I liked preparing for the dramatic Melinda [of Melinda and Melinda (2004)] because she was a real busybody. But the preparation wasn't easy because she was always drinking or smoking, and by the end of the day I would think to myself, 'Look at all the things she made me do!'
MELINDA AND MELINDA combines romantic comedy and drama in a way that Woody Allen, unique among filmmakers, likes to contrast. It takes place in Manhattan and chronicles a pair of crises that give reign to the talents of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Ferrell, Jonny Lee Miller, Radha Mitchell, Amanda Peet, Chloë Sevigny and Wallace Shawn. All the usual Allen areas are explained - the fragility of love, marital infidelity, sophisticated romance, the inability to communicate. As a character in the movie puts it, "He's despondent, he's desperate, he's suicidal. All the comic elements are in place."
