The Guardian attacks Woody Allen's directing

This appeared at the bottom of an article in The Guardian on Woody Allen as director:

This article was amended on 26 February to clarify that, as Allen and Mia Farrow were not married, he married his former partner’s adopted daughter rather than his former wife’s stepdaughter.

With all the reporting done on Allen lately, they still can't get this straight? Is it really that difficult? How do you confuse an adopted daughter and a step-daughter? I don't know what the problem would be if he DID marry Mia Farrow's ex-husband's daughter from a previous marriage. Would it be a moral outrage if he married Nancy Sinatra?

The article was sort of interesting but there was nothing new about Woody Allen's directing. He does little planning, he doesn't direct actors, doesn't do a lot of retakes and works short hours.

I have no idea why he should be attacked for this. Shooting a lot of retakes isn't a moral principle.

When John Huston directed Prizzi's Honor in the 1980's, his daughter, Angelica, commented to reporters on how fast he worked---he shot retakes until he got what he wanted, then he moved on to the next shot. I've read that older directors were disgusted at directors who shot retake after retake from every conceivable angle because they had no clear idea what the finished product should look like. 

How much planning do Allen's movies need? 

It could be that directing just doesn't need to be that hard. 

There was the story Ron Howard told David Letterman about his appearance on a three-part episode of Lassie in the 1970's. They would set up the camera, the actors would take their places. They would act out the scene, the director would yell cut and they'd pick up the camera and hurry to the next scene. The one retake they filmed was at the end when the director yelled, "Don't you EVER fuck with Lassie's close-up!"

In the cases of the Woody Allen movies, Prizzi's Honor and Lassie, they were working with professional actors. But Clint Eastwood worked with inexperienced or non-actors when he made Gran Torino. He said he filmed scenes in one or two takes and that he gave the actors simple instructions then worked quickly so they wouldn't have too much time to think about it. 

I wrote elsewhere on this blog about an episode of Flipper. The ranger and his sons were kidnapped by criminals who left them stranded on an island. The younger kid forgot both his lines and the plot of the episode. The father gave the boys instructions. The kid says, "Well, what about our boat?"

"Our boat is at home," the father says very patiently.

"Oh, yeah," the kid says.

"Oh, yeah," the father says.

They didn't care. They left it in.