Wild Man Blues

In 1996 Woody Allen went on a European tour with the New Orleans jazz band he had been playing clarinet in for twenty five years. The documentary follows that tour: cities, hotels, rehearsals, complaints before going on, and the concerts. Allen is comfortable on stage and complains constantly off it. Soon-Yi Previn is with him, and their relationship is in front of a camera this openly for the first time. Barbara Kopple's documentary takes its name from a jazz piece attributed both to Jelly Roll Morton and to Louis Armstrong. Kopple films the condition of being famous as much as the music: the paparazzi, the fans, a gondola in Venice. The most striking passage comes at the end of the tour, when Allen sits down with his parents; two elderly people say what they think of their son's work without softening any of it.