The Grey Area of A Rainy Day
I had nothing to do, so I took a stroll. I needed no food, but I walked into supermarkets. I needed no shoes, but I walked into shoe stores. And I didn’t know of any movies out, but I walked into a theater. Starting in 10 minutes was A Rainy Day in New York. It was directed by Woody Allen. You’ve probably heard about the sexual assault allegations against him.
They are graphic and horrifying (although his denial minces no words, either). Plenty of digital ink has been spilled over him, his movies, and whether anyone should continue watching them. I of course will make no judgement on the matter. You can his films, you can ignore them, you can take whatever approach you see fit. But I can share my story.
My dad’s mom—my grandma—used to make really good milkshakes. It was just low-fat and low-sugar, Edy’s ice cream (which she refused to microwave for even five seconds to soften it up; she believed the microwave tainted the ice cream), mixed with skim milk and Hershey’s chocolate sauce. But holy shit, they were good. What put them over the top were the cups: Royal blue plastic ones that, when the cold ice cream and milk were inside, frosted over and looked like the purest, bluest ice of Antarctica. Our spoons, which grandma provided for only the last tiny bit of ice cream that clings to the bottom corners of cups, would clack against the plastic as we drank. If childhood had a sound, that was it.
Grandma died in 2009. My grandpa—Pop—kept up the tradition. He makes milkshakes the exact same way (although he does microwave the ice cream, briefly). Those blue cups have survived three moves.
My brother and I usually have those milkshakes after a meal at Pop’s—Pei Wei or pizza, usually—and while watching whatever movie has recently caught his eye. Sometimes, the movies are all-time classics. Other times, they’re A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen (trust me, don’t even bother to look it up.)
But the most constant thread of the dozens of movies we’ve seen with Pop has been Woody Allen.
One of the first movies I can remember seeing in a theater was Small Time Crooks, in May of 2000. I especially remember how excited Pop, who’d already seen the movie once, was to take me and brother to see it. Of course, I could be mistaking his excitement over Small Time Crooks for his excitement over any of the the others: from Match Point to Vicki Cristina Barcelona to Whatever Works and Midnight in Paris, Cafe Society to Irrational Man — Pop was pumped about all of them. They all came with milkshakes in plastic blue cups.
A Rainy Day in New York is the latest of what seems like 100 Woody Allen films, but probably the first I didn’t see with my grandpa. As I said, I didn’t set out to see it; it just kind of happened. There I was, taking a lonely walk on a chilly weekend day after plans with friends fell through, and it was starting, and I thought to myself, I could use a charming rom-com right now. So I said, What the hell?
A young couple visits New York for the weekend, but the carefully crafted plans of the boyfriend (Timothée Chalamet) — his lunch reservations and his perfect, quiet night at a piano lounge—go for naught. His girlfriend (Elle Fanning) is reporting a story for their college’s paper, and, well, hijinks ensue.
Not without some timely quips, of course.
“There are no papers that aren’t tabloids,” a wife says to her husband in the film, just as I had been reading hundreds of journalists’ moralizing about the dismantling of Sports Illustrated, as if the magazine were some Rosetta Stone, bestowed from on high by Ring Lardner himself, for the betterment of society—not just a profitable enterprise.
It’s a lesson we need desperately in the Fake News era: Maybe outlets used to be more accurate, more journalistic, more responsible. But they only were that way because that’s what they believed would make them the most money.
I also liked, “The world is full of tragic little deal-breakers,” which Chalamet says to his brother in the film, referencing the heinous laughter of the brother’s girlfriend, and throwing us back to Seinfeld:
The film also addresses an important point that bugs me in countless movies and TV shows. Seinfeld, Friends, and plenty more take place in huge apartments in middle-upper-class New York neighborhoods and yet never show the audience how the characters afford them! (In this movie, Chalamet is a poker player on a hot streak, and so has money to blow on $400-a-night hotels).
As in almost every Allen film, there’s a cringe-inducing (especially in light of the allegations) pursuit of a younger woman by an older man—in this case, three older men. It does make a worthwhile observation, though: One person can be attractive for any number of different reasons. Chalamet’s character is attracted to his girlfriend because she is what his parents want. Liev Schreiber’s character falls for her because she reminds him of his ex-wife. Jude Law falls for her because she represents a dream of his. Diego Luna’s movie-star character just wants her body.
A Rainy Day in New York isn’t by any means an all-time classic. I don’t think it was ever meant to be. It was only ever meant to be charming and quaint: In the quiet piano bar where Chalamet eventually finds himself, in a carriage ride through Central Park, in the film’s unabashed love for a New York that never really existed. The movie was, simply, meant to leave you feeling good.
There are few experiences as globally dependable as walking into a McDonald’s or a Walmart, and there are few experiences as globally dependable as a Woody Allen movie, whatever the truth about him. It will be light-hearted; it will be funny but not laugh-out-loud funny; it will probably be short and it will certainly be sweet. And when I went to the theater the other day, that’s what I was paying for, and that’s what I got.
In his weekly newsletter, Will Leitch once wrote about how much he loved Woody Allen films—and how, in light of the allegations, he had decided never to see another one.
Leitch wrote:
Woody Allen has been one of the singular organizing principles of my life, not just a foundation of my friendship with Grierson, but a guiding force for me as a writer. I have always admired his philosophy of writing, which is just to work constantly, keep creating things and putting them out into the world, and not getting too attached to anything. … [But] I am out. I cannot support Woody Allen, or his films, or his work, any longer.
But Leitch also wrote this: “When you create something, you put it out into the world, and then it belongs to everyone else.” And Nietzsche said, “An artist … after all, is merely the pre-condition for the work, the womb, the soil, sometimes the manure and fertilizer on which it grows.”
Woody Allen’s films are not really his. Not once I’ve seen them. They belong to me. And when I watch them—as I will continue to do—I will choose to hear a spoon against a frosted, blue cup.
If you enjoyed this story — and even if you didn’t — you should check out my book, Ticketless: How Sneaking Into The Super Bowl And Everything Else (Almost) Held My Life Together.
