreamWorks SKG, the film's distributor.

Small Time Crooks is a comedy about a group of failed criminals who unexpectedly rise to fame and fortune in the cookie business. The film stars Allen, Hugh Grant, Elaine May and Tracy Ullman.

After the screening, Allen answered a series of questions about his extensive film career.

The comedian, who puts out a movie every 12 months, explained that he writes about whatever subject comes to mind.

"There's no real method to the way I work," he said.

"If I had thought of an idea about famine in a foreign country, it would have been about that. I chose a lighter fare," he said.

Known for his relatively low-profile New York lifestyle, Allen described himself as someone who hasn't reveled in success.

"I'm like the character in the movie," he said.

"I'm happy eating turkey meatballs, sitting in front of the TV watching the Knicks play. That's really all I need," he said.

After the showing, audience members noted how closely Allen's real life persona resembled the characters he usually acts.

"It was Woody Allen playing Woody Allen," said Sabrina Zanella-Foresi, a former teaching fellow for the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES).

VES reserved a group of seats for concentrators in the department. Several VES students asked Allen for advice in pursuing film careers.

"There's no procedure to follow," Allen said. "He or she out there who has the talent will emerge."

He recommended that future filmmakers not get discouraged if it takes time to build their careers.

"You have to give it a fair shot. Give it a number of years," he added.

Tickets to the event were given out by DreamWorks free of charge to students and film critics. Though the company distributed hundreds of passes, students said they were still hard to come by. Others with passes were turned away at the door due to overcrowding.

One Pforzheimer senior confessed to pretending he was both a Crimson editor and a VES concentrator in order to snag two tickets.

By the end of the evening, he knew his covert efforts had paid off.

"He was even more impressive than I expected," he said.

Allen's new film has already shown at the University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago and New York University. Other stars of the film are doing publicity stints on the late-night circuit, but Allen told The Crimson last week that he thought college students would be more fun than television hosts.