A Multicultural 'Manhattan'

A modest proposal for an update of the Woody Allen classic

Photo by Brian Hamill

MOVIE MOMENT: One of the most memorable romantic vistas ever captured on film, according to AsianWeek contributor Frank Wu, is the image in Woody Allen's Manhattan in which Allen and co-star Diane Keaton sit motionless in silhouette on a park bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn.

BY FRANK WU

We all dream about being in the movies. I'd like to share my dream. My favorite movie is Manhattan. Made by Woody Allen and released in 1979, it is widely regarded as an American masterpiece of moviemaking. Manhattan defined the city as well as the era of the late 1970s. The scene shown on the posters, with Woody Allen and Diane Keaton motionless in silhouette on a park bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn, shot in grainy black and white, is one of the most memorable romantic vistas ever captured on film.

The plot involves several stories, but it is the characters and their motivations that are important. As in any Woody Allen production, an ensemble of neurotic New Yorkers lead lives that are as captivating as they are funny. Although a single sentence cannot do justice to any movie as good as Manhattan, roughly this is what happens: Allen falls for Diane Keaton--who used to be the mistress of his best friend, Michael Murphy--and dumps his teenage girlfriend, Mariel Hemingway. Naturally, complications develop.

In any event, I've seen the movie a dozen times, but I've never seen it the way I'd like to see it someday.

I'd like to see the all-white cast transformed into a racially mixed cast in a remake that would be better than the original.

After all, we all project ourselves into the movie roles with which we identify; this is what makes the medium powerful and inspiring. I can envision an Asian American Woody Allen, with the same wit and tics (incidentally, aren't the humor and the mannerisms the same in his movies?).

Woody's pal Yale, the Michael Murphy character, an intellectual as if you couldn't guess from the name, could be played by an African American. The woman they love, Diane Keaton, might be Latina. Yale's wife could be as Waspy as they come. Why not?

Now, nearly 20 years after the movie's original release, on the verge of a new millennium, it should be believable that people who look different might be peers sharing their lives and forming a new culture. The movie could be set in multiethnic Manhattan, or equally well on the other side of the country, either in San Francisco or Los Angeles. The point is not to make a point of race relations, but to focus on people as if for a moment we really were colorblind.

Nothing else about the movie would change. The exact same script could be followed. Or a few aspects of it could be updated or transformed from the East Coast to the West Coast. Instead of sitting on a bench overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge, the Allen and Keaton characters could sit on the hood of a convertible looking out at the Pacific or under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Nontraditional casting, as this practice is known, has been an experiment in live theater for years. And a few films, such as the recent remake of Romeo and Juliet, have shown some people of color among the leading characters rather than merely as background. But these plays and movies are rare and rarely successful. They are making too much of a show of their own daring in race relations.

Of course, I know that there are issues about race and gender, interracial relationships and everything else, that my little idea does not even begin to touch upon. I'm not trying to gloss over any of that. But I believe that there would be a value to showing, if only in the fantasy of movies, a world in which people were individuals with lives made worthwhile and worth our attention by who they are and what they do, not who others expect them to be and what they represent. The racial minorities would defy stereotypes, but they wouldn't declare that their purpose--or the movie's--was to do so.

If you prefer a movie other than Manhattan, take any of your favorite comedies or dramas and remake it in your mind's eye by the same method: picture strong leading figures who are African American, Latino, Asian American, white, Native American, and multiracial. Any story that encompassed our diversity, even or perhaps especially if it did not preach too much of a moral, would be a story for all of us--finally. We ought to be able at least to imagine what it would be like.

If Woody Allen, or another producer or director is interested, I'm ready.

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