Woody Allen’s Whatever hardly Works
July 2, 2009 at 9:00 am by Curt Holman
I'M THIIIIS ANNOYING: Larry David (left) as Boris, and Evan Rachel Wood as Melodie
Art imitates life imitates art with Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, starring “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” Larry David. On “Curb’s” fourth season, Mel Brooks (fictionally) cast David as the scheming Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers. Nodding to the character’s history, a friend of Brooks asked, incredulously, “Zero Mostel. Nathan Lane. Larry David?”
Whatever Works finds David filling in for Mostel on the big screen. Allen wrote Whatever Works with Mostel in mind, but the larger-than-life actor died in 1977. The writer’s strike inspired Allen to dust off the script and tap David to play Boris Yellnikoff, a former physics professor and Nobel Prize also-ran. Boris spends his days teaching chess to kids and launching into tirades that equate humanity with “imbeciles” and “inchworms.”
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(Image courtesy Jessica Miglio/© Gravier Productions)
