LOS ANGELES—“Have I depressed you sufficiently?”

Woody Allen capped his long discourse on how life is “hard, harsh, brutal, short, nasty” and yes, “there’s no hope for us” by asking a journalist that question. Somehow, when New York’s—and the cinema’s— beloved neurotic talks about the “very grim human existence,” it’s reassuring.

In talking to Woody over the years, we’ve come to expect, even relish, his “realistic” (no, he’s not “pessimistic and cynical”) take on life, mortality and aging. It’s a given that he will make a joke about keeling over any minute, for one.

In “Whatever Works,” Woody’s latest comic meditation on relationships, his cast includes Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood (winning and almost unrecognizable as a Southern belle transplanted in Gotham), Patricia Clarkson (always fascinating), Ed Begley Jr., Conleth Hill and Michael McKean. Woody himself described the plot in the Q&A below.

The film marks Woody’s return to New York, where this press con took place (at the Ritz Carlton Central Park), after shooting four successive movies in Europe. He goes back to London for his next film which boasts of a great cast: Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, “Slumdog Millionaire’s” Freida Pinto, Naomi Watts, Lucy Punch (she replaced Nicole Kidman who had to withdraw due to a scheduling conflict) and Gemma Jones.

You have a knack for casting the perfect actors, quite a number of whom earn nominations and awards. What do you look for when you are casting roles?

I always look for people who don’t look like they’re acting when they act. When I’m casting in my office—it’s not much of an office but I call it an office (laughter)—an actor or an actress comes in and talks to me. We chat for a few minutes and they’re completely charming, graceful and utterly authentic. Then you give them something to read and they suddenly start doing what they think they should be doing professionally. They start acting. They don’t talk like a human being in real life. They suddenly go into an acting gear and they start speaking the way they’ve seen bad actors speak in the movies (laughter).

I never hire those people because I don’t want you to see people acting up a storm and in an inauthentic way. I always hire people who are completely simple and natural. I’ve done very well with that over the years. They always come through for me and when you see the performances, you always like them because you never feel that you’re seeing something corny or artificial.

Please talk in particular about how you cast Evan Rachel Wood.

I never heard of her before this movie. I was looking for a young girl and my wife had seen her in “Running with Scissors.” She said, “This girl is wonderful. You should check her out.” I watched some of Rachel’s films and she was terrific. I met her and she was very nice and I hired her. She assured me she could do a Southern accent but she was too shy to prove it. So I had to take that on faith. But when we shot, she did it.

She fits in that category of actors who are incapable of an unreal moment. She just makes everything so real. I felt in great hands with her. I encouraged her to improvise and I found her wonderful. I think she had never done a comedy before but if you can act, you can act. She’s young, lovely looking and if she keeps her hand on the wheel and keeps serious about her career, she will have a limitless career.

So is Rachel your new muse? What about Scarlett, who’s your very good friend?

The funny part of it is, if you can actually believe this, Scarlett is too old to play the part. When I first started working with Scarlett, she was 19 years old and she would have been perfect to play this but now Scarlett’s 24 and that’s just too old to play this (laughter). I remain very friendly with Scarlett and if there’s ever any role that she could play, I would always send it over to her and beg her to play it because I think she’s a wonderful actress, a beautiful woman and a pleasure to work with. She’s highly intelligent and can do anything.

I would also love to work with Rachel again but it has to obviously be someone—a part that she’s right for, so it has to be her age. She’s now a different generation than Scarlett so it’s funny how quickly time passes.

You originally wrote this movie’s script for the late Zero Mostel in the 1970s. How did you update the story to the present?

The basic structure of the original script is exactly as it is. I always thought it would be funny if Zero was living with this dumb little runaway and if suddenly her mother shows up out of nowhere and she hates him and he hates her. Then her father shows up and the whole thing becomes farcically a mess so that all remained. What I would call the existential problems remained—the fear of mortality, the sense of loneliness, problems that never get resolved that are the same year after year for thousands of years.

What I did have to spruce up were the more topical political things. Obviously, when I wrote it, people weren’t getting blown up on buses in the Middle East, people were not being massacred in Darfur and Obama was not the President. So there were a lot of topical references that had to be changed but the basic structure pretty much remained the same, but the outer, the cosmetics, had to be changed.

And how have your own views or ideas changed?

My personal ideas remain the same—that life is hard, harsh, brutal, short, nasty (laughter) and then there’s no hope for us (laughter). I feel I’m realistic. You’ll go away thinking, he’s so pessimistic and cynical but I’m not … I am realistic and I feel those people are slightly deluded. They sell themselves a bill of goods about how things are going to turn out OK in the end. Then they don’t turn out okay. They turn out very disappointingly and you have to try and figure out how to make a decent life in that framework. Have I depressed you sufficiently (laughter)?

You talk about how life is harsh but things have turned out okay for you—you’re still making films in your 70s and you’re happily married with two young daughters.
I’ve been very lucky in my life and things have worked out well within the limited framework of existence. Now I am 73. I’m still, any minute now, going to get old and (laughter) infirm and keel over. I’m subject to all the terrible things that happen. Within the context of a very grim human existence, I’ve had a very nice life.

