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May 3, 2002, 8:30 a.m. Woody’s Weird World Hollywood Ending.

oody Allen used to be famous for refusing interviews and making himself unavailable to the press. He was far too busy and too grand to publicize his own films, perhaps because he had no time left over after writing, directing, and taking naked photographs of the adopted teenage Asian daughters of his girlfriends. He did manage to find a few spare minutes once to make a television commercial for a Japanese department store, but who knows? Maybe there was a naked teenage Asian girl on the set they let him photograph.

But with the opening of his latest film, America's foremost writer-director-comedian-actor-ephebophile has decided to take a turn in the celebrity spotlight. Woody Allen is everywhere these days. On Tuesday he took a stroll through Central Park with Katie Couric. He did interviews with the New York Daily News and TV Guide. He agreed to attend the Cannes Film Festival. And most notably, he made a surprise live appearance at this year's Oscars.

What has gotten into him? I think the short and long answer is: Fear.

For more than 20 years, Allen has had total control over his pictures — right down to approval of the poster. Studio chiefs at United Artists and Orion Pictures considered it a great honor to work with him, even though his movies made no money. Alas for Allen, neither one of those companies is still in business and those studio chiefs are either dead or in retirement.

For most of the 1990s, he was supported by his best friend, Jean Doumanian. She managed to convince her billionaire boyfriend, Jacqui Safra, to bankroll Allen's movies. But for reasons known only to Allen, he decided last year to pick a huge fight with Doumanian and take her to court on the risible grounds that he was somehow cheated out of the profits of a series of box-office disasters.

Now he's got a deal with DreamWorks and a new producer. Letty Aronson may be the only woman in Woody World besides his wife Soon-Yi (who is, remember, the adopted sister of two of his children and the adoptive mother of his other two) who will speak to him. Aronson is his sister. So now she's his producer too.

Allen has had the power to do anything he wants. And here's what he's done with his power in the last seven years.

Mighty Aphrodite, a movie about Allen and an adopted baby and a hooker. It had an actual Greek chorus. It somehow won Mira Sorvino an Oscar, which the Academy really would like to have back because it's so embarrassed. Woody has sex with Mira and with Helena Bonham-Carter.

Everyone Says I Love You, in which performers like Julia Roberts and Edward Norton were forced to sing and dance in the second-most-embarrassing musical ever made (the winner in this category being Xanadu, about which don't ask). Woody has sex with Julia Roberts and Goldie Hawn in this one.

Deconstructing Harry, in which Woody plays a writer who trashes his ex-wives in his novels and hangs out with hookers. He has sex with Demi Moore, Judy Davis, Elisabeth Shue, and Kirstie Alley in this one.

Celebrity, a rip-off of Fellini's La Dolce Vita in which Kenneth Branagh imitates Woody Allen. Woody's not in it, but his doppelganger has sex with Charlize Theron and the amazing Amazon Famke Janssen.

Sweet and Lowdown, a rip-off of Fellini's La Strada in which Sean Penn plays a jazz guitarist who falls in love with Allen's dream woman — a mute. Woody appears briefly as himself and has no sex in this movie, which is why it's the best one.

Small Time Crooks, a rip-off of an Italian movie called Big Deal on Madonna Street in which Allen plays a petty thief who wants to knock over a bank and threatens lovingly to knock wife Tracey Ullman's block off just like Ralph Kramden.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, in which Woody and Helen Hunt have sex while they're hypnotized to commit crimes.

And now, here comes the latest work of genius. It's called Hollywood Ending, and it is one of the worst movies ever made. It's so bad, in fact, that I spent much of it with my hands over my eyes, cringing with embarrassment for a man I consider repulsive. Woody plays a has-been director. He gets a job directing a major motion picture for the first time in a decade because his ex-wife Tea Leoni insists on it.

This all takes about a half hour to establish.

Then, once a half hour is over, Allen's character goes hysterically blind. His agent insists he go through with directing the movie anyway. So he does. He can't see, and it's obvious he can't see, but everybody else is too stupid to notice.

This takes about another half-hour.

Then his shrink says, "Why don't we ever talk about your son?" Now we learn he has a son he doesn't talk to because the son has lots of piercings and tattoos. So he goes to see his son, who seems like a very nice boy. Then he continues directing the picture blind. Then he starts spending lots of time with Tea Leoni, who decides she prefers Allen to the very pleasant and good-looking studio executive who loves her and lets her produce movies.

Who can blame her? After all, who can resist the charms of Woody Allen, the man who hires women 30 years younger than he to costar in his films so that the world can see what a sex machine he is?
Then he can see again. Then he sees that the movie is terrible. But guess what? The French love it. So he and Tea move to France. The end.

There is not a single laugh in this movie. There is not a single dab of wit or cleverness. It is quite literally excruciating. Some critics are praising it. Movie critics always adore movies about movies, so they are to be excused this time (if you choose to excuse them).

Woody is selling this movie like crazy. He says he likes it. I think he knows it's horrible and that it's going to bomb and that once his deal with DreamWorks is over, he'll never get another studio to fall for the idea that he is a genius who needs total freedom.

There's a moral to the story of Woody Allen, and that moral is: Crime doesn't pay. Allen's cleverness, his wit, and his moviemaking skills have not recovered from that fateful day when Mia Farrow found those photos of her daughter in her lover's apartment and screamed in existential rage and fury and anger and heartbreak.

He made some wonderful movies with her as his muse — Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors. Following his exposure as a pervert and a cad and a moral fraud and an all-around bad guy, he has made cringe-inducing junk.

Could anybody deserve failure — creative, artistic, and financial failure — more than Woody Allen?

— Mr. Podhoretz is a columnist for the New York Post.