No magic to his film-a-year method, Woody Allen says

Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, started with the title. "But I had no story," he said during a phone interview last week. "I didn't know what happened at midnight in Paris."

You have to understand, I was practically panting into the phone here. Allen is arguably the most dazzlingly productive filmmaker who ever lived. With only a few exceptions, he's written and directed a feature film a year since Bananas in 1971.

Now really, think about that - a feature a year. From 1984 to 1987, just to pick an example, he made Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days. In the last five years - while in his 70s; he's now 75 years old - he made Cassandra's Dream, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. He's tried every genre from romantic comedies and farces to murder mysteries and serious dramas, and he acted in at least half of them. As well, he throws in some New Yorker essays, TV projects or stage plays for good measure. The fact that everyone now takes this for granted - "another year, another Woody Allen movie" - only boggles the mind further.

I was hoping he could give me insight into how the hell he does it. (Or perhaps confess that he has a magical filing cabinet stuffed with scripts, because that seems as realistic as any other option.) In conversation, Allen is calm and chatty, and speaks in full, perfect sentences, though his voice is thinner than it used to be, and he has to clear his throat at lot. After one sentence, his voice cut out so abruptly that I had to make sure he was still there. "It sounded like we lost the connection," I said.

"It sounded like I died," he replied.

But he's much more confident and in charge than his comedic persona, and his process, he insists, is maddeningly matter-of-fact. With Midnight in Paris, he simply thought, "Well, the protagonist is walking around, and a car pulls up, and the people in it say, 'Get in,' and they go to a party with him," he said. Eventually it "occurred to" him, what if the hero got to the party, and he was in a golden age in Paris? "Then the thing started to open up," Allen said. "Once it got into a nostalgic mode I was very happy, because you can write fun scenes in the past, and make beautiful photography, horses and carriages and candlelight and streetlamps, and the clothing."

Midnight in Paris's hero is Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter who'd rather be a novelist, and who reveres the Paris of the 1920s, when Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, T.S. Eliot, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein and their ilk rubbed shoulders. (All appear in Allen's film.) But Gil's fiancée (Rachel McAdams) is a hard-bitten broad who wants him to stay in L.A. and make money, and from there the high jinks ensue.

So that's it? The entire secret to Allen's productivity is that he walks around, thinking? "It's strictly capricious," he said. "I'm always thinking of what would make a good story. The toughest part is raising the money. The people who finance my films are not allowed to read the script and have no say in casting. They really have to give their money and move out of the way, so that's always hard. But thinking of ideas, writing films, that's not so hard for me. That's what I do, that's the one thing I can do, walk around and cook up stories."

Recently, those stories have been taking place outside the United States, because the people who finance his films are increasingly coming from England ( Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra's Dream, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger), Spain ( Vicky Cristina Barcelona), France and, next, Italy - Allen will shoot Bop Decameron, "an out-and-out comedy," in Rome this summer. Because he's always had an eye for hot talent, it stars Alec Baldwin, Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg. And because he works with people again and again, it also stars Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis and himself. "If there's a role for me, I play it," Allen said.

Getting a truly independent film financed is difficult for anyone in the U.S. these days, but there's another reason why Europe may be easier for Allen: In the U.S., his reputation has never quite recovered from the personal scandal that erupted in the mid-1990s, when he left his long-time partner, Mia Farrow, for her daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. I'd interviewed Allen at the time, and he'd remarked on how his capacity to compartmentalize had saved his peace of mind and kept him working. That capacity seems intact today. "My life was no problem then, and it's no problem now," he said. "It was fine, and it's fine. I take care of my kids, I watch basketball and baseball, I play jazz. I have a lot of stuff to do."

If European investors have been more forgiving, Allen has taken full advantage of it. "There's nothing wrong with living in Paris for a few months, or Barcelona or London," he said. "These are not unpleasant places to live. They're great cities for someone like me, who likes to walk around, go into restaurants and shops." As well, Allen's rewarded his investors' faith by producing some of his richer movies in years. He, more than anyone, knows that good work wins out.

"I like to work," he said. "It distracts me from brooding or anxiety." Approaching 80, he's no more sanguine about death than he's ever been. "I think we're hard-wired to reject death and to fight for our lives," he said. "I'm no different than anyone, I think. I'm not sanguine about it at all."

All films are exercises in nostalgia, because they freeze on celluloid moments that are in reality gone forever, and no one knows this better than Allen. "The films I did in New York, 65 per cent of the places I shot are gone - the bookstores and restaurants, Le Cirque and Elaine's," he said. His golden age in New York would be the 1920s through the 1940s - "the bootlegging and speakeasy era in the twenties," he said, "and the thirties, with all the great Broadway shows running, and then the beginning of the forties, with the soldiers and sailors walking around Times Square, and all the nightclubs that flourished - El Morocco and the Stork Club, the Copa and the Latin Quarter."

"But not to live in," he added. "I wish I could hop over for lunch and then come back."

Midnight in Paris, and indeed all Allen's films, offer a fantasy of "people wanting to get rid of their unpleasant present lives, because they sense that out there, there is a better way of living," Allen said. "But I try not to indulge in nostalgia, because it's a trap." Remember, his next film is already written.

How Allen cast his leads

"Plenty of people have said no," Woody Allen insists. But he's being modest - most actors are thrilled to work with him. Here's how he cast his three leads in Midnight in Paris:

Marion Cotillard "I needed a French actress, and she is the Rolls-Royce of French actresses, so I called her."

Owen Wilson "Owen seemed like a perfect type to be a California scriptwriter. He's a very good comedian and actor, and likeable, and appropriately amazed at everything going on around him. He was just right for it."

Rachel McAdams "I think it's the best Rachel's ever been. I said to her, 'Here's your chance to not play the sweet ingénue, but to play the interesting, sexy, manipulative character.' And she jumped at that. She loved that idea."