Production
Hot off his 1969 directing debut Take the Money and Run, Allen signed a contract to direct a series of films with United Artists. Told to "write what you want to write," Allen (a clarinetist and avid jazz enthusiast) wrote The Jazz Baby, a dramatic screenplay about a jazz musician set in the 1930s. Allen said later that the United Artists executives were "stunned... because they had expected a comedy. were very worried and told me, 'We realize that we signed a contract with you and you can do anything you want. But we want to tell you that we really don't like this.'" Allen went along with United Artists, writing and directing Bananas instead. In 1995, he dismissed The Jazz Baby as having been "probably too ambitious."
In 1998, Allen returned to the project, rewriting the script and dubbing it Sweet and Lowdown. In the role of Emmet Ray, a jazz guitarist whom Allen had originally planned to play himself, the director cast Sean Penn; Allen also considered Johnny Depp, but the actor was busy at the time. In regards to working with Sean Penn, who had a reputation for being difficult to work with, Allen later said, "I had no problem with him whatsoever... He gave it his all and took direction and made contributions himself... a tremendous actor."
In an October 26, 2009, appearance on Howard Stern's radio program, Rosie O'Donnell claimed that Allen offered her the role of Hattie, despite the fact that she had been vocal in her disgust over Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. When Stern asked if she was at all tempted to take the role despite her personal feelings, she replied that she was "not for one minute tempted." The role went to Samantha Morton.
Allen's use of Penn (and Morton) paid off when Sweet and Lowdown was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Samantha Morton). Morton's nomination was especially notable, considering the fact that she does not utter a single word of dialogue in the film. Allen has said that he told Morton to "play the part like Harpo Marx. And she said, 'Who is Harpo Marx?' and I realized how young she was. Then I told her about him she went back and saw the films." In addition to her Oscar nomination, Morton's performance was met with critical acclaim, with Salon.com critic Stephanie Zacharek saying that she "quietly explodes ... Her performance is like nothing I've seen in recent years."
Sweet and Lowdown was filmed entirely in New York and New Jersey but set in the Chicago area and California.
The film was the first of Allen's that was edited by Alisa Lepselter, who has edited all of Allen's films since. Lepselter succeeded Susan E. Morse, who edited Allen's films for the previous twenty years.
Read more about this topic: Sweet And Lowdown
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)