TERRY GROSS: One more question. And again, this is kind of personal, but it's really more about your movies I think. After you married Soon-Yi, I think a lot of people went back and re-watched "Manhattan" or thought about "Manhattan" because it's the story of an older man and a younger woman -middle-aged man and a teenager. And the ending of that movie was always ambiguous to me. I can never really tell whether you thought that the character you played, when he finally after telling the Mariel Hemingway character to leave and go on a trip to Europe to study, and that, you know, she'd be better off doing that and leaving him. And then at the end he kind of begs her to stay. Like, was he doing in your mind the right thing? I mean like what did you think of that character, the part you played?
Transcript
GROSS: One more question. And again, this is kind of personal, but it's really more about your movies I think. After you married Soon-Yi, I think a lot of people went back and re-watched "Manhattan" or thought about "Manhattan" because it's the story of an older man and a younger woman -middle-aged man and a teenager. And the ending of that movie was always ambiguous to me. I can never really tell whether you thought that the character you played, when he finally after telling the Mariel Hemingway character to leave and go on a trip to Europe to study, and that, you know, she'd be better off doing that and leaving him. And then at the end he kind of begs her to stay. Like, was he doing in your mind the right thing? I mean like what did you think of that character, the part you played?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ALLEN: I had no idea. You know Marshall Brickman and I wrote that together and we tried to figure out some kind of ending for the picture. We would've been happy to write any ending on a picture that would've worked - that they stayed together, that they didn't stay together, that you couldn't tell. To me it didn't matter. I mean I had no - I had no special feelings about that. We were looking at the beginning of the movie for some rich areas to get comic scenes in. And one of the areas that we - we came up with a few. And one of the areas was the older guy and the younger girl. And, but that had no relation to my life at the time and it was nothing there that was any particular interest to me or to him. It was just a good laugh gimmick and a good romantic gimmick, so I really don't know, you know, what happens at the end. I mean I remember the ending, but I don't you know I never knew and we never cared. We knew we could end it that way and have a effective dramatic punch to the audience, and we moved on.
