{"id":1236,"date":"2011-07-05T09:23:24","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T16:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2011-07-15T17:36:33","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T00:36:33","slug":"1236","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2011\/07\/05\/1236\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to Woody Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From A.J. Llewellyn<\/p>\n<p>Dear Mr. Allen,<\/p>\n<p>A few days ago I was in a bit of a creative funk which perhaps only another author can understand. The funk was brief, but deep. It stopped me in my tracks. Seriously messed with the muse.<br \/>\nOn Saturday I finally took time off from struggling with words and went to see <em>Midnight in Paris<\/em>. My boyfriend and I were mesmerized.<br \/>\nI am atill emotional from the impact of seeing this movie and what it did for me. It made me so happy in a way no other movie has for a long time. I want to thank you for that. It is not just an exquisite piece of art but a total sensory immersion into another realm. I went to a July 4th barbecue last night where family members now living in Paris, came for the summer vacation. They too, raved about the movie. It&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve heard such diverse people all saying the same thing. <em>It&#8217;s the best movie we&#8217;ve seen all year<\/em>.<br \/>\nNow I know that you know something about the muse being messed with, right? Well, your muse is back and we are all grateful for that.<br \/>\nMy only quibble is that I can&#8217;t buy the soundtrack until it&#8217;s released at the end of the month. And I will buy it, not filch it for free even though I am sure it will be online within minutes of its release.<br \/>\nI feel as if I really spent time with Mr. Hemingway, Mr. Dali -sorry, Dah-LEE!, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Mr. Bunuel, Mr. Fitzgerald and his crazy-adorable wife, Zelda, Mr. Porter, Mr. Picasso and oh, of course, Mr. Matisse, Mr. Degas and&#8230;Gauguin, Touluse-Lautrec, and T.S. Eliot. You are so imaginative!<br \/>\nOf course, I feel an urge to run to Paris and find those stairs and wait for the car to pick me up. I would love to be transported back in time to revisit the great voices of our artistic heritage. I&#8217;m not fussy. I&#8217;ll take midnight in Paris at any given generation when artists and writers were respected and serious discussion on the nature of creativity was normal.<br \/>\nOn a personal level, I enjoyed your sly digs at Hollywood and how screenwriters are not taken seriously&#8230;I always worry when great authors tell me it&#8217;s their fondest wish to be screenwriters, but I digress.<br \/>\nIf I could go back, I&#8217;d like to meet Ms. Stein. I would treasure every critical word she had to tell me. I&#8217;d like to drink Absinthe with Mr. Hemingway and dissect words. What am I saying? Thanks to you, I already have. And when I forget, I&#8217;ll just return for another dose of <em>Midnight in Paris<\/em>.<br \/>\nReaders of this blog&#8230;I am curious&#8230;if it were possible and you could go back in time to some golden age which one would you choose? Who would you meet? What would you say?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks again,<\/p>\n<p>A.J.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1237\" title=\"midnight\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/midnight.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"273\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From A.J. Llewellyn Dear Mr. Allen, A few days ago I was in a bit of a creative funk which perhaps only another author can understand. The funk was brief, but deep. It stopped me in my tracks. Seriously messed with the muse. On Saturday I finally took time off from struggling with words and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latestnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}