Scoop

Scoop is a media satire about a dippy magician who teams up with an aspiring reporter, who has been tipped off by the spirit of a recently deceased reporter, to investigate, or maybe I should say snoop around, a wealthy, British aristocrat of whom is supposedly the Tarot Card Killer, a dastardly homicidal criminal. Sounds like there’s much wacky fun to be had, right? Well yeah, I’d say so, despite its biting reception…
…It seems a tough life for an artist. They spend its entirety creating brilliant things; pouring themselves into their work, only to be slaughtered by critics who don’t think their new material is funny enough, or ridicule them for continuing to write parts for themselves. Well for the record, Woody Allen is a wonderful actor and I’ll never equate him with Victor Frankenstein; condemning him for creating some monster persona that can’t be destroyed.

Scoop is the second film of Allen’s to be filmed in England and was produced in association with the BBC; something which is evident through the choice of locations (city pubs and country mansions), set design (the afterlife, boating sequences are meagre and amateur; nothing like that of Love and Death) and all the British extras; plus a little cameo by a certain London, Nescafe whoring, supernatural-librarian watcher.


Even though Scoop should not really be compared to Allen’s earlier films, as they belong to different eras of his career, it is hard to ignore that Scoop is a glossy film, and does seem to be tainted with that refined, British, Brigitte Jones’ Diary style makeover, disposing of the concrete jungle of cluttered myriad New York streets, smoky bars, motley but sincere characters and chiaroscuro cinematography for generic, wealthy, urbanites; pastured mansions and glass house architecture, something to do with art deco and postmodernism…I haven’t a clue. It is also hard to dismiss the fact that Scoop seems to almost be a pastiche of some of Allen’s more recent works (by recent I mean those from the early nineties onwards), most notably Small Time Crooks, Manhattan Murder Mystery, with flashes of Crimes and Misdemeanours.

Scarlett Johansson plays a bespectacled, highly-strung, peppy, geeky, ambitious reporter named Sondra Pransky; a woman who also has a randy vixen streak which she isn’t afraid to indulge in should her duty as a reporter require it of her. After all, a reporter can’t just dig through the dirt but must roll around in it to, using their sexuality as a weapon as vital as the pen and the pad. It is a departure for Johansson who has been known to play cooler, mocking, more composed roles i.e. Ghost World as the apathetic miscreant Rebecca or the wry, contemplative Charlotte in Lost in Translation. It is certainly nice to see her making full use of her vocal chords, moving away from the whole monotone voice thing to something with a little more spark; at least to save her from the same fate as Keanu Reaves and his mono-expressional reputation.

Woody Allen plays a second-rate magician called Sid Waterman or ‘Mr Splendini’ (his stage persona). This could be Allen paying homage to himself as he was once known to be quite the entertainer when he was a child; performing magic tricks in his neighbourhood. His character of Waterman in Scoop seems to be an imitation of another of his creations, Danny Rose from Broadway Danny Rose, where Allen played a struggling talent agent; as they both speak in the same New York, Brooklyn accent; both use the same artificial ‘showbiz’ expressions (i.e. “you’re an incredible audience and I mean that from the bottom of my heart” and “God bless ya’ sweetheart”); and both share an endearing pathos. Strangely enough Waterman, as though in a parallel universe to Rose, could easily have been one of Rose’s acts that he would have hired for Broadway.

Waterman’s blundering, clueless ability to fit into the culture of high society, when he and Pransky go to Peter Lyman’s (Hugh Jackman) garden party, matches that of his character Ray in Small Time Crooks. The scenario is painfully similar (well not as painful as it was in STC), as both stand out with their brash accents, and almost like ‘Del boy’ attempting to sell a hooky toaster to some Lord who has never even heard of toast, you are sitting on the edge of your seat, as you see them showcase their uncouth, streetwise personalities, waiting for them to get ‘escorted’ off the premises by a bodyguard named Jones. Another scene in which they resemble one another is that of Sid’s attempt to enter Lyman’s coded music room whilst at the party, and that of Ray’s attempts at stealing a valuable necklace whilst at a high class party in SMT.

You must also keep your ears de-waxed, as there is a bit at Lyman’s ‘doo’ that we get a snippet of the classic Woody, denominational neuroses, which will be refreshing for fans of his older more self-obsessed films. Whilst talking with some of the guests he says, “I was born into the Hebrew persuasion but when I got older I converted to narcissism”, probably the best line in the film.

Scoop also seems to resemble Manhattan Murder Mystery in many ways though MMM is far superior in both acting (difficult to even compare the revered Allen – Keaton dynamic with the latest Allen – Johansson one) and plot of which combines intelligence, suspense and comedy, and is delightfully woven into Larry and Carol Lipton’s relationship, producing Larry’s reluctance (like Sid’s initial reluctance) to enter anything to dangerous and Carol’s desperate curiosity to play the sleuth.

There is something fractal about Woody Allen’s style as each new film seems to be derivative of an older one and also seems to be affected by it in some way. As though if Annie Hall had killed that lobster that got stuck behind the fridge, then that may have somehow caused Carol Lipton to be murdered by the Manhattan killer, which in turn would have caused Sondra Pronsky to forget how to swim. I’m sure that even Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) - the deceased reporter who we see at the beginning of the film trying to bribe the Grim Reaper with money to let him escape - is taking action that is suggestive of an action Allen, due to his preoccupation with death, has probably imagined taking many times when his death cargo sails in to port Woody to carry him away.

Scoop may not be as thought provoking, intricate or damned hilarious as some of Allen’s other works but it is certainly entertaining and shows that an ageing man possessing a filmography rich with some of the darkest emotions, can still see life with humour as he did when he made his gut-busting debut, Take the Money and Run.