Even before the release of “Manhattan” and its catalogue (or monologue) of cultural delights in the spring of 1979, my universe already intersected Woody Allen’s at many points. I had seen Willie Mays play center field, scoured the revival houses for Marx Brothers movies, knew Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony, could sing along with the trumpet breaks on Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues,” often looked at Cézanne’s still lifes at MOMA, got started in movies with Bergman’s “Shame,” had a big stack of Frank Sinatra LPs, was awed by Marlon Brando (above all, by “Last Tango”); I hadn’t yet read “A Sentimental Education.” Most of all, my aspirational Chinese-food-mavenhood had been inhibited by four years in a college town that didn’t have a Chinese restaurant. (I coped by means of a cookbook, a heavy pan, and ingredients from a small Chinese grocery about a mile down the road; readers who survived my Nassau-Street-meets-Nassau-County ersatz, you know who you are.) So when Allen exalted the crabs at Sam Wo’s, I took it as more than a recommendation—it was a commandment, and in the summer of 1980, a few weeks after I graduated from college, I met a friend at that Mott Street restaurant for an early dinner.
When we got there, my friend and I were the restaurant’s only patrons and we were seated up front—my back was to the front door, and I faced the back of the restaurant. Not long into the meal, as we snapped and gnawed at crab shells, two more diners arrived: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman. They were ushered to the back room; Allen sat with his back against the wall, looking toward the front—and, incidentally, at me. Our glances crossed, and what his said was: “I know that you’re here because of that scene in ‘Manhattan’; I acknowledge the tribute from a nerdy young aficionado who isn’t nostalgic for my early funny movies, and I can tell that you’d like nothing more than to exchange a few words with me, but I’d really like to eat my meal in peace.” And mine said, “O.K.” So I continued to eat, training my gaze fixedly on the crabs or the ceiling or the wall decorations as I chewed in haste.
And, a few months later, right on schedule, came “Stardust Memories,” the subject of which, of course, is the personal filmmaker’s personal contact with his audience. And, of course, the subject of some of the reviews the movie got was, in effect, “We made him; how dare he not like us.” The last line of Pauline Kael’s review of the film in this magazine (cited in Robert Weide’s “American Masters” documentary about Allen, the second part of which airs tonight on PBS) is: “If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting and wishes the public would go away, this picture should help him stop worrying.” As if Allen could conceivably been oblivious or indifferent to the existence of the audience that made his movies economically possible. Rather, he made a movie about his mixed emotions—about the conflict between public persona and intimate identity (heightened by his self-portraiture in his films) and about its artistic feedback effect. “Stardust Memories” daringly ramps up the abyss from 2-D to 4-D. It’s no surprise that, soon thereafter, came “Zelig” and “The Purple Rose of Cairo.”
These discoveries were yet to come; at the moment, all I wanted to say, in the presence of the crabs at Sam Wo’s, was “Pinch me.”