Why are Woody Allen's characters almost always affluent?

Because he likes making fun of the wealthy. I kind of see him as the modern equivalent of Victorian literature.

@Rarebear I wondered that myself and while he does make the occasional cheap-shot, it’s usually pretty innocuous and weak.

Seems to me that he only writes frankly loaded characters to maintain himself as an arbiter of “good taste” to his target audience of middle-aged,white, upper-middle-class and wealthy audiences.

Midnight in Paris was also pretty laughable to me because he seemed to think there aren’t any black people in Paris. eyeroll

I think he does write fairly gentle social satire for a certain class. It is the world, one presumes, in which he lives and with which he is comfortable. Not exactly a Marxist film maker like Ken Loach or Mike Leigh of England. Some of his earlier movies like “Take the Money and Run” are more rooted in his roots but he apparently strayed far from them. He also seems to idealize the cities he sets his films in and chooses to show them in their ritziest lights. I found the London settings in “Matchpoint” particularly egregious but – his movie, his choice. (I found more objectionable the fact that for many years, he was still the hero but the heroines kept getting younger and younger.)

It’s no different than 6 struggling 20-somethings lived and dated and wore Ralph Lauren and other fancy clothes, and flew all over on wonderful vacations, even though they were just friends!

Relax, they’re movies. The plots don’t work as well if they didn’t have a little money.

@LeavesNoTrace, respectfully but most emphatically, I completely disagree with you about Woody Allen and his movies. Maybe it’s because I’m Jewish and grew up with/understand, its often self-deprecating humor; maybe it’s generational; maybe you and I just don’t hear and see funny in the same way. But whatever, I have to tell you, he/they have made my life a little bit better.

I’ll admit to not much caring for his very early silly movies (“What’s Up, Pussycat” and “Bananas”). But starting with “Annie Hall” “Manhattan” and “Hannah and Her Sisters” right up to his most recent ones he’s directed but not appeared in, I’ve loved them all enough to watch them many times—especially the ones he was in. I could write a three-foot comment alone on how much I love his onscreen persona, which, though I’m sure you disagree, actually matured through the years.

As for the core of your question regarding affluency, I think both @rarebear and @janbb have it right. He knows those types well and uses them as mouthpieces to sling wisdom as well as arrows.

I agree with @Rarebear that he could be the modern equivalent to Victorian literature. Not only does he make fun of the rich, but more so the stereotype American.

I don’t like his on-screen appearance either. I prefer the movies without him in it.

I only like his earlier stuff, Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall & childish slapstick that they surely were, he was hugely funny in them.
He played pretty much your average jew Joe back then, living by fairly meagre means.

Well, the small, cramped apartments are tough to shoot movies in.
He also writes what he knows, and it has been a long time since he struggled for rent.
His first apartment in Manhattan was terrific. The 2nd one had brown water in the pipes, an elevator that sounded like a saxophone being played by a strangled cat, and neighbor sounds.

Allen isn’t the only one to do things like this, I think the requirements of shooting movies and TV shows often makes it necessary to distort reality.

Wealth is an enabler of sorts in the Woody Allen movies you describe.
The kinds of problems his characters wrestle with wouldn’t be on the radar of regular folks who have more mundane concerns. Ordinary people don’t have time for the indulgent fussing Woody Allen’s characters are usually wound up in.
It may even be part of the point that his characters with tons of leisure time and freedom don’t make much of it.

I loved midnight in Paris. Saw it twice.

@Rarebear It was great, but I think it could have been better without those not-so-talented-over-hyped Hollywood actors.

I liked ‘Midnight in Paris’ a lot, too.
It didn’t seem to suffer from the problems-of-the-rich-movie issue.

@tups like who?

@Rarebear Mainly Owen Wilson.

@tups Yeah – I loved the movie but Owen Wilson channeling Woody Allen didn’t thrill me either. And there was no reason why he was with his fiancee. Nevertheless, I thought it was a delightful movie.

@tups interesting. I thought he was great as the Woody Allen character.

@Rarebear Maybe I have missed some point here. What do you mean “Woody Allen character”?

@tups Allen plays a character in most of his movies. They are different characters but always have the same neurotic personality. He wasn’t in Midnight but he still wrote the neurotic character who was played by Wilson.

@Rarebear Doesn’t he write all the other characters as well? I just don’t think that Owen Wilson was very convincing, but it’s just my opinion. Who was the “Woody Allen character” in Vicky Christina Barcelona and You Will Meet A Talk Dark Stranger?

I’m with @Rarebear on this one. I thought Owen Wilson played the “Woody Allen” character well, the befuddled hapless character pulled along by the plot. That movie pulled Wilson up a couple notches in my estimation from his steam-punk period.

Owen Wilson was definitely the Woody Allen stand-in, down to the neuroses, the gestures and even the flannel shirts and chinos.

@tups Yes. He writes all the characters. But he almost always writes a part for himself in the movies, and he plays them. In Midnight in Paris, he wrote a part for himself, but he didn’t play it. Owen Wilson did.

@Rarebear Yes, I got it. It doesn’t change the way I think about it, though. I am still interested to know who the Woody Allen character was in the previously mentioned movies?

@tups Well, in almost all of them, it was Woody Allen himself. In fact I can’t think of any other movie that had a Woody character who wasn’t Woody. Some of them, though, like Match Point didn’t have a Woody Allen character.

Owen Wilson is just too cute!