Everyone romanticizes themselves.
Some more than others, but at the end of the day, we all have this idea of ourselves that is fairly rosier than reality. I feel like for most of us, we fancy ourselves as characters in a Woody Allen movie. Especially us, the college kids. The one that toss words around like 'avante garde' and 'troubled' and 'fundamentally'. It is this demographic that would like to see themselves, would like to be the very absent-minded, intellectual, complicated, romantic failures who say terrible, witty things and make reference to old Swedish films. Who have neurotic tendencies that come across as endearing, who are old souls, who write novels, who seem 'above it all' and live in severely cultured cities where they see a therapist twice a week to deal with the weight of their own genius.
Sadly, there is a problem with this illusion comes about when you realize two things: firstly, these characters, these fantastic pillars of taste and knowledge and modern living, are in and of themselves idealized versions of Woody Allen, the creator himself. We're constantly trying to make things come out perfectly in art because it's really difficult to do that in life. The characters you see, especially the male leads, are Allen's romanticized versions of himself, brought to life through snappy dialogue and celluloid. The difference between me and Woody Allen, is that Allen is able to project his romanticized self to an audience, who then accept, fall in love with, and eventually aspire to be that version of Allen, even if they don't realize it. Basically what I'm saying is, Allen gets away with it, where as, I don't.
The second epiphany is that ironically, almost brutally so, the characters that Allen creates wouldn't even know who Woody Allen is, let alone go to see his movies. Except for perhaps Woody Allen himself, and even then I'm sure that he probably wouldn't enjoy them, and would go on about how the main character was unlikable.
Woody Allen in 'Annie Hall' would have fucking hated 'Annie Hall'.
