Blast from the recent past, to honor Woody Allen, who turns 75 today: Fr. Robert Lauder's April interview with the director.

RL: When Ingmar Bergman died, you said even if you made a film as great as one of his, what would it matter? It doesnt gain you salvation. So you had to ask yourself why do you continue to make films. Could you just say something about what you meant by salvation?WA: Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to meits a brutal, meaningless experiencean agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but these are just small oases. Overall, it is a brutal, brutal, terrible experience, and so its what can you do to alleviate the agony of the human condition, the human predicament? That is what interests me the most. I continue to make the films because the problem obsesses me all the time and its consistently on my mind and Im consistently trying to alleviate the problem, and I think by making films as frequently as I do I get a chance to vent the problems. There is some relief. I have said this before in a facetious way, but it is not so facetious: I am a whiner. I do get a certain amount of solace from whining.

Read the rest here.