There is a seminal question asked at the end of Bullets Over Broadway (1994).  The formerly struggling playwright, David Shayne (John Cusack), now made big, asks his cheating girlfriend, Ellen (Mary-Lousie Parker), if she loved him as a man or artist.  This will be contextualized further later, but for now it applies to the writer and director of today’s entry, Woody Allen.  Despite his more modern takes on issues like sex, too modern for a practicing Catholic like myself, I have enjoyed many of his movies.  Yet, there are some flaws to Allen the man.  For starters, he married his adopted daughter.  There is a way to give him grace in this manner, but I would rather not speak it.  More recently, his name has been mentioned in the Epstein files.  I am unaware of the extent of Allen’s involvement, nor do I want to know.  I bring this all up to say that while maybe I should have expected his name to appear in the credits, I did not look it up ahead of time otherwise I might have avoided today’s entry.  Otherwise, if you know his work, none of what follows should be a surprise.

It should also not be a surprise to David at the beginning of Bullets Over Broadway that he is having trouble finding funds for his newest play, “God of Our Fathers.”  This Catholic waited eagerly for some sign of a Christian connection with this title, but none came.  At any rate, a producer friend of his, Julian Marx (Jack Warden), sees the quality of David’s work, but does not offer any firm commitments.  Things are about to change, however.  Punctuating the early scenes are eponymous implements of death, implemented by henchmen working for mob boss Nick Valenti (Joe Viterelli).  His girlfriend is an ambitious but dimwitted chorus girl, Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly), who wants to become a star as a serious actress.  To give you a sense of her challenges, she cannot complete one of the most famous lines in all of theater arts, “To be or not to be.”  All the same, she is demanding and pushy enough for Nick to seek out Julian.  One evening while David is out with his intellectual friends, he gets a call from Julian announcing they have secured the money.  There is a catch, of course.  When David learns who will be providing the financial backing, he is shocked and repulsed.  The meeting he attends with Julian in Nick’s house does nothing to assuage David’s fears.  At the same time, such are his ambitions that he agrees to the situation.  This is when the second condition is announced: Olive must have a part.  Naturally, she wants the lead, but David and Julian have established star Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) in mind.  It is David who makes the in-person pitch to Helen to convince her to play a role, and it commences an affair between the two despite her initial resistance.  Upon learning that she will be playing the boring doctor, Olive is not pleased.  Still, they get the cast together and begin rehearsing.  At almost every turn, the actors give David grief about lines or motivations.  Several times it gets to the point where he is about to quit, and has to be talked back into the theater.  Of particular annoyance is Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), one of Nick’s thugs and Olive’s bodyguard.  As Cheech sits in the back listening to the highfalutin dialog, he voices his opinion that nobody talks that way.  Each time, David gets defensive, prompting another blow up.  These chaotic moments are not the only problem.  There is also a brewing tryst between Olive and the male lead in the play, Warner Purcell (Jim Broadbent).  As for what is going on between David and Helen, it takes him accepting rewrites from Cheech, of all people, for her to give in to his advances.  What David does not do is admit that it is Cheech who is the inspiration behind the new dialog, not himself.  David does try to get the gangster to take some credit, but Cheech prefers to remain anonymous.  Yet, the more of Cheech’s ideas that are injected into the production, the more the show improves in its presentation.  Further, David continues to not want to let people think that anyone but him is responsible for the improvements, especially since it is raising him in Helen’s esteem.  Since their affair is beginning to make him feel guilty, he tries to let Ellen know about what he has been doing behind her back.  Again, he fails to do so, and the play goes for its soft open in Boston.  Everything is coming together, but Cheech is starting to not be able the stand the sound of Olive saying his words.  The following night, Olive is not available, and the understudy delivers the right performance.  As such, before they return to preparing the show for Broadway, Cheech takes Olive to the place where he murders most his victims and shoots her dead.  Upon learning of the death, David confronts Cheech.  Cheech defends his actions, saying that it makes the play better.  David remains angry, claiming to have not wanted this to happen.  All the same, the play opens in New York to rave reviews, but in the middle of the first showing, Cheech is gunned down backstage by Nick’s men.  The actors pretend as if it is part of the scene, and Cheech gives David one last stage direction before dying.  Afterwards, Julian is looking for David in order to celebrate, but the playwright has gone to find Ellen.  Despite her taking up with David’s friend, Sheldon Flender (Rob Reiner), David convinces her to come down to talk.  David has decided to give up writing, and she accepts his proposal that they return to Pittsburgh and get married.

Given the violence David witnesses throughout Bullets Over Broadway, and the insanity of the industry in general, I do not blame him for wanting to return to more provincial environs like Pittsburgh.  As such, I return to the question discussed in the introduction, though modified: do you love the art or the man.  I will give some credit to Ellen for choosing the man and doing the Christian thing of forgiving David.  I pray that he is sincere in his apology and goes on to make himself worthy of her gesture by following through with his proposal.  After all, as Matthew 5:37 reminds us, let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no.  Conversely, it should be pointed out that, in general, the Church does not preach against art.  One need look no further than the Vatican Museum to see one of the most incredible collections of what humans can do with the talents with which God blesses us.  Still, as the cliché goes, art is in the eye of the beholder.  There are forms of creative endeavors that some undeservedly elevate above its base level.  Please forgive me for not mentioning such stuff by name, but it is enough to know that there are a few modes of expression the Church is against.  This brings me back to Allen.  He makes solid films in terms of the technical qualities, though they always seem to revolve around extramarital, or just plain cheating, activities.  If you would like to accuse Catholicism of being old fashioned, you may do so.  God has a vocation in store for us, even if it is not always immediately clear.  Allen’s films usually suggest such thinking is foolish.  But, at least this one ends with an apology.

Is the apology at the end of Bullets Over Broadway enough for me to recommend it?  No, because there is Allen the man to consider.  The art here is flawed, too.