People have had unspeakably horrible lives so I’ve been incredibly lucky but in the end, if you saw “Stardust Memories,” all those trains meet at the same dump when it’s finally over and that’s really what happens. The rich successful man, the beautiful woman, the artist, the politician, the doctor, the philosopher and the poor man and the beggar, everybody winds up finally in the same place, but I’ve never denied that I haven’t had an incredibly fortunate life.

It’s an amazing thing to be born in the United States, in New York City, to live my life out in New York City, and to have not had any major health problems thus far. I’ve had parents with great longevity and I’ve been in love with some wonderful, beautiful women who have made enormous contributions to my life. I’ve got great kids. But I could leave this place and a falling piano would crash on me (laughter).

Every time we meet you mention the drawer where you keep your notes for story ideas. Can you tell us more about this “magic drawer”?

It’s in my night table next to my bed. On it are a lamp, a pad and pencil and the telephone. I have everything in there. My clarinet reeds, my earphones for listening to my jazz music and my passports are in there, and a policeman’s billy (club) in case anyone breaks in at night (laughter). I have all my papers in there, all my notes and invariably I open the drawer, pull them out, put them down on the bed. I lay down on the bed and go through the same pile of papers year after year because when you’re home alone thinking, if you just lay on bed or sit in the chair or stand in the room and you don’t have anything to start with, it’s very hard.

It’s still hard when you have something but it helps. So if I have some notes and it says “Idea about a man who builds a rocket to the moon in his backyard,” I start with that. At least there’s something I can start thinking about and when I start thinking about what a terrible idea that is about a guy who builds a rocket in his yard, I start to think, he’s a man, he’s got a yard, would it be funny if he built something else in his yard? It starts to lead you to other things so it’s very important to have some notes to begin with.

I’ve accumulated tons of scraps of paper and notes over the years and a number of scripts that I didn’t do for one reason or another. I can write a script and then give it to my production manager and she finds that the budget’s too high. She would say, “In order to make this movie, you would need $20 million.” I don’t have $20 million so I throw the script in the drawer. I do have scripts in the drawer both for the theater and for film. And a bad novel that I wrote that I never show to anybody but it’s in the drawer.

Do you still have your first notes in that drawer?

I can go back and see notes on hotel stationery that I stayed at 25, 30 years ago. I have some notes that I remember from when I was 19 years old at summer theater. I have a page of notes from that era and I still look at them and some of them lead me to other thoughts that occasionally culminate in an idea.

Are you still aiming for perfection?

When you first start out, you’re always aiming for greatness and perfection. You think you’re going to get it. After reality sets in, after some years, you realize that you’re not going to get it. One of the interesting things about an art form is that … you can never get a perfect work of art. When you finish something, you’re constantly impelled to try another one because you suffer from the delusion that you can get that perfect thing. You may get a good thing or a mediocre thing but you don’t get that perfect thing.

So when it’s over, it’s like sex, you want to do it again and you think you can, you’re ready to do it again. There’s an impulse in your body to want to do it again but you never do it. I’m happy when the picture is not an embarrassment (laughter). When I start out, I think it’s going to be the greatest thing ever made and when I see what I’ve done, I am always saying, “I’ll do anything to save this from being an embarrassment.”

In the movie, Larry David’s character has a habit of singing “Happy Birthday” twice to time the washing of his hands. Where did you get that idea?

I just heard in the course of things, very en passant that you’re supposed to wash your hands all the time. That’s the one thing you can do to try not to catch various colds and flu during the winter. Someone had said you should wash your hands not just quickly; you should wash it a certain amount of time. They said you’re supposed to wash your hands in the length of time it takes you to sing “Happy Birthday” twice so, I stuck it in the movie. That seems very logical to me though that you need something to measure the amount of time you wash your hands. “Happy Birthday” twice seems reasonable to me. It seems like an intelligent thing to do.

So do you actually sing “Happy Birthday,” too, while washing your hands?

I don’t sing the actual lyrics, but I do wash my hands for what I know to be sufficient amount of time. I am not one of those crazy people who wash constantly and put little white gloves on before touching a doorknob or something. But now that swine flu’s going around, I do wash my hands. I shake hands with all of you here. God knows what I could get. I will wash (laughter).

You talked about how lucky you have been, but can you tell us at what age did you enjoy life most?

A nice stage of life is of course your 40s because in my 40s I had not lost my athletic ability. I was still playing tennis all the time and playing Broadway Show League. I still had a lot of athletic ability which was very important. That’s the thing I miss most in my life. In your 40s, you’ve had a little success, you’re not scrambling so desperately, you’re not so anxious, you’ve had a little experience and it’s a very nice time of life. Men in their 40s are good. Women in their 40s have been around. They’re mature and lovely. I am not thrilled with my 70s, let me tell you (laughter). I would rather be in my 40s (laughter).

E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.